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Thomas Purcell

King's College London, European and International Studies, Faculty Member

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Thomas F. Purcell is Lecturer in International Political Economy at the Department of European & International Studies, King’s College London. He holds a PhD in Politics from The University of Manchester (2010) and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship (2011-2013), funded by the Spanish Ministry Education, at the Open University of Catalonia’s (UOC) Urban Transformation and Global Change Laboratory (TURBA Lab). Following this (2013-2015), he was Deputy Director of The National Strategy Centre for the Right to Territory (CENEDET) housed at the state postgraduate University (Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales) Quito, Ecuador. Tom also served 3 years as Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at Leeds Beckett University.

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Jessica Cargill-Thompson

The University of Manchester

Lidija Honegger

University of Cambridge

Naomi Clair Seow

Tomasz Zaborowski

University of Warsaw

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Books by Thomas Purcell

Los límites del capital en España: crisis y revuelta en el sur europeo (Introducción en castellano)

by Greig Charnock and Thomas Purcell

Desde los años setenta, el capitalismo global se ha caracterizado por ciclos cada vez más intenso... more Desde los años setenta, el capitalismo global se ha caracterizado por ciclos cada vez más intensos de auge y crisis que han culminado en la actual crisis económica y financiera global de los últimos años que ha afectado gravemente a la Unión Europea y especialmente al sur europeo. En particular, España se encuentra en el epicentro de una crisis en que sus graves consecuencias no tan solo son dramáticas para una gran parte de la población pero también amenaza el futuro de la eurozona.

Partiendo de la teoría del valor marxista, Charnock, Purcell y Ribera-Fumaz explican las raíces estructurales y profundamente históricas de la crisis en España contextualizándolas en las transformaciones económicas y políticas globales de las últimas décadas. El libro analiza los episodios más recientes de auge y crisis en España, su nexo con los circuitos de capital financiero europeos, la rampante urbanización del país, las dinámicas emergentes de las políticas de austeridad y las recientes revueltas populares (de los indignados al movimiento independentista catalán).

The Limits to Capital in Spain: Crisis and Revolt in the European South

by Greig Charnock, Thomas Purcell, and ramon ribera-fumaz

Since the 1970s, global capitalism has been marked by evermore intense cycles of boom and crisis.... more Since the 1970s, global capitalism has been marked by evermore intense cycles of boom and crisis. Today, Spain is at the epicentre of a crisis that threatens the future of the eurozone. Drawing upon Marxian value theory, Charnock, Purcell, and Ribera-Fumaz explain the deep historical and structural roots of the crisis in Spain, contextualised within global political and economic transformations in recent decades. They analyse the most recent cycle of boom and crisis in Spain, the nexus between European circuits of financial capital, urbanisation, and the emergent dynamics of state austerity and popular revolt – from the indignados movement to demands for an independent Catalonia.

The Limits to Capital in Spain: Crisis and Revolt in the European South

Since the 1970s, global capitalism has been marked by evermore intense cycles of boom and crisis.... more Since the 1970s, global capitalism has been marked by evermore intense cycles of boom and crisis. Today, Spain is at the epicentre of a crisis that threatens the future of the eurozone. Drawing upon Marxian value theory, Charnock, Purcell, and Ribera-Fumaz explain the deep historical and structural roots of the crisis in Spain, contextualised within global political and economic transformations in recent decades. They analyse the most recent cycle of boom and crisis in Spain, the nexus among European circuits of financial capital, urbanisation, and the emergent dynamics of state austerity and popular revolt – from the indignados movement to demands for an independent Catalonia.

Papers by Thomas Purcell

The political economy of land value capture in the UK: Rent and viability in Salford's new municipalist turn

EPA: Economy and Space, 2022

This paper contextualises the political economy of land value capture (LVC) within the shift to a... more This paper contextualises the political economy of land value capture (LVC) within the shift to an increasingly financialised, rentier-dominated capitalism. Contributing to an emerging dialogue between social constructivist planning literature on performativity in LVC and the critical political economy literature on rents and rentiership, we overview Salford's planning policy trajectory in recent decades in order to highlight how the UK planning system has increasingly been reconfigured as a mechanism to increase land values. In doing so, we explore both Salford's shift to neoliberal planning and its municipal socialist counter-turn in recent years, reflecting on how the centrality of LVC to the latter still leaves it dependent on rentier logics. In doing so, we locate these policy conjunctures within the governance dynamics of Britain's transformation into a rentier economy; wherein the stimulation, disbursement and capture of land values have become central objects of spatio-economic policy.

