Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?

by Brett Christophers

How did Britain’s economy become a bastion of inequality?

In this landmark book, the author of The New Enclosure provides a forensic examination and sweeping critique of early-twenty-first-century capitalism. Brett Christophers styles this as ‘rentier capitalism’, in which ownership of key types of scarce assets - such as land, intellectual property, natural resources, or digital platforms - is all-important and dominated by a few unfathomably wealthy companies and individuals: rentiers. If a small elite owns today’s economy, everybody else foots the bill. Nowhere is this divergence starker, Christophers shows, than in the United Kingdom, where the prototypical ills of rentier capitalism - vast inequalities combined with entrenched economic stagnation - are on full display and have led the country inexorably to the precipice of Brexit. With profound lessons for other countries subject to rentier dominance, Christophers’ examination of the UK case is indispensable to those wanting not just to understand this insidious economic phenomenon but to overcome it. Frequently invoked but never previously analysed and illuminated in all its depth and variety, rentier capitalism is here laid bare for the first time.

Genres: Economics, Politics, Nonfiction, British Literature, Current Affairs, Business, Finance

632 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 24, 2020

Reviews

[Kevin Carson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would have been better to devote slightly less space to details and comprehensive statistics regarding rental income for British corporations specifically, and included more general/theoretical discussion of how private equity and the finance sector gut productive capacity and strip assets because rent extraction is essentially about the ability to thwart productive activity. Some concepts from institutionalist economists like Veblen and Commons would have been especially useful.

[lindsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book! So informative and in-depth, yet accessibly written and easy to understand.

[Jacob Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is good. Though I have some notable problems with it. Let's start with the good: clearly written and has a keen eye for diagnosis of the problems of late capitalism and the neoliberal period in the UK. Christophers is inarguably attuned to the UK political economy. His solutions to 'rentier capitalism' make sense, and are consistent with my own. The politics on display here are not at issue, nor are his conclusions.

My issues are entirely academic. I feel that Christophers' notion of what constitutes rent is overly broad and underspecified, such that often, what is being analysed is not 'rentier capitalism' as such, but the operation of financial capital in the contemporary period. His problematic then seems to function less to provide specificity or analytic clarity than it does to signal a broader agreement and employment of Keynesian analyses and Piketty, enrobed with a Marxian bent. There isn't a problem there as such (fine inspiration to work with), but it over specifies and makes determinant one factor of financialised capitalism without analysing the social forces which produced it.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

We used to have an economy that was run on producing things. But these days that has given way to an economy which is run on owning things. Everyone can acknowledge over the last half century western economies have largely offloaded producing things overseas, except in specific cases—higher up the value chain, such as design work, medical equipment production, marketing, or top-tier software development—but not as much attention is paid to where that has left us.

Now, our economies are dominated by owning, not just things, but assets. Christophers defines an asset as a thing whose owner has monopoly control over it, and also has the ability to be monetized in an open market. In other words, rent, derived from assets, is "income derived from the ownership, possession or control of scarce assets under conditions of limited or no competition."

Christophers oulines seven major types of asset which deliver rent: finfancial, natural resources, intellectual property, digital platforms, service contracts, infrastructure, and land.

So why the term "rentier"? It conjures pictures of scowly 19th Century landowners. The reason is today's asset owners are no different—much (if not all) of their income and wealth are generated from the assets they own, though much more than just land. The classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo both thought that earlier notion of "rentier" was a drag on the economy and thought the practice should be abolished, but today the practice of rentierism holds the commanding heights of the economy.

So how different is this economy than one dominated by production? There are key similarities, after all. The owners of the means of production of old did not think much differently about their companies, for instance, which as assets they saw as their own private kingdoms with which they could do as they like.

But just as Marx described, these capitalists were constrained by competition. Market competition forced them to innovate. Since then things have changed. First, monopoly and its other half—imperialism—came to dominate, as Lenin documented in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Second, production was outsourced to the global south, particularly at the bottom of the value chain—famously pointed out by Vice President JD Vance as where the global south belonged:

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/...

Over time what is left is an economy build around not just financialization, but asset ownership (and of course services for the rest of us).

Overall this book presents an economic paradigm with incredibly rich explanatory power. The high costs of assets, no matter how dear to human survival, is a given here.

[Clara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is baller, and I loved it.

As a housing justice advocate and organizer, I was especially impressed with the chapter on land rentierism. That background makes me a difficult person to impress: I am well-informed about the causes of housing injustice and I have strong and deeply-held opinions about various policy solutions that are so frequently bandied about. RENTIER CAPITALISM managed to both furnish me with new insights and deepen my understanding of ideas I already had exposure to.

