What is now so striking is the increasing power of the unproductive and parasitic rentiers, not simply the owners of land and all the resources that reside therein, but the owners of assets, the all-powerful bondholders, the owners of independent money power (which has become a paramount means of production in its own right), and the owners of patents and property rights that are simply claims on social labour freed of any obligation to mobilise that social labour for productive uses. The parasitic forms of capital are now in the ascendant. We see their representatives gliding through the streets in limousines and populating all the upmarket restaurants and penthouses in all the major global cities of the world – New York, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, São Paulo, Sydney ...
