Dr. Jayati Ghosh will deliver the annual Robert Heilbroner Memorial Lecture at The New School with an ambitious and critical analysis that honors Heilbroner’s own breadth and depth: Power, Control, and Democracy in the 21st Century.

In her lecture, Dr. Ghosh (Professor of Economics, UMass Amherst) will argue we are witnessing a new mutation of capitalism—one in which monopoly power and state control generate economic rents so vast that their gravitational pull has profound implications. This "rent-mutant" capitalism fosters stagnating innovation, sluggish growth, rising inequality, and the erosion of democratic political rights. She distinguishes this phenomenon from “rentier capitalism,” resisting its reduction to a mere extension of the mainstream concept of “rent-seeking behavior.” Drawing on her considerable scholarship, Professor Ghosh will illustrate the distinctions between rentier capital, rent-seeking behavior, and the emergent form of capitalism she terms rent-mutation. Professor Ghosh will explore how recent shifts in state regulatory frameworks and the rise of “excess profits”—which, in reality, function as rents—are profoundly distorting and reshaping society.