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Rent, or unearned income, is a pervasive concept in contemporary economics. Economists of all stripes see today's global economy as riddled with harmful rents, but most deny these are intrinsic to capitalism, and insist they can be eliminated with the right policies. It begs the question, why is rent theory so critical of the present but so optimistic about the future?
In
Mother of Capital, Matthew Costa delves into the intellectual and social history of rent to solve this puzzle. Centring rent as the engine of capitalism's historical emergence in medieval Europe, he offers a groundbreaking, systematic history of rent and rent theory. The book also traces the history of resistance to rent from below, and unearths a neglected body of critical rent theory.
Weaving complex strands of social and intellectual history into a vivid, lively, and original explanation of how the society we live in came to be, Costa makes a bold intervention into contemporary debates about the origins and future of capitalism, the nature of social change, and of history itself.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Rent and the engine of history
2. The tributary rent relation
3. Tributary tendencies and contradictions
4. Tributary ideology, resistance, and critique
5. From tributary to capitalist rent
6. Resistance and critique in transition
7. The political economy of capitalist rent
8. Resistance to rent under capitalism
9. The critical social theorists
10. The critique of differential rent
11. Capitalist rent as proletarianization
12. Rent and capitalist domination
13. The ideology of capitalist rent
14. Proletarian imaginaries
15. Deproletarianization
Conclusion: Capital, mother of what?
Notes
Index
About the author
Matthew Costa is an Australian political economist. He has been a sessional lecturer and honorary associate in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. Alongside his academic work, he has served in economic and advisory roles in the Australian public sector for over a decade. He is currently a Director at New South Wales Treasury, and was previously an economic policy advisor in Australia's Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. He lives in New South Wales.
