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Neo-feudalism or new feudalism is a theorized contemporary rebirth of policies of governance, economy, and public life, reminiscent of those which were present in many feudalism societies. Such aspects include, but are not limited to: Unequal rights and legal protections for common people and for nobility, dominance of societies by a Oligarchy, a lack of social mobility, and relations of lordship and serfdom between the elite and the people, where the former are rich and the latter poor.
On the other hand, Jürgen Habermas used the term Refeudalisierung ("refeudalisation") in his 1962 The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere to criticise the privatisation of the forms of communication that he believed had produced an Enlightenment-era public sphere. Habermas did not use the term neo-feudalism, but later commentators have noted that his ideas were similar.Sighard Neckel, ‘ Refeudalisierung der Ökonomie: Zum Strukturwandel kapitalistischer Wirtschaft ’, MPIfG Working Paper 10/6 (Cologne: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, July 2010), pp. 11-12. Correspondingly, in 1992 Immanuel Wallerstein expressed views on global development, listing neo-feudalism among three other variants. By neo-feudalism, Wallerstein referred to autarky regions with a localised hierarchy and hi-tech goods available only for the elite.Wallerstein I. Capitalist civilization. -Binghamton (N.Y.), 1992.
According to Les Johnston, Clifford Shearing's theoretical approach of neo-feudalism has been influential. Shearing "uses this term in a limited sense to draw attention to the emergence of domains of mass private property that are 'gated' in a variety of ways".
Lucia Zedner responds that this use of neo-feudalism is too limited in scope; Shearing's comparison does not draw parallels with earlier governance explicitly enough. Zedner prefers more definitive endorsements.
Neo-feudalism entails an order defined by commercial interests and administered in large areas, according to Bruce Baker, who argues that this does not fully describe the extent of cooperation between state and non-state policing. The significance of the comparison to feudalism, for Randy Lippert and Daniel O'Connor, is that corporations have power similar to states' governance powers. Similarly, Sighard Neckel has argued that the rise of financial-market-based capitalism in the later twentieth century has represented a 'refeudalisation' of the economy.Sighard Neckel, " Refeudalisierung der Ökonomie: Zum Strukturwandel kapitalistischer Wirtschaft ", MPIfG Working Paper 10/6 (Cologne: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, July 2010).
The widening of the wealth gap, as poor and marginalized people are excluded from the state's provision of security, can result in neo-feudalism, argues Marina Caparini, who says this has already happened in South Africa. Neo-feudalism is made possible by the Private police, and signifies the end of shared citizenship, says Ian Loader. A primary characteristic of neo-feudalism is that individuals' public lives are increasingly governed by business corporations, as Martha K. Huggins finds.
John Braithwaite notes that neo-feudalism brings a different approach to governance since business corporations, in particular, have this specialized need for loss reduction.
During the course of the years 2020-2021, Yanis Varoufakis has written and lectured much about his theory concerning neo-feudalism. He posits that traditional capitalism has evolved into a new feudal-like structure of economies and societies, which he refers to as 'techno-feudalism'. Varoufakis explains that unlike in capitalism, feudal economies have the quality of being dominated by very small groups of people, and predetermine the behaviour of markets as they see fit. Taking the example of massive online enterprises such as Facebook, Amazon and others, Varoufakis noted that such venues are primarily governed by the whims of single individuals and small teams, and thus are not truly capitalist markets of free trade, but rather feudal markets of stringent control. Others, such as Jeremy Pitt, have raised similar opinions and concerns, also noting that techno-feudalism threatens freedom of information over the Internet.
Similar concepts had been used by Uruguayan American professor Jorge Majfud since 2010.
Similar ideas are found in some Anglophone fiction.Kaufman, Amy S., "Our Future is our Past: Corporate Medievalism in Dystopian Fiction", in Corporate Medievalism II, ed. by Karl Fugelso, Studies in Medievalism, 22 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2013), pp. 11–19. For example, Frank Herbert's Dune series of novels is set in the distant future with a neo-feudalistic galactic empire known as the Imperium. In these novels, after a series of wars known as the Butlerian Jihad, humanity has come to prohibit all kinds of "thinking machine technology", even its simpler forms. Subsequently, the political balance of power in the Dune Universe gradually became dominant by a myriad of royal houses, each dominating one or several planets. Albeit operating in the distant future, the social and political dynamics of said royal houses are similar in many respects to those previously seen in medieval times.
In David Brin's near-future science fiction novel Existence, American politicians campaign on legally transitioning the United States into a neo-feudalist society.
In the year 2020, head of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab published a book titled .Schwab, Klaus (2020), COVID-19: The Great Reset, ISBN Agentur Schweiz. The book argues that the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity for politicians and governments to change the world's economies, societies and structures of government, by introducing a system of "Stakeholder Capitalism", doing so via the guidelines of a plan known as 'The Great Reset'. Schwab also refers to his goals as "The Fourth Industrial Revolution".Schwab, Klaus (2017) The Fourth Industrial Revolution Other authors have criticized The Great Reset as being a form of Neo-Feudalism.Mercola, Joseph (2021), The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing The Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal, Chelsea Green Publishing. Breggin, Peter R. (2021), COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey, Lake Edge Press. Kotkin, Joel (2021), The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, Encounter Books.
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