Paul Mason's claim that we're entering the post-capitalist era has met some some sneering from the right. But I wonder: might we not be reverting to a pre-capitalist era instead?

I mean this in three different senses.

First, we might be seeing a tendency for people to have multiple jobs. One feature of the sharing economy is that companies such as Airbnb and Uber allow people to be hoteliers and cabbies alongside their day jobs. There are increasing numbers of self-employed - many of whom are jacks of all trades - and, to a lesser extent, increased number of people with second jobs in the formal economy.

This represents a reversion to pre-capitalism*. E.P Thompson has described (pdf) how, before the arrival of large-scale manufacturing, workers performed a "multiplicity of subsidiary tasks". And Banerjee and Duflo show how many of the poorest (pdf) people in the world - those whom advanced capitalism hasn't sufficiently reached - have several small jobs.

Secondly, we are seeing a backlash against capitalism's tendency to undermine communities. Marx wrote:

Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.

But as Karl Polanyi recognised (pdf), there will inevitably be a backlash against this. Which is what we're seeing. In its benign form, this takes the form of a preference for locally-produced food and even local currencies. In its nastier form, it consists of a hatred of immigrants. You can see all these as recrudescences of feudalism - a cleaving to community and (in the case of anti-immigrationism) belief that one's fate should be tied to where one was born.

Thirdly, secular stagnation, in its extreme form, might itself be a reversion to pre-capitalistic growth rates. In this context, Schumpeter is relevant. He described (chs XII-XIV of this pdf) how the revolutionary function of the entrepreneur was eventually subsumed into bureaucratic organization. One reason for stagnation might be that this has happened; the (over-)optimistic entrepreneur has been replaced by bureaucracy.

You might find it odd that I call this a reversion to pre-capitalism. But in a way, it is: hierarchy is pre-capitalistic - and, like feudalism, is sustained by irrationality and illusion.

Now, you might think I'm being mischievous here. I'm not sure. For one thing, Marx, Polanyi and Schumpeter all agreed that free market capitalism would undermine itself. Maybe this is what we're seeing.

And for another, there's a long and growing literature which shows how very distant history shapes our behaviour today - which suggests that attitudes formed before capitalism might still linger. As Michal Kalecki said of Poland in the 1960s: "Yes, we have successfully abolished capitalism; all we have to do now is to abolish feudalism."

* Or does it. Marx wrote:

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

Note, however, that these are pre-capitalistic occupations. And there's a big difference between people doing many jobs because they are free to choose - as in Marx's description of communism - and because they must do so to make ends meet.