The New Road to Serfdom

Capitalism is a class system, and in recent years billionaires and their retainers have grown more brazen in asserting this basic social fact. Wherever the extreme right have assumed government, the oligarchical interest is strengthened as what’s left of the social state is shredded, and along with them constitutional mores and democratic accountability. Little is done to stymie their growing power by centrist governments, with the weak non-response to Elon Musk’s provocations about UK politics provide a paradigmatic example. Class never went away, but the assertion of class power has seldom been more blatant, more transparent. What are the dynamics driving this? This is question Jodi Dean has concerned herself with in Capital’s Grave: Neofeudalism and the Class Struggle. Just like the casual overuse of fascism, I normally bristle at applying feudalism to an examination of capitalist class dynamics. Hyperbole is the enemy of clarity, after all. But here Dean makes a compelling case…