Who is gonna live in the best houses?

[RedThinker]

Before i start, English is not my main language, sorry for typos if you find some.

As my first thread on this forum i want to put up the subject of housing the people, in a society after the revolution. As we all know, irrelevant where in the world you might live, we have seen the "winners" of the capitalistic game (which i think it as) living in these big villas, or penthouses with the best views.
As a communist as my self, i love equality of everyone, but what would be the solution of the housing problem, who would claim the rights of these better homes? I was asked this question by my liberal uncle (i live in Denmark, so its not as hardcore liberalism as in USA or England) and simply didn't know what to answer him.
I would love to hear your opinions.:rolleyes:

[The Idler]

Everyone will live in the best houses.

[Ele'ill]

I think how cities are structured, how industrial areas are structured, highways, public transit, suburbs, living areas within commercial areas in city centers, all of that will possibly probably get rearranged so that things are a lot healthier for people/'communities' where folks proactively put themselves and each other before what was previously the interest of capital. Everything down to architecture of the buildings themselves. Also, doing a quick google search (a very brief one and reading only the headers of the websites) there are like 3.5 million homeless folks in the US (probably a lot more I think) and 18+ million vacant homes. None of what I mention here is some detailed program for how it will occur but that isn't up to me to decide right now.

[Sinister Intents]

Everyone will live in the best houses.

Indeed :) plus everyone will be able to have whatever houses that they want, shit with the amount of unoccupied houses in my area there should be no fucking homelessness. Anytime someone breaks into one of the unoccupied and condemned homes they get arrested and it's utter bullshit.

[Oulian]

During the USSR the best houses had their rooms divided and multiple families could live there. People had the choice between a "prestigious" house that you share with other people or a "basic" flat and people had to wait for years to get a place in a pretty house because a lot of people craved it.

[Ele'ill]

Indeed :) plus everyone will be able to have whatever houses that they want, shit with the amount of unoccupied houses in my area there should be no fucking homelessness. Anytime someone breaks into one of the unoccupied and condemned homes they get arrested and it's utter bullshit.

Just as a side complaint I hate when neighbors take a stand against it. I've been approached by 'neighbors' of the abandoned/bank owned/derelict blight buildings/homes just for walking down the public sidewalk near it when I had no idea it was even there. I hate citizens.

[IBleedRed]

I don't think of it in terms of principles, i.e. that everyone needs to be exactly equal and if Johnny has five ounces more food than Billy then Johnny needs to be punished.

For me, it's strictly practical: do they both have sufficient food? Their personal preferences might lead to unequal consumption, but minor variations in consumption are less important if there is abundant food.

Who lives in the nicest houses doesn't matter as much as that everybody has clean, safe homes to live in.

[Sinister Intents]

During the USSR the best houses had their rooms divided and multiple families could live there. People had the choice between a "prestigious" house that you share with other people or a "basic" flat and people had to wait for years to get a place in a pretty house because a lot of people craved it.

Never heard of this before, that's interesting... Under real socialism though, people will be able to have what ever home they desire, whether it need to be built or can be found. Their literally are plenty of good homes everywhere in the city of Erie, and the city of Jamestown that are unoccupied.

[Oulian]

Never heard of this before, that's interesting... Under real socialism though, people will be able to have what ever home they desire, whether it need to be built or can be found. Their literally are plenty of good homes everywhere in the city of Erie, and the city of Jamestown that are unoccupied.

I come from an ex-soviet country and my relatives experienced the different stages of the evolution of the USSR, it's always a pleasure to share what I heard from that era because it can help to answer a lot of questions.
Look on wikipedia "communal apartment" or "kommunalka" for more details :)


A communal apartment or kommunalka (Russian: коммуналка, коммунальная квартира) appeared in the Soviet Union following the Russian revolution. Communal apartments emerged as a response to the housing crisis in urban areas and were a product of the “new collective vision of the future”. A communal apartment was typically shared between two to seven families. Each family had its own room, which served as a living room, dining room, and bedroom for the entire family. The hallways, kitchen, bathroom and telephone were shared among all the residents.[1] The communal apartment was the predominant form of housing in the USSR for generations, and still exist in “the most fashionable central districts of large Russian cities.” [2]

Also if you are interested into understanding more of people's minds at that time you should read the Master and Margarita by Bulgakov which is a classic for any Russian speaking person.

