Rent. Joe Collins
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу Rent - Joe Collins страница 3

Название: Rent

Автор: Joe Collins

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Экономика

Серия:

isbn: 9781509539079

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ 94

      103  95

      104  96

      105  97

      106  98

      107  99

      108  106

      109 107

      110 108

      111 109

      112 110

      113 111

      114 112

      115 113

      116  114

      117 115

      118 116

      119  117

      Joe Collins

      polity

      Copyright © Joe Collins 2022

      The right of Joe Collins to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      First published in 2022 by Polity Press

      Polity Press

      65 Bridge Street

      Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

      Polity Press

      101 Station Landing

      Suite 300

      Medford, MA 02155, USA

      All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3905-5

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3906-2 (pb)

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2021941064

      by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL

      The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

      Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

      For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

      This short book was hard to write. So hard that it needed to be written twice. I am indebted to the many people who helped to transform a loose set of reflections on rent into what is hopefully a useful resource for demystifying capitalism with its rentier inflection.

      Many thanks to George Owers and two anonymous readers for sharp and thorough comments on a chaotic first draft. Reader 2, who typically gets a bad rap, gets special mention for a fair and tough appraisal that continues to offer much food for thought. Thanks, also, to Julia Davies for patiently guiding a novice author through the publication process of his first book. Gail Ferguson’s expert copyediting is much appreciated. So, too, is the professionalism of Evie Deavall, Sue Duncan, Neil de Cort and the rest of the Polity crew responsible for producing this book.

      Sounding boards that helped shape thinking about rent over years are too many to name but chats with Beck Pearse, Humphrey McQueen, Claire Parfitt, Bruce McFarlane, Emma To, Peter Curtis, Liz Humphrys, Troy Henderson, Adam Morton, Frank Stilwell, Ben Moody, Franklin Obeng-Odoom, Bill Dunn, Chris Fletcher, Mike Beggs, Ryan Jory, Bill Kolios and Gareth Bryant directly informed the chapters below. Thank you, comrades. To the students and colleagues in the political economy movement at Sydney, your influence on the ideas in context explored in this book is immense and treasured.

      The word ‘rent’ first appeared in English around the twelfth century. In this original usage, rent meant income received by landlords and paid by tenants for the use of land. The word probably came from the French rente, meaning income, derived from the Latin, rendere, meaning to give back or give up.1 The word ‘land’ was used synonymously in this context with the things that could be done with land, like housing and farming. Rent was therefore taken to mean the periodical payment by tenants to landlords for the use of land and for what could be done on and with the land. One interesting connection is to the word ‘farm’, which meant ‘payment as rent’ in thirteenth-century English. Its Latin root is firmare, meaning ‘to fix.’2 There appear to be instances where the word ‘rent’ was used to mean tax in reference to various forms of property, but these were rare compared to the usage of the term to refer to the income derived from ownership of land. These discrepancies may well come down to the fact that in order for something to be given back, rendere, it first needed to be rent, torn apart, from its possessor. Rent as payment for the use of land remained its dominant meaning until the late nineteenth century.