Landlords are the fucking scum of the earth and Mao was right to kill them
All landlords are monsters that profit off of the poor and should be nuked to hell where they belong
Mao didn't order any mass killings of landlords though. This is a common misconception. After the Agrarian Reform Law, Mao supported the rights of peasants to confront and punish their former landlords, such as the Speak Bitterness campaigns. They could then be put on trial at People's Courts, which were set up by Red Guards. If the peasant's grievances were severe, these landlords would then be found guilty, and either be beaten or executed.
Mao was too kind
He was nicer than I would've been.
It was also a very regionalized thing: in places where landlords lived in the same general area as their properties they tended to be put on trial and punished, but in places where they instead lived in cities and delegated management of the property to others it was their cronies who were punished while the landlords were allowed to either flee the country or cut a deal to peacefully hand over their properties and receive a job as a bureaucrat in return on account of the dire need for literate workers (a category that pre-revolution was systemically restricted to the rich and some skilled professionals).
I also thought I heard (maybe I'm getting this from Fanshen) that plenty of more-or-less OK landlords maybe had their rental properties confiscated, but were otherwise allowed to go on as before.
The landlords who received harsher penalties, including death, were acting more as feudal lords (with all the direct violence and depravity that comes with) than as some guy renting a second home at market rate. The latter is not something they should be allowed to do, but apparently Chinese peasants in the 50s weren't calling for blood over it.
Beaten, executed, or made to wear a silly hat around town
This is fantastic news. It’s like the Game of Thrones “shame” bit but instead of nudity it’s a dunce cap.
The execution of one such big landlord reverberates through a whole county and is very effective in eradicating the remaining evils of feudalism. Every county has these major tyrants, some as many as several dozen and others at least a few, and the only effective way of suppressing the reactionaries is to execute at least a few in each county who are guilty of the most heinous crimes. When the local tyrants and evil gentry were at the height of their power, they literally slaughtered peasants without batting an eyelid. Ho Maichuan, for ten years head of the defence corps in the town of Hsinkang, Changsha County, was personally responsible for killing almost a thousand poverty-stricken peasants, which he euphemistically described as "executing bandits". In my native county of Hsiangtan, Tang Chun-yen and Lo Shu-lin who headed the defence corps in the town of Yintien have killed more than fifty people and buried four alive in the fourteen years since 1913. Of the more than fifty they murdered, the first two were perfectly innocent beggars. Tang Chunyen said, "Let me make a start by killing a couple of beggars!" and so these two lives were snuffed out. Such was the cruelty of the local tyrants and evil gentry in former days, such was the White terror they created in the countryside, and now that the peasants have risen and shot a few and created just a little terror in suppressing the counter-revolutionaries, is there any reason for saying they should not do so?
jesus. I think we forget that Mao's landlords were feudal landlords. our landlords do their killing much less directly
i heard somewhere that some landlords preferred beatings to the silly hat
I disagree.
Death is a waste! Landlords should be forced to pay back their debt to society. Make them build housing and clean dwellings.
The best way to ensure that the housing is shitty. Landlords aren't actually good at anything.
what do you mean it's perfectly fair that poor people spend half their lifetime to pay off my loan without getting anything for it. my hard labor of applying for a loan is definitely worth 500k.
was talking with a potential friend and they started to complain about how their tenant had an unauthorized dog
sigh
Had to listen to my mother in law's boyfriend talk about how he's eyeballing a multi tenant property today. His back of the napkin math came out to be ~$13k per month profit (that's net, after mortgage), and he's got the money to do it. Tells us that Joe Byron is the problem with the country and young people just need to boot strap it up... Meanwhile my brother in law has a good paying job and plenty of cash on hand, he can't afford a fucking shack.
The fucker doesn't pay a goddamn dime to my MIL for the mortgage while living in her house, and he owns two other properties - one for fun and he rents the other one to a family member. He buys that shit and we won't be speaking to him again.
Not the poor smol bean landlordarinos!
Theoretically, am I a landlord if a rent out a room below market value in my current residence?
It's either that or just let it sit empty apart from the 2 days a year I have a guest over.