Fossil food: landed property as a hidden abode of global warming

Review of International Political Economy, 2023

This article analyzes the relation between climate change and the globalization of food systems. ... more This article analyzes the relation between climate change and the globalization of food systems. Although the corporate food regime made possible by the logistics revolution has been deemed highly intensive in its use of fossil fuels, the political economy of its energy foundations is yet to be deciphered. Based on EDGAR-FOOD, a global database that measures carbon emissions in the food system, we built a sample of nine South American economies to assess the extent to which capital mobility triggers emissions across different sectors. Findings from our study reveal that although food distribution was the most dynamic sector during the period in assessment, land-based emissions remained overwhelmingly larger in absolute terms. This, the paper concludes, highlights the definitive role that landed property and the structural heterogeneity of agrarian capitalism more broadlyperforms in the politics of carbon emissions. Accordingly, our findings lay bare a hidden abode of heterogeneous relations of productionchief of which are unpaid work, petty commodity production, and rentthat lies at the basis of a polarizing, hierarchically-structured international division of labor.

Common problems or different questions: A critique of 'assetisation'

Dialogues in Human Geography , 2023

This commentary provides the contours of a Marxian critique of 'assetisation'. In doing so, the p... more This commentary provides the contours of a Marxian critique of 'assetisation'. In doing so, the paper identifies a subjective approach to valuation and value which ties together Birch's and Ward's appeal to theoretical pluralism. The argument highlights how a focus on future-orientated valuation practices elide the question of class and production and, therefore, the very basis of rent and value. A call is made for geographers to better interrogate the relationship between rent and interest in the flurry of research around rentiership.

The Rentierization of Food: Regimes of Property and the Making of Chile's Globalized Agriculture. Journal of Peasant Studies.

by Martín Arboleda and Thomas Purcell

Current scholarly debates on the financialization of agriculture have tended to give analytical p... more Current scholarly debates on the financialization of agriculture have tended to give analytical priority to markets over institutional regimes of property. This article shifts the gaze towards the latter in order to illustrate the extent to which globalized food systems have come to be increasingly characterized by rentier dynamics. By considering rent as a relation that relies on monopoly control of the circuit of capital, the article explores the case of Chile as an instance of a broader mutation of class power that has placed property owners increasingly at the center of the dynamics of wealth creation under late capitalism.

The political economy of water infrastructure: An introduction to financialization

WIREs Water, 2018

If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.

The Turbulent Circulation of Rent: Towards a Political Economy of Property and Ownership in Supply Chain Capitalism. Antipode.

by Martín Arboleda and Thomas Purcell

Although recent years have seen an efflorescence of research on rent, the emphasis has tended to ... more Although recent years have seen an efflorescence of research on rent, the emphasis has tended to be placed in the antagonistic relations of distribution that underlie this category. The ways in which rent relations also mediate the expansion of global networks of production and trade, however, are yet to be deciphered. On the other hand, an emerging scholarly interest in questions of logistics and supply chain capitalism has lacked a systematic theorisation of how increasing functional integration in the world economy shapes-and is also shaped by-rent relations. To bridge this gap, this article explores the complex, convoluted relation between property and the social circulation of capital in and beyond land markets. With this, we place into focus the extent to which the logistics revolution has elevated the importance of property relations -and thereby of the rentier class- in the dynamics of accumulation and political conflict under late-stage capitalism.

Value-rent-finance

Progress in Human Geography, 2020

In this paper, we develop a novel interpretation of the internal relationship between value, rent... more In this paper, we develop a novel interpretation of the internal relationship between value, rent and finance, thereby enabling a new reading of the process of financialisation. As we argue, responding to the important question of how best to conceptualise the relationship between value and finance necessitates an understanding of the internal relations with a third moment, that of rent. We therefore develop a triadic understanding of these three interrelated moments. Crucially, we demonstrate that fictitious capital now actively pursues forms of rent, deepening the interrelationship between value, rent and finance. We conclude with a critical review of the literature on the financialisation of water, showing how the conceptual framework we develop sheds light upon the relations out of which water infrastructure has been financialised, as well as suggesting strategic entry points for its contestation.

'Hot chocolate': financialized global value chains and cocoa production in Ecuador

This paper explores the dialectical entanglements of the highly liquid and volatile trading of co... more This paper explores the dialectical entanglements of the highly liquid and volatile trading of cocoa in its financial derivative form, and the small-scale, labour-intensive peasant production in its physical form. To do so this paper deploys financialization as a concept analytically subordinate to changes in global value relations which, we argue, shine a light on the internal relations between the global financial trading and local production of cocoa. Based upon detailed empirical research in the Ecuadorian cocoa sector, the paper demonstrates how the financialization of agro-industrial linkages have been internalized into uneven production relations between peasant producers facing low and volatile farm-gate prices, thereby producing a heterogeneous form of social class restructuring.

Post-neoliberal energy modernity and the political economy of the landlord state in Ecuador

by Thomas Purcell and Estefania Martinez Esguerra

A B S T R A C T This paper offers a value-theoretic critique of 'post-neoliberal' energy producti... more A B S T R A C T This paper offers a value-theoretic critique of 'post-neoliberal' energy production in Ecuador. The Ecuadorian government is attempting to end the dependence on finite hydrocarbon resources and unite energy infrastructure with industrial competitiveness through the transformation of the country's 'energy matrix'. Based on extensive field research, we argue that the project reveals the contradictions of the landlord state's attempt to mobilise circuits of ground rent and foreign debt to create cheap energy as a comparative advantage for national industrial development. Riding high on global commodity prices and tapping into a huge stream of Chinese investment , the government massively increased investment in new sources of hydroelectricity and energy infrastructure. Whilst ostensibly bringing about a reduction in energy production costs, this has come at the price of leveraging the country's natural resources (oil and minerals) and, paradoxically, creating an oversupply of hydroelectricity. Drawing on a Marxist reading of the landlord state and tracing the flows of ground rent, capital and energy we reveal how, far from the claims of post-neoliberal modernity, the project is in fact deepening resource dependence by channelling hydroelectricity towards the nascent Ecuadorian mining frontier.

