ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors refine the Marxist theory of land rent through the challenge laid out by Haila's sympathetic critique. This is motivated by their assessment that the empirical question of whether there is a tendency to treat land as a financial asset has been settled as land financialization has become a ubiquitous feature of the global economy (albeit always contested, uneven, and with contingent countervailing tendencies). In this context, the authors argue that a focus on assetization is indispensable to understanding rent theory and addressing the problem that Haila set out around the treatment of land as a financial asset. In the spirit of Haila's work, assetization brings into focus the contingent power relations and related social struggles necessary for turning the use value of land into an abstract exchange value while fully asserting its systemic basis through a rigorous critique of the political economy of land rent.
