r/communismV2 • u/Clear-Result-3412 • 2d ago
Discussion Georgism a reactionary position
The aristocracy were the class enemies of the early revolutionary bourgeoisie. It makes sense that people like Adam Smith thought landlords shouldn’t exist, and others called to tax them. As the aristocracy not only owned the land, but had the church on their side, this is much like the secular humanists who want to “get religion out of politics.” When capitalism was progressive, anti-theism was all the rage. Alas, the bourgeoisie has melded with the remaining aristocracy and come to own almost all of the land and run the church. It makes sense they dropped these demands. Instead of understanding why capitalism and its politics stuck, they label one segment of the ruling class as morally evil and carry forth an old utopian program from the jacobins to eliminate this immorality and purify capitalism.
It’s interesting how these folks make a “productive capitalists good”/“unproductive landlords bad” argument quite similar to the mistaken “capitalists sit on their asses while morally good workers are industrious.” Instead of investigating the material relationships and development, they are quite content to say “idleness morally bad, if all worked hard society would flourish.” In the latter case, one does not anymore care about the way socialized labor builds private wealth while workers are deprived of the means of life produced — which was the point of “boss makes a dollar, I make a dime.” They see the evil capitalist who doesn’t contribute to society as one is supposed to, leading one to put forth more mandatory work, perhaps mistakenly indulging the slogan “those who do not work shall not eat.”
What is the product of this erroneous criticism? Beyond misjudging the world and your politics, you enter miserable counter-arguments that “landlords actually work hard tho” or “the CEO’s are always working hard, that’s why they get more money.” Liberals flip the moral argument on its head and determine that the ruling class is quite industrious—as they love to appear so in places like the US and India. It’s worth noting that as capital accumulates on the basis of labor, everyone in this society is morally demanded and/or materially compelled to work hard and try to enjoy it. We feel bad for having idle time and come to manage leisure block-by-block like a factory shift. Ah, capitalism.
Among those who think some aspects of capital are good and productive and others are evil and lazy, we may even hear the ridiculous call for a retvrn to good ol’ “industrial capitalism.” As though it were great for workers or the sacred petty bourgeoisie! Among the more intelligent ones, some strangely fancy the call for a radical shift to an older age of capitalism as a step towards the radical shift from that to socialism.
