Property in Contemporary Capitalism

1 Introduction





2 From Thing-Ownership to Bundle of Rights to Social Relation


Property as thing-ownership: the Blackstonian conception


'Heroic reification': creating objects of property


The conceptual limitations of 'property' and 'ownership'


The rise of property as thing-ownership


From bundle of rights to social relation


Vanishing into thin air: property as a 'conceptual mirage'





3 The Dual Nature of Property


The revolution in property: institutionalising modern property


Private property, individual autonomy and identity


Personal possessions versus productive resources


Capital, capitalist and capitalism


Property-as-capital


The reconceptualisation of the joint stock company share





4 Profiting from the Efforts of Others


Capital and investment


Profiting from the ownership of productive resources


The rise of 'rentierism'


The new enclosures


Profiting from debt


The distribution of wealth and capital


The gender, racial and inter-generational dimensions of wealth inequality


Ownership of public debt


Rising private wealth, declining public wealth


Speculating on the future





5 Defending the Property Status Quo: Analytical Jurisprudence


The new essentialism: reviving property as thing-ownership


The ubiquity of property institutions


The dangers of abstraction


Dominium in Roman law


The idea of property in law





6 Defending the Property Status Quo: Law and Economics


The modern corporation and the threat to shareholder rights


Social democracy and the socialised corporation


Defending the rentier: the market for corporate control


Contractual theories of the corporation: reprivatising the public company


The fictional corporation rematerialises


The rise of financialised corporate governance


Information cost theories of property


Facilitating the market: functionalism and efficiency


Property rights as 'special'





7 Safeguarding Property-as-Capital


Universalising capitalism


Historicising property: private property and capitalism


Creating property-as-capital


Prioritising the investor interest


The new aristocracy of finance


Containing democracy: the 'new constitutionalism'


Derisking new property


Neoliberal ideology versus neoliberal practice





8 Property and Social Transformation


Property as a historical category


Thing-ownership, bundles of rights or social relation?


The social relational dimensions of property


Bringing capitalism back in


Capitalism's logic of process


The moral logic of capitalism


Changing the logic: gradual transformative change?





References


Index