It is no understatement, therefore, to say that the impact of this book on my understanding of the other sectors Christophers explores, and on the detailed inner workings of the neoliberal policies that have enabled and robustly entrenched rentiers and rentierism in the UK's economy, has been transformative. Few books have had quite such a significant impact on my understanding of the world.

If I have one gripe, it's that - as other reviewers have mentioned - this is not an accessible book for those with no pre-existing understanding of capitalism or political economy more generally. Christophers paints a picture of the world and of the UK neoliberal economy specifically that is dizzyingly complex. RENTIER CAPITALISM requires significant and sustained effort from readers - effort many laypeople are unlikely to invest. Those that do, however, will find their efforts richly rewarded.

[Clara]

This book is baller, and I loved it.

I've been organizing in the housing justice space for a long time, so I'm well informed and I have some fairly deeply held opinions on the causes of the current state of housing issues and the relative merits of different policies. The chapter on housing in RENTIER CAPITALISM both taught me new things and deepened previously learned insights. When it comes to the discussion of the other 6 sectors this book tackles, its impact on my understanding of their operation and of the inner workings of the neoliberal era that enabled them to operate as they do was nothing short of transformative.

If there's a caveat for me, it's only that RENTIER CAPITALISM is - as others have said - not very accessible to readers with no or highly limited background in political economy. It presents an accurate but also dizzyingly complex picture of the UK economy, one that will be hard for most laypeople to wrap their heads around without significant and sustained effort. If you do put that effort in, however, you'll be amply rewarded.

[Steve Lawless · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 would be a fairer scoring. The good, there's a lot of detailed information about the way capitalism pumps wealth upwards and impoverishes many. However I did have some problems with how he defines rentierism. The information on the way that taxation systems under UK right-wing governments have consistently advantaged those who extract wealth that do very little with anything to create it was useful. Probably the most important chapter is the last one. It's the only one where he really addresses the issues of the need to reduce monopoly address taxation. However his solutions are basically reformist. He does quite rightly mention that a central, and for me the central problem, is ownership. This section would have justified better treatment. The bottom line however is that current class forces are such that the systems of exploitation elucidated in this book will continue until there is a serious challenge from the labouring classes.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Christophers doesn't understand Economy. And he doesn't care. After all the general public is paying for his lifestyle and expenses, they are paying for his healthcare, and they will pay him a generous pension plan when he won't be bothered to even go to his comfy office for which he hasn't paid a cent.

Once you know that Economy is the total of the output of all people in a given area, it's hard to talk about ”owning” the Economy.

Who pays for this? Well, certainly Christophers won't risk his comfy life, and his wonderful ability to hire serfs to do his job (he calls them assistants) at taxpayer's expense, so he is going to bring any fallacious argument he can muster to make the reader look the other way.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really hard to know how to feel about this one - parts of it felt so bloody garbled and as though 'rentierism' was just a convenient vehicle to launch into a generic critique of neoliberalism. At other times though it was incredibly incisive and hit upon explanations that feel so intuitively accurate but are completely absent in the left's political economy. Really like the idea that Thatcherism was a reassertion of rentier dominance and think this goes some way towards explaining Britain's chronic productivity deficit.

[Lorcan McClenaghan-Rees · Rating 5 out of 5]

crucial reading that lays bare both the extent and the deliberate mechanisms of ever-magnifying inequality. one of the best examinations of neoliberalism’s many ills, compellingly arguing that rent is essentially capitalism’s raison d’être. scrupulously researched, decisively - and accessibly - argued. should be a feature of every reading list associated with emerging western anti capitalist movements. 100% recommend.

[Gabriel Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read but a fascinating, depressing and thought provoking one.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book could have been a bit shorter, but definitely a great contribution to the study of the phenomenon. A useful phrase I learned was "the functionless investor."

[Adam Civzelis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Inaccessibly written. A book for experts not the layman. More like a thesis than a book for the masses.

[Stanley Wilshire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Keen to reading group this with the Britannia Unchained crew

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

To come....

[Candy]

(i only read the IP chapter and skimmed the rest) interesting ideas but quite boring :) lol

[KT · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and detailed, if repetitive read on rent and rentier capitalism that covers rents in finance, natural resources, intellectual property, platforms, contracts, infrastructure and land

The book defines rent as income to which control of a valuable asset is in some sense fundamental, and a rentier is the recipient of such income and defines rentier capitalism as an economic system not just dominated by rents and rentiers but, in a much more profound sense, substantially scaffolded by and organised around the assets that generate those rents and sustain those rentiers

I thought the chapter on renterism under contracting in the UK was particularly good, where despite the government stating that outsourcing would improve competition, innovation and efficiency, in reality inefficient oligopolies such as Capita and Serco constantly win contracts and provide mediocre services