From Technostructure To Technofeudalism (A Tale Of Today, Episode #16)
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
An exploration of the political economy of technofeudalism begins by defining the technostructure and introducing its personification, followed by testimony from a skeptic [26:00], competing periodizations of the present [48:00], and media praxis under the rein of the cloudalists [73:00].
To receive transcripts and other updates related to The American Vandal Podcast, please subscribe to Matt Seybold’s newsletter.
Cast (in order of appearance):
Yanis Varoufakis is a heterodox economist, most recently at University of Athens, the former Minister of Finance in Greece, and the author of Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Melville House, 2024).
James Livingston is Professor Emeritus of History at Rutgers University and the author of, among other things, “What Was Capitalism?” (2024) and the Politics, Letters, Persons newsletter.
Astra Taylor is a writer, filmmaker, and activist, co-founder of the Debt Collective, and author, most recently, of The Age of Insecurity (AK Press, 2023), a collection of her 2023 Massey Lectures.
Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, as well as resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies and executive producer of The American Vandal Podcast.
Soundtrack:
All music for this season of The American Vandal Podcast comes from the Tennessee-based roots ensemble DownRiver Collective. Most of the tracks come from their most recent EP, Off The Shelf. You can purchase it direct from the band here. It’s also available on Spotify and Apple Music.
Tracks featured in this episode include “Steam Whistle,” “Daylight Break,” “Wasted Time,” and “As It Was.”
Narration:
Excerpts from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s The Gilded Age come from the audiobook edition produced by SNR Audio and narrated by Nathan Osgood. Available at Audible, as well as other audiobook retailers. SNR has an extensive catalog of professionally-narrated adaptations of 19th-century Anglophone fiction, including The Complete Mark Twain Collection.
Nathan Osgood is an actor and voice artist who has being appearing in films, scripted television, video games, podcasts, and audiobooks since the mid-’90s. In 2018, he played Mark Twain in the Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly vehicle, Holmes and Watson.
Episode Bibliography:
Jared Abbott, “Class Dealignment Is The Define Political Challenge of Our Time” Jacobin (April 26, 2024)
Marc Andreesen, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” (October 16, 2023)
Steve Bannon & David Brooks, “My Unsettling Interview with Steve Bannon” New York Times (July 1, 2024)
Tim Barker, “Dealignment” New Left Review (November 11, 2024)
Tim Barker, “Empathy Economics & Social Classes” Origins of Our Time (January 18, 2023)
Wendy Brown, “Listening For Political Freedom” Judt Memorial Lecture @ NYU (March 11, 2025)
Otto Brunner, Land & Lordship (1939) [1992 UPenn English Translation]
Louis Brandeis, Other People’s Money & How The Bankers Use It (Stokes & Co., 1914) [Previously Serialized in Harper’s Weekly]
Kenneth Burke, Attitudes Toward History (New Republic, 1937)
Henry Carey, The Harmony of Interests: Agricultural, Manufacturing, & Commercial (1851)
Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (1909)
Jodi Dean, Capital’s Grave: Neofeudalism & The New Class Struggle (Verso, 2025)
Gil Duran, “Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarians Idea” The New Republic (July 22, 2024)
Gil Duran, “The People of Solano County Versus The Next Tech-Billionaire Dystopia” The New Republic (January 4, 2024)
Gil Duran, “The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of A Right-Wing San Francisco” The New Republic (February 12, 2024)
Cedric Durand, How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism (Verso, 2020) [French Edition, 2020]
Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. III: The Process of Capitalism Production As A Whole (S. H. Kerr & Co., 1909) [Google Books]
Bryant Morey French, Mark Twain & The Gilded Age: The Book That Named An Era (Southern Methodist UP, 1965)
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, PBS/BBC/CBC (1977)
John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics & the Public Purpose (Houghton Mifflin, 1973)
John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Houghton Mifflin, 1967)
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Houghton Mifflin, 1958)
John Kenneth Galbraith, American Capitalism (Houghton Mifflin, 1951)
