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.