Word Origins | Rant, Kira

"Toprak işleyenin, Su kullananın" Bülent Ecevit (1970) 

 Differential ground rent and absolute ground rent are concepts used by Karl Marx in the third volume of Das Kapital to explain how the capitalist mode of production would operate in agricultural production, under the condition where most agricultural land was owned by a social class of land-owners  who obtained rent income from those who farmed the land. The farm work could be done by the landowner himself, the tenant of the landowner, or by hired farm workers. Rent as an economic category is regarded by Marx as one form of surplus value just like net interest income, net production taxes and industrial profits.

Mavi Boncuk |

Rant : from FR rente. Rent [1] or income based oninterest on a loan. "kira veya faiz geliri, getiri"  OLat rendita 

Sources on historic use

rant "sabit getirili borçlanma tahvili" [ c (1935) : frank üzerine tazyikın hafiflediği, rant ve saire kâğıdların da yükselmeğe temayül gösterdiği ]

rantabl "gelir getiren" [ c (1937) : asıl mühim mesele şarkta kurulan sanayiin rantabl olup olmayacağı keyfiyetidir ]

rantiye "kira veya faiz geliriyle yaşayan" [ Akşam (gazete) (1929) : Bu itibarla, memleketimizde yeni bir emlak sahibi 'rantiye' sınıfı teşekkül ediyor. ]

Kira: from AR kirāˀ كراء .Arabic root  kry same meaning as  kirāˀ كراء 

Sources on historic use
[ Neşrî, Kitab-ı Cihannümâ (1492) ]


[1] rent (n.1) "payment for use of property," mid-12c., a legal sense, originally "income, revenue" (late Old English), from Old French rente "payment due; profit, income," from Vulgar Latin *rendita, noun use of fem. past participle of *rendere "to render" (see render (v.)).

rent (n.2) "torn place," 1530s, noun use of Middle English renten "to tear, rend" (early 14c.), variant of renden (see rend (v.)).

rent (v.) mid-15c., "to rent out property, grant possession and enjoyment of in exchange for a consideration paid," from Old French renter "pay dues to," or from rent (n.1). Related: Rented; renting. Earlier (mid-14c.) in the more general sense of "provide with revenue." Sense of "to take and hold in exchange for rent" is from 1520s. Intransitive sense of "be leased for rent" is from 1784. Prefix rent-a- first attested 1921, mainly of businesses that rented various makes of car (Rentacar is a trademark registered in U.S. 1924); extended to other "temporary" uses since 1961.



Marx’s theory of rent is the most difficult part of his economic theory, the one which has witnessed fewer comments and developments, by followers and critics alike, than other major parts of his ‘system’. But it is not obscure. And in contrast to Ricardo’s or Rodbertus’s theories of rent, it represents a straight-forward application of the labour theory of value. It does not imply any emergence of ‘supplementary’ value (surplus value, profits) in the market, in the process of circulation of commodities, which is anathema to Marx and to all consistent upholders of the labour theory of value. Nor does it in any way suggest that land or mineral deposits ‘create’ value. It simply means that in agriculture and mining less productive labour (as in the general case analysed above) determines the market value of food or minerals, and that therefore more efficient farms and mines enjoy surplus profits which Marx calls differential (land and mining) rent. It also means that as long as productivity of labour in agriculture is generally below the average of the economy as a whole (or more correctly: that the organic composition of capital, the expenditure in machinery and raw materials as against wages, is inferior in agriculture to that in industry and transportation), the sum total of surplus-value produced in agriculture will accrue to landowners + capitalist farmers taken together, and will not enter the general process of (re)distribution of profit throughout the economy as a whole.

This creates the basis for a supplementary form of rent, over and above differential rent, rent which Marx calls absolute land rent. This is, incidentally, the basis for a long-term separation of capitalist landowners from entrepreneurs in farming or animal husbandry, distinct from feudal or semi-feudal landowners or great landowners under conditions of predominantly petty commodity production, or in the Asiatic mode of production, with free peasants.