John Holbo has a suggestion:

[China] Miéville should seriously consider writing a thumping great historical political economy of his world – Marx’s Das Silmaril, if you will. It would be huge fun to read. It should be a multivolume affair that, ideally, he never manages to finish. (“What I have to examine is the magical mode of production, its supernatural laws and tendencies winning their way through and working themselves out with necessity as hard as mithril.” A long and careful analysis would follow of how power in Middle Earth is a function of — and race relations are inescapably mediated by — silmarills and, in later stages, ring ownership; value and use-value; importance of control of the means of ring production. “A spectre is haunting Middle Earth — no, really, a spectre!”)

Update: If you’re interested in epic fantasy — and when I say “interested in”, that includes “hostile to” — go and read the rest of his expanded post on Miéville. Post haste.