Any serious conversation about socialism has to start with something very basic systems that replace an old order cannot survive by copying it. Feudal rulers could not just rebrand themselves and hope to compete in a world shaped by industry and markets. The productive forces had already moved on. In the same way it makes little sense to claim we are building something beyond capitalism while keeping markets competition profit logic and wage dependence at the center of everything. Calling it market socialism or state capitalism does not magically turn it into a new mode of production. If the underlying structure of accumulation and market compulsion stays intact then what you have is capitalism with new management. Socialism has to mean a real transformation in how production is organized and how surplus is distributed otherwise it is just nostalgia dressed up as innovation and history is not kind to systems that refuse to evolve beyond their time.
Understanding the transition from feudalism to capitalism requires examining how each system organizes production, class relations, and the extraction of surplus. The feudal mode of production was structured around landownership, hereditary hierarchy, and obligations enforced through direct social and political coercion. In contrast, the capitalist mode of production is based on private ownership of capital, wage labor, and market exchange as the central mechanism of economic coordination. By comparing these two systems, we can see not only how economic structures changed, but also how power, freedom, and class relations were fundamentally reorganized in the shift from medieval to modern society.
Here are the core characteristics of the feudal mode of production:
>1. Land is the central means of production
Wealth doesn’t primarily come from trade or industry, it comes from land. Whoever controls land controls power.
>2. Lords own the land, peasants work it
The ruling class (lords, nobles) legally controls the land. Peasants (often serfs) work that land to survive.
>3. Surplus is extracted through extra-economic coercion
This is key. The lord doesn’t pay wages. Instead, peasants are obligated to give part of their harvest, labor time, or services. This obligation is enforced by tradition, law, and force, not by a labor contract like in capitalism.
>4. Serfdom (limited freedom of peasants)
Serfs are not slaves, but they’re not free workers either. They’re tied to the land. They usually can’t freely leave, sell their labor elsewhere, or move without permission.
>5. Political power is decentralized
Unlike modern states, power is fragmented. Local lords exercise judicial, military, and economic control over their territory. The king often depends on these lords.
>6. Production is mainly for subsistence
Most production is for local consumption. Markets exist, but they’re secondary. The village is largely suficient.
>7. Rigid social hierarchy
Social mobility is extremely limited. You’re generally born into your status: noble, clergy, peasant.
Here are 7 defining characteristics of the capitalist mode of production, set up in clear contrast to feudalism:
>1. Private ownership of the means of production
Land, factories, machinery, infrastructure, all are privately owned by capitalists, not tied to hereditary noble titles.
>2. Free wage labor
Workers are legally free individuals. They are not tied to land. But they don’t own productive property, so they must sell their labor power in exchange for wages.
>3. Surplus value extracted through economic mechanisms
Exploitation doesn’t rely on direct coercion (like feudal obligations). It happens through wage labor. Workers produce more value than they are paid, and the difference becomes profit.
>4. Production for exchange, not subsistence
Goods are produced primarily for the market, not for direct local use. Profit and competition drive production decisions.
>5. Generalized commodity production
Almost everything becomes a commodity, including labor power itself. Under feudalism, labor obligations weren’t commodities; under capitalism, labor is bought and sold.
>6. Centralized state power
Instead of fragmented feudal authority, capitalism develops centralized nation-states that enforce property rights, contracts, and market conditions.
>7. High social mobility (formally), but structural class division
You’re not legally bound to a class at birth. However, society polarizes structurally into two main classes:
Bourgeoisie (owners of capital)
Proletariat (workers who sell labor)
So after all of this we are supposed to believe that a proletarian revolution can politely overthrow capitalism and then keep its markets its wage labor its competition and its profit logic just toned down a little. As if history is a dinner party and the old ruling class will simply respect the new management. The lesson from the transition out of feudalism was not that you preserve the old relations so everyone feels comfortable. The lesson was that once the productive forces outgrow a system any attempt to freeze them inside outdated relations leads to stagnation or collapse.
From a left communist perspective the idea that you can build socialism while conceding the fundamental mechanisms of capitalism is not realism it is surrender with better branding. Market socialism does not compete with the most aggressive and exploitative forms of global capitalism by being kinder and more ethical. It gets crushed or it adapts and becomes what it was supposed to overcome. Capital does not reward moderation it rewards accumulation expansion and discipline. A workers state that reintroduces market dependence simply recreates the pressures that restore class divisions in new forms.
And demanding that a new mode of production actually break with capitalism is not radical posturing or utopian purity. It is the bare minimum. If socialism does not transform how surplus is allocated how labor is organized and how production is coordinated then it is not a new system at all. It is capitalism with a different flag.
If you want we can push this further and outline what seven defining characteristics of a genuinely socialist mode of production would look like, nd conoare them to the characteristics of capitalism.
It’s not even relevant because the ecological destruction capitalism is causing will make both itself and a transition to socialism (whatever that means) impossible anyway, the only way forward is a return to feudalism or primitive communism