Medieval or Modern, Warlords or Landlords?

Medieval or Modern, Warlords or Landlords?

The Warlord life style:
Looking at European life in the 14th Century, we see it was organized between three estates, The first, the church, the second, the nobles and knights, and the third, all the rest. The nobles and the church exacted taxes on the rest, and basically held them hostage to make or do whatever the first and second estates needed or wanted to maintain their lifestyles. Individual bishops and nobles raked in thousands of times the annual earnings of even highly skilled artisans in the third estate. The rest, other than the merchants, (whose talent for acquiring and trading wealth the nobles needed to sequester from time to  time) of the ordinary people lived by labouring 14 hour or more days, able to save nothing for old age, getting sick and dying for lack of medical care, without education. Basically,they were slaves, their labour and their bodies were used to grow food, make the finery and grand buildings the nobles and clergy wanted, and fight and die in the interminable wars the nobles fought amongst themselves, and against other agglomerations loosely called countries. Countries only because they were ruled by a king, not because they had any form of governance that ensured the safety and well being of the citizens of the territory designated as a country. These warlord rulers lived to indulge in extravagant displays of their wealth such as their ability to cause the erection of enormous cathedrals and castles, laden with high art,  and to engage in ferocious battles amongst themselves. They none of them could agree together long enough to form large territories of relatively peaceful governance, until at least another two centuries had passed.

Then we got the Landlord life style:

The nobles of fairly large territories got together to force the kings into signing contracts, contracts to which they were all bound, that introduced some order, some rules of governance and justice, thai would provide a glue to prevent them all from continuing to tear each other to pieces, and destroy their citizens in the process. But the powerful had to give up a lot of their own prerogatives, the idea that might was right, and that the people are basically just another resource they could use at pleasure to meet their own extravagant need for display, and heroism in battle, and acquisition of each other’s territory. They had to give up acting on large and serious matters of state out of sheer personal whim, and learn to become rational, thoughtful, and at least somewhat principled and aware of the needs of the citizens.

But they did not give up entirely their urge for domination, they just put it underground for awhile.

The ascendance of the Landlords and resurrection of the Warlords:

Today, on a global scale, we have seen for a brief period that the Landlord lifestyle was superseded in many places by the Democratic governance style. But that period has been short, and is rapidly giving way to a return to the Warlord style over the Middle East, and much of Africa. And the Landlord lifestyle is returning in full armour, driven by politicians and global corporations who are the new landlords, and ruled by the 1% who together now have control of 50% of the world’s wealth. Wealth in the form of deeds of land, control over vast corporations producing armaments to sell to the Warlords, agribusiness to mine people’s hunger, and food addictions, for profits, pharmaceutical corporations to mine their health for profits, funding colleges and universities so they will produce workers educated enough to work the levers of all these corporate interests, but fearful of losing their funding if they speak out against the new (old) despotism.


On the farm years ago, I heard local people speak of a man with a large “corporation”, meaning he had an over-large belly from eating too much rich food…In Italian, I believe, a man with a seriously large amount of power is called “un pancione”. a “big belly”.

Warlord business is profitable business. That’s why capitalism and its robot corporations (landlords of money) have brought it back, rather, taken advantage of it’s continued existence and fostered it’s renewed growth.

I use the word “robot” on purpose. Capitalism and its offspring are robots of the mind and mined resources. The people associated with it, in every way, just mindlessly do what its mindless structures demand of them.

Donato Cianci April 10  2015