Capital’s Grave: Neofeudalism and the Social Manor

The fact that communism did not prevail does not mean we are still in capitalism. Capitalist relations are undergoing systemic transformation and becoming something that might even be worse.

Bringing together analyses from different fields--law, technology, Marxism, and psychoanalysis--Jodi Dean shows the direction the contemporary world is heading: neofeudalism. Feudalism isn’t just a metaphor. It’s the operating system for the present. Politics and plunder thrive in the capitalist pursuit of profit, and the many are bound to serve the few, coerced into a system of rents, destruction, and hoarding driven by privilege and dependence.

The question is: In a society of serfs and servants, how do we get free?

With the rise of neofeudalism, and as more and more workers are drawn into the service sector--from nurses to Uber and delivery drivers--Dean argues that we can see the emergence of a new vanguard, the class that can lead the struggle for liberation from oppression and exploitation: what she calls the servant vanguard.

Jodi Dean teaches political, feminist, and media theory in Geneva, New York. She has written or edited thirteen books, including The Communist Horizon, Crowds and Party and COMRADE.