Development, Capitalism, and Rent: The Political Economy of Hartmut Elsenhans

‘The essays in this volume are refreshingly different in their tone and mode of analysis. Using a few basic concepts like rent, balance of class power, and wage-led growth through mass consumption, the author provides a multi-dimensional explanatory framework for development.
With impressive scholarship, he links history, economics and sociology seamlessly with country-based observations. Whether in agreement or not, the reader, an experienced researcher or an aspiring scholar, will feel greatly rewarded by the insightful freshness of these essays.’
–Amit Bhaduri, Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

‘One of my greatest revelations as a young scholar came when I read Hartmut Elsenhans’ 1983 article “Rising Mass Incomes as a Condition of Capitalist Growth”. Almost 30 years, and dozens of articles, later, Elsenhans’ much more fully developed theory still provides one of the freshest, most insightful, and coherent policy-relevant visions of the economy of our supposedly “post”-colonial world. This volume celebrates Elsenhans’ long career with a welcome introduction to his vision.’

–Craig N. Murphy, Betty Freyhof Johnson ’44 Professor, Wellesley College, USA

‘Hartmut Elsenhans is the most clear-sighted political economist of our time. This book rounds out his theory of rent with a series of articles not previously available in English. Highly recommended!’

–Salvatore Babones, University of Sydney, Australia

This book combines Hartmut Elsenhans’ ideas on the laws of motion of capitalism and his approach to world system analysis and rent theory, his thoughts on development theory and finally, international relations and the past, present, and future dynamics of the international system. Hartmut Elsenhans shows that capitalist growth depends on rising mass incomes and on the strength of labor unions and their bargaining power. This alternative approach challenges mainstream assumptions on capitalism, growth, and development by both leading leftist authors, such as David Harvey, Immanuel Wallerstein, Andre Gunder Frank or Samir Amin, as well as by neoclassical economists and western institutionalist political and social scientists. Hartmut Elsenhans offers a unique approach to understand the dynamics of capitalism as well as the prospects for development. This Festschrift brings together his major contributions on these topics that were initially never or only published in German or French.

Hannes Warnecke-Berger is Senior Researcher at the University of Kassel, Germany. He is a political scientist and the author and editor of various books and articles, including Politics and Violence in Central America and the Caribbean (2018), and Politics and History of Crime and Violence in Central America (2017).