Formation, Reality, and Prospects of the Society of Benefits and Privileges

This review analyzes the book Rental Society: In the Shadow of Labor, Capital, and Democracy. The book’s authors consider factors and conditions for the transition from a social state and a society of mass labor to a rental type of society. The main reasons for this transformation are the depletion of resources on a global scale and the replacement of humans by machines, which entails the growth of social groups living off various forms of rent (benefits, unconditional basic income, additional payments, etc.). Meanwhile, fewer and fewer people are involved in the production of wealth. Under these conditions, the only active political subject becomes a non-democratic and non-egalitarian state, which distributes rents to various social groups. Simultaneously with the transformation of economic, political, and social structures, the content of moral consciousness also changes during the transition from a labor society to a rent society. There is a transition from labor morality to rent-parasitic morality, which, in view of the objective conditions for the existence of the rent majority, is internalized and gradually becomes a new moral norm. Two possible scenarios for the further development of the rental society are discussed. The positive scenario is a formation of a new type of economy due to the development of science, personality, new socialization forms. Negative scenario is associated with the deepening and globalization of rent processes, leading to “neoliberal feudalism,” to a society without mass labor and economic growth but with a hierarchy of class-rent groups, between which the state distributes rents and privileges using non-economic methods. In addition, the article shows significant shortcomings of the reviewed research: inconsistent understanding of the concept of rent, overly broad understanding of the subjects of rental processes, unjustified extrapolation of rent relations to the whole history of mankind (so called rent presentism).

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