All landlords are inherently scum. If you make your living off of forcing others to pay you to live in their home, you are scum.
“if you have a house that you don’t live in fuck you”
I mean. Yeah
What gives you claim over someone’s private property?
What gives them claim to property they do not make use of themselves?
I am sorry but this makes me think of communism
Landlords are actually useful for certain lifestyles, i.e. for managing, keeping and maintaining property for their tenant(s), who may not be in a position to commit to buying/mortgaging a property of their own at the moment but instead are seeking temporary real-estate until they are in a position to do so. Renting a place is more-often-than-not the better option for short-term residence, like I don’t wanna buy my permanent house right now and I don’t wanna buy the place I’ll be living until I move into my permanent house. I wanna rent a place until then.
Once again, for the hundredth time, this is a deeper systemic critique than “buy a house”
I apologize for my ignorance to the depth of your systemic critique. The conversation seems to be about the roles of property owners and the mutual agreements they are allowed to make with people seeking short-term residence.
Other than purchasing property or living in a dumpster, I gotta say I can’t see any other alternatives to renting a place (which inherently means having a landlord, be it just one person or a business). The name ‘landlord’ does give it a pretty bougie vibe, but the role itself isn’t a one-way power dynamic and there are good and bad landlords. Landlords do have obligations to uphold such as maintaining the property, which is the aspect of the job they are actually getting paid for, because let’s face it no one is going to lease and maintain a property for no profit.
Landlord has a “bougie vibe” because landlords are quite literally elements of the bourgeois or ruling class, and are in fact the ur-example of the petty bourgeoisie in Marxian class analysis. They own and profit off of a basic human necessity, and therefore, based on the role they play in capitalist society, there is no functional difference between “good” and “bad” landlords: they are, to a one, agents of exploitation and capitalist class domination. As socialists, we do not believe that they play a necessary role. There is no genuine need for anyone to own and profit from property; the role of the landlord is an artificial one with no basis in nature or need. We advocate for the abolition of private property, that is, privately owned property used to generate profit. Housing should be held as a human right and managed collectively. Landlords are an integral part of the capitalist system, and that system does not need to exist any longer. We can build something better.
You’re talking about communism; socialism still allows citizens to profit from their work. Ideally yeah, people would pay a certain amount of tax to the state proportional to their income, and the state would in turn provide all with a sort of ‘safety net’ of accomodations, like housing, healthcare, education, financial advising etc. Tools that are always available to people to help them make their lives better. It has the ‘no one starves’ aspect of communism, but it has the ‘I can build this life for myself’ aspect of capitalism.
Landlords are not a domineering authority to submit to, they are a service you pay for. They may not be a necessity in communist society, but they aren’t a necessity anywhere on the spectrum. Having another party to manage one’s property is just a helpful option. I don’t have the time or know-how to fix that leak in the roof. You who does? My landlord. It’s their paid obligation to keep my space liveable, not my indebted requirement to accept them as the owners of my life.
No, I’m talking about socialism. Socialism is that stage of economic and social development which precedes communism and succeeds capitalism, and constitutes the transitionary period between the two. Socialism demands an end to private property, the wage system, and the profit motive. In fact, you are mistaken in that you can build your own life under capitalism: the working class, by definition, does not own the tools with which they work, and have nothing to sell but their labor. You cannot build your own life under capitalism, you can only build a pre-approved life which benefits and enriches the capitalist class.
Furthermore, your landlord isn’t even necessary in the scenario you pose. How often does a landlord make repairs themselves? More often they contract laborers to do that job for them. The landlord is a pointless middleman with no genuine reason to exist. In theory the rent you pay covers the cost of contracting laborers for repairs, plus extra for profits’ sake. This is to say nothing of the fact that landlords rarely hold to their supposed obligation; the list of negligent landlord horror stories is far too long to mention. Your landlord does not provide a useful service, and to claim he does is nothing more than capitalist propaganda.
spacemaverick archive 