[Queen Mab]

I remember someone on here suggesting that the quality of housing could be the mechanism for rationing according to contribution in the lower stage of communism.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Never heard of this before, that's interesting... Under real socialism though, people will be able to have what ever home they desire, whether it need to be built or can be found. Their literally are plenty of good homes everywhere in the city of Erie, and the city of Jamestown that are unoccupied.

Well, in the Soviet case this was done as a direct measure to stem the extremely severe housing shortage in the cities, which was terrible. Housing construction then continued to be neglected (for various reasons, funds and lack of political will). There was some new construction, but it was limited and insufficient and often oriented at providing new communal flats of small sizes and poor service (because it wasn't so much about a communal service as it was about saving money on plumbing). The situation improved somewhat during the Khruschev-era and immediate post-Stalin time, with a few million new flats built, but this was not enough to do away with the severe housing shortage, though the situation somewhat improved.

New housing was thereafter somewhat variable, and often new construction was done as a populist mean (because naturally, more and modern housing was an improvement), though new construction always fell well short of the demand, particularly in the cities. Though the early types of standardised blocks (1-464 and related serial designs, often known as Khruschevkas) were originally intended to be be rather temporary structures to be replaced by newer and improved blocks within a few decades, they remained often the primary housing stock in many smaller and medium-sized towns and cities. In the last few years of the Soviet Union's existence, local programs for providing resources to prospecting residents to build standardised blocks for their own future residency were introduced (because the government more or less caved in on its aspiration to provide housing to the citizen), and this gave a slight boost in construction, primarily in the wealthier cities and centres.

Overall, construction did remain insufficient and many people still lived in old derelict shared flats, often with generations cohabiting out of necessity.

http://www.panoramio.com/photos/original/16623343.jpg
If you do not appreciate the Soviet housing block design, I think horrible things should happen to you. In the background, P-55 type standardised blocks and scattered use of I-700A type 22-storey tower blocks to serve as eye-catching orientational aides for the estates. In the foreground a number of P-44 (in the most common 16-storey variation) in a variable orientation along the riverside frontage.

[ckaihatsu]

During the USSR the best houses had their rooms divided and multiple families could live there. People had the choice between a "prestigious" house that you share with other people or a "basic" flat and people had to wait for years to get a place in a pretty house because a lot of people craved it.


This is a critical and crucial question for a revolutionary politics -- it can be generalized to the question of luxury goods / luxury inclinations / luxury production, overall.

I think the quick, administrative answer might be basically 'first come, first served' -- even if it has to measured to a microsecond-point accuracy. One possible option might be a calendar-year timesharing, if the requesters are open to that.

But this *could* be tricky, especially from my own viewpoint in that I don't think liberated-labor-hours should be *exchangeable* for goods or materials of any kind -- due to that kind of exchange [1] *reinforcing* the practice of exchange, [2] implicitly valuing liberated-labor in terms of what it produces (which is very commodity-like), and finally [3] would tend to impede free-distribution and free-access.

Just offhand, maybe an early socialist-type society might require whoever *takes* an existing abode to *reproduce* (build, or help-build) that domicile in its entirety, so that there's always a net-surplus of (similar) housing stock....

[The Idler]

Not necessarily a good example, but the Amish engage in a practice of barn raising for building new homes in their communities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_raising
It is reciprocal and unpaid.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think historically if we look at working class revolutions, probably the first thing would begin to happen before/during the overthrow of capitalism: people would just take unused commercial and residential space. I think then it would be a matter of the revolutionary forces sanctifying that initiative but also creating some fair way of dealing with conflicts (conflicts between residents, not between the new residents and the old landowners).

