2024 US ELECTION SERIES

Feudalism & Liberalism [2/10]

Focusing on the evolution of political philosophy and current party policies, we have you covered for November 5th

Leo Greenwood
Coping with Capitalism
8 min readJul 29, 2024

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Photo by GR Stocks on Unsplash

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Feudalism & Manorialism

Feudalism comes from the word ‘fief’ meaning an estate, or land, property essentially, and was constructed hierarchically from monarch at the top, down through ever broadening tiers of lords, to peasants — peasants being the lowest social class — those who worked the land.

Manorialism is the organisation of this system at the lower tiers, centring on a lord’s manor where peasant and serfs worked the land in exchange for military protection and a place to live. This was the socio-economic and political scaffolding of medieval Europe.

Capillary action

It was, as you might have realised, a pyramid scheme. The peasants worked the land owned by a lord, and gave that lord a huge percentage of what they produced. It had to be a big percentage because the lord had to, in turn, give a percentage of that income to the lord above them called, wait for it…

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Leo Greenwood
Coping with Capitalism

The Universe thinks about itself in interesting ways from here. Philosopher, author, in love with the miracle of existence. leogreenwood.com