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AbstractWhat is rentified capitalism? And, how can we characterise its unfolding into the socio-economic sphere? This paper theoretically and empirically defines attributes and trends of rentified capitalism, that we shall argue, it is more than a stage of capitalism, but it rather represents a new socio-economic paradigm characterised by the primacy of rent accumulation. The functioning of rentified capitalism is based on three mechanisms, namely, appropriation, exclusion and commodification. From income distribution, to financialization, from housing to intellectual property rights, the definition of the ownership structure is nowadays progressively favouring the power of rentiers in the production and redistribution spheres, as such jeopardizing the very capacity of capitalism as a system able to generate new economic value and a social and equitable prosperity.

The explosion of the pandemic has been optimistically considered as the ''last straw that breaks the camel's back''. At the time of writing, after three months since its out- burst, we can hardly find any sign of a ''broken camel'': indeed, it could have been the opportunity to collectively question the current regime of production and appro- priation, exclusion and marketization characterizing this phase of unjust ''rentified capitalism'', but the route taken has largely seen a frightening combination of ''business as usual'' on the production side and pervasive forms of social control, limitations of individual and collective rights and the perpetuation of a false dichotomy between economic and health security. This pandemic, which under decent public health provisions might have been a controlled disease, is producing the most severe crisis after the Great Depression and has been used to implement forms of massive social control hardly conceivable in ''advanced democracies''. Butterfly effects are well-known in complexity sciences. However, social scientists have still difficulties in understanding how a grain can make the sandcastle fall down. On the contrary, we are now under the actual risk of starting a ''new normal'' without dealing with the deep routes and origins of this crisis, with the dominant intellectual discourse pushing for maintaining and indeed reinforcing the status quo, established power and social blocks. This myopic strategy might end up in collectively disruptive socio-political transformations.