Excerpt: /301/ Reading Club: Neo-Feudalism

On Joel Kotkin's The Coming of Neo-Feudalism 

We start off by discussing your points on the last RC, on conspiracy theory.

Then we delve into Kotkin's book, asking whether he has an adequate understanding of feudalism, and whether this is the right lens to understand transformations underway now. Is 'techno-feudalism' not just a downturn in 'systemic cycles of accumulation', related to the decline of the US empire? And what are Kotkin's politics and how do they relate to his analysis?

Thanks for all the questions received on this one, we discussed them as we went through the episode.

Reading:

• The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, Joel Kotkin, Encounter Books
• Techno-Feudalism Is Taking Over, Yanis Varoufakis, Project-Syndicate 

Next month: Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Atle Mikkola Kjøsen and James Steinhoff, Pluto Books