this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Because in practice the line between capital and personal property is very thin. Can a car or apartment not be used to generate income in a modern economy?
When the soviets were in power they would force multiple families under one roof (kommunalka). Think 4-8 families sharing a kitchen and a bathroom. Each family was given just one room and all housing was considered communal housing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment?wprov=sfti1
After Stalin’s death families began receiving single family apartments due to massive housing reform by Kruschev, but were hastily built and called ‘khrushchyoba,’ a cross between Khrushchev's name and the Russian term for slums. That by the way still leaves a multigenerational period from 1917-1954 where the kommunalka would have been the primary unit of housing.
You can generate money with a car or a farm. The whole problem with capitalism is getting money without working because you let people work with your stuff. So owning a car and use ist as a taxi is fine with communism. Having a taxi company is not. But you can form a taxi company with others. The difference is no one has financial power over others. No one just profits because he/she is the owner. There are people in charge but they are in charge because they have the knowledge and ability not just because they own everything and can do what they want.
Listen, I’m a worker who saved money through my labour. Why should I not get to use my saved labour by deploying it into an investment?
People accuse leftists of idealist thinking but in what fantasy world are you thinking your personal savings from selling your labor is ever going to come close to what would be considered "capital" in the sense being discussed here?
It’s directly deployed in stocks and real estate, what do you mean?
Most capital is “collectively owned” through public corporations, pension funds, etc.
Not most, in the US around 400 individuals own over 50% of wealth. Similar situation in Russia.
You’re right that wealth is concentrated, but I was saying that the assets are collectively owned. For example I am a shareholder of Amazon, a publicly-traded company that Jeff Bezos owns a large stake in. So Amazon is “collectively owned” but each share gets one vote instead of one person.
Shares only give you voting power if you have a massive amount of them. In the vast majority of cases shares function as either a place to store wealth to protect it from inflation or as speculative gambling, the majority of use cases is not to signify ownership. I would not classify that as collective ownership, maybe only in theory if you don't look into it too much but real world application of shares is definitely not collective ownership.
I'm very much in favour of businesses being actually collectively owned through a coop business model though.
Owning public stock is legally indistinguishable from directly owning a joint business venture.
Plenty of things are legally indistinguishable but real world applications are often quite different.
Though I would also challage that claim since owning a joint business gives you legal deciding power while owning 1 stock does not, you get zero votes from that.
It depends on the percent of the company you own.
Gee, who decided what is legally equivalent? Certainly not the people with wealth to buy politicians and judges.
I have no idea what point you’re trying to make.
Where do you think the value for your return on investment comes from? It's extracted from the labor of workers.
It’s not extracted it’s combined with labour to produce higher output than labour or capital on their own.
For example a worker with a shovel could only dig a small hole a day, but with the injection of capital (ie a backhoe) they can dig many more holes. The worker can increase their pay compared to what they would’ve made with just a shovel and the person that provided the backhoe can also generate a healthy return for their capital contribution.
How is it healthy that some rich investor gets to play golf all day because he can afford to buy backhoes and hire people to use them? How is it healthy that he earns more money if he pays them less, or that he alone is in charge of resources that a whole community worked to produce? What is healthy about any of this?
What you are describing is the entire fucking premise of socialism: workers cannot afford the means of production, so production ends up controlled by a handful of wealthy capitalists with perverse incentives and no loyalty to the rest of the human race. An entire tradition of thought is dedicated to how unhealthy that is.
Again, capital is extracted from labor. Who do you think built the back hoe? It didn't fall off the back hoe tree. Workers built it, workers designed it. If some capitalist pig didn't own it, then the laborers could just use it.
Even a labourer who has saved up can buy a back-ho. The backho could have been produced by a communist country or work co-op. Who produced the back-ho is not important.
The important thing is that value is stored, invested and combined with labour to make everyone better off. This is why wages are higher in countries with more capital such as the USA.
Why should you get money for doing nothing? I think that is a good question. If your investments are earning money, for example because you invested in real estate, then you've driven up the price of rent for the rest of us.
But anyway, in reality almost all of the money in the stock market is held by people who are not like you, people who didn't save their money by working a nine to five for 10 or 20 years.
Nobody is stopping you from leaving your money sitting in a bank account. Nobody is suggesting you shouldn't save money.
You keep saying “doing nothing” but I earned that money and now I am risking it in investments with uncertain returns.
You work for your money. But the people making the big investments don't.
If you want to work to earn some money and then save it and then later spend it, great. But you're not content with that.
Let's look at a simple example. Suppose you take your savings and you buy a rental property and start renting it out. You're taking a risk that perhaps property prices will go down, or that maybe you'll run into a string of 10 bad tenants in a row, and you might lose some money. All the while, you're sitting there doing absolutely nothing, and probably you're getting paid for it. But what about your tenants? What's the risk they're taking? They could pay rent on time for decades and yet never be able to qualify for a loan to buy property of their own, because people like you have bought up what used to be more widely available. A huge percent of the population is working paycheck to paycheck, and if they have a string of bad luck that lasts more than a month or two then they're going to end up homeless. Of course their life expectancy will be slashed in a second. In other words, my friend, you're risking some extra money while they're risking their lives.
Also, as several of us have pointed out, most investment money is held by the rich so that they can get richer at our expense. Many people would prefer to get rid of that system rather than try and piggyback on it. There are other ways to structure society so that you can retire in comfort.
Hmm, I got a feeling that there is no such thing called "investment" under communism.
Invest in what?
Why are you hoarding wealth?
Like what else would i do with it? Wreck the environment by spending it on things i don’t need?
Maybe don't charge as much?
😂
How dare you make fiscally responsible investments and expect some return in exchange for the risk you're taking on by letting others use your stuff. How. Dare. You. /s
Being responsible isn't an excuse to own other people's livelihood.
Risk is an idiot's justification. Anyone who owns a business knows the whole point of a limited liability corporation is it removes any risk in case of failure.
If Walmart went tits up today the Walton's would still be rich. It's the workers who bear all the risk.
The worker can walk away at any time to another job, can even change entire industries.
That was a really fascinating read, thanks. Checked out a few of the other links from the wiki. Do you happen to have or know where I can see interior pictures and floorplans?
I'll try looking it up myself in the meantime; I love stuff of that nature
You should check out "The Cold War Podcast". The housing episode is really good.