this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Ok, so exploitable land (a means of production) can be owned for the exclusive enjoyment of an individual in a socialist economy. Got it, thanks.
Yes, exploitable land can be owned by an individual in a socialist economy. If you're growing food for your family, then that's just one family the state doesn't have to feed. If you're growing food for your community, then that's several mouths the state doesn't have to feed. If you're hoarding or selling food (or in one very famous historical case, burning it out of spite), then you are monopolizing a resource that could be feeding people, and the state will intervene, whether by buying your land back from you, taking it from you, liquidating you as a class, or some other solution to be determined by the state in question - there is no one size fits all blueprint to socialism.
"Or some other other solution to be determined by the state in question"
Gulags, generally speaking
I literally said "liquidating you as a class" as a possible retaliation. "Gulags" is not a gotcha, if you hoard or destroy food during a famine you are committing murder and you need to be stopped for the good of society.
By the way, the US prison population today is higher than the Gulag population of the entire Soviet Union at its peak. I'd sure as hell rather see gulags full of reactionaries and food-burners than full of drug users and the chronically unemployed. I'm curious, why do you prefer the latter?
Well being worked to death and/or being strait up shot tends to keep those numbers down. And how many of those "hoarders" were quite literally starving but they had a tiny bit on hand? And how many more were in there for "anti-soviet behavior" instead of anything related to hoarding or destroying food.
Gulags, concentration camps and the like are definitely a "gotcha" as much as a "gatcha" can exist.
Tankie apologetics 101:
it blows my mind the lengths that online rightists will go to to defend literally burning food during a famine. Why?
What percentage of the harvest was lost to the destruction of grain?