Class, Assets and Work in Rentier Capitalism

Brett Christophers

doi:10.1163/1569206x-29021234

Abstract

Abstract ‘Rentier capitalism’ is the term increasingly used to describe economies dominated by rentiers, rents, and rent-generating assets. A growing body of scholarship considers how the ownership of such assets by individuals and households is reshaping patterns of class and inequality and accordingly requires the reconceptualisation of the latter phenomena. The significance of company-owned assets and corporate rents for class, inequality and their conceptualisation has not been considered, however. This article offers an exploratory investigation along these lines, highlighting the importance of employees’ working relationship to company-owned, rent-generating assets for their class position. The article further reflects on how developments in this regard might be approached from the perspective of Marx’s writing on value, labour and class, and the challenges that those developments potentially pose to Marxian concepts.

Highlights

There is not much on which Marx, Keynes and mainstream economics tend to agree, but one notable such commonality concerns rent, via free access
If commentators are largely agreed that rentierism has revived with a vengeance, they generally acknowledge that the intensification of the rentier character of capitalism requires us to rethink inherited concepts of class and inequality
2.5 Sweating Assets At most rentier-type, asset-intensive companies, the individuals whose roles we have considered far – creating assets, performing their value, 30 Sandbu 2018

Summary

Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Lecture

Abstract ‘Rentier capitalism’ is the term increasingly used to describe economies dominated by rentiers, rents, and rent-generating assets. Rent is understood as income derived from the ownership, possession or control of scarce assets and under conditions of limited or no competition This understanding represents an extension of the original Marxian formulation in two senses.[4] First, it entails a generalisation of asset type: the asset on which rent is earned need not be land – it might instead be intellectual property (e.g. a pharmaceutical patent), or a digital platform, or, à la Keynes, interest-bearing loan capital. This extended understanding incorporates recognition of the importance of the market conditions under which such income is realised.[5]

From Employment to Assets?

Findings

Conclusion