Beyond that though, it's just one of the many things people would have to figure out shot-term what makes most sense for the specific local conditions. If there is a lot of housing already that's decent, then it would probably be just a matter of cataloging available space and matching it up with people who need housing. I'm less concerned about what to do with real eliete places and mansions and exclusive beach houses or whatnot. I think that these are probably so extravagant that we could transform the best ones into "hotels" basically for travelers or just public buildings for common use, entertaining, or whatnot. McMansions and rich suburbs are a little trickier in the short-term because they are not nice enough to warrant keeping as permanent public spaces (like if we took Hearst castle and made it into a public museum or vacation area or whatnot). But maybe if there is a lot of need, some of these can be broken up into apartments in the short-term. I think people would need to elect some kind of committee to organize these issues in local areas and it would probably look different in different places.

I think Mari3L is totally right about how it would be approached once immediate need for housing is more or less set and people begin to grapple with how to live (build communities) in a way not shaped by market forces. I think suburbs would quickly be seen as inefficient and undesirable (far from common services, isolating) once the effort to create new living arrangements is underway.

[consuming negativity]

The thing about massive houses that require maids to clean is that they require maids to clean. You would think that a lot of people would want to live in a huge mansion, but when they have to pick up for themselves, most people would probably be just fine living in a spacious but modest dwelling. Not to mention all of the work that goes into the actual upkeep of one of those massive houses. Communal ownership/hotels/etc. as suggested before would probably be the best way to go about using these properties, assuming that's practical and desirable by the people in the area. As for the rest, there really isn't any reason why everybody can't have a comfortable living quarters; and no, I'm not talking about those weird modular tenements that the Soviets built, although I'm sure there would be people perfectly content with such a situation. Right post-revolution there might be housing issues, but I'd imagine shelter would come right after food and water on the list of "shit we need to make sure we have". Or perhaps between "water" and "marijuana"...

As for the rest of the extravagant houses, they can just be my vacation homes. No problem, comrades; I'll take this one for the team.

[Q]

This fits better in Learning.

Moved from /theory.

[ckaihatsu]

I think historically if we look at working class revolutions, probably the first thing would begin to happen before/during the overthrow of capitalism: people would just take unused commercial and residential space. I think then it would be a matter of the revolutionary forces sanctifying that initiative but also creating some fair way of dealing with conflicts (conflicts between residents, not between the new residents and the old landowners).

Beyond that though, it's just one of the many things people would have to figure out shot-term what makes most sense for the specific local conditions. If there is a lot of housing already that's decent, then it would probably be just a matter of cataloging available space and matching it up with people who need housing. I'm less concerned about what to do with real eliete places and mansions and exclusive beach houses or whatnot. I think that these are probably so extravagant that we could transform the best ones into "hotels" basically for travelers or just public buildings for common use, entertaining, or whatnot. McMansions and rich suburbs are a little trickier in the short-term because they are not nice enough to warrant keeping as permanent public spaces (like if we took Hearst castle and made it into a public museum or vacation area or whatnot). But maybe if there is a lot of need, some of these can be broken up into apartments in the short-term. I think people would need to elect some kind of committee to organize these issues in local areas and it would probably look different in different places.


Agreed.





I think Mari3L is totally right about how it would be approached once immediate need for housing is more or less set and people begin to grapple with how to live (build communities) in a way not shaped by market forces. I think suburbs would quickly be seen as inefficient and undesirable (far from common services, isolating) once the effort to create new living arrangements is underway.


Possibly, though we'd be "surrendering" to an internalization of the status quo if we thought that *technology* had to stay the same while *social relations* were revolutionized -- in my estimation the world needs a permanent solution to the energy question, and such could be very liberating for geographical habitability.

[Sea]

I think how cities are structured, how industrial areas are structured, highways, public transit, suburbs, living areas within commercial areas in city centers, all of that will possibly probably get rearranged so that things are a lot healthier for people/'communities' where folks proactively put themselves and each other before what was previously the interest of capital. Everything down to architecture of the buildings themselves. Also, doing a quick google search (a very brief one and reading only the headers of the websites) there are like 3.5 million homeless folks in the US (probably a lot more I think) and 18+ million vacant homes. None of what I mention here is some detailed program for how it will occur but that isn't up to me to decide right now.100% agreed. The problem that revolution would put on the order of the day is not who would get the best houses, but how we will get houses for those who need them. Distinctions as to what house is better than another are a mere afterthought to this.

