ABSTRACT
To help conceptualise the broader historical opportunity structure and incentives that enable and reward illicit forms of speculation in land and property markets, this chapter draws on Marx’s theory of fictitious capital, Harvey’s theory of monopoly rents and Foucault’s late work on governmentality. It is argued that real-estate markets may be usefully conceived of as a circuit of fictitious capital, which sees value transferred from productive to unproductive circuits, through the lever of monopoly rents. It will be contended that this helps to explain how manipulative land and property market practices are rewarded by value drained from productive circuits of capital.
