You know, there's a real difference between going into Macy's or going into Home Depot
and buying things in the market, and yes, indeed there is a realm of daily life, and
yes, indeed there seems to be a realm of society, a level of society where it's not being governed
by the rules of the market.
In fact, there is something going on up there which is again a bit like what Braudel described
of society, where the anti-marketeers are actually operating outside of the market.
And they're swinging deals, and they're having pillow fights with each other and god knows
what.
But then, when you think about the society we live in, that formulation makes quite a
bit of sense.
We see the market.
We know the market is happening, and we see corporations engaging in the market.
General Motors builds a motor car, and it sells it in the market.
And it gets money for it and all those kinds of things, but then, there's a realm of the
ultra rich, who are dealing.
And they're dealing in a way which is- and I've been talking about this- they become
absurdly rich from their deals.
And they don't actually necessarily produce anything in the sense of anything we can consume.
They produce a lot of wealth for themselves by sucking up wealth from elsewhere.
Here we sit in a world where yes, we have our daily lives.
Yes we see an economy which is working according to the laws of supply and demand and crooked
though they may be.
And it's a market system and all the rest of it.
There's a lot of activity of that kind, and people who are earning wages because they're
making things and all the rest.
Then, there's this world where the big hitters stand, though these big hitters have exercised
immense control.
So this imaginary of a house with a basement where certain things are going on, a market
system in the going on, and then this wild behavior going on in “the attic”.
And then you say, “How much of our lives are dictated by what these crazy people are
doing in “the attic” and the kinds of things they're doing with each other?”
They're trying to compete with each other, and actually, TV has started to take this
up there with all these series now like Succession or Billionaires, which are all about what's
going on in “the attic”.
And the market doesn't matter, and the market economics is irrelevant to what they do.
They just want to accumulate wealth, and they'll do it by any means.
What Marx was arguing was that there was a way of accumulating wealth by capitalists
going into industrial production and employing labor power.
This is not what these people in “the attic” do, but these people in “the attic” have
a world of political influence.
They buy up the media.
They have control over the media.
They have all of these things.
So, in a sense, when people start to talk about the new feudalism today.
I think there's some way in which we can sort of say, “Look, this new feudalism is a bit
like what Braudel said”, which is that there is something going on in “the attic.”
And we better grapple with the fact that it's in “the attic” and not try and say they're
all part of the market system, because they're not part of the market system.
They're outside of the market system, but they're accumulating wealth power and capital
hand over fist.
So, when people talk about the new feudalism, I think what they're doing is responding to
the fact that there is indeed a new structure in society.
Or, not a new structure but in a sense, it's probably an old structure.
But, it's becoming more disaggregated, more clearly distinct that the real wealth, the
billionaire's wealth, is up there in “the attic”, and they're making more wealth simply
by dealing with each other at the same time as what Braudel put it.
They have tendrils down into the market, where they're sucking value out of the market by
various means: through rentals, for example.
They're affecting everyday life.
So the whole system then is kind of suffused with, if you like, a sucking mechanism of
value which is being transferred into “the attic” and “the attic” is where it's
mass wealth is being assembled.
That mass wealth is used politically, but it's also used in competition with each other.
This, it seems to me, [seems] be something we should actually... as a simplification,
it's not a bad place to start.
Because, in effect, what we are beginning to see is a recognition that these people
in “the attic” don't have the interests of capital at heart.
They don't even have the interest of people at heart.
They have their own interests at heart, and that's all.
And that's all, and therefore, we have to do something about what's going on in “the
attic”.