The Value of Rents: Global Commodity Chains and Small Cocoa Producers in Ecuador

by Thomas Purcell, Estefania Martinez Esguerra, and Nora Fernández

Drawing on the Marxian theory of ground rent, this paper develops an analysis of " global commodi... more Drawing on the Marxian theory of ground rent, this paper develops an analysis of " global commodity chains " (GCCs) with agrarian roots. There is an acknowledgement that the concentrated downstream governance of primary commodity-based GCCs has created a set of " asymmetrical " power relations which blocks the transmission of value upstream towards small producers. This paper argues that this research under-specifies what is meant by value and rent, and in doing so marginalises the analysis of value production before its journey through inter-firm relations. We demonstrate the importance of theorising the value constitution of commodities produced on the land and the forces that contest the payment of ground rent and thereby shape the geography of GCCs. Based on empirical research conducted around Ecuador's " post-neolib-eral " cocoa re-activation plan, we identify the class politics and production mechanisms through which value and rent escapes the hands of a stratified network of small owner producers. Resumen: Este art ıculo desarrolla un an alisis sobre " cadenas globales de mercanc ıas " (CGM) con ra ıces agrarias utilizando la teor ıa marxista de la renta de la tierra. Existe un reconocimiento de que la gobernanza de las CGM primarias concentrada en el procesa-miento ha creado una serie de relaciones de poder " asim etricas " que bloquean la trans-misi on de valor hacia peque~ nos productores agrarios. El art ıculo plantea que esta aserci on sub-especifica lo que se entiende por valor y renta y que, al hacerlo, margina-liza el an alisis de la producci on de valor antes de su recorrido a trav es de las relaciones inter-firmas. Demostramos la importancia de teorizar la constituci on del valor de las mercanc ıas producidas en la tierra y las fuerzas que impugnan el pago de la renta de la tierra y dan de este modo forma a la geograf ıa de las CGM. Sobre la base de investi-gaci on emp ırica realizada alrededor del plan 'post-neoliberal' de Ecuador para la reacti-vaci on del cacao, identificamos las pol ıticas de clase y los mecanismos de producci on a trav es de los cuales el valor y la renta se escapan de las manos de una red estratificada de peque~ nos productores propietarios agrarios.

LA ECONOMÍA POLÍTICA DEL CAPITALISMO RENTISTA Y LOS LÍMITES DE LA TRANSFORMACIÓN AGRARIA EN VENEZUELA (Capítulo en español)

El descubrimiento de grandes depósitos de "oro negro" a comienzos del siglo XX acabó con el pasad... more El descubrimiento de grandes depósitos de "oro negro" a comienzos del siglo XX acabó con el pasado agrícola de Venezuela el cual pasó de ser un país predominante agrario a una nación abrumadoramente urbanizada y dependiente del petróleo. A partir de este momento, el llamado a "sembrar el petróleo" para lograr la diversificación económica, se convertiría en una frase vana para la durante toda la historia contemporánea de Venezuela. Cuando Hugo Chávez asumió la presidencia en 1998 sobre la base del programa anti-neoliberal de la Revolución Bolivariana, Venezuela era el país latinoamericano con la más alta dependencia de importación de alimentos (Morales, 2009). En respuesta, el gobierno de Chávez fue el primero de América Latina en proclamar la soberanía alimentaria como política pública y en impulsar la creación de una serie de instituciones, estructuras de gobierno y nuevas políticas orientadas a movilizar gente, tierras, créditos, etc. en una apuesta por transformar el desarrollo rural y la provisión doméstica de alimentos. No obstante, el gobierno de Chávez heredó una fuerza de trabajo rural que representaba entre el 3-4% de la población laboralmente activa, así como un campesinado débil en comparación a una población urbana del 94%, y un sector de distribución de alimentos dependiente de las importaciones y dominado por los monopolios privados (Ellner, 2008). Estos obstáculos confluyen alrededor de la economía política del petróleo y de las dinámicas de la acumulación rentista en Venezuela.

The Political Economy of Rentier Capitalism and the Limits to Agrarian Transformation in Venezuela

This paper explores the contradictions and limits to agrarian transformation under twenty-first C... more This paper explores the contradictions and limits to agrarian transformation under twenty-first Century Socialism in Venezuela. Given the historical destruction wrought by the oil-based accumulation process upon Venezuela’s agricultural sector, the symbolic and social importance of an ‘agrarian revolution’ could be seen as a yardstick with which to measure the progress of the Bolivarian Revolution in ‘sowing the oil’. Eschewing a policy focus on the role of ‘food sovereignty’ and ‘food security’, the paper analyses how the dynamics of rentier-capital accumulation have played out in the agricultural sector. The paper argues that the macroeconomic framework of the Bolivarian Revolution has diminished the possibility of expanded domestic food production and instead reduced agrarian transformation to contradictory processes of ground rent appropriation.

