In the popular understanding of Marxism there is a mode of production that comes before capitalism which is the feudal mode of production. Recently though I've been seeing (and it seems it's been a debate for awhile) things about how feudalism doesn't actually exist, which seems to come from two authors: Susan Reynolds and another woman who I can't remember. Of course then it will often be said "well feudalism in its Marxist sense exists, this is referring to the non-marxist use of 'feudalism.'" The main thesis seems to be (as far as I can understand) that there was no standard of "feudalism" and what is referred to as "feudalism" differs greatly across time and geography.
I'm wondering if someone who knows more about this can help me square this Marxist theory (which I also understand I don't have a great handle on either). But does this call certain aspects of Marxism into question - namely this idea of feudalism synthesizing into capitalism? Does the Marxist historiography of the Middle Ages through the Early Modern period need to be reworked? Although it seems the "feudalism does not exist" theory specifically excludes Marxism - so what is the difference then between the Marxist and non-Marxist understanding of feudalism? And further, if feudalism doesn't exist, what is the feudal mode of production? Hoping there's someone here who can help provide insight into any of these questions. Thanks.
The question of whether feudalism exists is kind of separate from Marxist consideration. It’s closer to a debate on taxonomy within the biological sciences, where people can’t quite agree if two organisms ought to be considered in the same taxonomical family or if they’re really different. It’s not entirely trivial though, as these groupings can reflect in the minds of the researchers and cause them to perceive things less objectively.
It is true, we should not have a rigid view of feudalism e.g. that there is always a pyramidal political structure between serf and monarch, knights, courts, yada yada. This is irrelevant to feudalism as Marx considered it economically as a system of production relations.
In feudal societies, production was small-scale and largely agrarian. All property rights and political power emanated from a monarch or limited set of rulers. The small-scale and distributed nature of production required a degree of freedom and autonomy for the producers, the serfs, as opposed to slave-based systems of production. Serfs had legal rights, and the people in different parts of the political structure had obligations as such.
As Marx analyzed feudalism, he realized that the contradictions of feudal society eventually lead to its upheaval as it produces an independently wealthy merchant class that eventually attains sufficient political power to emancipate itself from the limitations of the feudal mode of production. This is essentially what happened throughout Europe. And of course the rest is well known — Marx concluded from this that capitalism has a similarly limited lifespan due to the contradiction between wage labor and capital. The fact that so-called feudal societies in Asia had different political peculiarities from those in Europe does not change the basic underlying relations of production as Marx analyzed them.
Good post wanted to add that the nature of the economy as a whole is the over determining factor of the "mode of production" in Marxist terms. For instance the US pre war south was a capitalist mode of production. It was based on the usage of slave labor but functioned within a commodity economy - or "production for exchange" - which is an emergent characteristic of capitalism. Production for use is characteristic of feudalism, as noted in quarks post, where the surplus itself is produced and taken by the nobility.