Reconstructing Development Economics: Overcoming Rent for Constructing Capitalism

Abstract

The purpose of the following article is to show that for its survival capitalism requires expanding mass incomes and that the dominant interpretation of growth relying on ever increasing shares of the rich in national income is misguided. Capitalism is an achievement involuntarily imposed by the poor onto the rich of society. The rich gain wealth by a large variety of means, very often not by the discipline capitalism requires and imposes through competition. The article concentrates on two aspects: the conditions of making expanding mass incomes the basis of capitalist transition in not yet capitalist underdeveloped economies, and the importance of such a transition for maintaining capitalism at the global level where a globalisation of rent against globalisation of profit is the intention of the forces of capital. Therefore many other very relevant aspects of the theoretical model can only be shortly outlined.