From Neoliberalism to Neofeudalism

Lenin viewed transition as the "economic essence" of imperialism or moribund capitalism.Characterized by the dominance of monopoly and finance capital and the territorial division of the world among the leading capitalist power, imperialism names a period where differing modes of production coexist even as they are compelled to follow the same economic and political logics.As Lenin observed, in this stage certain features of capitalism "change into their opposites."What he had in mind was their transition toward socialism.What we see in today's moribund capitalism is another tendency, toward something that looks a lot like feudalism.Capitalist laws of motion are reflexively folding in on themselves and becoming something no longer recognizably capitalist.Processes long directed outward -through colonialism and imperialism -are turning in on themselves in ways that undermine capitalist laws of motion and repeat accumulation strategies typical of feudalism: rent-seeking, plunder, and political control.Indeed, Lenin observed that a prominent tendency in imperialism is "the creation of the "rentier state", the usurer state, in which the bourgeoisie to an ever-increasing degree lives on the proceeds of capital exports and by "clipping coupons."" 1 In the imperialist epoch, holders of capital start acting more like landlords than they do like capitalists.In Albena Azmanova's words, "the big winners are those who can exercise a rent type of a control such as a natural monopoly and thus exempt themselves from the pressures of competition." 2 It's important to be clear on what we mean by capitalism.I follow Ellen Meiksins Wood when she emphasizes that the specificity of the capitalist mode of production stems from how market dependence