Marx’s Theory of Rent: A Speculative Reading Iman Kumar Mitra * In the first passage of the first chapter on rent (Chapter XXXVII, Part VI, Vol. III), Marx forewarns his readers not to judge his writing simply empirically. 1 He first makes an assumption in his usual emphatic tone that ‘agriculture is dominated by the capitalist mode of production’ and clarifies its real implication: ‘[the capitalist mode of production] rules all spheres of production and bourgeois society, so that its prerequisites, such as free competition among capitals, the possibility of transferring them from one sphere of production to another, a uniform level of the average rate of profit, etc., are fully matured.’ 2 He adds immediately, ‘The form of landed property which we consider here is a specifically historical one.’ Also, he alerts us, this ‘form’ was ‘altered’ (Marx’s emphasis) through capital and the capitalist mode of production itself and evolved out of the ‘feudal land ownership’ or ‘small peasants’ agriculture.’ 3 ‘For the results of our analysis,’ he asserts, ‘the objection, that other forms of landed property and of agriculture have existed or still exist, is quite irrelevant.’ 4 The object of his ire is, once again, those economists whose empiricism blinds them to the ‘historical’ nature of the form of landed property and makes them treat it as ‘an eternal category.’ 5 This historical form is not accidental: it ‘demands the expropriation of the rural labourers from the land and their subordination’ to a capitalist farmer. 6 In this way, he goes back to the Volume One of Capital and its celebrated chapter on primitive accumulation. But, unlike that chapter, Marx here is not trying to map the historical processes through which this transition happened. ‘The analysis of landed property in its various historical forms belongs outside of the limits of this work’ – the chapter begins with this disclaimer. 7 Marx wants to talk about this history only if it helps him understand how ‘a portion of the surplus-value produced by the industrial capital falls into the hands of the land owner.’ 8 This is also the reason why he makes the assumption about the dominance of the capitalist mode in agriculture. In a way, it sounds like a tautology: the problematic and the assumption are feeding into each other. But then, as David Harvey observes, ‘Rent…troubled Marx deeply.’ 9 The chapters on rent, Harvey comments, ‘lack ‘the usual magic of [Marx’s] touch’ and seem like a ‘minefield.’ 10 Coming from a loyalist like Harvey, it speaks a lot. We also have another loyalist as witness – Frederick Engels. And from his account we come to know why at places the ‘usual magic’ seems missing. The manuscript of Volume III, Engels wrote in his editor’s preface, was more a draft than a final product and highly uneven in its writing style, argumentation, and structure because of Marx’s failing health and increasing workload as a political organiser: * Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Patna and Member, Calcutta Research Group. The paper was presented in a Conference, Capital in the East on January 30 & 31, 2018 at Kolkata. Policies and Practices, Issue No. 94, February 2018