Cambio de la Matriz Productiva y Acumulación de Capital en Ecuador (Documento de trabajo CENEDET español)

by Estefania Martinez Esguerra and Thomas Purcell

The Bolivarian Process in Venezuela: A Left Forum

by Sara C Motta, Jeffery R Webber, and Thomas Purcell

Historical Materialism, 2011

... Sujatha Fernandes (SF): The answer depends on how you define the Bolivarian process, or the &... more

Book Chapter: New International Division of Labour and Differentiated Integration in Europe: The Case of Spain

Charnock, Purcell and Ribera-Fumaz argue that it is of crucial importance to understand the longe... more Charnock, Purcell and Ribera-Fumaz argue that it is of crucial importance to understand the longer-term historical role played within the new international division of labour (NIDL) by relatively late industrialising countries that are today bearing the brunt of crisis and ‘internal devaluation’ in a ‘unified’ Europe. Focusing on Spain, they argue that it is precisely on the material basis of its full integration within the NIDL from the mid-1970s that the conditions of the reproduction of the working class were re-shaped, and it is this ‘historical component’ in the reproduction of the Spanish accumulation process that has prefigured the process of the differentiation of the conditions of the reproduction of the working class within and across its borders ever since.
DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-53872-7_7
In book: The New International Division of Labour, pp.157-180

Book Chapter: ‘Post-neoliberalism’ in the International Division of Labour: The Divergent Cases of Ecuador and Venezuela

The global rise in primary commodity prices in recent years has put the question of the use of i... more The global rise in primary commodity prices in recent years has put the question of the use of income from natural resources for developmental goals back on the political agenda across Latin America. Purcell examines the distinction between agricultural and mining landownership, in the context of global transformation associated with the international division labour, so as to explain the developmental trajectories of Ecuador and Venezuela. He argues that dual landlordism in Ecuador—in the form of an agro-export elite and a state-controlled oil sector—contrasts with the singular dominance of the state-controlled oil sector in Venezuela, and this, for Purcell, explains the manner in which the two national forms of insertion into the international division of labour have determined different national variants of ‘post-neoliberalism’
DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-53872-7_5
In book: The New International Division of Labour, pp.107-126

Rents, knowledge and neo-structuralism: transforming the productive matrix in Ecuador

by Thomas Purcell, Nora Fernández, and Estefania Martinez Esguerra

This paper explores the relationship between ground rent, production and knowledge in Ecuador’s n... more This paper explores the relationship between ground rent, production and knowledge in Ecuador’s neo-structuralist, state-led project to transform the productive matrix. Based upon insights from the Marxian approach to the critique of political economy, we interrogate how neostructuralism has conceptualised the relationship between ‘natural resource income’ and ‘knowledge-based’ economic development. The paper argues that a rent-theoretical perspective, which takes seriously the regional unfolding of uneven geographical development in Latin America, can highlight the limits of a national development plan conceived according to the logic of Schumpeterian efficiency. In doing so, the paper identifies the contradictory relationship between natural resource exports, state-led ‘knowledge’-based development and capital accumulation. On this basis the paper offers a historically and empirically informed critical analysis of selective import substitution industrialisation and vanguard science and technology strategies designed to transition Ecuador away from primary resource dependence.

Los límites del capital en España: crisis y revuelta en el sur europeo (Introducción en castellano)

by Greig Charnock and Thomas Purcell

Desde los años setenta, el capitalismo global se ha caracterizado por ciclos cada vez más intenso... more Desde los años setenta, el capitalismo global se ha caracterizado por ciclos cada vez más intensos de auge y crisis que han culminado en la actual crisis económica y financiera global de los últimos años que ha afectado gravemente a la Unión Europea y especialmente al sur europeo. En particular, España se encuentra en el epicentro de una crisis en que sus graves consecuencias no tan solo son dramáticas para una gran parte de la población pero también amenaza el futuro de la eurozona.

Partiendo de la teoría del valor marxista, Charnock, Purcell y Ribera-Fumaz explican las raíces estructurales y profundamente históricas de la crisis en España contextualizándolas en las transformaciones económicas y políticas globales de las últimas décadas. El libro analiza los episodios más recientes de auge y crisis en España, su nexo con los circuitos de capital financiero europeos, la rampante urbanización del país, las dinámicas emergentes de las políticas de austeridad y las recientes revueltas populares (de los indignados al movimiento independentista catalán).

