no
this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
15 points (100.0% liked)
askchapo
22756 readers
32 users here now
Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
-
Posts must ask a question.
-
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
-
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
-
Try [email protected] if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Even if that meant that you get tons of free time to dedicate to the communist party and organize?
If your well-being is dependent on extracting rents from others, you're not going to stay a communist. Material conditions create ideology, and becoming bourgeois will inoculate bourgeois ideology.
But Engels was bourgeois and he was a communist
Are you Engels? Did you literally edit Capital? Come up with a different example.
Lol you’re getting all worked up over reality in a post about a hypothetical. Weirdo. What’s next? “Name a single Marxist Leninist detective in real life”?
I think when people fantasize about parasitism against their fellow workers we can call them out.
i think they were doing a communist "would you rather" and trying to make compromising of ideals sound attractive so its a compelling question
In his defense, he is talking to someone who wants to be a landlord
That is not the point. The point is that bourgeois can be communists.
Name one other example of a bourgeois communist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Enlai
It is said that, just before the Sino-Soviet split, Nikita Khrushchev had a tense meeting with Zhou Enlai at which he told the latter that he now understood the problem. “I am the son of coal miners,” he said. “You are the descendant of feudal mandarins. We have nothing in common.” “Perhaps we do,” murmured his Chinese antagonist. “What?” blustered Khrushchev. “We are,” responded Zhou, “both traitors to our class.”
That being said, I don't think you could realistically be a bourgeois communist while still maintaining your wealth and exploitation. But really, is there such a huge difference between a landlord collecting income out of their tenants' pockets, and politicians living off taxes? Genuine question, my best answer is that the difference is the landlord is directly placing themselves in a position where they provide no value at all to society and still leech off of people who need housing, while politicians at least nominally are civil servants.
It just pisses me off when people analogize their position immersed in imperial capitalism to the people at the leading edge of the revolutionary struggle. There are far more radicals who were seduced by capital than the other way around.
Zhou Enlai wasn't bourgeois. He was part of the bureaucratic class which doesn't have a good analog in Western society. The closest equivalent would be some kind of government employee since the bureaucratic class traditionally served the imperial court or were otherwise part of the imperial bureaucracy. And even the bureaucratic class had tiers to it. His particular family wasn't that high up within the imperial bureaucracy.
still made for one of the greatest owns of all time.
Be a landlord and actively organize a tenants union for your own tenants lol
I love when my boss is really nice and organises a union for his employees 😊
yes
id like to say no. morally i know its bad.
but, im also just a lazy stupid man so who knows.
we all have the potential to be the thing we hate.
I will become a landlord but i will only rent to white expats because they are the only ones i want to exploit
My "whites only" rental policy is woke and based actually
I want to say an unequivocal no, but I've lived just north of section 8 literally all my life. If I came into the means and could actively suppress my nausea reflex long enough to go through with it, I'd still feel practically obligated to Engels it somehow. I like the idea of a landlord themselves organizing a tenant's union-- I almost feel like a landlord doing that needs a different title, 'cause by that point you're getting away from lord-ery-- but I also don't think that's ever happened irl in the west
I'd rather die than be a landlord
Death to America
The only way I would consider it is if it were like actual luxury condominiums in some building that working class people could never afford, but still probably no.
I have been thinking for a while about if it would be possible to leverage the cash from such a scenario into buying and leasing out more affordable condos in a "rent-to-own" scheme for working class people, but I'm not sure if it would work. Obviously that is a very controversial topic in and of itself.
There’s no state of the world in which yes is an acceptable answer. If you had enough housing to live off the rents, you would always have the option to work and give housing away for free.
kind of wild that some landlords dont even do that. talkin about the bastards who "need" the rent to cover the mortgages on properties---they're still doing something else for their personal expenses, i think. just immiserating strangers on the side to maybe in a decade be able to rent a property they would own.
the not working a real job is the only proposition for landlordism that remotely makes sense "yes im doing evil, but it enables me to have such fun!" or whatever. certifiably insane to imagine doing that vile shit and not seeing the actual dividends for years and years. ought to be illegal to rent something which you only "own" through a loan
The only way I'd be a landlord is for the exact opposite reason: it ended up being a way for me to lose money but ensure housing for folks that were struggling. I'd start the process of making it a co-op where rent built equity until they purchased it at a low rate (in this scenario I'm not rich enough to buy it and give it away but I am rich enough to buy it and have "renters" buy it for half price or something over a period of time).
