My parents are landlords of a medium apartment with a family of 4 living inside it. Is it hypocritical for me to be a Marxist-Leninist when my parents are landlords? especially considering what past revolutionaries have done to landlords (Mao). To clarify things, i do not agree with the concept of landlord-ism and how my parents (and me too from a broader view) are benefiting from someone else’s income while doing nothing except owning basic human needs
I was browsing the boards up and down before reading this, and my first reaction was “haven’t you read who Engels was and what he did for a living?”, but others had the same response as well.
The reason I was searching and browsing threads was to locate reading material about “private property” and the distinction of it being owenrship of means of production or property you couldn’t exploit anyone’s labor with.
I am firm and clear about production means not being private, but what if someone creates/builds something for their own use. It can be a cabin,house, or it can be a raw boat, a violin, a bicycle… without any intention of renting them, using them to exploit others. What can be wrong with it? I am thinking more about the amount of resources needed, that they would have to become private to be used, so building a 6 story 1000 sq.m building “for yourself” is an overkill and abuse of resources, but even painting on a piece of canvas also needs privatization of “materials”. So there has to be a cut-off.
But banning all private property makes no sense at all, it is nearly inhumane to enforce such policy.
We tend to make a distinction between “private property” and “personal property”. The communists aren’t coming for your toothbrush, just your factories! 😁
Nice of you to say this, I am very attached to my toothbrush, and my guitar and bicycle. But where is this distincion made, do you know? To what extant do we see limits where personal ends and public property begins?
For example, one can claim his land of 5 generations back is 24 hectares, but he is not using it for production, he takes care of it, uses a patch for growing personal/family food, the rest is for walks, riding a horse or a bike around, Is this personal? A 4 person family globally relates to about 3 hectares of land that can be culrivated, and maybe 6-7 more that is useless for agriculture. If one person has 10 times as much as personal, that would create a deficiency for available land to grow food for everyone else.
With basic hand-tools one person can barely work a land that is half a hectare, no matter what grows in it. Most of us can barely deal with the work needed for 1/10 of a hectare 1000sq,.m
The other extreme would be to have a 400sq.m house that you pretend is personal but at times you could exploit a traveler or a visitor to charge rent.
Please keep in mind that I’m not one of the smart theory powerhouses here. I’ll do my best!
I’ve always understood the difference to be between “things I’m using or can reasonably use” and “things used to create surplus (that can be sold off)”.
You might look into “the enclosure of the commons”. My understanding is that the idea of individually held land for individual recreational use pretty much arises with the advent of capitalism and private property. Your example includes inheritance (sounds incompatible with an equal and fair society) and someone who isn’t using the land. That sounds like private property to me, right? Why not take that from him and make it a park for everyone?
This one seems pretty easy. It’s more than our subject can reasonably use, and is used to generate surplus. Def private property!
If you need help clarifying, let me know! I can try to look up resources for us to learn together.
You are absolutely right about inheritance, I was referring (in my mind) on the transition period between capitalism and private ownership to socialism and collective/communal property.
The populist anti-communist propaganda has been built around this sensitive issue where “the evil communists will come and take the little property you have away”. This has to be clearer and understood better for the enemy not to have grounds to base their propaganda on.
The recent development world wide has had public land (and water/sea) be rebranded state property, and under this state property label it is easier for the masses to digest that instead of raising taxes the state sells off “its assets” as state property. This is a violation of any constitution in robbing human rights from public land/sea and converting it to “real estate” owned by the state, which in turn flips it over to private interests for exploitation at gift like symbolic cost.
So now we are left with all land and all sea be in a way private. They took desserts and converted them to solar panel lots for the industry, which may eventually fail and be converted to casino centers, who knows. They took hills and mountains and handed them over so windmills/generators can be installed, all private enterprise, the management, roads, water supplies, pylons to carry electricity were all placed in mountain areas, forest was wiped out, and the protection of this infrastructure is now enforced by private interests.
The general left had nothing to say about all this, because simply the autism of public land and state property has not yet been theorized upon, and therefore neither have human rights and access to land and water been theorized upon. So it was all ok, because humans are slaves of either capital or the state.
But the propaganda on taking someone’s hard earned and constructed cabin, a little lot with vegies fruit and flowers, is private property that will be banned in communism.
This is ideology at the verge of bankruptcy and should either be re-examined or be sentenced to the slow death new-capitalism has sentenced it to.
Aight, this might be the root of our difference then. I pretty much fully support the expropriation of land that existing socialist concerns have done. I specifically like how Cuba approached it, but every country’s different.
Idk if I agree that states usually expropriate land to sell to private concerns. Maybe it happened in China’s special economic zones? Just because it has happened doesn’t mean it’s necessary for the future, though. That’s just what China’s development required.
It looks like you might be talking about China’s energy development projects which I do support. China’s got a clear history of tightly managing private businesses, and taking them over when the time comes.
I really don’t want to spend a long time writing back and forth about this if we’ve figured out where we differ. We can definitely leave it at this instead of having a big argument!
Reducing public land, that is access by poor people to land, increases their dependency for food to markets. This nearly makes revolutionary tendencies become suicidal. You subject yourself to slavery or die starving.
Are you now for the state that mandates people to starve than violate market stability?
I admit I do not follow China’s development much, and I also understand not having time to engage too, so I agree to stop, but I had to bring this little detail into it for other readers to understand my perspective as well. Maybe others would be willing to continue this.