Dude why do people think communism means you can’t own anything. There’s a difference between private and personal properties. You can own a house, and a car, hell even a whole farm. What you cannot do is hold capital.
A farm is means of production, therefore it would classify as public property. You cannot own production under communism, only products.
Therefore it could count as a means of production but in general in Communism personal farms of reasonable size and constant use are encouraged. Again, that’s a misunderstanding of communism.
That’s not a feature of communism, it’s a compromise based on the recognition that private ownership produces more efficient outcomes at scale. According to the collective farming wiki: A Soviet article in March 1975 found that 27% of the total value of Soviet agricultural produce was produced by private farms despite the fact that they only consisted of less than 1% of arable land (approximately 20 million acres), making them roughly 40 times more efficient than collective farms.
No one wants to recreate the Great Famine (The most deadly famine in human history - caused entirely by communism and specifically collectivized farms).
There’s also Holomodor in the USSR which lead to similarly deadly outcomes.
Oversimplified for brevity, but basically: You may not be able to OWN a farm in the sense that the land itself is collectivized (not even always true under socialism, depends on specific policies and also whether you consider the “farm” to be a different entity from the land it’s sitting on, in that case you often own the farm itself, just look at home ownership rates in socialist countries), but you can USE and WORK ON the farm to generate products for yourself and society at large. I don’t see it as that different practically from the perspective of the farmer, since they’re still living on the land and taking advantage of its productivity.
I think that’s certainly better than renting or mortgaging the land and having to deal with landlords and banks. Collectivization usually freed farmers from their obligation to their landlord or private bank and they just continued farming as normal. It’s the landlords who had their “livelihood” taken away (i.e. land that they owned but someone else was living and working on), not the farmers doing the actual work.
Perhaps you have a source on the collective farms of the Great Leap Forward years in Communist China, or a URL that points to the collective farms in the Ukraine and how it made the farmers better off?
Because in practice the line between capital and personal property is very thin. Can a car or apartment not be used to generate income in a modern economy?
When the soviets were in power they would force multiple families under one roof (kommunalka). Think 4-8 families sharing a kitchen and a bathroom. Each family was given just one room and all housing was considered communal housing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment?wprov=sfti1
After Stalin’s death families began receiving single family apartments due to massive housing reform by Kruschev, but were hastily built and called ‘khrushchyoba,’ a cross between Khrushchev’s name and the Russian term for slums. That by the way still leaves a multigenerational period from 1917-1954 where the kommunalka would have been the primary unit of housing.
You can generate money with a car or a farm. The whole problem with capitalism is getting money without working because you let people work with your stuff. So owning a car and use ist as a taxi is fine with communism. Having a taxi company is not. But you can form a taxi company with others. The difference is no one has financial power over others. No one just profits because he/she is the owner. There are people in charge but they are in charge because they have the knowledge and ability not just because they own everything and can do what they want.
Listen, I’m a worker who saved money through my labour. Why should I not get to use my saved labour by deploying it into an investment?
That was a really fascinating read, thanks. Checked out a few of the other links from the wiki. Do you happen to have or know where I can see interior pictures and floorplans?
I’ll try looking it up myself in the meantime; I love stuff of that nature
You should check out “The Cold War Podcast”. The housing episode is really good.
So when does a farm go from personal to private property? Is it the moment you rent it or employ other people on it?
It’s an oversimplification, but… Sort of, yeah. Property you “own” to keep from others, and make money from owning it.
One of the thousands of nuanced use cases that generalist communist revolutionaries haven’t even thought about let alone have the skills to provide solutions for.
They have a solution, it’s labor camps or bullets to any citizen who doesn’t follow orders.
I’m ashamed to admit I had no idea, until I stumbled upon this video. https://youtu.be/Krl_CUxW14Y
Dude why do people think communism means you can’t own anything. There’s a difference between private and personal properties.
Because the dictionary definitions of those words don’t match the way you’re using them.
I think definition b on private covers what he was talking about
Also merriam Webster is not the end all be all of how language is used
belonging to or concerning an individual person, company, or interest
My car “belongs to […] an individual person”, doesn’t it?
