The Crisis of the Law of Value and the Becoming-Rent of Profit

This article aims to provide a few elements of theoretical reading of the current crisis, taking the thesis of the “becoming-rent of profit and the crisis of the law of value” as a starting point. Following the crisis in the Fordist model, the current transformation of capitalism is characterised by a full-fledged comeback and proliferation of forms of rent parallel to a complete change in the relationship between wages, rent and profit. To demonstrate our thesis, the following of this article is divided into two parts. In the first part we will come back to the definition of the categories of wages, rent and profit. We will insist upon the flexible and mobile borders that separate the category of rent from profit. To do so, we will base the argument on some points that Marx develops in the third book of Capital, when he sketches a theory of the becoming-rent of capital, a theory that can be put into relation with the hypotheses of general intellect. In the second part, we propose a reading of the historical transformations of the capital-labor relation which have simultaneously leaded to a growth in the power of rent and to a crumbling of the distinction between rent and profit.

Carlo Vercellone. The Crisis of the Law of Value and the Becoming-Rent of Profit. Andrea Fumagalli, Sandro Mezzadra. Crisis in the global economy : Financial Markets, Social Struggles, and New Political Scenarios, Semiotext(e), The MIT Press, pp.85-118, 2010. ⟨halshs-00516801⟩ - lien externe