When people talk about capitalism, they usually talk about private property, free markets, businesses, investment, competition, and the ability of individuals to accumulate wealth. But I think there is a deeper problem with the way capitalism is usually understood today. Capitalism talks a great deal about private ownership, but it stops short when it comes to the most fundamental form of property of all territory itself.

A person can privately own a house, a farm, a company, a factory, or millions of dollars worth of assets, but can that person actually own the political territory in which all of those things exist? Under the modern state, the answer is basically no. The individual can own property within the state, but the state and its territory remain ultimately public and sovereign. This creates, in my view, an important incompleteness in capitalism.

This is where monarchy comes in.

Monarchy, especially when understood in its older patrimonial sense, provides something that the modern capitalist state does not: the possibility of viewing the realm itself as connected to the hereditary property and sovereignty of the ruling dynasty. The king is not simply an administrator temporarily occupying a political office. He is the hereditary sovereign of a particular realm, and the kingdom can be understood as something that belongs to and is transmitted through the dynasty.

That makes monarchy much more compatible with the fullest possible idea of private ownership.

The basic principle of capitalism is that property should belong to identifiable owners who have the right to use it, manage it, profit from it, inherit it, and transfer it. But if we accept that principle, why should it necessarily stop at ordinary economic property? Why should an individual be able to own a farm, while the political territory surrounding that farm can only belong to an abstract state?

This is the point where feudalism becomes important.

Feudalism, at least in the political and economic sense relevant to this argument, provides a way of organizing territorial property in a hierarchy. Instead of having one completely flat system in which every individual owns property independently of everyone else, land can be arranged through different levels of hereditary possession and authority.

At the top is the monarch and the realm. Beneath the monarch can be great territorial lords, beneath them lesser nobles and landholders, and beneath them individual families, farmers, tenants, and other inhabitants. Each level has its own rights and responsibilities, while remaining connected to the level above it.

The important thing here is that property becomes hierarchical.

A king can have sovereignty over a kingdom. A duke can have hereditary rights over a duchy. A count can possess a county. A lesser lord can control an estate, while individual families can own or cultivate particular pieces of land. These different forms of possession do not necessarily have to cancel each other out. They can exist at different levels.

This is something that modern capitalism does not really provide. Modern capitalism is extremely good at dealing with privately owned economic assets, but it generally assumes that the territorial framework itself is already there and belongs to the state. Capitalism tells us how people can buy, sell, invest in, and develop property, but it does not really answer the question of who owns the realm in the first place.

Monarchy and feudalism can answer that question in a way capitalism by itself cannot.

The relationship can therefore be understood quite simply:

Capitalism deals with private capital.

Feudalism deals with hierarchical territorial property.

Monarchy deals with hereditary sovereignty over the realm.

Put together, these three principles create a much more complete conception of property.

There is also something important about inheritance here. One of the strongest features of private property is that it can be passed from one generation to another. A person can build a business, acquire land, develop an estate, and eventually pass those things to his children. His descendants inherit not just wealth, but something that was accumulated by their family over generations.

The hereditary principle of monarchy operates on a similar logic. The king does not normally think of his position as something that ends with his own lifetime. His position is inherited by his descendants. The kingdom is therefore something that exists across generations of the same dynasty.

Ideally, this should create a long-term interest in preserving the realm. A temporary political ruler has only a limited amount of time in office, whereas a hereditary monarch can think in terms of his children, grandchildren, and even more distant descendants. The kingdom is not simply something he governs for a few years; it is something he is expected to pass on.

Of course, this does not mean that every historical monarchy actually worked this way perfectly. Historical feudalism was not one single system, and monarchs did not simply own every piece of land in their kingdoms as though the entire country were their personal estate. There were complicated systems of tenure, customary rights, noble privileges, religious institutions, communal lands, and private ownership. So this argument should not be understood as claiming that medieval Europe literally operated according to a simple modern definition of private ownership.

Rather, the argument is about the logic of the system.

If capitalism is based on the principle that property should have owners, then monarchy provides a way of extending that principle beyond ordinary capital and into the political organization of territory. Feudalism then provides the hierarchy through which territorial property can be distributed and organized beneath the sovereign.

In that sense, monarchy does not have to be seen as the enemy of capitalism. It can instead be seen as the political structure that completes something capitalism leaves unfinished.

Modern capitalism essentially says: you can privately own your house, your business, your land, and your investments.

A patrimonial monarchy can take the idea one step further: the realm itself can be connected to a hereditary sovereign who possesses an enduring relationship to the territory.

Feudalism then fills the space between the two. It creates a hierarchy between the sovereign realm and the individual property-holder.

This produces a completely different understanding of society. Instead of seeing the state as an abstract institution standing above everyone and everything, the political order becomes a hierarchy of ownership, inheritance, obligation, and authority. The family owns its property. The landholder possesses his estate. The noble possesses his territorial domain. And above them stands the hereditary sovereign of the realm.

This is why I would argue that capitalism, when taken to its logical conclusion, is incomplete without monarchy. Capitalism gives us private ownership of capital, but monarchy gives us the possibility of private and hereditary sovereignty over territory itself, while feudalism provides the hierarchical structure necessary to organize that territorial ownership.

The combination is therefore much more than an economic system. It is a complete philosophy of property: from the individual household, to the estate, to the lordship, and ultimately to the realm.

Capitalism provides the economic freedom. Feudalism provides the territorial hierarchy. Monarchy provides the hereditary sovereign center.

And if private ownership is truly meant to be a fundamental principle rather than something limited to businesses and personal possessions, then the question of who owns and inherits the realm cannot simply be ignored.