What are the best arguments against the existence of landlords, from an economic, social and Marxist standpoint?
Landlords literally contribute nothing to society. They’re a middleman, a leach, between someone who actually contributes to society (i.e. a worker) and the human right of having somewhere to live.
Like, if every landlord disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow, literally nothing would change. You’ll always hear “THEY PROVIDE HOMES!!” Or “some people can only afford to rent! What would they do without landlords??” - literally if the landlords didn’t own all the shit, people could just live in the homes without paying a parasitic class?
Another counter argument I always hear is “well my [dad uncle girlfriend cousin whatever] works a full time job but is also a landlord, they contribute to society”, to which it’s like, ok cool. I consider that a form of class traitor, coming from a lack of class consciousness, and the fact that they’re trapped in capitalist society. They could just not be greedy assholes?
You’ll also hear “well this or that landlord fixes stuff around the place, that’s work!”. No motherfucker, that’s just protecting their investment. And I’m sure we’ve all experienced a landlord’s idea of “fixing” stuff. It takes forever, and it’s usually shoddy. The only time it gets done properly is if they call in - shock -a plumber, a carpenter, an electrician, aka an actual WORKER to do the job.
Another argument: “well it pays for my grandparents retirement!” - in a socialist society, old people wouldn’t have to extort younger people in order to maintain quality of life in their old age.
Yup. To add to this, even classical economists saw landlordism as predatory, not-value-producing behavior, and labeled it as rent-seeking or absentee ownership, the latter a term anyone can easily understand.
Adam smith gave a really simple definition for what constitutes producing value (he was interested in how nations build wealth), which amounts to two conditions:
- The work must create a vendible commodity.
- The work must be paid out of capital, not revenue.
Landlording and a lot of industries that seem to be value-producing simply because they make money, actually don’t produce any new value and merely transfer it around.
Another way of putting it, is only labor can create value, and landlording requires no labor. Landlords make that money while they sleep and play golf, stealing the real value from their renters paychecks.
@DashRendar@lemmygrad.ml has an excellent summary of how all private property / absentee ownership is parasitic here.
There’s always one who goes “yeah but they invest and stuff. Investing is good! Landlords are good!” but they forget about the fact that they invest insofar as they’ve insulated themselves in a market. There’s one LL firm that owns all the real estate in my area, and there’s another one down the road that does the same for them. Rent increases on a regular basis and the reason given is useless cosmetics and beautification, like $100 increase on changing the balcony glass inserts. Oh, and the rent never goes down once it’s complete. Gee I wonder why? The goddamn elevators don’t work! Someone nearly drowned in a fucking elevator from rainwater flooding because it was built on flood-prone land with absolutely zero safety precautions against it. Again, gee I wonder why?
Like, if I started a business of kicking guys in the balls, and some schmuck down the street starts a bodyguard business to protect against my business, suddenly we’re both valuable? Oh, if you don’t want to be kicked in the balls, just hire the guy who doesn’t kick you in the balls. If you get rid of the ball-kicking business, you kill all the jobs of the ball-protectors and the investment opportunities of the ball-kicking enterprise. Tim’s neighborhood doesn’t have anyone kicking his nuts! Like, dude, the money involved in this socially legitimized CBT scheme doesn’t actually do anything. Stop letting me kick you in the nuts just because I do it to a lot of people.