The Limits to Capital in Spain: Crisis and Revolt in the European South

by Greig Charnock, Thomas Purcell, and ramon ribera-fumaz

Since the 1970s, global capitalism has been marked by evermore intense cycles of boom and crisis.... more Since the 1970s, global capitalism has been marked by evermore intense cycles of boom and crisis. Today, Spain is at the epicentre of a crisis that threatens the future of the eurozone. Drawing upon Marxian value theory, Charnock, Purcell, and Ribera-Fumaz explain the deep historical and structural roots of the crisis in Spain, contextualised within global political and economic transformations in recent decades. They analyse the most recent cycle of boom and crisis in Spain, the nexus between European circuits of financial capital, urbanisation, and the emergent dynamics of state austerity and popular revolt – from the indignados movement to demands for an independent Catalonia.

The Limits to Capital in Spain: Crisis and Revolt in the European South

Since the 1970s, global capitalism has been marked by evermore intense cycles of boom and crisis.... more Since the 1970s, global capitalism has been marked by evermore intense cycles of boom and crisis. Today, Spain is at the epicentre of a crisis that threatens the future of the eurozone. Drawing upon Marxian value theory, Charnock, Purcell, and Ribera-Fumaz explain the deep historical and structural roots of the crisis in Spain, contextualised within global political and economic transformations in recent decades. They analyse the most recent cycle of boom and crisis in Spain, the nexus among European circuits of financial capital, urbanisation, and the emergent dynamics of state austerity and popular revolt – from the indignados movement to demands for an independent Catalonia.

The political economy of land value capture in the UK: Rent and viability in Salford's new municipalist turn

EPA: Economy and Space, 2022

This paper contextualises the political economy of land value capture (LVC) within the shift to a... more This paper contextualises the political economy of land value capture (LVC) within the shift to an increasingly financialised, rentier-dominated capitalism. Contributing to an emerging dialogue between social constructivist planning literature on performativity in LVC and the critical political economy literature on rents and rentiership, we overview Salford's planning policy trajectory in recent decades in order to highlight how the UK planning system has increasingly been reconfigured as a mechanism to increase land values. In doing so, we explore both Salford's shift to neoliberal planning and its municipal socialist counter-turn in recent years, reflecting on how the centrality of LVC to the latter still leaves it dependent on rentier logics. In doing so, we locate these policy conjunctures within the governance dynamics of Britain's transformation into a rentier economy; wherein the stimulation, disbursement and capture of land values have become central objects of spatio-economic policy.

Fossil food: landed property as a hidden abode of global warming

Review of International Political Economy, 2023

This article analyzes the relation between climate change and the globalization of food systems. ... more This article analyzes the relation between climate change and the globalization of food systems. Although the corporate food regime made possible by the logistics revolution has been deemed highly intensive in its use of fossil fuels, the political economy of its energy foundations is yet to be deciphered. Based on EDGAR-FOOD, a global database that measures carbon emissions in the food system, we built a sample of nine South American economies to assess the extent to which capital mobility triggers emissions across different sectors. Findings from our study reveal that although food distribution was the most dynamic sector during the period in assessment, land-based emissions remained overwhelmingly larger in absolute terms. This, the paper concludes, highlights the definitive role that landed property and the structural heterogeneity of agrarian capitalism more broadlyperforms in the politics of carbon emissions. Accordingly, our findings lay bare a hidden abode of heterogeneous relations of productionchief of which are unpaid work, petty commodity production, and rentthat lies at the basis of a polarizing, hierarchically-structured international division of labor.

Common problems or different questions: A critique of 'assetisation'

Dialogues in Human Geography , 2023

This commentary provides the contours of a Marxian critique of 'assetisation'. In doing so, the p... more This commentary provides the contours of a Marxian critique of 'assetisation'. In doing so, the paper identifies a subjective approach to valuation and value which ties together Birch's and Ward's appeal to theoretical pluralism. The argument highlights how a focus on future-orientated valuation practices elide the question of class and production and, therefore, the very basis of rent and value. A call is made for geographers to better interrogate the relationship between rent and interest in the flurry of research around rentiership.

The Rentierization of Food: Regimes of Property and the Making of Chile's Globalized Agriculture. Journal of Peasant Studies.

by Martín Arboleda and Thomas Purcell

Current scholarly debates on the financialization of agriculture have tended to give analytical p... more Current scholarly debates on the financialization of agriculture have tended to give analytical priority to markets over institutional regimes of property. This article shifts the gaze towards the latter in order to illustrate the extent to which globalized food systems have come to be increasingly characterized by rentier dynamics. By considering rent as a relation that relies on monopoly control of the circuit of capital, the article explores the case of Chile as an instance of a broader mutation of class power that has placed property owners increasingly at the center of the dynamics of wealth creation under late capitalism.

The political economy of water infrastructure: An introduction to financialization

WIREs Water, 2018

If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.

