Industrial Feudalism and the Distribution of Wealth

Industrial feudalism is a socio-economic formation of advanced capitalist countries in which society becomes stratified into closed, hierarchically-defined social groups. In the writings of Ludwik Krzywicki and Oskar Lange, industrial feudalism is associated with the dominance of monopoly finance capital. The chapter extends this analysis of twenty-first century capitalism in which social groups are differentiated by the kind of property that they own and hence the kind of credit to which they have access to prevent becoming déclassé. However asset inflation then inhibits upward social mobility, confining households to their inherited social class. This inhibits labour mobility. But the availability of credit for the propertied classes also defines attitudes towards state welfare provision.