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by AnimalMuppet 3086 days ago
> Simple reliance on a profit model for housing is never going to adequately meet housing needs.

Can you give something to justify that statement, something more than just a bare assertion? To me, it looks like reliance on something other than the profit motive (that is, rent control) is what's causing the problems here.
1 comments
classwarsteve 3086 days ago
A start would be the pervasiveness of homelessness throughout the history of the United States as contrasted with its abolition in the USSR and its dramatic return with post-soviet privatization.
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cjalmeida 3086 days ago
Likely because being homeless in USSR was a crime and motive to send one to a Gulag?
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classwarsteve 3086 days ago
At least in the USSR you were guaranteed housing as opposed to the United States where homelessness is largely criminalized while the homeless are offered little support and in fact regularly have their lives upended because they're considered an eyesore.

https://www.nlchp.org/documents/No_Safe_Place

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jules 3086 days ago
Why don't you start a communist commune? You can do that in a capitalist system. You can't set up a capitalist commune in a communist system because they'll put you in the gulag.
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classwarsteve 3086 days ago
Actually you should check out the long history of western capitalist supported right wing death squads that have been sent to break up communist governments.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/a-timeline-of-cia-atrocities/5...

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AnimalMuppet 3086 days ago
And how does that answer jules' point? You sound like you're just looking for a chance to spew your talking points, rather than actually having a conversation with us.
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classwarsteve 3086 days ago
My point is that Jules is wrong that capitalists will permit you to set up a communist society. Perhaps you should revisit the cold war. In addition, a commune within a capitalist society would still be reliant on the labor of an external, exploited proletarian class. Communism is internationalist. Ultimately this is the failure of first world social democratic programs that provide decent gains for their working classes but do so at the expense of oppressed peoples in the global south.

Referring to them as talking points without refuting them sounds a whole lot like trying to dismiss the argument without dealing with the contents. Don't get upset and fall back on procedural obfuscation if you're trying to have a conversation with me.

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AnimalMuppet 3086 days ago
> My point is that Jules is wrong that capitalists will permit you to set up a communist society.

The non-communist countries tried to sabotage the communist ones, true. (And vice versa - a cold war is like that.) That is not at all the same as saying that, within a capitalist countries, the capitalists will not permit you to set up a commune. Your argument (and link) therefore do not actually address jules' point at all.

> In addition, a commune within a capitalist society would still be reliant on the labor of an external, exploited proletarian class.

How does that address jules' point (or even mine)?

> Communism is internationalist. Ultimately this is the failure of first world social democratic programs that provide decent gains for their working classes but do so at the expense of oppressed peoples in the global south.

How does that address jules' point (or even mine)? Starting a commune in the US doesn't exploit the oppressed in the global south whatsoever.

This is why I say it looks like you're just looking to spew talking points. You're saying a lot, but it's not relevant to the subject.

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