Capitalism, Rents and the Transformation of Violence

Abstract

Violence seems on the rise. After centuries of declining homicide rates in the Global North, violence has been transforming since the 1960s and even increased in some parts. In the Global South, in contrast, levels of violence have remained constantly high. The article questions both the liberal peace theory lately highlighted by Steven Pinker as well as Marxist accounts on the relationship between capitalism and increasing violence, lately dubbed accumulation by dispossession. This article elaborates a heterodox Keynesian model of capitalist growth in which growth ultimately depends on rising real wages. Following this Kaleckian model of capitalism, money plays a pivotal role regarding the low propensity for violence in capitalist societies: capitalist credit money tends to alter the matter of dispute from non-divisible to divisible and thus functions as a general denominator for social conflicts. Conflicts in capitalism are about ‘more or less’ instead of ‘either/or’. In the Global South, in contrast, capitalism is too weak to structure the economic sphere as economic rents predominate. Rents tend to favour social closure and social verticalization. They are particularly prone to violence. Inasmuch as economic rents penetrate capitalist societies, violence will be increasing in the Global North as well.