Socialist Revolution!
Spectrum Street Epistemology with a member of the Revolutionary Communists of America
In this SSE conversation with a member of the Revolutionary Communists of America, we discussed two key claims: whether the working class should have democratic control of society and whether private property should be abolished.
The comrade argued that “millionaires and billionaires have never worked a day in their lives” and emphasized the importance of empowering the working class, as they are the ones who truly contribute to society.
Additionally, the comrade believes that it is essential to provide reparations to individuals or countries affected by American imperialism.
He has unshakable faith in the power of “the working class” to vote for the right thing.
Peter (and all who visit) - You do understand that we have no private property rights even in America? We pretend we do but in reality we don't and haven't in a very long time. The first property taxes started within just 1 generation after the formation of America. We "pretend' we have private property because we can posses something that other citizens can;t legally take but the government can take it and w/o the just compensation required by the Takings Clause in the 5th amendment.
What is a private property right as envisioned during the days of the creation of our Constitution? The Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause states that private property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation. This clause is intended to prevent the government from forcing individuals to bear excessive burdens for the public good and yet what happened within just 1 generation? States begin eating away at this in small incremental steps starting with the taxation of livestock mainly while a few states also taxed land. Eventually this spread b/c what politician doesn't like more tax money coming to buy more votes? We went to war with Britain over a %2 tax and yet today you pay more than that in sales tax.
Regardless if one believes it's just or not, as long as we have property taxation we don't have true property rights because the government can take it, without just compensation, if you neglect to pay that annual eternal rent to the government. There are a number of way to funds the costs of local services like education without property taxation. The only reason for keeping it in place is that like with the income tax it allows the government to invade your privacy. There is no excuse as to why as of today, local governments can't simply come up with a budget and divide that cost up amongst all applicable citizens and bill them like any private service provider does and if they don't pay then you place a lien in the property just like a private party has to. Local bureaucrats don't want this changed because it's easier to obscure the corruption they are engaged in with property taxes and in some of teh worst locales, the local bureaucrats use it to effectively steal peoples homes to make money. They will take someone's home who owes a few thousand dollars, sell it to a friend or family member (or even a developer) for pennies on the dollar and then said family/friend provides them with a kikcback from the money the made. yes it is that bad in some places.
Just as with the income tax, the property tax was marketed to the masses as being something that would be primarily the burden of the wealthy and of course we all know that was a lie. Not only do the truly wealthy find ways to avoid income taxes (i.e. being compensated not with a salary or bonus but with stocks ) but they have the money to pay the expensive tax lawyers to minimize how much they pay in property taxes. To be clear I don't blame them for doing this as I would do it if I could because teh government is excessive and abusive with it's taxation and it needs to come to an end. Income tax needs to be replaced with a sales tax and property taxes need to be replaced with direct billing of services.
What is happening now is that it's been discovered that there is widespread fraud with property taxes on the part of the government, specifically the tax accessors. It's been found that what's being going on is that government entities like the education departments are telling tax accessors how much needs to be raised and the accessors are fudging the valuations to increase teh taxes enough to cover that budget. There is a huge lawsuit in Denton TX over this.
There is no need to ask the question of should we get rid of private property rights since we don't have them to begin with. What we have is the illusion of ownership and this is new. It wasn't to many generations back that when you owned property it was yours and you passed it down without fear of your own governance taking it instead or forcing you pay a sin tax to the government for owning such property.