Economic property and the theorisation of ground rent

The theory of capitalist ground rent that Marx develops in CapitalVol. III is customarily regarded as either unproblematic, or susceptible to technical improvements. This paper argues that there are profound difficulties in Marx's theorization of ground rent and the relation of landed property to capitalist production in agriculture, and draws attention to the concepts of 'property' and 'commodity' that Marx deploys. The persistence of a philosophical anthropology in the later works of Marx emerges clearly in the deficiencies of these concepts when used in the analysis of capitalist agricultural production.