Hi friends, I’ve been learning about some research trends through Paul Cockshott and the like. But I’ve also been reading Mao’s Red Book 📕 I also keep up on market trends, just to see the train wreck that is capitalist economics. tl;dr at bottom.

Based on my observations, I’ve noticed that, especially with the Davos elite pushing for the 4th industrial revolution and the great reset, I’m wondering if anyone has information on or has noticed that we are moving from a consumer/producer worker/capitalist mode of production, to a renter/owner one. When we generally think of economic assets, we think of houses or cars and the like, but with the Davos elite, it seems that this paradigm is either switching or already gone. Does the majority of the population actually own a significan amount of ‘their’ assets, or is it merely all pseudo-ownership; rented stuff?

Legally, we don’t own our phones, farmers don’t own their tractors, most products, especially electronic ones, are in a way, rented. We don’t have legal basis to use them for whatever we want, to even fix planned obsolescence which keep us in endless maintenance loops, like with cars. Furthermore, how many people really own their homes if they can get foreclosed on? When assets can just be seized, can ownership really exist?

It seems to me that most people rent or lease, and when they’re not renting products, they’re renting themselves(wage labor) in the form of work, or through an app overlord(twitter, YT). We don’t even own the platforms many of us use for labor purposes(Uber).

The owner class dictates how the economy works, we just get to participate. Not that worker/capitalist, prole/bourgeois dichotomies are useless, but renting/owning class seems to be ever more prevalent. I’m wondering if this is something worth looking into further.

Specifically, I’m wondering if it can be a different perspective that can be used to better articulate the global economic moment we see ourselves moving toward/in. If the owning classes dictate it, so it must be. We do live in a bourgeois dictatorship. Do you think this could be a helpful perspective or rhetoric to help describe the modern economic paradigm to a layperson?

That’s my piece. Does anyone else have any ideas floating around like that? Xi has encouraged the world to keep developing Marxism. I think it’s an excellent point. I’m only trying to follow from that invitation.

The tl;dr is I think it renting/owning class dichotomy could help agitate class consciousness in a way that more closely describes our lived lives than what could be seen as old timey gothic terms, which most people haven’t heard of or can spell. I want to lower the bar of entry for people to become class conscious.

  • @cfgaussian
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    1 year ago

    It doesn’t really fundamentally change the mode of production which is still a capitalist one but yes we are increasingly living in a society where we own less and less and rent/lease more and more. This is a way of further disempowering workers but it is also a consequence of the unprofitability of late stage capitalism from actually productive activity and its dependency on parasitic rent extraction in various forms, be it actual land rent, intellectual property rent, or other. The other notable development is the loss of stable, regular employment and the emergence of the gig economy, which increases the precarity of workers and further elevates the degree of exploitation that is possible by keeping people at just above the threshold of slipping back into the reserve army of labor at any given time.

    However even if things still were as they were say 50-60 years ago and you still really owned all your own property, your house, your car, etc. and even if you still had stable full time jobs as a norm, the worker-capitalist class dichotomy would still exist just the same. Because what a worker can own does not (or only in very limited way) constitute a means of production.

    I guess this is a roundabout way of saying that yes your observations are correct, but no, i don’t think this really changes the underlying nature of the system. You could maybe say that we are moving in the direction of a return to feudal relations if the trend of corporate pseudo-fiefdoms, corporate towns, etc. continues and grows. But i don’t see a need to throw out the old terminology.

    That being said, you can and should be flexible in your vocabulary when talking to regular people who are not yet communists. If you find certain informal terminology is more effective at making a connection with them and getting them to understand Marxism then by all means. We have to be smart about how we engage in our propaganda, agitation and class-consciousness raising activities.

  • @knfrmity
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    131 year ago

    I don’t think it’s different at all. Enclosure (a general term for the shift to rentierism you’re talking about) has been a critical part of capitalist development since the very beginning. Serfs and free labourers have been forced into capitalist class relations via enclosure all the way back to the sixteenth century. People will not choose to work in exploitative conditions unless they are forced into desperate circumstances. Losing personal access to property (land, means of production) is the most efficient means of forcing people into such desperate circumstances. The working classes of Europe were so angry with these developments that labour leaders even had slogans along the lines of “death is better than wage labour.” Many were indeed put to death for refusing to go along with the desires of the owning class.

