Forget feudalism

This was a shocker.  In sedesdraconis’s LJ I found a reference to an article by Melissa Snell which reveals that there’s no such thing as ‘feudalism’.

http://historymedren.about.com/od/feudalism/a/feudalism.htm

The usual understanding of feudalism is that it comprised a hierarchical system in which near-sovereign control over land was traded for military service… essentially a way of ordering society when strong central government was not possible.  This turns out to be not the case.

The medievals never talked about ‘feudalism’; the concept was the invention of 16C French and Italian scholars, attempting to understand a 12C text, the Libri Feudorum.  Unfortunately they bungled the job.  They imported contemporary notions into the document (especially the idea that ‘fiefs’ were lands held by nobles), and they mistook the earlier writers’ own speculation for fact. 

Their interpretation solidified into received wisdom, till it was blown apart by Susan Reynold’s 1994 book Fiefs and Vassals.  Snell’s review is rather short on what’s right if feudalism is wrong.  But these seem to be the main points.

• There was an immense amount of variation.  The worst part about the ‘feudalism’ concept is the implied uniformity.  Land could be held in all sorts of ways, and people’s ideas of rights and property were different from ours.
• The implied class structure– serfs, clerics, knights– is hopelessly simplistic.  The armed forces were by no means limited to fighting nobles or knights.
• Most grants of land weren’t based on any agreement to provide military service, though they might be based on service already provided.  There was generally no idea that a grant could be revoked if the grantee broke an oath of fidelity (if it was even required).
• Far from being lawless, medieval society expected general obedience to the king.
• Serfs’ relationship to their lord- manorialism– was really a separate concept, not considered at the time a form of vassalage.

Some additional useful information and criticism are found in these two reviews of Reynolds’ book: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/reynolds-2%20reviews.html

There’s a lesson here somewhere about the dissemination of new insights.  This might be a very academic dispute, but I find it remarkable that I’ve never run into it in 34 years… the time since Reynolds’ predecessor Elizabeth Brown published her critique.  You’d think someone would tell the public that the textbook understanding of the Middle Ages is just wrong.

 The important question is of course… what about the conworlders?  I welcome the opportunity to rethink some aspects of Almean history.  In general we should avoid not merely reproducing the fiefs-for-service idea, but exclusively European models.  Bernard Lewis’s From Babel to Dragomans, which I recently mentioned, has some good descriptions of Islamic models.  China looked pretty different too, not really having what we think of as an aristocracy.

 

The failure of neoliberalism

I’ve been reading Ha-joon Chang’s Bad Samaritans: The myth of free trade and the secret history of capitalism.  It’s amazing.

Its target is clear enough, but like any criminal enterprise it has a confusing array of names.  Europeans call it “liberalism”, Americans call it “neoliberalism”; I’ve also heard it called the Washington Consensus.  It’s the set of policies– free trade, eliminating tariffs, free movement of capital, privatization, safeguarding intellectual property, balancing budgets– that the IMF pushes on developing countries, and the Economist holds up as the self-evident standard for everyone.

Pretty obviously these are policies that rich First World companies like: they want to sell their products everywhere without restriction, they don’t want copycats, they hate when protectionist or nationalist governments get in their way.  But it’s also claimed that these policies will somehow promote development and prosperity; indeed, enthusiasts like Tom Friedman maintain that it’s “the only model on the rack”.

As Chang shows, it’s not.  It’s not how the First World developed.  It doesn’t produce prosperity and it doesn’t develop economies.

• In the 1960s and 70s, under protectionist import substitution policies, the developing world grew at 3.0% annually.  In the 1980s and beyond, under neoliberalism, the rate was 1.7%.
• Where neoliberalism was implemented earlier and more thoroughly, in Latin America, the contrast is even greater: 3.1% in the 1960s/70s; 1.7% in the 1990s; 0.6% in the 2000s.
• Africa didn’t grow much in the ‘bad old days’ (1 to 2% a year), but it’s shrunk under neoliberalism.
• Mexico grew at a rate of 3.1% under import substitution (1955-82); neoliberalism was a disaster, with growth rates from 0.1% (1980s) to 0.3% (2000s) to 1.8% (1990s).  The free trade agreement with the USA wiped out whole swaths of Mexican industry.

Most damningly, the policies the First World preaches to the rest of the world are completely the opposite of those it used in its own development.  Neoliberalism is climbing up the ladder, kicking it away, and advising those below to learn to fly.

