One of the most persistent left shibboleths is the notion that productive investment is giving way to unproductive speculation, leading to the “hollowing out” of the industrial economy and the decline of capitalism. After all, it seems obvious that capitalists would rather make a quick buck than undertake the arduous and risky process of actually producing something. Neo-feudalism is having a moment.

Such arguments have typically focused on the supposedly parasitic role of finance and “fictitious capital.” More recently, however, they have been extended to describe an emerging “rentier capitalism,” in which the extraction of rent through monopoly power and control over the state has displaced production as the primary means through which capitalists accumulate wealth. In reality, the dystopia unfolding around us is not the result of capitalism’s logic breaking down — it is the direct expression of that logic.

In a recent piece in Sidecar, for instance, Dylan Riley reiterates the important point often associated with his coauthor, Robert Brenner, that “all-round market dependence” is the basic foundation of capitalism. Which is to say that the defining characteristic of capitalism is that it is a system in which both the ruling class and the laboring masses depend on the market for their well-being. Among other things, this has pivotal implications for how we understand the transition to capitalism, briefly summarized by Riley in the piece. It leads us to focus on production relations within societies, rather than just their external trade connections to a “world system,” in determining the nature of its mode of production.