The Turbulent Circulation of Rent: Towards a Political Economy of Property and Ownership in Supply Chain Capitalism. Antipode.

by Martín Arboleda and Thomas Purcell

Although recent years have seen an efflorescence of research on rent, the emphasis has tended to ... more Although recent years have seen an efflorescence of research on rent, the emphasis has tended to be placed in the antagonistic relations of distribution that underlie this category. The ways in which rent relations also mediate the expansion of global networks of production and trade, however, are yet to be deciphered. On the other hand, an emerging scholarly interest in questions of logistics and supply chain capitalism has lacked a systematic theorisation of how increasing functional integration in the world economy shapes-and is also shaped by-rent relations. To bridge this gap, this article explores the complex, convoluted relation between property and the social circulation of capital in and beyond land markets. With this, we place into focus the extent to which the logistics revolution has elevated the importance of property relations -and thereby of the rentier class- in the dynamics of accumulation and political conflict under late-stage capitalism.

Value-rent-finance

Progress in Human Geography, 2020

In this paper, we develop a novel interpretation of the internal relationship between value, rent... more In this paper, we develop a novel interpretation of the internal relationship between value, rent and finance, thereby enabling a new reading of the process of financialisation. As we argue, responding to the important question of how best to conceptualise the relationship between value and finance necessitates an understanding of the internal relations with a third moment, that of rent. We therefore develop a triadic understanding of these three interrelated moments. Crucially, we demonstrate that fictitious capital now actively pursues forms of rent, deepening the interrelationship between value, rent and finance. We conclude with a critical review of the literature on the financialisation of water, showing how the conceptual framework we develop sheds light upon the relations out of which water infrastructure has been financialised, as well as suggesting strategic entry points for its contestation.

'Hot chocolate': financialized global value chains and cocoa production in Ecuador

This paper explores the dialectical entanglements of the highly liquid and volatile trading of co... more This paper explores the dialectical entanglements of the highly liquid and volatile trading of cocoa in its financial derivative form, and the small-scale, labour-intensive peasant production in its physical form. To do so this paper deploys financialization as a concept analytically subordinate to changes in global value relations which, we argue, shine a light on the internal relations between the global financial trading and local production of cocoa. Based upon detailed empirical research in the Ecuadorian cocoa sector, the paper demonstrates how the financialization of agro-industrial linkages have been internalized into uneven production relations between peasant producers facing low and volatile farm-gate prices, thereby producing a heterogeneous form of social class restructuring.

Post-neoliberal energy modernity and the political economy of the landlord state in Ecuador

by Thomas Purcell and Estefania Martinez Esguerra

A B S T R A C T This paper offers a value-theoretic critique of 'post-neoliberal' energy producti... more A B S T R A C T This paper offers a value-theoretic critique of 'post-neoliberal' energy production in Ecuador. The Ecuadorian government is attempting to end the dependence on finite hydrocarbon resources and unite energy infrastructure with industrial competitiveness through the transformation of the country's 'energy matrix'. Based on extensive field research, we argue that the project reveals the contradictions of the landlord state's attempt to mobilise circuits of ground rent and foreign debt to create cheap energy as a comparative advantage for national industrial development. Riding high on global commodity prices and tapping into a huge stream of Chinese investment , the government massively increased investment in new sources of hydroelectricity and energy infrastructure. Whilst ostensibly bringing about a reduction in energy production costs, this has come at the price of leveraging the country's natural resources (oil and minerals) and, paradoxically, creating an oversupply of hydroelectricity. Drawing on a Marxist reading of the landlord state and tracing the flows of ground rent, capital and energy we reveal how, far from the claims of post-neoliberal modernity, the project is in fact deepening resource dependence by channelling hydroelectricity towards the nascent Ecuadorian mining frontier.

The Value of Rents: Global Commodity Chains and Small Cocoa Producers in Ecuador

by Thomas Purcell, Estefania Martinez Esguerra, and Nora Fernández

Drawing on the Marxian theory of ground rent, this paper develops an analysis of " global commodi... more Drawing on the Marxian theory of ground rent, this paper develops an analysis of " global commodity chains " (GCCs) with agrarian roots. There is an acknowledgement that the concentrated downstream governance of primary commodity-based GCCs has created a set of " asymmetrical " power relations which blocks the transmission of value upstream towards small producers. This paper argues that this research under-specifies what is meant by value and rent, and in doing so marginalises the analysis of value production before its journey through inter-firm relations. We demonstrate the importance of theorising the value constitution of commodities produced on the land and the forces that contest the payment of ground rent and thereby shape the geography of GCCs. Based on empirical research conducted around Ecuador's " post-neolib-eral " cocoa re-activation plan, we identify the class politics and production mechanisms through which value and rent escapes the hands of a stratified network of small owner producers. Resumen: Este art ıculo desarrolla un an alisis sobre " cadenas globales de mercanc ıas " (CGM) con ra ıces agrarias utilizando la teor ıa marxista de la renta de la tierra. Existe un reconocimiento de que la gobernanza de las CGM primarias concentrada en el procesa-miento ha creado una serie de relaciones de poder " asim etricas " que bloquean la trans-misi on de valor hacia peque~ nos productores agrarios. El art ıculo plantea que esta aserci on sub-especifica lo que se entiende por valor y renta y que, al hacerlo, margina-liza el an alisis de la producci on de valor antes de su recorrido a trav es de las relaciones inter-firmas. Demostramos la importancia de teorizar la constituci on del valor de las mercanc ıas producidas en la tierra y las fuerzas que impugnan el pago de la renta de la tierra y dan de este modo forma a la geograf ıa de las CGM. Sobre la base de investi-gaci on emp ırica realizada alrededor del plan 'post-neoliberal' de Ecuador para la reacti-vaci on del cacao, identificamos las pol ıticas de clase y los mecanismos de producci on a trav es de los cuales el valor y la renta se escapan de las manos de una red estratificada de peque~ nos productores propietarios agrarios.

