© S. J. Carey
History never repeats itself, but from time to time, consciously or not, some influential men attempt to force us into the monstrosity of their imaginary time machines to try to reverse decades, and in the case of feudalism, almost a millenium of social progress. The mid-20th century brought the years of collective psychosis of Adolf Hitler's "thousand year Reich," and more recently what can be viewed as the United States of America's imperialist manifesto or so-called
Project for the New American Century, concocted in 1997 but still in effect today under the current administration, with the self-proclaimed objective to "promote American global leadership" resolutely and by military force, if necessary.
Montesquieu and his colleagues of the mid-18th century, such as Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau of the Age of Enlightenment, denounced feudalism as being a system exclusively dominated by aristocrats who possess all financial, political and social power. During that time, which incubated the French Revolution and built its ideological foundations, feudalism became synonymous with the French monarchy. To the Enlightenment writers, feudalism symbolized everything that was wrong with a system based on birth privilege, inequality and brutal exploitation. In August 1789, shortly after the takeover of La Bastille on July 14, one of the first action of the Assemblee Constituante was to proclaim the official abolition of the "feudal regime."
Ironically, feudalism is making a comeback in the latest evolution and under the impulse of predatory global capitalism. After all, Karl Marx, in the mid-19th century, considered feudalism to be a precursor of capitalism. Typically a feudal system can be defined as a society with inherited social rank. In the Middle Ages, wealth came exclusively from agriculture: the aristocracy strictly assumed ownership of the land while the serfs provided the labor.
Comment: Our western collectives outward declarations of love and relations to our children may have changed over the last 80 years, but really how much do we protect our children and our communities children? Since then communities have been divided and phased out, and we deposit our children in schools which suck them dry from imagination and teaches them to be emotionally and intellectually dependent on a parasite system. To boot they are fed degenerate diets, mind crumbling meds and stupefying entertainment. And that's not even mentioning the large share of children being physically molested at home or through pedophile networks. Ironically, Father Flanagan's 'Boy's Town' was later to become part of such a pedophile network, covered up by the same god-awful church.
No, it still doesn't seem like we learned to care.