Thinking Past Henri Lefebvre: Introducing “The Theory of Ground Rent and Rural Sociology”

This introduction to the translation of Henri Lefebvre's 1956 essay “The theory of ground rent and rural Sociology” moves through three stages. First, it suggests that Anglophone appropriations of Lefebvre have tended to focus too much on his urban writings, at the expense of understanding his early work on rural sociology, and failing to recognise how his urban focus emerged as a result of his interest in rural–urban transformation. Second, it provides a summary of his wider work on rural questions, including his unfinished work on a major treatise of rural sociology; and outlines the key themes of the present essay in relation to these other projects. Third, it connects Lefebvre's issues to wider debates in political economy and geography about aspects of the rural, land and ground rent, not least including the work of Antonio Gramsci and José Carlos Mariátegui.     

From the State to the Shareholder: Rent and the Production of Shareholder Value in Real Estate

Following the 2008 global financial crisis, the use of real estate tax credits to generate shareholder value for investors increased significantly. While tax credits are lauded as crucial to the delivery of social goods like affordable housing, the multiplier effects they supposedly generate fail to account for the hollowing out of the state that occurs as public funds are transferred to shareholders. Through a detailed case study of the historic tax credit industry in the United States, this research shows how many of the banks and financial institutions investing in tax credits have come to rely on overly engineered forms of landownership, deeply discounted credit pricing, and a wave of stock buybacks to boost their corporate profitability. This paper therefore develops a theoretical framework to understand taxation as a financialised accumulation strategy where the state serves as an important—if not problematic—source of real estate profit.     

The Precarity of Young People’s Housing Experiences in a Rural Context

Young people’s housing, economic and labour market circumstances have become increasingly insecure due to the combined effects of the 2007/2008 economic crisis, neoliberal welfare reforms, rising costs of higher education and the shortage of affordable housing. Discussions of young peoples’ experiences in these domains have largely neglected their spatial variability but evidence suggests that young people living in rural parts of the UK have distinctive experiences of housing, which are closely connected to labour markets and educational opportunities. By drawing on qualitative data from young people and housing professionals, this article explores some of these rural distinctions and frames them within theoretical debates about the ‘precariat’. It argues for a more theoretically informed and geographically nuanced understanding of contemporary housing issues as rural youth potentially face greater precarity than their urban peers.     

论柯克的贸易自由思想

柯克的贸易自由思想主要包括通过法律约束国王颁授垄断特许权、维护臣民的贸易自由以及鼓励臣民从事合法贸易等内容。柯克秉持普通法传统和贸易自由思想,对国王颁授垄断特许权进行了长期的抗争,最终推动议会通过了《反垄断法》。这部法令集中体现了柯克的贸易自由思想,否定了大多数垄断特许权的合法性,保障了臣民的贸易自由,并创设了世界上最早的专利制度。柯克的贸易自由思想有利于消除贸易领域中的封建因素,推动自由贸易的发展,促进社会财富向资本的转化。     

俄国1861年改革后农民赋役负担探析

俄国1861年农民改革废除了农民的封建人身依附关系,农民成为法定的自由人,同时可以获得土地所有权。但是改革后的赋役负担制约了农民自由权利和土地所有权的实现。政府仍奉行严厉的赋税政策,农民想尽各种办法筹集税款,却终难摆脱欠税的命运。农民承担的劳役租、代役租和混合租在改革后均转变为代役租,加之担负着各种实物义务,农民的经济负担愈益沉重。繁重的赋役负担迫使大量农民破产,严重阻碍了农民经济的发展。     

“满洲”电业株式会社始末

本文介绍了满洲电业株式会社的发展历程、代表性发输配电设施、伪满洲国覆灭时的状况。纵观“满电”的发展史可以发现,这既是高度垄断的电力生产、管理机构,也是伪满洲国傀儡政权的重要经济支柱和日本帝国主义侵略、掠夺中国东北的重要工具。     

A peculiar pluralism

Abstract

In this article, we shall describe the complexity and differentiation that characterizes the state of religion in Italy, beginning with a concise reconstruction of the chief factors that characterize the relationship that Italians experience with their birth religion or the prevailing religion (Catholicism). We shall then describe the level of ethical and religious pluralism (found both within the Catholic universe and, especially, outside of that universe) that Italian society is beginning to experience directly, in part because of the fact that other religious entities (both old and new) are become increasingly visible in the public sphere, adding color and identity to the symphony of voices attempting to speak publicly in religious terms. In conclusion, we shall explore a phenomenon, popular religion, which continues to show extraordinary vitality. The basic hypothesis that we intend to set forth is based on the idea that ordinary Italians consider themselves Catholic but have a variety of different ways of interpreting their practical involvement with the Catholic Church.     

Financialisation as Monopoly Profit: The Case of US Banking

Different economic measures afford different ways of seeing processes of financialisation. In the prototypical case of the US economy, the most compelling evidence of post‐1970s financialisation is found in corporate profits measures. This much has been clear for at least a decade. What remains much less clear, however, is the explanation for the long‐term maintenance and amplification of extreme financial‐sector profitability that financialisation in the United States has and continues to entail. With a specific focus on banking, this article turns to post‐Marxian scholarship on profit rate trends to explain this phenomenon. It argues that limited and declining levels of competition within the US banking sector during recent decades—rooted in high levels of industry concentration, collusive behaviour, and substantial entry barriers—have contributed to sustaining and boosting abnormal sectoral profitability. In doing so, the article theorises financialisation in the United States explicitly in terms of monopoly profit.     

Potemkin Revolution: Utopian Jungle Cities of 21st Century Socialism

This paper explores the entanglement of ideology and materiality in the production of the spaces of 21^st century socialism. “Millennium Cities” are currently being constructed for indigenous communities throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon, with revenues derived from petroleum extracted within their territories. As iconic spatial symbols of the “Citizens’ Revolution”, the Millennium Cities would appear to embody “the original accumulation of 21^st century socialism”—a utopian state ideology promising the collective appropriation of natural resources without the dispossession of the peasantry. Drawing on extensive field research, we argue that they are better understood as a simulation of urban modernity that is symptomatic of the predominance of ground rent in South American capitalism, and which conceals the violent repression of an autonomous indigenous project of petroleum‐based modernization. The original accumulation of 21^st century socialism can therefore be interpreted as a “fantasy of origins”, which functions to reproduce the primitive accumulation of capital.     

“丰满水电站”的殖民动机与客观效果

伪满洲国水力电气建设局及伪满洲电业株式会社修建的丰满水电站,同时也为日本全面掠夺中国东北地区的各种资源,提供了动力基础与工具。本文从规划与设置机构、设计与施工、工程投资与质量、奴役与压榨劳工、垄断与掠夺资源等几个层面,对伪满洲国时期的吉林丰满水电站进行了剖析。无论是从丰满水电站修建的历史过程,还是从主要动机及客观效果来看,这一水利工程都充分反映了日本企图长期霸占中国东北地区的侵略野心。