Resentment and the State

the two are not the same in other regards - irrelevant: they're the same in that regard;

strictly regulated land-ownership was not feasible 1000 years ago - true, we're better at it now;

God exists and was the head of the feudalism - preach elsewhere please.

Give examples, that I can refute or conced that point.

Can't you see the implications of that? If it is not feasible then a system will emerge based on what is feasible- i.e. non-strictly regulated land ownership.

At what point did I say that God existed? The feudal system was brought into being by a society that universally accepted the existance of God, and God, or rather the belief in God, was a fundamental part of the functioning of the feudal system, and I showed that with the example of papal authority.

In a state of nature, each individual principally has equal right to resources and habitat as any other - that is they are free to feed and take shelter.

The key point to my argument is that the state criminalises direct self-provision - capitulation to the state's terms becomes a survival necessity.

... we are born into a contract we could never have agreed and have no choice but to act on its terms.

• The greatest needs of the individual are (i) to hunt or gather food; (ii) to find or build shelter.
  
• In a state of nature, each individual principally has equal right to resources and habitat as any other - that is they are free to feed and take shelter.
  
• The freedom to feed and take shelter is suspended by the state.
  
• One may 'rent back' this freedom by fulfilling obligations to the state either directly or indirectly via the corporations and landowners
  

I believe it is the duty of the state of any nation calling itself developed to ensure that the acquisition of food and shelter is not a determining factor in how the individual contributes toward his society, and that the state has never had claim over such freedoms - it simply took them as part of building a feudalism that remains intact today.

And that's why it doesn't work. If there's no upper limit on what I can freely lay my hands on, there's no upper limit for anyone. That requires infinite resources, which we don't have.

Yeah, economic materialism rather depends on an economy. Still doesn't change the fact that if there's nothing stopping them, enough people would take as much for themselves at the expense of others to render a society of free goods but finite resources doomed from the get-go.

Genes are influenced by the environment much more than people.

Tell me to the cows come home :bigsmile:; you seem more interested in fitting ideas to words than the ideas themselves. Thanks for your responses but I'm not interested in what you want to call it (no offense).

Well, I'm also not interested (here in this thread) in the ideal political and economic structure of society. Whether my idea does not go far enough in your opinion is a separate matter. I'm talking about one thing and one thing only. People already pay for services with taxes. This happens to be one that's worth something to them.

Will do Khethil. Thanks a lot for your detailed and well-thought out critique. I disagree with a number of points (surprise!) but have no time right now to respond to such a lengthy post. I will say this: Your response is quite handy because I do recognise that, in rewriting the OP to be more striking, I obscured some of my argument. Your post gives me the opportunity to reintroduce some of the detail of the original OP.

You might notice, for instance, the title now has nothing to do with the thread. Originally this started out as a companion piece/competitor to your 'Angry, Are We?' thread, which may give some indication as to where I was headed. Unfortunately the original OP garnered no interest, or else I was too impatient.

I will respond when I can: much to get done today, and I will follow suit with the approach of the response.

It's in the topic in question: The feudal system is a system of land ownership, land ownership at the time being ownership of the means of production. The central idea is that access to those means of production is gained by labour to the land owner, thus feudalism was a means of removing the possibility of self-provision by the individual, thus obliging them to labour for the land-owner.

We still have the same approach now. Self-provision is criminalised because the produce and the means of produce (land and others) are still owned. This time the structure is called something else, and the details vary, but it's still based on the idea. Landowners and banks own the land, they and corporations control the means of production. In order to provide for yourself, again, you are obliged to labour on behalf of one or the other.

I'm really struggling to believe that the above is really beyond you. I'm kind of thinking this is an argument-to-argue kind of deal. Which, I suppose, is better than nothing, but at the moment I'm just repeating myself in different ways.

Feudalism began in our country with William I. The Norman conquest was followed by a land-grab which was followed by disputes between the land-grabbers, hence the Domesday book seemed like a good idea at the time as a means to establish exactly who owned what, who worked what, who produced what and how much should be working its way up: it fixed the post-grab land-ownership and thus settled any disputes.

First off, apologies for the tone: what seemed like being firm to stop a thread derailment now reads back as overly harsh. That said, your claim was not that the system was under the acceptance of God, but that God headed the system. If the feudal system existed and God did not, the latter cannot be the head of the former, so it seemed to me to be 'You're wrong, because God...' type argument. That's what I wanted to nip in the bud - briong yet another unrelated thread back to 'Does God exist?'. Sorry, I might be a little sensitive to those as a number of other threads have been derailed in the same way.

calling needs "freedoms", calling a sad condition perpetuated by mismanagement or resource lack a "crime", etc

I'll happily applaud and stand with you on the first point here (although I'd love to hear how you're defining "determining factor in how [an]... individual contributes"). It sounds nice though!

To prevent outright peasant ownership, lords asserted their own right to ownership. They forced the peasants into renting the land with a temporary lease.
...
In other words, the lords claimed the traditional land of the peasants as their own and the courts upheld this right.

English common law dealing with land ownership was based on the feudal system in which the monarch owned all the land but allowed favored individuals the use of it, as tenants, in exchange for service.
...
The key points of the feudal system were that ultimately the King retained control, and that payment of some kind was made. True personal land ownership was impossible because the title one held was always subservient to the King.

Much deals with counter-arguments to anarchist or anti-capitalist views that I presume you've assigned me simply because hue-man posted such views here.

