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Industrial feudalism is a socioeconomic formation that the Polish Marxists Ludwik Krzywicki and Oskar Lange associated with monopoly finance capital. Industrial feudalism arises in a socially static capitalism where mobility between hierarchically defined social strata is restricted. Krzywicki's account predates Hilferding's Finance Capital and outlines the functioning of the capital market-based finance capital that has become more common in capitalism. Seemingly unaware of Krzywicki's pioneering articles, Oskar Lange then presented his own account of monopoly finance capital in the United States with similar social consequences in the early 1940s with state support for monopolies. Krzywicki's work on monopoly finance capital was discovered in the 1950s by Tadeusz Kowalik.

Industrial feudalism is a socio-economic formation of advanced capitalist countries in which society becomes stratified into closed, hierarchically-defined social groups. In the writings of Ludwik Krzywicki and Oskar Lange, industrial feudalism is associated with the dominance of monopoly finance capital. The chapter extends this analysis of twenty-first century capitalism in which social groups are differentiated by the kind of property that they own and hence the kind of credit to which they have access to prevent becoming déclassé. However asset inflation then inhibits upward social mobility, confining households to their inherited social class. This inhibits labour mobility. But the availability of credit for the propertied classes also defines attitudes towards state welfare provision.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

Burrell (2020) challenged management and organization studies (MOS) scholars to pay attention to a topic they have mostly ignored: the peasantry, those 2 billion people that work in the rural primary sector. This paper aims to address the topic to expand Burrell’s challenge by indicating that the peasantry offers a unique context to study a paradoxical condition: the coexistence of persistent poverty and vanguardist innovation.

The authors advance conceptual arguments that complement the reasons why researchers should pay more attention to the peasantry. They argue that continuation of past research into field laborers, transitioning from feudalism to industrial capitalism, still has currency, not just because of the good reasons listed by Burrell (enduring relevance of the phenomenon in developing countries; sustainability concerns; acknowledgment of common heritage) but also because some seemingly archaic practices are evident in the economically developed countries where most management and organizations scholars live.

The authors show that in advanced economies, the peasantry has not disappeared, and it is manifested in contradictory forms, as positive force contributing to sustainable productivity (in the case of digitized agriculture) and as a negative legacy of social inequality and exploitation (as a form of modern slavery).

The authors discuss contrasting themes confronting management of the peasantry, namely, modern slavery and digital farming, and propose that a paradox view may help overcome unnecessary dualisms, which may promote social exclusion rather than integrated development.

The paper gives a brief description of the transformation on a global scale of the old international production concept of mass production towards the new global concept of lean production as an explanation for the increasing inequality in income distribution since the 1980s. The information is based on research of the electronics industry. The salient point is that mass production heavily depends on conveyor‐belt work, while lean production (batch size one) is increasingly relying on sub‐contracting (co‐makership, just‐in‐time delivery) which is part of the strategy of large suppliers to concentrate production on their core activities, on global sourcing and on coalition‐forming. The former left room for low qualified employment and “on the job training”, while the concentration on core activities etc. tends to redirect work to highly remunerated but decreasing employment in large enterprises, and to poorly rewarded work in an increasing number of smaller subcontractor and co‐maker firms. The risks involved for income distribution are self‐evident.

In the West, society has been on an inexorable journey from autocracy to democracy. Though there have been dark ages and various regressions there seems to have been a fairly consistent move toward granting rights and entitlements to individuals which were once denied them or solely retained by a governing élite. The struggle for man's individual freedom to create the kind of life he so desires first freed him from the authority of bandits and feudal lords, then the authority of established churches, then from assorted tyrants, then from a secular governing elite. Now the struggle has shifted to the corporation where labour unions and others have been struggling to establish workers' rights and entitlements vis‐à‐vis the organisation. The owners and managers have become the latest in a long line of dominant ruling forces which retain vestiges of the feudal master's powers over the individuals in their realms — modern organisations.