But honestly, I feel a more base, emotionally driving hatred towards the more immediate capitalists in my life. I hate my landlord, I hate my district manager, I hate my uncle who makes 250k a year sending emails. These are more the people I want to rip out of their homes kicking and screaming to the guillotines.

Pretty much every successful communist revolution didn't direct their fury towards just the richest of the richest, they recognized there were people down the hierarchy who were still exploiters who deserved the wrath of the proletariat. Calling for the liquidation of American Kulaks would do more for socialism in America than trying to get people to strike against Bezos.

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[–] GrafZahl@hexbear.net 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Socialists should focus neither on moral arguments nor about where the line between rich and not-rich is supposed to be. One is unproductive, the other only useful for reformist policy.

If we can understand the landlord-tenant relationship, we can recognize that violence doesn't end the relationship. Only ending the system of property ends the relationship. Once there is no more landlord and no more tenant, what necessity is there for violence?

[–] zedcell@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How do you end the system of property without violence? Do you think the landlord will just give up their property? Is there any historical precedent for that?

Violence is necessary to gain and then maintain control of a proletarian state until the system of property is undone. Landlords that fight back will be subjected to violence, more often than not in retaliation by the directly affected members of the proletariat. The Soviets and the communist party of the USSR would often have to intervene in outbursts of revolutionary violence from the masses, ensuring it didn't go too far and directing it where it had the most impact. The terror following the Russian revolution was directly in response to the violence meted out against communists by the Tsarist forces, hanging landlords and the bourgeoisie responsible in the streets to make examples of them for killing communists.

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

almost no landlords are prepared or willing to engage in direct violence to evict occupants. they rely on no cost state violence to enforce their right to exclude.

if armed police are no longer getting paid by the broader community to watch over and protect movers throwing peoples' belongings onto the curb or escort them to the street, landlordism is over.

until that mechanism is gone, there will always be another landlord waiting behind the dead one.

[–] zedcell@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

I think this is a rosy view of what revolution looks like. Armed police won't simply all disarm on the eve of their pay drying up. There are committed fascists amongst their ranks that will fight back pay or no pay at the prospect of a proletarian revolution. To think we have no ideologically committed foes that might operate in opposition to their immediate material interests is to fall to mechanistic materialism.

The Chinese civil war was 30-40 years long with ebbs and flows in the strength of the communist aligned movement and the nationalist movement. Nothing just stopped because the red army took control of a given province.

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 6 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

i think this is a uncharitable interpretation of what i said. armed police don't need to disarm. the police force doesn't need to be demobilized. they would be formally declared no-longer-responsible for protecting landlordism, potentially with something as simple as a ban on evictions, but possibly a more explicit right to shelter-in-place.

that was effectively what happened under the proletarian revolution in china: those employed in public safety were no longer charged with securing and protecting the rights of landlords through evictions or court collections of rents. additionally, they would they no longer be charged protect landlords from the broader public if they tried to evict people themselves, using hired goons.

under capitalism, renters always outnumber landlords and they will never be able to afford enough goons to out number their tenants. the landlord's position is precarious, numerically. it is propped up by the extension of public safety to include their so-called "rights". once that "positive right" become illegitimate in the eyes of a community, landlordism would be crushed.

anything short of a broad, communal reorienting of tenant rights is just individualistic/stochastic adventurism and revenge killing that goes nowhere, because there will always be someone waiting behind the dead landlord.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

i think this is a uncharitable interpretation of what i said. armed police don’t need to disarm. the police force doesn’t need to be demobilized. they would be formally declared no-longer-responsible for protecting landlordism, potentially with something as simple as a ban on evictions, but possibly a more explicit right to shelter-in-place.

I think that depends on which police you're talking about.

US police, which are armed with surplus military hardware and are reliable reactionaries, absolutely do need to be disarmed.