[Rss]

There are literally more empty homes than there are homeless in many countries. Take a look at China, f'instance.

http://www.metropolismag.com/Point-of-View/August-2013/The-Real-Problem-with-Chinas-Ghost-Towns/

Problem isn't having too little decent quality housing, problem is distribution.

[DOOM]

Well I have to say there is objectively no best house. Everyone would live in his own best house, I presume.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

Given that ideas of ownership and property would be different in a post-revolutionary society I imagine that there might be a movement towards more communal living - especially amongst those who would benefit most from it (i.e young families and the elderly) That said, I imagine housing would run the gamit from large communal structures all the way down to smaller and comparitively isolated dwellings according, of course, to people's needs (in other words, for evey group willing to live with tens or hundreds of people in fairly close community there are going to be some who prefer smaller living groups or even living alone.)

Beyond that (and even that is hypothetical) I think it's hard to predict how housing/architecture and all that interlinked gubbins will go, and I imagine that it's yet another thing that will only begin to be properly figured out as the revolution begins and develops. However, I do think that a lot of what's been suggested in this thread would likely seem viable - especially the occupation and remodelling of existing disused properties.

[Skyhilist]

Some other people in this thread have mentioned that everyone should be able to have the house they want, even if it means more really upscale homes bein built. Personally, that seems like a really bad idea. We already have enough housing for everybody, even if everyone can't live in their dream home. With a current ecological crisis, the last thing that we should be doing is gearing ourselves towards the consumption of more resources and further expansion into the natural world. For that reason, building millions of new upscale houses to meet people's desires is not a real solution.

I have my own thoughts about this but I think that my own ideas on how it should be done are less important than noting that more consumption and expansion is NOT how it should be done. Again, we have a ton of perfectly viable empty houses already.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Some other people in this thread have mentioned that everyone should be able to have the house they want, even if it means more really upscale homes bein built. Personally, that seems like a really bad idea. We already have enough housing for everybody, even if everyone can't live in their dream home. With a current ecological crisis, the last thing that we should be doing is gearing ourselves towards the consumption of more resources and further expansion into the natural world. For that reason, building millions of new upscale houses to meet people's desires is not a real solution.

I have my own thoughts about this but I think that my own ideas on how it should be done are less important than noting that more consumption and expansion is NOT how it should be done. Again, we have a ton of perfectly viable empty houses already.

Well I think once the market is not the determining thing, what's valued in a home and what's considered convenient or nice or luxurious would be completely different. I think it's most likely that people would want to just re-arrange what we already have as a first step just so that people aren't cramped together or homeless or living in unsafe or unhealthy places. But I also think that after some other basic things, housing and creating new communities would be a big priority for people. I also don't think that new communities can't be better and nicer for people AND less harmful, less inefficient, less resource-wasting, and communities less alienating. What's convinient or luxurious now is a mini-castle because most reproduction service is done privitly in autonomous homes or family units: most daily cooking, laundry, entertainment, recreation, and so on are done in the home and so the more means someone has, the better wages etc, the bigger the house with the large kitchen, the multiple garages, the entertainment center, the pool, the laundry room, the home office, etc. But this is only luxury in capitalism.

More people could have access to nicer and better and more well maintained things if a lot of this activity was made social rather than accomplished autonomously in induvidual homes. I mean think about how in suburbs every family is in their own house turning on their own ovens to cook relativly small meals, watering and mowing induvidual lawns, etc. Today the rich hire people to do this, the less rich do it themselves, and many people just have to do without. But it could also be accomplished more communally, with common kitchens which would allow people to have better prepared food more easily with less energy and labor wasted and then induvidual homes wouldn't need massive kitchens, but just maybe a small set up for when you want to make something yourself or whatnot. Transportation in another big thing in the US which would require structural changes but I think could be done in ways that both decrease the need for autos while increasing our individual geographic mobility and ease of travel. Many workers have cars and they use it to run errands and go to work and otherwise it's a big hunk of steel sitting on the road, requiring maintenance and cleaning and a garage and so on. It's basically a necessity for suburban type development, but reorganization of how we set up communities could mean better transportation, more ease for daily mobility and so on without every family either having to buy cars or be stuck at home.

