The Problem of Rent

Abstract

With rentier dynamics playing an increasingly central role in the economy across much of the advanced capitalist world, critiques of rent, the rentier, and rentierism have been gathering a head of steam. For the majority of critics of rentierism, it appears that the central problem of rent, and the reason we should be critical of it, is that it represents “unearned” income. In this critical reflection, I question this critique and, in its place, advance an alternative conceptualization of the problem of rent, centered not on the degree to which rent is or is not “earned” but rather on the monopoly power that the rentier, by her nature, enjoys, and which, I argue, substantially accounts for two of rentier capitalism’s negative features: low levels of innovation and high levels of worker exploitation.