It's rather amusing that a long-winded article stating that people shouldn't describe the current American economic system as 'feudalism' doesn't bother to include the concepts of 'the aristocratic class' or 'inherited wealth and power.'
For example, one characteristic of a society divided into aristocrats and serfs (and lacking anything like the 'American middle class' of the 1960s) is a segregated educational system, with fundamentally different approaches for the posh vs. the proles. The various attacks on public schooling (like the effort to remove higher mathematics from public schools in California) and the elimination of state subsidies for higher education are certainly a step in that direction.
Another feature of this article is the lumping of all things 'capitalist' together, ignoring the very real distinction between commericial and investment capitalism, colloquially described as "Main Street" vs "Wall Street". Notably the latter is characterized by extreme concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a 'central committee' of Wall Street financiers; the former version of capitalism certainly has a much more distributed character in terms of wealth, power, land ownership etc.
Finally, this really is a 20th century argument that misses a fundamental characteristic of the 21st century: resource limitations. Regional water scarcity due to ongoing fossil-fueled global warming is a reality in many parts of the world, and this is more fundamental than ideological wrangling about societal structures. The resulting impacts on food production are physical and ecological in nature, not ideological - although the consequences could lead to things like the French Revolution, or the rise of authoritarian power to ensure food distribution (basically, that's China writ large).
I think the real split is going to be more about authoritarianism vs. libertarianism, and the libertarian track record on avoiding things like mass famine and consequent societal destabilization is perhaps not the best.
> Another feature of this article is the lumping of all things 'capitalist' together, ignoring the very real distinction between commericial and investment capitalism, colloquially described as "Main Street" vs "Wall Street".
My (extremely tentative!) thesis is that there’s been a shift in language over the last decade or so in left/liberal culture, and this is part of that. “Leftists” are often very down on “liberals” -- in the telling of Left Twitter, liberals are basically centrists and centrists might as well be right-wing -- yet what “The Left” believes is, by and large, pretty much what I believed as a “liberal” two decades ago. (I suspect a lot of this is generational, driven by disillusionment at perceived failures on the part of the Clinton/Obama establishment.)
Likewise, I think what’s seen as “capitalism” has made a linguistic shift. I’ve always thought of small business owners and solo entrepreneurs, from the little bookshop on Main Street down to freelance artists selling their prints at the dealers’ rooms in science fiction and comic conventions, as quintessentially capitalist, but at least on the left, that doesn’t really seem to be how it’s used anymore. The focus is squarely on the worst features of “big” capitalism, on the principle that exploitation and destruction is where capitalism always leads. Since a two-person indie software company doesn’t fit that narrative of capitalism, it’s…something other than capitalism? Frankly, I don’t think the logic fully holds up there.
Back in my day [waving cane], I would have distinguished between entrepreneurship and corporatism -- which is, more or less, that “Main Street” vs. “Wall Street” distinction. (I also think it’s worth acknowledging that there are some small businesses out there which, depending on the yardstick you’re measuring by, can be truly, truly dreadful.) But, this is a hill I don’t have a real interest in dying on. If someone wants to argue that a dealer’s room at a furry con full of freelance artists selling sexy catgirl pinups isn’t capitalism but “market socialism” or whatever, then godspeed.
As a unrelated note, re-reading your last sentence, though:
> I think the real split is going to be more about authoritarianism vs. libertarianism, and the libertarian track record on avoiding things like mass famine and consequent societal destabilization is perhaps not the best.
The authoritarian track record here does not seem to be sterling, either.
The liberalism / leftism divide is actually a return to traditional terminology that dates back to post-revolutionary French politics. Leftists essentially want answers to the 'social question' (welfare) while liberals essentially want to protect 'liberties', primarily economic liberties.
The weird hybrid between economic liberalism and light social democracy represented by the US Democratic party is basically an artefact of the electoral system, it's not actually a coherent politics. That's why there are such big divisions in the party itself.
Petite bourgeois vs. haute bourgeois is no new distinction.
(Also entrepreneurs are different from small businesses. Entrepreneurs make attempts at new big businesses, vie for new monopolies, etc.)
> in the telling of Left Twitter, liberals are basically centrists and centrists might as well be right-wing -- yet what “The Left” believes is, by and large, pretty much what I believed as a “liberal” two decades ago
I think probably you're not as aware of what leftists believe as you think.
Leftists are not using "liberal" in the American sense of the word at all, and "never were." (Like, maybe those specific people were, but "the left" wasn't.)
The shift in the use of "capitalism" to mean solely the capital class and not small business owners is a return to the actual meaning.
With any exploitative minority of people, it's in their best interests to convince large groups of people that they're all really part of the same club. It makes the exploited less likely to end the exploitation. Or end the exploiters.
And I don't just mean capitalists. Consider the way both ridiculous, unpopular mainstream political parties use wedge issues to scare people into following them even though they are both known to be corrupt machines full of greedy, self-seeking people. Etc.
You're interpreting this as a new meaning of capitalism but it seems to be a return to an older definition that came out of early socialist theory, where capitalism is defined by having an owner/investor class of capitalists and an (exploited) working class. I suspect the prevalence of this terminology is driven by the increasing perception that liberal (politicians) don't seem to care that large corporations have grown into monopolies, leading those concerned with this "corporatism" to turn to socialist theories as a way of conceptualizing the current system.
For example, one characteristic of a society divided into aristocrats and serfs (and lacking anything like the 'American middle class' of the 1960s) is a segregated educational system, with fundamentally different approaches for the posh vs. the proles. The various attacks on public schooling (like the effort to remove higher mathematics from public schools in California) and the elimination of state subsidies for higher education are certainly a step in that direction.
Another feature of this article is the lumping of all things 'capitalist' together, ignoring the very real distinction between commericial and investment capitalism, colloquially described as "Main Street" vs "Wall Street". Notably the latter is characterized by extreme concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a 'central committee' of Wall Street financiers; the former version of capitalism certainly has a much more distributed character in terms of wealth, power, land ownership etc.
Finally, this really is a 20th century argument that misses a fundamental characteristic of the 21st century: resource limitations. Regional water scarcity due to ongoing fossil-fueled global warming is a reality in many parts of the world, and this is more fundamental than ideological wrangling about societal structures. The resulting impacts on food production are physical and ecological in nature, not ideological - although the consequences could lead to things like the French Revolution, or the rise of authoritarian power to ensure food distribution (basically, that's China writ large).
I think the real split is going to be more about authoritarianism vs. libertarianism, and the libertarian track record on avoiding things like mass famine and consequent societal destabilization is perhaps not the best.