• The first nation to modernize, Britain, did so by state intervention, going back to the Tudor monarchs who pressed for the creation of a wool processing industry rather than shipping raw wool to the Netherlands.  Britain protected its industries with high tariffs on manufactured goods– 45-55% in 1821.  (It also prevented its colonies from developing manufactures.)
• The United States was built on protectionism too; by 1820 average tariffs were 40%.  They were raised during the Civil War and stayed that way till WWI.  During this period it was the fastest growing country in the world, and had the highest tariffs.
• France had something of a free trade policy in the 1800s (tariffs at about 20%).  Concluding after WWII that this had something to do with its economic underperformance, it reversed these policies, directing the economy through state-owned banks and nationalizing key industries; tariffs rose to 30%.  The strategy worked; France was a technological leader by the 1980s.
• South Korea, Chang’s native country, was desperately poor in 1961, with a per capita income of $82 (less than Ghana).  Under heavy state direction, it achieved growth rates above 6% and its PCI today is $13,980.  Its growth slowed in the 1990s when it was forced to accept some IMF direction.
• Japan developed after WWII under heavy state direction.  Imports were tightly limited; foreign ownership was banned in key industries, and where allowed, subject to restrictions (technology sharing, limited ownership, local contents requirements).
• China is big enough to ignore the IMF and develop under its own protectionist regime.

Not only does protectionism work, it’s the only thing that does.  Naturally it doesn’t and shouldn’t last forever: once national industries are in good shape they can compete without government help.  But without protection and local control of investment, the nation won’t have national industries.

Chang goes on to show that state enterprises can work quite well; that free movement of capital was rightfully restricted by the First World during its own development; even that corruption and lack of democracy don’t in themselves prevent development (and tend to lessen once countries do become prosperous).

Intellectual property ‘rights’– actually demands by corporations– sound benign, but Chang points out that they are a great obstacle for developing nations, which cannot afford First World prices for pharmaceuticals, software, and textbooks.  Developing nations need to absorb a huge amount of new knowledge; copyright doesn’t benefit them, but stands in their way– it’s a luxury of rich nations.  And once again, it was only promoted by the First World long after they’d put away their own historical piracy.

Neoliberals have belatedly started to notice that their prescriptions don’t work as well as they should.  Their favorite explanation now is “culture”… some people, they say, just have the wrong values.  Chang neatly demolishes this by going back in time and showing that people’s complaints about poor people are always the same.  The Japanese were once described as lazy and emotional, and with “a quite intolerable personal independence”.  Koreans were dirty, sullen barbarians.  The Germans were “a dull and heavy people” who “never hurry”, unable to cooperate or receive new ideas, and prone to thievery.  Such observations are either simply wrong, or have nothing to do with whether nations can develop.

Despite the somewhat incendiary title, Chang isn’t against capitalism, trade, or globalization.  He simply wants the Second and Third Worlds today to have the same ability to control and encourage their own development that the First World nations enjoyed.

Chang has the best answer I’ve seen to David Ricardo’s old explanation of how poor nations ought to stick to whatever they have a relative advantage in… which generally ends up being resource extraction.  That is the best approach for maximizing current income.  But it fails if you want to increase your income beyond that point– if you want to develop, in other words.  To change those relative advantages– and perhaps create some absolute advantages– you have to sacrifice some current income (e.g., set tariffs to encourage native industries, or direct investment to future possibilities rather than current hot spots, or invest in R&D).

 

Wide-open elections

D’oh… 1968 felt wide-open, but a reader points out that, of course, the Democratic nominee was Johnson’s VP.

So, let’s see when was the last election with no sitting president or veep as the nominee: 2004 Bush, 2000 Gore, 1996 Clinton, 1992 Bush, 1988 Bush, 1984 Reagan, 1980 Carter, 1976 Ford, 1972 Nixon, 1968 Humphrey, 1964 Johnson, 1960 Nixon, 1956 Eisenhower… there we go, 1952, Eisenhower vs. Stevenson. 

Though maybe that gets an asterisk, since both Truman and his VP, Barkley (then 75), were in the race for awhile.  So: 1948 Truman, 1944 Roosevelt, 1940 Roosevelt, 1936 Roosevelt, 1932 Hoover, 1928… OK, 1924, Hoover vs. Smith.

The next earlier case was the previous election, 1920: Wilson was incapacitated and his VP, Thomas Marshall, wasn’t interested, nor interesting to others.  Apparently Marshall liked to tell a joke about a woman with two sons: one ran away to sea, the other was elected vice president… neither was heard from ever again.