Guy Standing

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why rentiers thrive and work does not pay

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There is a lie at the heart of global capitalism. Politicians, financiers and global bureaucrats claim to believe in free competitive markets, but have constructed the most unfree market system ever. It is corrupt because income is channelled to the owners of property – financial, physical and intellectual – at the expense of society.
This book reveals how global capitalism is rigged in favour of rentiers to the detriment of all of us, especially the precariat. A plutocracy and elite enriches itself, not through production of goods and services, but through ownership of assets, including intellectual property, aided by subsidies, tax breaks, debt mechanisms, revolving doors between politics and business, and the privatisation of public services. Rentier capitalism is entrenched by the corruption of democracy, manipulated by the plutocracy and an elite-dominated media.
Meanwhile, wages stagnate as labour markets are transformed by outsourcing, automation and the on-demand economy, generating more rental income while expanding the precariat.
The Corruption of Capitalism argues that rentier capitalism is fostering revolt, and concludes by outlining a new income distribution system that would achieve the extinction of the rentier while promoting sustainable growth.
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387 printed pages
Original publication
2021
Publication year
2021
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Quotes

  • Byunggyu Parkhas quotedlast year
    It is about the uncharted corruption of a claimed ideal – ‘free markets’ – and how economies are being rigged to favour owners of assets – the rentiers – while depressing incomes from labour.
    Some would say that capitalism is inherently corrupt, because those who can cheat successfully for long enough do very nicely and always have. Even many of those who espouse capitalism unreservedly would grudgingly admit to that. Every day there is a report of some economic crime. There are too many rogues whose names are known to us to imagine that corruption does not pay. There is a saying among Russian businessmen: never ask how he got his first million.
    Yet that is not what this book is about. It is about how the claims made on behalf of capitalism have been subverted in the construction of a system that is radically different from what its advocates claim. They assert a belief in ‘free markets’ and want us to believe that economic policies are extending them. That is untrue. Today we have the most unfree market system ever created. It is deeply corrupt because its leaders claim it is the opposite of what it is becoming.
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