Living in China is getting cheaper. Because rents in my neighborhood in central Beijing are dropping, my wife and I pressed our landlord to reduce ours by $140 a month in a new lease that we signed last month. He wasn’t too happy about it, but he’s lucky that we didn’t move out. Given the desperation of local landlords, we probably could’ve saved another $500 a month had we switched to a comparable apartment nearby.

BUT AT WHAT COST?

    • T34_69 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      14 hours ago

      Marx responded to Georgists and criticized the ideology in his time, too. Here is a key letter in which he addressed the mistakes of Georgism. He pointed out that George was not the first theorist to suggest abolishing ground rent with this method, and that all these “socialists” made the same mistake: Failing to address capital and its contradictions, leaving wage labor, and in effect, using land redistribution to actually uphold and perpetuate capitalism.

      All these “socialists” since Colins have this much in common that they leave wage labour and therefore capitalist production in existence and try to bamboozle themselves or the world into believing that if ground rent were transformed into a state tax all the evils of capitalist production would disappear of themselves. The whole thing is therefore simply an attempt, decked out with socialism, to save capitalist domination and indeed to establish it afresh on an even wider basis than its present one.

      Sounds a lot like the “reform vs. revolution” kind of debates that we’re still having as we try to raise the consciousness of the working class. Communist revolutions have generally put these kinds of land reforms at the forefront of their platforms while also attempting to address the contradictions of capitalism directly, unlike Georgism. Countries like (if I recall correctly) China, Vietnam, Lao, and Cuba have some form of collective ownership of land in which all land is ultimately owned by the state, which grants temporary ownership through leases or other methods. Needless to say, they also have other economic policies and reforms that go beyond land ownership. Singapore also has a similar land ownership policy and is a highly capitalist country, so hopefully you can see the limitations of such a “solution.”

      • Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        13 hours ago

        You’re wasting your time, I think that account is a troll, they actively reject any call to examine Georgism critically and refuse to read Marx. I say “troll” rather than bit account, because they don’t back down and admit it is a bit.

        If they are actually being sincere, I think they just stumbled upon Georgism’s wikipedia page and it was the first time they ever thought about class consciousness and have made a connection between this nonsense idealism and actual class struggle.

          • Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            5 hours ago

            That’s true, even if they weren’t going to change their mind it still provides good information for other people to read and learn. Georgism is pretty obscure (for a reason) so people might not be too familiar with it (I know I wasn’t, it was just one of those “pre-marxist leftist ideas” to me, and that’s about all I knew about it)

        • T34_69 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          5 hours ago

          Sure, it’s low hanging fruit though, even if it’s an intentionally annoying joke account someone who just heard about Georgism will read that and go ah, ok, moving on. I’ve got that one in the chamber so it’s an easy one but yeah, I’m not getting those ten minutes back.

      • DylanMc6 [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        15 hours ago

        firing the landowners (as in “hey landowner, new policy today, you’re no longer needed - why DON’T you get a different job?”) and nationalize land would also work.

          • DylanMc6 [any, any]@hexbear.net
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            13 hours ago

            what i mean is that the government would issue a policy saying that all landowners have been stripped of their ownership of their land, and ownership will go to the people - that’s how i think it would be handled without a fight

            • ColombianLenin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              12 hours ago

              Landowners have a lot of money. They can pay off government officials so that they rule in favor of them. And if the government doesn’t play ball? They can use that money to pay mercenaries to kill whoever fights them.

              Colombia is a huge example of this btw. Paramilitaries are a huge force.