Brett Christophers provides a forensic examination and sweeping critique of early-twenty-first-century capitalism.

He styles this as ‘rentier capitalism’, in which ownership of key types of scarce assets – such as land, intellectual property, natural resources, or digital platforms – is all-important and dominated by a few unfathomably wealthy companies and individuals: rentiers.

If a small elite owns today’s economy, everybody else foots the bill. Nowhere is this divergence starker, Christophers argues, than in the UK, where the ills of rentier capitalism – vast inequalities combined with entrenched economic stagnation – are on full display and have led the country to Brexit.

With profound lessons for other countries subject to rentier dominance, Christophers’ examination of the UK case is indispensable to those wanting not just to understand this economic phenomenon but to overcome it. Frequently invoked but never previously analysed and illuminated in all its depth and variety, rentier capitalism is here laid bare for the first time.

Brett Christopher’s Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays For It? is published by Verso. Buy a copy from Waterstones, our bookselling partners.

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Festival of Ideas: Brett Christophers, How Does Britain’s Economy Uphold Inequality?