Is modern capitalism beginning to resemble a feudal system? This episode of Explaining History explores the provocative argument, drawn from the work of the late anthropologist David Graeber, that contemporary capitalism has evolved into a new form of feudalism.

This episode delves into a lecture by David Graeber, where he contended that modern "rentier capitalism" shares many characteristics with historical feudalism. We'll unpack the distinction he makes between a system based on the extraction of rent and the traditional capitalist model centred on the production of surplus value from labour. Graeber's analysis suggests that wealth is increasingly accumulated not through competitive production, but through the control of assets and the extraction of fees, a system he termed "managerial feudalism."

To provide a comparative perspective, the episode will then turn to an analysis of "state-managed capitalism" in the People's Republic of China. We will examine how the Chinese model, often referred to as "party-state capitalism," utilizes state-owned enterprises that monopolize key upstream industries to extract rent from downstream private sectors.

Join us as we question the nature of our current economic system. Is the 21st-century global economy moving beyond capitalism as we know it and, in some ways, returning to a pre-capitalist mode of wealth extraction? This episode of Explaining History offers a thought-provoking analysis of the structures that underpin the modern world.

Newsflash: You can find everything Explaining History on Substack, join free here
Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each week

If you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:

If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership here

Or

You can support the podcast via Patreon here

Or you can just say some nice things about it here

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.