RedMaistre posted:

littlegreenpills posted:

i say this all the time but if you mention the term 'feudalism' to a medieval scholar their eyelid will start to twitch. i feel it still describes something useful when marxists use it but we have this ongoing confusion where a lot of marxists essentially believe its still useful to talk about the same sort of thing 17th century protoliberals were talking about when they coined the term i.e. a poorly informed caricature of a society that had died centuries before their time

1. I would take issue with describing what those 17th century writers were talking about as being merely a fanciful caricature. They saw that real social changes had occurred in recent centuries, could see these changes unfolding at first hand, and had a profound interest in understanding them. As J.Q.C. Mackrell puts it.

Eighteenth century historians gave to feudalism more meanings than meet with the approval of modern academics. Yet that does not mean that 18th century writers knew no history. They seem, however, to have felt more deeply about the past than most modern writers, which may explain why the latter find it so hard to forgive them.

The word's main usefulness for their purposes came from the fact that it registered the reality of these new developments--not that it descriptively corresponded to a continuous and homogeneous system that had stretched from the fall of Rome to modern times.

2. The main problem is that Marxist polemic and agitprop used the word to apply to any and all social forms throughout the entire world that they could construe as being premodern, regardless of their origin or date of formation. Which is fine for polemic and agitprop but it obscured the historical specificity of Marx's analysis, which is mainly about the transition to capitalism in a handful of Western Europeon countries (above all England).As long as we keep this historical specificity in mind, using feudalism as a generic term for the social orders preceding capitalism in those countries remains acceptable, imo.

I don't understand this fief

by floating the notion that Greece might be better off leaving the common currency, Germany displayed its national interest more nakedly than in the past

Makeshift_Swahili posted:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/29/yanis-varoufakis-may-face-criminal-charges-over-greek-currency-plan?CMP=twt_gu?

his response http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/29/treason-charges-what-lurks-behind-the-bizarre-allegations/

it's all pretty impressively insane. maybe they can gin up a way to have him electrocuted or something. maybe in the front yard of the ecb?

babyhueypnewton posted:

I think that Brenner and Perry Anderson (among others), read together, make a convincing case for the historical specificity of feudalism as a Europeon phenomena and help move us away from notions that it was defined by mere stagnant autarky or localism. Medieval Feudalism had markets, dynamic class relations, and (through institutions like the Church and the HRE) a sort of over-arching social-political internationalism of its own as well. It is such factors, in fact, that brought about the series of crises that led to the death of feudalism in the first place throughout much of Europe by the 14th century and set the stage for the rise of capitalism in England, the Reformation in Germany, and the French Absolutist state with a base established on small peasant proprietorship.

Also, outside of Europe, the power of center in the Chinese and the Ottoman Empires waxed and waned, but they never had the characteristically feudal 'parcellization of sovereignity' (Anderson) that was unique to Europe, and was the result of a specific set of legal arrangement between independent aristocratic property owners and royal dynasties. So if 'feudalism' is our future, for much of the world it will not be a 'return' at all.

Dang bro I think u just inspired my thesis. That's why this forum is cool. We must keep the corpse of LF shambling along.

Long live the Vampire Castle, wherever it is found.

Edited by RedMaistre (July 30, 2015 02:30:08)

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

nice title change. do you like bros khamsek

the title change was because she quoted my tweet wrong, no one cares about you

c_man posted:

i dont block anyone except bots but i have also never been harassed by anyone. namaste

i should make a blockbot called "nigga close yo eyes hahaha"

Crow posted:

Well the nazis killed a bunch of women and children, while stalin killed a bunch of nazis

why are you comparing an army to an individual. that makes little sense. hitler personally probably killed very few women, while the red army killed a whole lot. these are some confusing fallacies of logic you're making here, in my opinion