LA ECONOMÍA POLÍTICA DEL CAPITALISMO RENTISTA Y LOS LÍMITES DE LA TRANSFORMACIÓN AGRARIA EN VENEZUELA (Capítulo en español)

El descubrimiento de grandes depósitos de "oro negro" a comienzos del siglo XX acabó con el pasad... more El descubrimiento de grandes depósitos de "oro negro" a comienzos del siglo XX acabó con el pasado agrícola de Venezuela el cual pasó de ser un país predominante agrario a una nación abrumadoramente urbanizada y dependiente del petróleo. A partir de este momento, el llamado a "sembrar el petróleo" para lograr la diversificación económica, se convertiría en una frase vana para la durante toda la historia contemporánea de Venezuela. Cuando Hugo Chávez asumió la presidencia en 1998 sobre la base del programa anti-neoliberal de la Revolución Bolivariana, Venezuela era el país latinoamericano con la más alta dependencia de importación de alimentos (Morales, 2009). En respuesta, el gobierno de Chávez fue el primero de América Latina en proclamar la soberanía alimentaria como política pública y en impulsar la creación de una serie de instituciones, estructuras de gobierno y nuevas políticas orientadas a movilizar gente, tierras, créditos, etc. en una apuesta por transformar el desarrollo rural y la provisión doméstica de alimentos. No obstante, el gobierno de Chávez heredó una fuerza de trabajo rural que representaba entre el 3-4% de la población laboralmente activa, así como un campesinado débil en comparación a una población urbana del 94%, y un sector de distribución de alimentos dependiente de las importaciones y dominado por los monopolios privados (Ellner, 2008). Estos obstáculos confluyen alrededor de la economía política del petróleo y de las dinámicas de la acumulación rentista en Venezuela.

The Political Economy of Rentier Capitalism and the Limits to Agrarian Transformation in Venezuela

This paper explores the contradictions and limits to agrarian transformation under twenty-first C... more This paper explores the contradictions and limits to agrarian transformation under twenty-first Century Socialism in Venezuela. Given the historical destruction wrought by the oil-based accumulation process upon Venezuela’s agricultural sector, the symbolic and social importance of an ‘agrarian revolution’ could be seen as a yardstick with which to measure the progress of the Bolivarian Revolution in ‘sowing the oil’. Eschewing a policy focus on the role of ‘food sovereignty’ and ‘food security’, the paper analyses how the dynamics of rentier-capital accumulation have played out in the agricultural sector. The paper argues that the macroeconomic framework of the Bolivarian Revolution has diminished the possibility of expanded domestic food production and instead reduced agrarian transformation to contradictory processes of ground rent appropriation.

Cambio de la Matriz Productiva y Acumulación de Capital en Ecuador (Documento de trabajo CENEDET español)

by Estefania Martinez Esguerra and Thomas Purcell

The Bolivarian Process in Venezuela: A Left Forum

by Sara C Motta, Jeffery R Webber, and Thomas Purcell

Historical Materialism, 2011

... Sujatha Fernandes (SF): The answer depends on how you define the Bolivarian process, or the &... more

Book Chapter: New International Division of Labour and Differentiated Integration in Europe: The Case of Spain

Charnock, Purcell and Ribera-Fumaz argue that it is of crucial importance to understand the longe... more Charnock, Purcell and Ribera-Fumaz argue that it is of crucial importance to understand the longer-term historical role played within the new international division of labour (NIDL) by relatively late industrialising countries that are today bearing the brunt of crisis and ‘internal devaluation’ in a ‘unified’ Europe. Focusing on Spain, they argue that it is precisely on the material basis of its full integration within the NIDL from the mid-1970s that the conditions of the reproduction of the working class were re-shaped, and it is this ‘historical component’ in the reproduction of the Spanish accumulation process that has prefigured the process of the differentiation of the conditions of the reproduction of the working class within and across its borders ever since.
DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-53872-7_7
In book: The New International Division of Labour, pp.157-180

Book Chapter: ‘Post-neoliberalism’ in the International Division of Labour: The Divergent Cases of Ecuador and Venezuela

The global rise in primary commodity prices in recent years has put the question of the use of i... more The global rise in primary commodity prices in recent years has put the question of the use of income from natural resources for developmental goals back on the political agenda across Latin America. Purcell examines the distinction between agricultural and mining landownership, in the context of global transformation associated with the international division labour, so as to explain the developmental trajectories of Ecuador and Venezuela. He argues that dual landlordism in Ecuador—in the form of an agro-export elite and a state-controlled oil sector—contrasts with the singular dominance of the state-controlled oil sector in Venezuela, and this, for Purcell, explains the manner in which the two national forms of insertion into the international division of labour have determined different national variants of ‘post-neoliberalism’
DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-53872-7_5
In book: The New International Division of Labour, pp.107-126