The simple answer is yes
The nuanced answer is yes, but this person isn't really the problem. They are still profiting, ultimately, off the labor of another just by owning "capital" (quotes because a personal home isn't really capital, but it's sort of transformed into this specific case... it's weird). However in terms of scale and intent, it's different.
Scale obviously if you rent one or two rooms that's the limitation of exploitation you can participate in unless you become a full fledged capitalist and buy more homes to rent.
And intent is obviously a gray area, but looking at it in the least cynical way, the owner in this case might be struggling for whatever reason, electricity rates are high as fuck, inflation generally is up, and they might legitimately need say $400/month more income to just stay in the home. In this case that would be cheap as fuck to most people to then be able to live in a full house with a private room. This intent, in my view, is as ethical as possible for this situation. If the owner is otherwise doing fine and just wants to pocket $400/month, well, that's essentially just being a normal landlord, although still a little different since the home wasn't originally purchased with the sole purpose of profiting from renting it... so there's a lot to analyze there and my end thought is basically "this person isn't worth the time to care about even if their intentions are the worst possible case." Basically because there are much larger fish to fry. That doesn't mean I have to support it, but also hyper-focusing on some dude/family renting one room out is... not a good use of time, imo.
This still benefits the homeowner of course because they, and they alone, gain equity in the home as they pay off the mortgage more and more. If a tenant lives there for 5 years, $400/month, and moves out, the homeowner has effectively stolen $24000 from the tenant. Obviously some of that went to, perhaps, paint for walls, upkeep from increased wear and tear, but let's be honest it wasn't $24000 worth unless the tenant collapsed the fucking roof. This is why it's exploitation and the only real way around this is some sort of legal agreement that the tenant will receive their full portion of the equity if they move out. Maybe if the owner is elderly putting them in the will would be a way to do it. There's a bunch of scenarios, but if the tenant just lives there, pays, and moves one day, the owner directly benefited from someone's labor, so, still exploitation. Although this comes back to my above answer of "this is so small that it's hardly worth focusing on."
In the revolution, your dad will have to give his second home to the renters but won't be harmed
The nuanced answer is yes, but this person isn't really the problem.
Thank god, now I can rest easy in my 8 story luxury apartment complex that my grandfather bought me.
if BakedBeanEnjoyer is charging exactly break even or at a loss for wear and tear on the appliances and carpet and that rent money isn't a net contribution to a mortgage taking depreciation into account then i don't think it would qualify as landlordism. I'd be surprised if that's the case, but one could hope.
Morally speaking I don't think it matters in and of itself. There's a power imbalance that needs to be critically engaged with so it doesn't become a problem, and there's a small to medium influence on your material interests that may color your perspective on things if you aren't ideologically disciplined.
Treating people well and being nice and trying not to exploit people is basic, individual morality, trying to be good.
Leftism however is about trying to understand and change society. It isn't about lifestylism or poverty or personal purity.
Categorically speaking I wouldn't consider you a landlord. Your material interests likely don't align with the landlord class, assuming you still have to sell your labor to survive. Of course you (or others in your material position) might adopt an aspirational consciousness that aligns with landlord ideology-- I've even seen that from people with no private property whatsoever, nothing at all with which to rentseek. Temporarily embarrassed millionaire types.
rather than rent, sell them equity in the house, or if you're subletting, team up on the actual landlord and they can have their own place.
At that point why not let them live there for free?
Selling equity would cost me money as the house values goes up and I'd have to buy it back. Also, they would be able to sell their equity and thus right to live in the house without my approval. Then I could get someone moving in that I've never met or vetted before.
no more half measures walter
Did something happen?
No I just hate them
Fair
I'm a hair away from taking my landlord to the tenant's court so after weeks of dealing with that gaslighting kulak piece of shit, I feel this post 😂
YAH WELL AS AN ANARCHIST
yes
Currently arguing with my old landlord about damage that was there when we moved in that they're now trying to pin on us, hope this piece of shit dies in a fire.
Be the change you want to see in the world!
I once again have to choose rent over food and this time it's more personal because rent has increased and my money for food has decreased.