Mother of Capital: How Rent Gave Birth to Modernity

By Matthew CostaRecorded Track

Length10h 46m

About this audiobook

Rent, or unearned income, is a pervasive concept in contemporary economics. Economists see today's global economy as riddled with harmful rents, but most deny these are intrinsic to capitalism, and insist they can be eliminated with the right policies. Why is rent theory so critical of the present but so optimistic about the future? Costa delves into the intellectual and social history of rent to solve this puzzle. Centring rent as the engine of capitalism's historical emergence in medieval Europe, he offers a groundbreaking, systematic history of rent and rent theory. The book traces the history of resistance to rent from below, and unearths a neglected body of critical rent theory. Weaving complex strands of social and intellectual history into a vivid, lively, and original explanation of how the society we live in came to be, Costa makes a bold intervention into contemporary debates about the origins and future of capitalism, the nature of social change, and of history itself.

Exploration

Political Intrigue

Mystery

Audiobook details

Rating★★★★★ 5.0 (1)

GenreBusiness and Economics, Politics and Government

Length10 hrs 46 mins

Narrated byRecorded Track

FormatAudiobook

Publish dateApr 11, 2026

LanguageEnglish

1Front Matter

118. Resistance to rent under capitalism

2Acknowledgements

129. The critical social theorists

3Introduction

1310. The critique of differential rent

41. Capitalism and the engine of history

1411. Capitalist rent as proletarianisation

52. The tributary rent relation

1512. Rent and capitalist domination

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63. Tributary tendencies and contradictions

1613. The ideology of capitalist rent

74. Tributary ideology, resistance, and critique

1714. Proletarian imaginaries

85. From tributary to capitalist rent

1815. Deproletarianisation

96. Resistance and critique in transition

19Conclusion: Capital, mother of what?

107. The political economy of capitalist rent

About the author

Matthew Costa

Matthew Costa is an Australian political economist. He has been a sessional lecturer and honorary associate in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. Alongside his academic work, he has served in economic and advisory roles in the Australian public sector for over a decade. He is currently a Director at New South Wales Treasury, and was previously an economic policy advisor in Australia's Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. He lives in New South Wales.View all by Matthew Costa