Reading Kropotkin for the first time at age 71. Just finished the chapter on expropriation of dwellings. Doubt if even Kropotkin could have imagined a time and place like the US now: Pity the poor homeless person faced with the daunting task of choosing among twenty-four vacant homes. Decisions, decisions! Other forms of expropriation might be more complex, but housing would be simple.
That's the kind of thing that gets me so riled up about the current social and economic structure. We are spending more money KEEPING PEOPLE HOMELESS than it would cost for the government to simply require banks to repay their debts by turning over those houses so that people could live in them. It's so, so, so insanely wrong.
Hello and welcome, Mark. The Conquest of Bread is an excellent read, by an excellent write. I remember reading an article last year about there being 18.4 million vacant homes in America. We tend to toss around words like 'million' and 'billion' a lot now. But 18 fucking million empty houses? Shit's just wrong. Here's to the fall...
Maybe this is a plan? There was a discussion on salon.com here http://www.salon.com/2012/02/27/occupys ... /#comments and somebody named Mark G. mentioned Kropotkin and I sort of repeated what had been said here, and he responded that conditions now are even more conducive than in Kropotkin's time, and then I posted this (it should be on page 2 of the comments--I'm posting there with the same login name ):
Yeah. I usually don't think in terms of working within the system or in incremental ways, but this seems (I'm probably wrong) so incredibly easy to pull off that even the Occupy movement could do it. A serious problem solved and no revolution necessary. The homes would have to be turned over with deed and title free and clear, but I'm sure the banks would force government to more than reimburse them with tax write-offs or more hand-outs if they don't pay taxes. And property taxes would have to be either paid or waived also, but that would be cheaper than building more homeless shelters. Of course the city inspectors and cops would do their darnedest to try to put people back on the street again, but there would be a lot of unified resistance. Eventually people paying rent and mortgages would become voluntarily homeless in order to qualify, so if it worked it could end up doing away with rent and mortgages completely. Expropriation has to start somewhere, somehow, and I'd really appreciate it if somebody can explain to me why this wouldn't be worth a try.
