>>477091>the modern system is neo-fuedal, not capitalist.I don't know what to call it. In feudalism exploitation was very direct and clear. The peasants worked their own subsistence farming plot where they kept their harvests to sustain them selves, and then they worked a different farming plot that belonged to the feudal lord, and they didn't get to keep that harvest. That made it incredibly obvious how exploitation was happening. Maybe the purpose of the extremely heavy handed theocratic mindfuck in the dark ages was compensating for that. Anyway You can't say that today exploitation is as visible as it was in feudal times. You still have money as a veil over the economy that hides exploitation the way capitalism has always done it.
However all that being said you are absolutely correct that the structure of Ruling circles is beginning to mirror the European dark ages. And the power-struggles in the superstructure are beginning to look like that as well.
The base of the economy is mostly capitalist tho, most workers are wage laborors, doing commodity production for profit. Tho not everything is, people are not getting payed a wage for generating data, the gig workers are getting payed but it's not a hourly wage.
>Rule by oligarchs to the end of maximizing their own control and influenceYes it seems that they are investing into means of control, instead of means of production. That's almost certainly the reason why they keep loosing so many international power-struggles.
>Most Marxists are 100 year behind the timesI'm not sure. What the western ruling class is doing now, isn't working, it's not a new mode of production replacing an old one, it's creating economic death zones (how Micheal Hudson describes it). While there certainly is the appearance that they are implementing Neo-feudalism as the new order, consider the possibility they might just be failing at capitalism.
Marx's prediction that the means of production are the key to power, remains true. China has grown a massive industrial sector and their power rose in tandem with that. The west de-industrialized and suffered a proportional power decline.