Or maybe some weird commercial real estate thing where I'm an owner of an org's meeting space on some technicality but still not making money from it.
Landlording is a trap. Sure, you aren't selling your labor, but now you are functionally ruled by others who do; your renters. You are also responsible for any repairs, must follow all applicable laws, the process and expense of evictions, insurance and taxes, as well as all the other shit involving owning property. You are also exposed to the greater economy through your renters who sell their labor. All of this is worse if you took out a loan. Congratulations, you are now the (unpaid) property manager for the Bank, and you won't see any equity until you're 25% through your loan repayment schedule. To end with a fiery exclamation point, all of this machinery assumes housing prices go up. Ask Japan how their property bubble went...
lowkey seize the means of production so you stop selling your labor and working so hard. It turns all of the machines and productivity of the world away from being menaces to the working class into allies and assets. The Falling Rate of Profit is at the same time The Attenuation of Necessary Labor needed to make commodities, giving us more of that free time to explore being human. It's also dis-alienating, as you are no longer a single Sisyphean automation rolling the stone of Work everyday, but deciding what Goal, and thus what Work, is necessary to achieve that Goal.
Friendly reminder that Friedrich Engels was a Capitalist and a Class Traitor. Go form a tenant's union and take over your landlord's rental property.
Most of the reason why I have to work is to pay rent!
To cover utilities, property taxes, transportation, food, clothing, and entertainment would cost me maybe $1000 a month, possibly less if I had even better sharing arrangements. I would have no issue working for that amount, and never retiring.
Probably. I'd justify it by not evicting people who can't pay rent until my savings is exhausted. Or in other words, being less evil than most landlords. Not the pure answer, but truthful.
No. Even charging at cost, where they pay the same as if they owned the place, is still dubious to me. It feels wrong to have power over someone else's house, to be in a position where in theory I could raise their rent or throw them out on the street. I don't think it would be healthy.
i become a landlord because i love math
Kinda, if setting up transfer of partial property rights every month was easy. Then, when i die people will have fun with 10 partial ownerships of my place.
Sitting with 300 k or whatever my imaginary property cost otherwise is enough so why be a piggie. Don't have kids tho.
Why no kids?
I mean i dont have kids, thus not leaving any property/assets behind is not some hard question.
You can donate it to the communist party so they can re-purpose it to something useful for the revolution once you die?
Taking a broad view on history of unions and communist parties, they more than likely to set small bureaucracy dealing with properties which will survive active party politics by 50 years.
And again, being a piggy is warping to the soul, i can't deal with nonpaying tenants. Just flat out, i can't throw people on the street. If i were to rent a property, that situation would come up sooner or later, and then doing moral calculus "well, i'll make someone homeless, but thats okay cause i fund ~~charity~~ communist party" is bullshit
No
No I'd just live on the property or if it's multi-unit sell it unit by unit
It would be nice to say no, but broadly speaking living in the core means the family is the only thing capable of reproducing a social structure different than the wage labor for continued existence and treats regime I live under.
So without an alternative form and assuming this “becoming a landlord” hypothetical is just a sudden influx of real property I’d say yeah, I’d do it.
To talk in clearer terms, if a bunch of houses plopped down in my backyard tomorrow I wouldn’t spend more than a day thinking about it before advertising them as rentals at cost privately to the dozens of people I know who either can’t find housing or are struggling under the housing costs they have.
Things aren’t as bad as they could be here, but they’re bad enough that I would feel pressured not to wait and figure it out first.
Probably. It depends on what kind of landlord. If it’s one that owns multiple properties and apartment blocks? No. But if it’s just a house next door I can easily work on in person? Maybe. And no that doesn’t make me a good landlord. I just would feel 10% less evil.
yes, im working from bed sick with covid because of my boss.