Rents, knowledge and neo-structuralism: transforming the productive matrix in Ecuador

by Thomas Purcell, Nora Fernández, and Estefania Martinez Esguerra

This paper explores the relationship between ground rent, production and knowledge in Ecuador’s n... more This paper explores the relationship between ground rent, production and knowledge in Ecuador’s neo-structuralist, state-led project to transform the productive matrix. Based upon insights from the Marxian approach to the critique of political economy, we interrogate how neostructuralism has conceptualised the relationship between ‘natural resource income’ and ‘knowledge-based’ economic development. The paper argues that a rent-theoretical perspective, which takes seriously the regional unfolding of uneven geographical development in Latin America, can highlight the limits of a national development plan conceived according to the logic of Schumpeterian efficiency. In doing so, the paper identifies the contradictory relationship between natural resource exports, state-led ‘knowledge’-based development and capital accumulation. On this basis the paper offers a historically and empirically informed critical analysis of selective import substitution industrialisation and vanguard science and technology strategies designed to transition Ecuador away from primary resource dependence.

THE UNEVEN GEOGRAPHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF CACAO COMMODITY CHAINS IN ECUADOR: FROM DIFFERENTIAL TO MONOPOLY GROUND-RENT (CENEDET Working paper)

In 2008, when on a visit to a cacao-producing province in Ecuador’s Amazonian region, the Preside... more In 2008, when on a visit to a cacao-producing province in Ecuador’s Amazonian region, the President of Ecuador Rafael Correa declared the community’s way out of poverty and underdevelopment to be the ‘industrialization of our fine chocolate for export in large quantities’. Ecuador is the world’s largest producer of fine aroma cocoa, a particular type of bean with special flavour qualities that can be a source of significant price premiums on the world market. It is the expansion, recovery and appropriation of these ‘premiums’ that has both captivated and confused the government’s upgrading project. This this paper argues that because the magnitude of ‘premiums’ available for Ecuador’s fine aroma cocoa is objectively limited in their existence as consumption (monopoly) rents, the governments project, in lieu of a public differential pricing policy, is effectively subsidising the second-tier suppliers that export bulk raw cocoa from Ecuador to global traders and manufacturers.

Transforming the Productive Matrix in Ecuador (CENEDET Working Paper)

by Nora Fernández, Thomas Purcell, and Estefania Martinez Esguerra

This paper explores the relationship between ground rent, production and knowledge in Ecuador’s n... more This paper explores the relationship between ground rent, production
and knowledge in Ecuador’s neo-structuralist, state-led project to
transform the productive matrix. Based upon insights from the Marxian
approach to the critique of political economy, we interrogate how neostructuralism
has conceptualised the relationship between ‘natural
resource income’ and ‘knowledge-based’ economic development.
The paper argues that a rent-theoretical perspective, which takes
seriously the regional unfolding of uneven geographical development
in Latin America, can highlight the limits of a national development
plan conceived according to the logic of Schumpeterian efficiency. In
doing so, the paper identifies the contradictory relationship between
natural resource exports, state-led ‘knowledge’-based development
and capital accumulation. On this basis the paper offers a historically
and empirically informed critical analysis of selective import
substitution industrialisation and vanguard science and technology
strategies designed to transition Ecuador away from primary resource
dependence.

The Limits to Capital in Spain: The Roots of the 'New Normal'

by Greig Charnock, ramon ribera-fumaz, and Thomas Purcell

Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, Aug 7, 2015

This article contributes to a Marxist understanding of the roots of the contemporary predicament ... more This article contributes to a Marxist understanding of the roots of the contemporary predicament for many societies in which future economic growth is likely to be low and accompanied by mass ‘structural’ unemployment, increased inequality, and further crises of social and political cohesion. It takes Spain as an exemplar of this ‘new normal’, and argues that the ‘irrational rationality’ of crisis in capitalism can be seen in successive cycles of crises in that have resulted in the present catastrophe in that country, and also – by means of European economic and monetary union – in the delimiting of political opportunities to restore growth on any other basis than through the subordination of social reproduction to the power of money and (increasingly authoritarian) law. The article therefore supports value-theoretical, diachronic analyses of capitalist development that trace the prefiguration of contemporary forms of crisis in the formation and ‘resolution’ of preceding cycles of overaccumluation and devaluation.

Contesting total extractivism: Between idealism and materialism

Journal of Agrarian Change, 2021

This review essay develops a methodologically-minded critical engagement with two books that seek... more This review essay develops a methodologically-minded critical engagement with two books that seek to make big theoretical contributions to our understanding of the socially and ecologically destructive dynamics of extractivism. By reading both texts through their methods of concept building and abstraction, the essay points towards the potential and pitfalls of science and technology in the capitalist mode of production and, in turn, the prospects for human agency to contest the forces of extractivism.