There's a certain degree of intellectual dishonesty going on here.

For instance:

Khethil;65359 wrote:

...calling needs "freedoms", calling a sad condition perpetuated by mismanagement or resource lack a "crime", etc.

This is a rather wilful changing of my statement. I did not call needs freedoms, I called the ability to meet basic survival needs freedoms. Nor did I call mismanagement a crime, I called the criminalisation of self-provision with no recompense by way of meeting basic survival needs a crime. You paint what was meant as provocation to appear as rousing rhetoric to get people on my side. Never did I call for any militant, retributive or revolutionary action, so your gallows reference makes no sense. You question how your government could be guilty of "building a feudalism" - the building I refered to happened ~1000 years ago.

Again, you think you know what's 'going on' in someone else's mind for their motivations. Again - not a good idea. Also, you're accusing me of willfully changing your statement: For this, I'll ask your apology.

I agree they're needs and I could even buy off on them being "rights". But it sounds over-inflammatory and unjustified to be termed "freedom" - no definition I can find seems to fit. Was this phrasing an attempt to garner support by using a pure & extolled word to amplify the effect of the word 'crime'? It sounds like it... in either case, it doesn't follow.

Woops, that would be an assumption. Unless you're on very firm footing, you shouldn't try and guess at someone's motivations. This not only is incorrect (like, WAY off), this kind of rhetoric is a bit embarrassing.

Again, you think you know what's 'going on' in someone else's mind for their motivations. Again - not a good idea. Also, you're accusing me of willfully changing your statement: For this, I'll ask your apology.

The re-statements I've made on how I perceived the progression of your thoughts were not ever deliberately made to deceive. If I've misunderstood them, I was hoping you'd clarify, but to accuse someone of willful changing is most unbecoming.

For people who are like this, on this forum, I simply don't engage them. Let's finish this up here, but I'm guessing I'd mistook you to not be numbered among them.

In any case, you might want to go back and re-read your edited opening post. It very much looked like that's what you're saying; that these needs were freedoms and that suspension of such was a crime. Which, to my mind, called for questioning and calling-out. In any case i'll not address the other point as I can see where this is going.

Good luck with this

This is a rather wilful changing of my statement.

Khethil;65869 wrote:

Also, you're accusing me of willfully changing your statement: For this, I'll ask your apology.

Bones-O!;65878 wrote:

Woah! You're kidding, right?

Wow...

... what's most bizzare about this is you seemed to have some excellent ideas that were simply in need of clarification. As it is, it appears that you likely don't fully recall what you've posted.

And looking through the rest of your responses to me, they're all this disconnected. I don't know quite what to say here. But I do feel better, for a minute there, I thought it was me.

Cheers!

Khethil

What don't you like? Come on, I should be getting a bigger kicking than an examination as to how far my feudalism simile goes.

On which point, Avatar, thanks, but I disagree. The fixing of taxes was a huge incentive for the Domesday book, as was establishing who owns what land for the settling of disputes - i.e. the centralisation of authority on the ownership of means of production. I can try to dig up citations if need be.

---------- Post added at 04:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:29 PM ----------

Always begin with Wiki!

On the purpose of feudalism, from "How society makes itself" by Howard J Sherman, Business and Economics, 2005:

Seems like a method of stopping self-provision to me.

Okay, so what does this have to do with my point? Well, as I said in the OP, during the feudal system controlling the land meant controlling the means of production. This is no longer true: in fact, agricultural produce requires far much less labour than it did. Again as per the OP, most produce now depends on land only as a space, and we tend to maximise the space within a parcel of land (et voila, the skyscraper). So we no longer directly work for those who ensure our survival, but the key point is that self-provision is criminalised, and so still impossible. We still have to fulfil some obligation to some other elite in order to pay (extortionate) housing costs and buy food and clothes in order to survive. The landowners have been usurped as the owners of means of produce: the corporations have largely taken over, so now we are in service to them. This has no geographical similarity with feudalism, but that is not the similarity I drew. The key principle is the denial of self-provision, or, as state above, to prevent outright peasantry ownership.

What I have not said is that capitalist democracy = feudalism. I hope the above says what I meant better than I did and we can avoid any "but this detail doesn't match that one" type arguments.

Please find better citations. Wikipedia I will ignore, for obvious reasons. As for the book you mention, it is by a marxist historian. Now Marxist historians, while often intresting and useful, do have a nast of habit of seeing history entirely from the perspective of class and ownership, and tend to project backwards the norms of modernity, to a time and context where they are irrelavent. I reccomend Susan Reynolds, in particular her book Fiefs and Vassals, which should enlighten you to the full complexity of Feudalism, or rather mediaval society, for as she rightly points out, feudalism as a term of pure modern invention, and I personally use it ownly for conveniance and in an attempt to redefine it.

The book I reffered to, and its author do not represent the marginal view of feudalism, but rather an emerging understanding of the fact that mediaval society and feudal relationships were far more complex, and less open to scrutiny than had previously been thought. The book I reffered to is widely recognised as the result of some of the most fantastically rigarous works of compiled historical research on medieaval society.

I have my own view of feudalism, true, and it is certainly marginal, but I have here only presented some of the more basic and recognised facts about feudalism. I am not intending to derail this topic, but its premise is that feudalism, and the feudal economy and modern capitalist society and economics contain many common elements, wheras the two societies and economic systems are in fact as close to being opposites as any other pair of socio-economic constucts.