Technofeudalism and Islamism

• In Event: Marxist Sociology Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

“Technofeudalism and Islamism” develops a class-analytic comparison of technofeudalism in the United States and Islamism in Turkey to explain the class dynamics behind contemporary political polarization. The paper argues that technofeudalism functions as a core ideology of the MAGA movement, promoted by prominent figures such as Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Alex Karp, yet the social-class base of technofeudalism remains undertheorized.

Balaban contends that Turkey’s Islamist trajectory, analyzed in his book Industrial Islamism: How Authoritarian Movements Mobilize Workers (2025), provides a revealing comparative case. The paper first identifies policy and narrative parallels between MAGA and Turkish Islamists, including attacks on the judiciary, universities, and bureaucracy; efforts to make the state more transactional; reliance on executive authority; and coalition-building with domestic small manufacturers. Both movements also deploy eclectic, leader-centered narratives that frame immigrants, minorities, intellectuals, LGBTQ people, and women as threats, use religious themes without pursuing theocracy, and portray themselves as guardians of the nation against globalization.

The paper then links these similarities to post–Cold War class formation within global commodity chains. In Turkey, export-oriented reforms strengthened small and medium manufacturers (“faubourgeoisie”); in the United States, the WTO era and the rise of the internet bolstered a “technocracy” of executives and engineers managing global supply chains. Both clash with a petty-bourgeois “middle class” of professionals, bureaucrats, and intellectuals.

Finally, the paper proposes an analytical framework of “circulation classes” (technocracy, faubourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie) whose roles center on the circulation of surplus value. Ongoing empirical work combines content analysis of technofeudalist narratives with distributional data (PSID, World Bank, World Inequality Database).

Author

• Utku Balaban, Xavier University