But I heard the tankies are going to take my toothbrush away and give it to my neighbor!!!
We are gonna take the neighbor tootbrush too.
I’ve come for your toothbrush.
we’re going to seize all the toothbrushes from the peasantry and force them to rent the toothbrushes from us to brush their teeth!!! monopoly the means of dental hygiene, mwah, hahaHA!
communism is 100% about nationalizing your parent’s sex tapes
Private property is mostly things you don’t use. Like a second flat you have the ownership papers for, but do not live there. The house you’re living in is not private property.
What if you live in one urban house during the week and the other cheap rural retreat on the weekend? What if your kids live separately because of education reasons?
Second house criteria seems rather arbitary to me.
The actual criterion is whether something is used to make profits or not. If you have 10 houses, but don’t rent them, that’s personal property. If you own just one house and rent it, it’s your private property.
Better yet - private property is things used to exploit other people’s labour. Renting exploits labour, too, but indirectly.
The actual criterion is whether something is used to make profits or not. If you have 10 houses, but don’t rent them, that’s personal property. If you own just one house and rent it, it’s your private property.
Better yet - private property is things used to exploit other people’s labour. Renting exploits labour, too, but indirectly.
(Reposting my reply to somebedy’s comment)
Actually, no. If you have 10 houses and 9 are vacant and remain vacant then your nine vacant houses are contributing to the surplus that keeps rents high. Landlords not only rent homes but crucially, keep homes/units empty to control rent prices. Developers and landlords often work hand in glove with local governments to craft policies for just this purpose. Blackstone holds a high number of empty houses in their portfolio, it would be silly to believe that those homes are not capital.
Personal vs. Private property is not really an individual choice but a systemic set of incentives and consequences. What happens when one of the houses has property taxes that come due? What happens when the roof leaks and needs replaced? In the winter, pipes in vacant buildings are kept from freezing by running water, and there’s going to be electric and/or water costs associated with that maintenance. will it just remain vacant while the owner hemorrhages money indefinately? If all ten units are empty and creating no income, and the owner has no plan to appreciate them as assets to resell them (because if the owner does, then they become capital) then is the owner really just like a wage worker, or do they have capital that makes them enough money that they can have 10 houses for personal use?
I’m sorry, but you are misunderstanding how capitaliam functions as a system. If someone has one extra house, maybe because of circumstances, I could see your point. But ten? No at that point they’re practically no different from a landlord, as they are propping up rent prices whether they intend to or not. As long as there are ten families who need homes who can’t get housing, that is private capital whether the owner uses it to make money or not.
If what matters is the number of houses possessed, then the criterion is quantitative rather than qualitative. So who decides the right amount? Is it private property if the ten houses are super small and old, comparable to one big new house? Will it cease being private property if I give birth to 10 children, raise them and then give each a house compared to never having children at all? Ultimately, if passively owning ten houses is propping rent prices, then owning one house is still propping up prices, just on a 10x smaller scale.
This is all hypothetical. These are hypothetical houses and a hypothetical owner in a hypothetical market, frozen in time. There is a direct correlation between quantity and quality, since changes in quantity lead to changes in quality. This is a fundamental part of socialist theory of change. This is not a moral consideration, there is no “right amount.” Because there are absolutely no possible scenarios where someone owns 10 vacant houses and just loses money on them indefinitely. Is this someone who owns and maintains ten houses all for their own personal recreation and use? How can they afford 10 houses?
The discussion is about the difference between personal and private property. The definitions of these things are socially contingent. We cannot conduct analysis outside of the social context and be serious about truth or social transformation. There is no arbitrary number cut off, splitting this hair in this way is completely besides the point. There is no reason for someone to own and maintain 10 empty properties while others have nowhere to live. My point is even if we aren’t consciously capitalizing on the houses, the houses exist within a context. Broadly, that’s capitalism, and broadly the properties still function as part of capitalism whether the owner intends it or not. Trying to further abstract this hypothetical in a desperate search for a generalization that is so alienated from reality that you “might be” sort of correct if viewing the situation from one very narrow perspective does not help anyone understand the relationship between personal property and private capital. Because over time, at some point, circumstances beyond our ideals decide that our ten houses are worth more if they have a use value or an exchange value for us. The system asserts itself upon our lives, and there’s no real escape.
You have not discovered a loop hole by inventing a kind of property that has neither a use value or an exchange value. You’ve merely discovered a pit of idealism where material relations exist to suit one’s own confusion and wrong headedness. This is not a road to understanding socialism. But I do appreciate the contribution to discussion.
