Rentism as fundament to accumulation through the built environment

Abstract

It is no surprise that the incorporation of the built environment as a locus of accumulation only occurred with the more advanced development of capital as a social force. The elements that materially constitute it (real estate, infrastructure and other types of fixed capital for collective consumption) require specific conditions of production and circulation that distinguish them from other commodities. Likewise, the total production of social space in favor of accumulation demands yet another deepening of these relations that may give it the role of realization and distribution (dispute) of the totality of social wealth. This work, through a theoretical and exploratory approach, aims to highlight such specific conditions of production and circulation (valorization) of the built environment, resuming and expanding what Marx calls a brief digression in the Grundrisse regarding the determinations of a production of infrastructures by a quoted and interest-bearing capital to articulate it with the designations of real estate and the built environment in general before and through financial capital. Throughout the discussions, rentism emerges as a fundamental way of valorization of the built environment, which gains even more strength through its connection with the world of finance. It is also from it that other possibilities for immediate circulation of possession and property of these particular commodities derive, which are alternated and metamorphosed according to the transformation of the general conditions of production and circulation that sustain them.