Friday, October 1, 2021

"Communism amounts to perverted feudalism; it is feudalism without what is good in feudalism. Under a feudal system, the lord has some interest in not crushing his peasants; he wants their agricultural products—he might even develop a kind of paternal benevolence to them over the generations. The peasant has relatively little—very little autonomy—but he can keep a portion of what he earns; he is not run to five-year plans, nor does his lord tell him exactly what to think and say—not out of benevolence, but because a lord simply does not care what a peasant thinks or says."
https://www.xenopolitix.com/post/370-contemplation-ix

Obligatory [RTWT]. 

A fortiori: what was bad about feudalism was its flirtations with communism. A purified feudal system is not only strictly better than "democracy" but so vastly better it's like living as a different species. E.g. one of the major insults to feudalism was demand for labour mobility. Serfs couldn't be traded from where they had lower demand to where they were in greater demand, even if all of serf, lord, and lord at destination agreed to the trade. Is this feudalism? No, this is communism. Central planning buzzwords catchphrases etc etc.

I call myself anarcho-feudalist as a joke and also as not a joke in the slightest. Proper anarchy is feudal and proper feudalism is liberty.

4 comments:

Arqiduka said...

But surely you propose some way of assigning people to slots that would exceed "its obvious"

Alrenous said...

It's none of my business.

Step 1 is getting peasants to admit they're peasants, step 2 is getting them to admit they need a lord, step 3 is having them petition a lord to accept them.

Step 4: their lord, who knows the peasant far better than I ever could, will assign them a slot. If he screws up, the lord will be held responsible by Gnon, meaning he generally won't screw up.

Arqiduka said...

Sorry, in search of brevity I let myself be misunderstood. I meant how to determine who is a peasant and who a lord in a formal fashion. Obvioisly peasants will never admit to being such. Seems to me the main issue in proposing feudalism with any serious intent. Apologies if you have covered this elsewhere.

Alrenous said...

Answer's pretty much the same, though: none of my business. Kind of the point of a lord is I don't get to tell them what to do or assign them anything.

Everyone gets to try to be a lord if they want. If they're not a lord, they fail. Can't get followers, can't get jurisdiction, can't keep their followers, etc. Narcissists in particular will get wrecked constantly by this dynamic.

For peasants, taking the [have a lord] deal will seem like a good idea. Especially as under non-communized feudalism, you can stop whenever you want. "Be a peasant until you can get set up, then show them, show them all!" However, peasants in particular are creatures of habit...