Wonderfully said.
Changes in quantity do lead to changes in quality, but there is always a precise point where gradual quantitative changes cause a sudden qualitative change. Water remains liquid from 0C to 99C and then suddenly starts boiling at 100C. To have a proper definition of something, such a dividing point is to be found.
I meant “right amount” as in “right amount for something to be private property” and not as in “morally right”.
There could be a miriad of scenarios for having 10 houses without renting them. I would love to have my own place in 10 different cities or countries so I could just go there and live without worrying about renting somewhere to stay. I could have my own little data centers in those houses and host lots of decentralised media. I could use the houses for separating my workflow: one house for my musical instruments, another for engineering etc. But whether it is a real scenario is not important. Owning 10 houses is just an example of possessing more than the majority. If it is considered to be private property, then following the same logic having a personal computer while living in an area where few people have one should also be considered to be private property and, in the case of a revolution, the computer should be seized as such. So this is not merely something hypothetical.
First of all, none of these downvotes are mine. Just to clarify, I don’t do that.
I did write a long response to you, but honestly, I don’t see the point. My objective in these spaces is to learn and educate. If you want to self medicate with asinine debate, find a different mark. There is nothing in your reply that merits repeating the points I already made and which you, intentionally or otherwise, ignored.
I appreciate the discussion. If you have anything you’d like to discuss related to reality, I’d hear you out.
If you don’t want to address my points, I’m not interested in continuing the discussion either.
I’m a noob at this and I kind of dont understand. Could i still own a house or like a couple acres ? Or would there be no ownership?
Home ownership is a lot higher in currenntly existing socialist states than in their capitalist peers. Do what you will with that information.
Not all housing is equal, at least in so called capitalist peers, where lots of people who can afford houses in small town or village are not buying that as they live in big cities and are saving up.
I’d like to know if the housing in the socialist peers is considered equal, regardless of size and location?
In Marxism communism personal ownership is still allowed (you own your house and belongings etc.). What’s not is the control of the means of production or any property that lets its owner live off others’ labor, say factories, land, mines etc. by capitalists and argues that they should be the social or common property of the producers/workers.
Socialists want to eliminate Private Property, which is to say property that generates capital: farms, factories, stores, etc. While retaining personal property. Stuff like you’re house, your tv, your toothbrush, etc.
Now, there are some exceptions to this. If you go to Cuba, you’d find that most of the agricultural land isn’t collectivised, but is rather owned by individuals or families, who’s interests are represented by a mass organization of small holding farmers.
The historical specificities of Cuba’s land reform process meant that Cuban socialism retained a sector of small scale private ownership, within a Socialist system.
The point Marx is making is that under capitalism, as much as they talk about private property being a fundamental natural right, the consolidation of capital means that most people never have the opportunity to access that supposed right, or reap its benefits
In addition to what others have said, the boundaries between these can change according to the society and time. Fifty years ago, a computer would have been ‘private property’. Nowadays most computers are ‘personal’.
Whether you can own a house or a couple of acres under a hypothetical socialist system would mainly depend on population density. The Soviets used to give young people large tracts of land in rural areas because land isn’t really a scarce resource in Russia. (Vietnam still does this, but the plots are smaller.) On the other hand, Singapore, a capitalist country, has no private land ownership because land is so scarce.
What will you do with those couple of acres?
Farming, cattle and poultry. A storehouse, a small factory, and a separate kitchen house/pantry.
Depends on how industrious one is, and how much hiring and help one can do.
If you’re hiring then you are own the means of production that should be shared by the workers.
Not OP, but I would set up a basketball halfcourt, grow some weed, have a mead shed
Not in China, it’s kinda like Canada. You don’t own the land you lease it. It’s yours until the government deems it not.
Edit: because yall ignorant
In Canada, private property ownership is called fee simple. Legally, you own the exclusive right to live on, modify, sell, or pass down that land forever. However, the ultimate radical title sits with the Crown.
And the US? Try not paying property taxes on the land you “own” for a while and see how much you own that land compared to the government.
In China, the government can do the same to your house/land even if you pay all your “dues” timely.
So can most countries it’s called eminent domain
Removed by mod
As you can in China I’d advise looking into nail houses where you can delay them so long that you don’t even have to give up your house/land. Most people just choose not to given the new accomodation is generally better/more modern alongside a payout.
Also
civilized countries
Adolf is that you?
We dont own land in the US either, we are on a perpetual lease from the government. Stop making that yearly lease payment called property tax and the government will evict you from their property and steal your assets
