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Abstract
During the financial crisis that started in 2007–2008, the incomes of the most outstanding professional footballers increased exponentially in Spain. By contrast, most wage-labourers witnessed a drop in their wages. Professional football industry owners relied on professional advisory reports, such as one developed by the KPMG consultancy to justify the income increase. According to this report, each player is remunerated according to his contribution to social wealth. In this article, such a claim is questioned. Firstly, the notion of wealth developed and used by mainstream economics is criticized. Secondly, based on Marx’s concept of rent, an alternative explanation is developed. In doing so, a contrary conclusion is reached in that the incomes of football stars do not correspond to their contribution to social wealth and they, in fact, appropriate wealth that they themselves do not produce.
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Notes
1 ‘[…] labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use values produced by labour. As William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother.’ See p. 31 of Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1. Chapter 1, translated by Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin Books, 1982).
2 See Ibid., p. 27.
3 Nick Potts, ‘Trying to Help Rescue Value for Everyone’, Critique 37:2 (2009), pp. 177–199.
4 Xabier Arrizabalo, Patricia Pinto, and Lucía Vicent, ‘Historical Significance of Labor’s Increased Precariousness in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 78:1 (2019), pp. 255–290.
5 Eurostat (2008Q2 = 100).
6 Paloma Villanueva, et al., ‘The Role of Internal Devaluation in Correcting External Deficits: The Case of Spain’, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 54 (2020), pp. 282–296.
7 The quarterly labour cost survey and Consumer Price Index (2012T1 = 100). INE (Spanish Statistical Office).
8 Consumer Price Index (2007T4 = 100). INE (Spanish Statistical Office).
9 K. P. M. G. Sports, ‘Impacto socio-económico del fútbol profesional en España’, Informa asesores (2015).
10 See page 2 of Anwar M. Shaikh, and E. Ahmet Tonak, Measuring the Wealth of Nations: The Political Economy of National Accounts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
11 Ira Gerstein, ‘Production, Circulation and Value’, Economy and Society, 5:3 (1976), pp. 243–291.
12 National accounting recognizes this fact in the way GDP is estimated (i.e., measurable by way of production, distribution, and consumption). It is the same magnitude that is produced, distributed, and consumed or, in reverse order, what is produced is consumed and mediated by its distribution.
13 Pierangelo Garegnani, ‘Value and Distribution in the Classical Economists and Marx’, Oxford Economic Papers, 36:2 (1984), pp. 291–325.
14 This allows us to focus on capitalist logic, which, due to the current position of fully dominant capitalist production relations, explains the substance of the accumulation process as a whole and therefore its problems.
15 Enrique Dussel, ‘The Discovery of the Category of Surplus Value’, in Marcello Musto (ed.) Karl Marx’s Grundrisse (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), pp. 95–106.
16 Miguel D. Ramirez, ‘Marx’s Theory of Ground Rent: A Critical Assessment’, Contributions to Political Economy, 28:1 (2009), pp. 71–91.
17 Nick Potts, ‘This Marx is a Game Changer: Rethinking the Economics of Sport’, Critique, 49:1–2 (2021), pp. 117–133.
18 Jon Emanuel Illescas Martínez, ‘La renta del cuerpo como fuente de riqueza de las celebridades. Estudio de caso: la estrella de la industria musical’, Revista Economía, 70:111 (2018), pp. 155–171.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Xabier Arrizabalo-Montoro
Xabier Arrizabalo-Montoro, PhD in Economics (Complutense University of Madrid, UCM), is an Associate Professor of ‘Critique of the political economy’ at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM).
Alberto Ruiz-Villaverde
Alberto Ruiz-Villaverde, PhD in Economics (University of Granada, Spain), is an Associate Professor of Political Economy and Public Economics at the University of Granada (Spain). Email: [email protected]