feudalism

is distinguished from democracy in that democracy is a system in which your vote counts while in feudalism your count votes.

In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes.

is a system of government where your vote does not count, but your count does vote

is the miraculous inscribing of a disorder within an all-inclusive order.

Order paralyzes. Disorder convulses. Inscribing a disorder instituted within an all-inclusive order was the miracle of feudalism.

is distinguished from democracy in this: in democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism it's your count that votes.

In democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism it's your count that votes.

is a system with whose advance came the growth of iron armor, until, at last, a fighting-man resembled an armadillo.

With the advance of feudalism came the growth of iron armor, until, at last, a fighting-man resembled an armadillo.

is a system whose transition to capitalism was not an economic transformation but a military revolution; namely, the fortified city disappeared because of the advent of ever- increasingly transportable and accelerated weapons systems.

Unlike Marx, Virilio postulates that the transition from feudalism to capitalism was not an economic transformation but a military revolution. Broadly, where Marx wrote of the materialist conception of history, Virilio writes of the military conception of history. To be sure, Virilio’s somewhat unconventional answer to his own question is that the fortified city disappeared because of the advent of ever- increasingly transportable and accelerated weapons systems. In Virilio’s terms, such innovations ‘exposed’ the fortified city and transformed siege warfare into a war of movement. Henceforth, the efforts of the authorities to govern the flow of the urban citizenry were undermined, heralding the arrival of what Virilio calls the ‘habitable circulation’ of the masses.

feudalism, n.All

feudalism