The new articulation of wages, rent and profit in cognitive capitalism

Abstract

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 hypothesis, this article is divided in two sections: in the first section we are going to examine the definitions of the categories of wages, rent and profit , and claim that the lines separating rent from profit are flexible and mobile both theoretically and historically. To illustrate this point we rely on suggestions found in Marx's Capital volume III, where he drafts a theory of the becoming-rent of capital that provides new insights into the related theory of the general intellect . In the second section we will provide a synthetic framework for the interpretation of transformat ions of the labour-capital relation that led simultaneously to an increase in the power of rent and the collapse of a distinction between rent and profit in the transition from industrial to cognitive capitalismwages, rent, profit, cognitive capitalism