Is this Capitalism or Neo Feudalism? REVISITED
Channel: A New Conversation
Date: 2022-01-18

This video addresses ideas I expressed in 'Is this Capitalism or Neo Feudalism?' from two years ago (link at the end), after having read Lenin's 'Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism' a year later. (This was supposed to be made last spring!)

The ideas from two years ago questioned whether or not we had moved on somewhat from capitalism, arguing that capitalism was perhaps more a tool used by the powerful, a means to an end rather than an end in itself, and that power attained through its use might eventually transcend the need to attend to a capitalist economy at all, and that the social heirarchies of the feudal era seemed to be being reimagined today through capitalism.

In Lenin's treatment of Imperialism from just over a century ago, we see many of the tendencies within capitalism occurring today, occuring then also, and as a crucial contributor to Marxist theory, we learn through Lenin that, though it is in decay, we are not in fact leaving capitalism behind. The video works through Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, addressing its relevance to today's context.

In identifying that the Imperial stage of capitalism signigied its decay, Lenin believed society was taking its first steps toward socialism. However, it feels we are far from the proletarian led revolution to socialise the ownership over the already socialised form of capitalist production presented by monopolisation. So it remains, if we are not taking steps towards socialism, what barbaric phase are we facing?