Our society is not feudal. To suggest anything to the contrary would be abhorrent. No of course not, feudal society is obsolete and we overcame feudalism just about the time we overcame the monarchy, history tells us.
But we haven’t left the feudal mindset behind, and the way we have gone about governing ourselves is ample and sad testimony to that. Politicians often act as feudal overlords and people have not merely come to expect that, they have for long encouraged it. (This article is not picking on any particular politician or politicians in this regard, and is written in decidedly general terms.)
Why are school functions mostly helmed by politicians at the invitation of parents sometimes, and parents and teachers most of the time? Politicians in general are seen as the feudal overlords though it would be impossible to eke out a confession from anyone who is inviting them, about their feudal mentality in extending such invitations.
The above is a mere example. People see politicians as feudal overlords when they expect politicians to dole out jobs or fix people in the private sector. Of course politician-archetype feudal overlords operate in cahoots with other feudal overlords in the sphere of business and corporatism.
Laws very often do not operate or are temporarily in a state of suspension when the neo-feudal system takes hold. It could be asked whether the feudal system ever really was jettisoned, when in the immediate post-independence past, most of the powerful politicians came from land owning families or families with business holdings and vast proprietary rights.
The same could be said for a great many class-stratified societies. The class system continued to permeate public life in England for instance, and it is those who are enrolled in the correct schools and universities and are well networked through the buddy system of the so-called upper crust that run most of the commercial enterprises. They continue to hold sway over vast swathes of society which are ostensibly democratised.
BREAKAWAY
Of course society was democratised but that hasn’t prevented the feudal mentality from taking root once more in its post-feudal form. It can and would be argued that capitalism with all its rapacious ways doesn’t bear the characteristics of feudalism, but think again.
In some ways feudalism in its raw and original form that was widely prevalent in pre-democratised societies so called, still included a social compact of sorts. The feudal overlords had land rights and the serfs toiled on the land for minimal recompense.
However, there was a compact concerning the obligations of the Lords — the landed gentry — and the serfs. But modern forms of capitalism have sometimes ensured that those whose lands are taken over have no rights to speak of. Corporatism, at least some of the time ensures that land is parceled over to capitalist oligarchs for no just recompense, or for little or nothing.
This is the social and institutionalised form of modern feudalism, but what this writer is more focused on in this article is the form of political feudalism that has taken root in society after all vestiges of the old-feudalism of the landed gentry have been obliterated.
Most of contemporary politics is in imitation of the old feudal order, with patronage being the name of the game. Patronage politics was encouraged and was made the norm in politics with the emergence of the two-party system post the breakaway of the Bandaranaike faction from the then monolithic UNP.
In the 80s and 90s these tendencies became not merely the norm, but what was politically expected of the ruling parties. The winners were doled out jobs by the overlords i.e. the elected politicians who didn’t have any tangible compact with the voters. Jobs were doled out and it was understood that those who were appointed were at the mercy of the appointing political bosses who were overlords in all but name.
The salient aspect of this arrangement was that it was not just feudalistic for all intents and purposes, but was also this way in terms of the trappings and the appearances, i.e. politics in practice was extremely, conspicuously feudalistic.
This aspect of democratic politics remains to this day. It is why despite all the citizen-centred protests during tough times, most politicians want to flaunt their security detail and want to stop traffic wherever and whenever they move.
They are aware that the feudal mindset among the core voter groups secretly tolerates this type of behaviour and sometimes calls for it.
The serfs are happy having powerful overlords, the more powerful the better. If the bosses are at or near the top of the power hierarchy, the serfs feel safe as their jobs, perks and other benefits would continue to be assured.
It would be argued that this is not a feudal arrangement because modern day politicians are subject to their own ups and downs and can be voted out and cast into the wilderness by the voting public, including the direct benefactors in the above example in which the politically involved sections of the public were characterised as the ‘serfs.’
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But this doesn’t detract from the general arrangement. Political parties are powerful, and this includes parties that have been voted out of power or have never been in power but have been powerful in opposition and entertain prospects of being rewarded with power anytime soon.
Politicians rarely repudiate this arrangement and rarely are they expected to. They are expected to decide policy and follow through with the adaptation of these policies by implementing the party platform, and participating in this process is politics for both the politician and the voter no doubt.
But beyond this general construct, is the common expectation that party politicians would deliver to the party faithful before they deliver to the hoi polloi. In this endevour the party leaderships are encouraged to be as unorthodox as possible. They are expected to be anything but fair to whom they are not directly beholden.
That’s the feudal nature of politics that has taken root and it applies equally to all political parties unless there is somebody who is able to adduce concrete proof that some parties are indeed the exception.
Our political culture has spawned this particular societal dynamic of incorporating old feudal values with the allegedly democratised politics of our time. Some democratised societies have graduated from feudalism entirely, but latterly most of them have embraced aspects of feudal culture once more with a vengeance, either through choice otherwise.
Some are of the opinion that we need to tolerate the neo-feudalism in our politics because everybody is better off than they were when we were in the real feudal age of the past.
They have enough creature comforts it is said, and there is no need to envy those who are above your station. It is wished, however, that this can be said of a society that’s fraught with insecurity.
People both here and abroad, in democratised polities are in constant danger of slipping below the poverty line and many already have. The gulf between the haves and have nots in any event cannot be justified by saying the have nots are not having it so badly as they did in feudal times.
Relative wealth matters precisely because there are more than mere vestiges of feudalism that remains in modern societies that have in some instances reintroduced feudalism with a different face. Within this new feudalism the powerful could be of any class or creed as long as they enjoy political power.
Immaterial of those divisions there is a feudal order governing the basics such as ownership and matters of holding agency over the governing apparatus. There may be no compact between the people and the politicians within this neo-feudal order but that doesn’t mean the people are not entirely complicit.