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929 (Houghton Mifflin, 1955)
Eugene Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies In The Economy & Society of The Slave South (Pantheon, 1965)
Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World The Slaves Made (Pantheon, 1974)
Fredic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Duke UP, 1992)
Jeff Jarvis, The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print & Its Lessons For The Age of The Internet (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Walter Johnson, “On Agency” Journal of Social History (Autumn 2023)
Walter Johnson, “Agency: A Ghost Story” in Slavery’s Ghost (Johns Hopkins UP, 2011)
Christopher Lasch, The True & Only Heaven: Progress & Its Critics (Norton, 1991)
Christopher Lasch, “Herbert Croly’s America” New York Review of Books (July 1, 1965)
Vladimir Lenin, “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism” (1916)
Vladimir Lenin, “The Tasks of The Proletariat in the Present Revolution” (1917)
James Livingston, “What Was Capitalism?” Project Syndicate (February 16, 2024)
James Livingston, “Bannon Talks Techno-Feudalism” Politics, Letters, Persons (January 25, 2025)
James Livingston, “Steve Bannon Reads Christopher Lasch” Politics, Letters, Persons (July 4, 2025)
James Livingston, “Wild Things” Politics/Letters (November 15, 2009)
Marshal McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (U. Toronto, 1962)
Walter J. Ong, Orality & Literacy: The Technologizing of The Word (Routledge, 1982)
Thomas Pettitt, “The Gutenberg Parenthesis: Oral Tradition & Digital Technologies” MIT Media Studies (April 1, 2010)
Jacques Ranciere, The Politics of Literature (2006) [2011 Polity English Translation]
Matt Seybold, “The Keynesian Theory of Jamesonian Utopia: Interdisciplinarity in Economics” in The Cambridge Companion To Literature & Economics (2022)
Matt Seybold, “Authoritarianism Is The Bailout” The American Vandal (February 21, 2025)
Matt Seybold et al, “Newspapers Worse Than Dead (Bur Print Is A Rent Strike)” The American Vandal (April 4, 2025)
Matt Seybold et al, “The Facebook Files & The Gutenberg Parenthesis” The American Vandal (March 31, 2025)
Matt Seybold et al, “The Gilded Network” The American Vandal (March 20, 2025)
Matt Seybold et al, “Strategic Presentism & Resistance History” The American Vandal (September 23, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, “Cruel Optimism & The Enclosure of the Commons” The American Vandal (September 12, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, “The Age of Insecurity” The American Vandal (Septermber 9, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, “Ponzi Austerity in The Age of Cultural Abundance” The American Vandal Podcast (August 21, 2023)
Matt Seybold et al, “Brittle Paper & The Bloggossance” The American Vandal Podcast (October 2, 2023)
Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals & The Dream of A World Without Democracy (Metropolitan, 2023)
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism (Polity, 2016)
Astra Taylor, The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart (AK Press, 2023)
Astra Taylor, “The Age of Insecurity: 2023 CBC Massey Lectures” (CBC, 2023)
Astra Taylor, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power & Culture In The Digital Age (Picador, 2014)
Mark Twain & Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) [2006 Modern Library Edition]
Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Melville House, 2024)
Yanis Varoufakis, “Trump & The Triumph of The Technolords” Project Syndicate (April 30, 2025)
Yanis Varoufakis, Talking To My Daughter About The Economy: Or, How Capitalism Works – & How It Fails (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018)
Yanis Varoufakis, Adults In The Room (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2018)
McKenzie Wark, Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse? (Verso, 2019)
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic & The Spirit of Capitalism (1905)
Matthew Weiner, Mad Men, AMC (2007-2015)
Gabriel Winant, “The New Working Class” Dissent (June 27, 2017)
Gabriel Winant, “We Live In A Society: Organization Is The Entire Question” n+1 (December 12, 2020)
Curtis Yarvin & David Marchese, “Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done” New York Times (January 18, 2025)
Janet Yellen, “Job Insecurity, The Natural Rate of Unemployment, & the Phillips Curve” Federal Reserve Memo (June 10, 1996)
Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight For A Human Future At The New Frontier of Power (Profile, 2019)