    Enclosure may look slightly different now than it did in Shakespeare’s day and age, but the motivation is the same.

    That’s not to say that more accessible terminology wouldn’t help. A big part of what we need to do as Marxists is to educate the masses. Using overly complex or niche vocabulary certainly doesn’t help the cause, at least in the early phases of radicalizing the working class.

    • @SamubaiOP
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      51 year ago

      Ive heard enclosure described, but never by name. So you’re saying this renterism is still the same trick as enclosure, just different hand waving gestures and more tech and finance bs? Makes sense. It seems nothing in class relations has fundamentally changed lol. Any texts to check out?

      • @knfrmity
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        51 year ago

        Rentier capitalism goes all the way back to the late 19th century as well. It’s probably been most apparent in the neoliberal Era which started in 1971, but the trend started a hundred years earlier at the latest. As already mentioned, Caliban and the Witch is a great book to learn about the first enclosures, and more broadly the social means with which the first wave of primitive accumulation were accomplished and reinforced. Marx talked about rent although not rentierism. Lenin also writes a bit about rents in Imperialism.

        When you cut away all the fancy terms and intentional obfuscation, modern neoliberal trends of privatization are exactly the same process and have exaxtly the same intended outcome as the original enclosures of the late middle ages. The point is to divorce workers from anything and everything which we may use to be even marginally self sufficient and even modestly independent. By owning nothing we owe our entire existence to our [land]lords, and they may use that power to do as they please.

  • Water Bowl Slime
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    121 year ago

    The term “working class” describes how industry is organized, but “renting class” puts the emphasis on personal ownership. I don’t think the mode of production has changed, but I do think highlighting how capitalism is causing our disenfranchisement is useful and I agree that it can promote class consciousness.

    Though many capitalists would technically be renting class too since they don’t directly own all their wealth and instead shuffle it around in trusts, loans, etc. So that’s something to be mindful of when using this framework.

    • @PolandIsAStateOfMind
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      51 year ago

      Though many capitalists would technically be renting class too since they don’t directly own all their wealth and instead shuffle it around in trusts, loans, etc. So that’s something to be mindful of when using this framework.

      This is also a paradox described already by Marx. Capitalism tend to make capitalists needless.

  • Muad'DibberA
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    1 year ago

    Does the majority of the population actually own a significan amount of ‘their’ assets, or is it merely all pseudo-ownership; rented stuff?

    To address this point: there is a distinction between personal property, and productive property. Capitalists would of course prefer to own everything and extract rents from our use of them. As @knfirmity mentioned, the process of enclosure was a mass eviction where people were moved into rented housing tenements.

    They’ve just been prevented to by the difficulty of controlling portable products after they’re sold, although the techbros are finding ways around that via the “internet of things”, and always connected devices.

  • @Lemmy_Mouse
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    1 year ago

    The bourgeoisie are as in control of their lives as we are of ours. They are entwined within and driven by their economic interests. They couldn’t simply stop any more than we could simply be them. In chess, even the kings and queens move according to the rules of the board, same thing here.

    Don’t confuse this for victimhood, they are beneficiaries of all horrors committed under capitalism. And although removing these people will not “fix capitalism”, it is an essential and historically proven necessity in evolving to socialism.

  • @ihaveibs
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    1 year ago

    I think understanding the dollar standard is imperative but can’t contribute beyond that

    Okay I can contribute this: every Marxist worth their salt should read Michael Hudson’s work

    • @SamubaiOP
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      51 year ago

      Michael Hudson is awesome. Mostly have seen interviews, maybe read an article or two along the way. Any book you could recommend?

      • @ihaveibs
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        61 year ago

        Superimperialism for sure. It lays out the whole financial imperialistic game that dictates geopolitics