Introduction

No, the solution isn’t “just build more houses”, and landlords are still parasitic middlemen that profit from a necessity. Let’s revisit a topic I briefly covered four years ago, this time exploring it in much greater depth. This video examines the issues that landlords and property management companies face regarding housing prices and offers a perspective on housing from a Marxist point of view. I’ll also attempt to respond to some arguments raised in response to that video, keeping it as concise as possible. Of course, with a touch of urbanism.

First, let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way, you can’t compare Marxism and Social Democracy, one is a materialist analysis of history focused on class struggle, and a critique of political economy - by marxism people usually meant socialism or communism, and social democracy is a ‘mixed economy. Social democracies are meant to mitigate inequalities created by capitalism, by using a system of progressive taxation and social benefits. Sure social democracies have improved material conditions for the working class when compared to free-market capitalism, the NHS is a good example of this. Though even after accounting for imperialism and exploitation of the global south that they heavily rely on, there are significant problems that remain with social democracies.

These past few weeks, we have seen an exacerbation of the US’ warmongering rhetoric as the state department realizes that the country is losing its grips on the unilateral hegemony it has enjoyed ever since the fall of the USSR in December of 1991.

The imperialist rhetoric towards Venezuela has been constantly changing in the past decades, from the good ole McCarthyite reaction to Chavismo socialism and ‘dictatorship’ to now claims of narcotrafficking (even though Venezuela doesn’t even produce any cocaine or fentanyl).