The article draws a distinction between the more modern Marxist definition of feudalism as a stage between slavery and capitalism and the medievalist one that d

The article draws a distinction between the more modern Marxist definition of feudalism as a stage between slavery and capitalism and the medievalist one that describes "the customs and relationships of an elite who governed ordinary people by virtue of their military, political, and social power." I feel our current model would merit a third definition. The demographic partition is similar to what is described in the article: a very large group of workers, a smaller group of more comfortable workers, and the capital holding elite. The main difference is that workers have a few more rights and a different relationship to the world, the clergy-analog workers have a physical role in the economy (in the sense that unlike with the social function of prayer, machines and systems of production and control have to be actually designed and implemented), and the elites are, due to the increased virtuality of the economy and the skills of the clergy-analog class that assists them, no longer subject to the same type of pressures and responsibilities as their blue-blooded forebears. Perhaps our generation's Thorstein Veblen will tackle the question of identifying what the customs and mechanisms of the current elite are in more detail.