Two Masks, One Face: State Capitalism and Private Feudalism as Mirrors of the Same System

The paper compares state capitalism and private feudalism as two institutional forms that can concentrate decision-making power while presenting different accounts of freedom, equality, or merit. Through cases involving the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, post-Soviet Russia, and the United States, it asks whether hierarchy, worker dependence, and obedience can persist beneath opposing ideological masks.

• The paper distinguishes formal ownership from practical control over work, investment, information, and political decision-making.
• Its comparative cases are used to generate an institutional question: when does an ideology's promise diverge from the distribution of power it enables?
• The title's claim that systems share one underlying face is the paper's interpretive thesis, not a verified finding that all states or economies are identical.

This document is presented as a public reading copy connected to the Independent Observer program. Its source trail and status remain visible so readers can distinguish a working preprint from a released publication.

The Volume II taxonomy places this paper alongside the programme's inquiry into sovereignty, institutions, and political economy. The public page keeps its strongest comparative language labeled as an argument and does not reproduce the source file.

The public SSRN record lists 30 downloads and 186 abstract views in the indexed snapshot checked on 30 August 2026. This is a comparative and interpretive working paper; the cases are not interchangeable, and the argument requires period-specific evidence rather than ideological equivalence by assertion.