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The historian Marc Bloch defined "feudal society" as a warrior aristocracy bound by vassalage. A lord was a noble who held land, the land was called a fief. Those granted possession by the lord were called vassals, expected to give service to their lord. Wealth was derived from agriculture organized not by market forces but by customary labor services owed by serfs to landowning nobles.
Rulers who adapted feudal institutions to increase their power were called "feudals", their governments labelled "feudal monarchies". When feudals started paying wages to the soldiers, workers and labourers, historians presented medieval feudalism in the 14th and 15th as a system in decline, calling it "bastard feudalism". In contrast to the rest of world, this medieval system continues to exist and flourish in Pakistan masquerading under the façade of "democracy".
Large joint families possess hundreds or even thousands of acres of land in Pakistan worked by peasants or tenants living at or below subsistence level. Comparable to medieval Europe, feudals virtually run towns, operating private prisons for personal enemies, the locals dependant on them generation after generation through debt bondage. This control makes the landlord an all powerful master, able to critically influence the distribution of water, fertilizers, tractor permits and agricultural credit and, consequently exercising considerable diktat over revenues, police and judicial administration of his area, and crucially the voting behavior of the dependant peasants and town population.
With half of Pakistan's GNP and bulk of its export earnings derived primarily from the agricultural sector, few thousand feudal families control almost two-thirds of Parliament. With key Federal and Provincial executive posts distributed between them, this oligarchy dominating power since Pakistan's inception is as callous of the plight of the poor as were the 19th century European feudals and capitalist barons who migrated into politics and business. Blatant exploitation and brutal domination by the rich and powerful created space for communism, the same lack...