[ckaihatsu]

I agree that, with the revolutionizing of production, daily social habits and lifestyles could be profoundly affected. The current ethos is one of go-out-into-the-world-and-get-it-and-bring-it-back-to-your-place-for-the-enjoyment-of-you-and-yours-only, and it's incontestably wasteful and duplicates much effort on the part of everyone.

Post-revolution we'd undoubtedly see *far more* in the way of resources (and technology) being made available, and it would also all be done with a *communal* ethos at heart. One step that could *only* be done under communism would be a price-free worldwide domain of objects that can always be identified and tracked -- thus facilitating sharing and reuse.





[P]ost-capitalist social relations + industrial and digital technology = worldwide primitive communism on steroids, basically. If we care to posit any kind of anthropological ideal, meaning how most people would *want* to live, free of wage slavery and private ownership, we might wind up dispensing with domestication and even fixed locations *altogether*, in favor of a pure GPS-based sense of dynamic spatial arrangements, for everyone and everything.




A simple RFID-type chip in the body of the pine unit would give the object a permanent digital identity, linked to a database for all purposes of tracking and history.

So, in brief, we can always use the answer of 'stores' to ease our discussions with others, but we should ourselves consider how people might realistically deal with the production process, the natural or urban environment, and personal lifestyles along the way, using available technologies. If the (Calvinist) work ethic is an anachronistic relic imposed on us from centuries ago, how might we disentangle ourselves from that legacy and realize a mass productivity that meshes into more-individually-intentional kinds of lives and lifestyles -- ?

[Regicollis]

The question of housing under socialism can be separated into two. First how to distribute the existing housing and then how to build new housing.

Regarding the first I think the only reasonable system would be one of needs-based waiting lists or of lottery. A large family should be first in line to a large home, a person in a wheelchair should be first in line to a ground-level home etc. I think there would be a system where you signed up for the homes you wanted to live in.

The larger mansions could be converted to multi-family homes as has already happened many places when maids became too expensive. The more culturally or architecturally significant homes should be converted to public purposes like museums, schools, hotels etc.

As for how to construct housing post-revolution the goal should be to provide all with adequate housing of good quality according to their own preferences. Some people prefer to live in the middle of a city with access to all the facilities that give while other people prefer the peace and quiet of the countryside. Providing housing for different kinds of personal tastes should be perfectly possible.

I also hope that we will start to build neighbourhoods instead of just building housing. To reduce needless consumption of resources and to provide pleasant surroundings for the citizens many different kinds of functions should be built within the same neighbourhood. Within a few city blocks one should not only find housing but also entertainment, shopping, light industry and offices. Architecturally new developments should be inspired by the kinds of homes and the kinds of cityscapes people like to live in.

The old city cores of Europe is a good example of how to build nice cityscapes that people like to stay in. Variation in architectural styles and shapes, crooked streets that are not too heavily trafficed, shops and restaurants on the first floor and offices and apartments above, scales that are not so large they become intimidating and nice squares and parks here and there to provide centres for socialising in the public space and a mixture of home sizes. I hope these elements will be part of future city construction after the revolution.

[Rss]

What do you people think of arcologies?

[Jimmie Higgins]

What do you people think of arcologies?I think there's some technocratic baggage connected with some of these specific ideas, but in general I don't see an issue with them if people think that that would be the best way to organize a larg-ish community. I certaintly wouldn't want it to be a sort of bureaucratic dictate about how best to live.

But whatever the specific form of communities, I think the basic idea of an arcology in the sense of crating communities that both cater to human wants and comfort and ease while also fitting into the environment and having a more balanced relationship with natural space would probably be something that people would support and want to do.

