Geographies of ground rent: Periodizing ground rent theory, spatializing ground rent refusal

Abstract

This article presents an overview of ground rent theories from a historical and political vantage, analyzing chronological continuities and discontinuities, and hypothesizing about the historicopolitical motivations which spur certain approaches to ground rent. I begin with “Classical Marxist” approaches to ground rent theory in the decades after Marx’s death, followed by an analysis of ground rent theory from the 1970s to 2020s. While critical of some contemporary trends in ground rent scholarship, I note several important contributions the literature makes to our understanding of the world and argue that ground rent-based analyses yield a unique and essential interpretation of class relations, state–capital relations, and the complexity of embodied categories of capitalist social relations. I conclude by considering Demonic Ground/Rent in which the analysis of ground rent may lead us toward ascertaining how to most deeply and fundamentally challenge, refuse, abolish, the current state of things—if we allow ourselves to follow it there.