printPost-Capitalist Society:
Neo-Feudal or Personalistic?
Davydov D.A.
Cand. Sci. (Polit.), Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Philosophy and Law, Ural Branch of RAS, Yekaterinburg, Russia davydovdmitriy90@gmail.com
Davydov D.A. Post-Capitalist Society: Neo-Feudal or Personalistic?. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2025. No 11. P. 123-134
The article raises the topic of social transformations indicating the emergence of a post-capitalist society. Two opposing approaches to understanding the post-capitalist perspective are considered: versions of socialism or communism constructed by many left-wing theorists, on the one hand, and concepts of neo- or techno-feudalism, on the other. The article shows that both the optimism of the first approach and the pessimism of the second are not confirmed by the observed social dynamics. Post-capitalism may be understood as a gradual erasure of the differences between labor and capital – the personalization of production relations. Accordingly, a hypothesis is put forward that a post-capitalist society will be neither socialist nor neo-feudal, but personalistic. It is shown that today models of capital as self-increasing value, ensured by maximizing the appropriation of surplus labor, are gradually losing their significance. Using the example of the gig economy and the content creators economy, it is demonstrated how production relations can change as a personalistic society is emerging. Extremely pessimistic assessments do not correspond to sociological data: many people benefit from the fact that the economy is turning into a set of interactions between independent agents. Online platforms allow people to realize their personal potential and accumulate the key resource of the modern world – attention. However, in the new realities, there is a significant share of losers – those who are unable to profitably realize their personal potential and are forced to engage in routine and exhausting work. Personalization also means that success or failure will depend more on personal efforts, and responsibility for failures will be more difficult to shift to others.
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