Aside from Las Vegas or Dubai however, there's currently no realistic way for them to happen under capitalism (maybe state-capitalism, maybe China will build luxury ones) which is the main reason the sort of engineer-utopia versions today will probably remain fantasy blueprints. It's too great of an investment and too slow of a return outside of resorts for the super-rich like in Dubai.

[ckaihatsu]

Not to belabor the point, but I really think that a socialist revolution would even throw domestication itself into disarray -- consider that it was *objective conditions* that steered previously-nomadic cultures into static living arrangements, and led to the development of agriculture, of course.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution#Agricultural_transition


---





This [Neolithic] revolution consisted in the development of the domestication of plants and animals and the development of new sedentary lifestyles which allowed economies of scale and productive surpluses.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization


Given that humanity is now readily able to realize economies of scale and productive surpluses through *industrial*-based production, it really wouldn't matter much exactly *who* would be pulling the levers and clicking the icons to make various processes and sub-processes kick into action -- and the non-logistical remainder would be a matter of collectivist politics and social coordination.

Without the fetters of the financial superstructure and private property accumulations, humanity would finally be free to always have surpluses of *whatever* at its disposal, in *any* location, by mass-communally -- but flexibly -- tending to various industrial productive processes on a roughly as-needed basis, without concern as to geography.

In other words, *everywhere* would be 'home' because there would no longer be an objective (economic) need for family-type 'homesteads'. I'd imagine that most people's living and lifestyles would be far more fluid in such a wide-open world.

[Marshal of the People]

To ensure equality we would demolish all houses and replace them all with standardised apartment blocks.

[Sinister Intents]

To ensure equality we would demolish all houses and replace them all with standardised apartment blocks.

Ummm, I don't think a lot of homes will needed to be demolished, rather fixed up and improved, my home needs fixing up because we have several problems with our house I witnessed get built when I was eight, essentially my parents and a few kind local people helped build my house, but they guy who put our plumbing did it completely wrong, and our roof leaks.

[Skyhilist]

Well I think once the market is not the determining thing, what's valued in a home and what's considered convenient or nice or luxurious would be completely different. I think it's most likely that people would want to just re-arrange what we already have as a first step just so that people aren't cramped together or homeless or living in unsafe or unhealthy places. But I also think that after some other basic things, housing and creating new communities would be a big priority for people. I also don't think that new communities can't be better and nicer for people AND less harmful, less inefficient, less resource-wasting, and communities less alienating. What's convinient or luxurious now is a mini-castle because most reproduction service is done privitly in autonomous homes or family units: most daily cooking, laundry, entertainment, recreation, and so on are done in the home and so the more means someone has, the better wages etc, the bigger the house with the large kitchen, the multiple garages, the entertainment center, the pool, the laundry room, the home office, etc. But this is only luxury in capitalism.

More people could have access to nicer and better and more well maintained things if a lot of this activity was made social rather than accomplished autonomously in induvidual homes. I mean think about how in suburbs every family is in their own house turning on their own ovens to cook relativly small meals, watering and mowing induvidual lawns, etc. Today the rich hire people to do this, the less rich do it themselves, and many people just have to do without. But it could also be accomplished more communally, with common kitchens which would allow people to have better prepared food more easily with less energy and labor wasted and then induvidual homes wouldn't need massive kitchens, but just maybe a small set up for when you want to make something yourself or whatnot. Transportation in another big thing in the US which would require structural changes but I think could be done in ways that both decrease the need for autos while increasing our individual geographic mobility and ease of travel. Many workers have cars and they use it to run errands and go to work and otherwise it's a big hunk of steel sitting on the road, requiring maintenance and cleaning and a garage and so on. It's basically a necessity for suburban type development, but reorganization of how we set up communities could mean better transportation, more ease for daily mobility and so on without every family either having to buy cars or be stuck at home.

Yeah I don't have a problem with anything you're saying necessarily, I was mostly just responding to people who seemed to imply that we should just build more houses if people weren't happy with the houses already in existed and desired something more. If that wouldn't be the case, then great.

Also, you brought up transportation - I think a high-speed public transit monorail system going between major cities would be pretty cool for that personally. Then people would only need to rely on slower-speed and less energy efficient cars to go shorter distances.