chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Could they? I guess it depends if that capital would actually enable them to live without working?
Fuck Gentrification - Join the Fuck Parade...Part 3!
- Thread starter ClassWar2015
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Could they? I guess it depends if that capital would actually enable them to live without working?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
This isn't quite true. If you're a pensioner, it is very hard to borrow against a home owned outright.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
I'd imagine that 25 years plus of w/c interests might negate a change in material interests upon retirement somewhat...
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Not if you stick to ownership of the means of production.
At the moment I don't have to sell my labour to survive and I'm not bourgeois; I just happen to have lived very frugally for years and am living off past earnings that were surplus to previous out-goings. I'm determined not to sell my labour for as long as the money lasts...that don't make me MC.
newbie
undisambiguated
is it? I thought there was a whole financial industry based around what they call 'equity release' but maybe I've misunderstaood.
Anyway, there's exceptions to any blanket statement
mauvais
on reddit or something
Fine, terms. And I don't think it's about money - independence, power, community, autonomy could all be interchanged into my sentence, so I quite agree. But I don't see how - if this is even an argument - that gentrification is different from the usual 'trickle down' pattern that's become ingrained in so much of our lives. So I don't believe that the dreaded hipsters have any more of these things except proportionally so as afforded by this model. So with greater affluence, they have the ability to configure their hipster district to some extent, but they'll still be powerless when the rents on their cafes and fixed wheel bicycle shops go up threefold or whatever.
When property and basic living costs are dominant, and the flow of money is at upwards at a significant rate, how does anyone towards the bottom of this pyramid really have what you describe? And this has been the whole point - that it's almost the same problem, just offset to some slightly different economic or demographic tier, so with different bounds and timeframes. And so, if you wanted to fight it, or change the underlying construct, who is an ally or who is the enemy? Is it the people moving in or is it the people at the top? Or, who do you want to have your class war with? The lower middle class?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
which is just the same as the person who owned a house outright in your example. I dont think that in either case they'd be MC
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Is that really the process? When I see an area like Homerton becoming 'gentrified', I see rents zooming up first, followed by the (rather slow) ingress of new businesses. tbh it's not really become gentrified. It's just become unaffordable.
But to the extent that the process you talk about does happen, Foxtons will jump on any improvement in an area to talk up prices. That's the real evil of the process, imo - the impossibility in this model of urban regeneration without it turning into gentrification. For example, if an arts and crafts centre were to open in an area, providing spaces for artists and artisans at affordable prices, performance areas, exhibition areas, and loads of free activities for kids - ie something that I think few would say was not good for an area - Foxtons would leap on it as an excuse to put prices up.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Why not?
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Why not?
newbie
undisambiguated
if you own your home outright, and can sell it whenever in order to adapt to changing circumstances, you're the beneficiary of unearned income. It's entirely possible that in a good number of the past years the notional value of your home has increased by more than you've earned. That's nothing to do with how frugally you've lived or the accumulation of investments based on past earnings.
My parents are HA tenants, and have been paying rent on the same house for ~60 years. If they move, eg to sheltered housing, they will have a modern tenancy agreement and their rent will triple. The homeowner can sell, downsize and release capital. Owning the MOP is only part of the differentiation between those with and those without the choices that being m/c brings.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
And Mao with Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
So you're saying until 6 months ago I was WC, but now that I'm taking a break from selling my labour I'm MC, and when my cash runs out and I go back to work I'll be WC? That fluid?
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
No. But that's the thing - your cash running out, and foreseeably. That's not what I mean by having enough capital to not have to work. You're still gonna have to work at some point?
...and equally if you balance the periods of working and not working and see what impact these have on your concrete, material interests...has your "break from work" (can I call it an extended "gap year" or would that be mean
?) changed them?
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Yeah, but at the moment I don't have to sell my labour...and, according to your definition, I'm now middle class?
IM(possibly biased)O, that's why it's best to concentrate on ownership of the MoP.
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
Why do you keep ignoring what we've shown you in terms of what's happening to the social housing?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Why do you ignore the majority of the substantive points in my posts and misrepresenting what I'm saying wrt homelessness and concern for social cleansing?
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
I should read that, thanks.
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
Your substantive points rely on misrepresenting East End gentrification as regeneration. Now there's some regeneration, granted. But not to the extent that you seem to think there is.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
cos I think we should define such things based upon where people are, not where people could be.
mauvais
on reddit or something
Oh, and asked about the counterweight to gentrification, i.e. what areas get worse as hipsters and the middle classes take over another, I said I didn't know because I don't know London.
But I don't need to. The answer, to a significant extent, is 'everywhere but London'. Twice.
First, because the UK economy and employment and culture and everything else has for a very long time gravitated towards London and the SE, draining people and opportunities out of areas like the North of England, and even the husks of "commuter towns" which now encompasses most of Hampshire.
Then a second time in the early stages of London destroying itself, as Londoners migrate out en masse usually with wealth to their second chances like Bristol, destabilising life and displacing people in those places. Secondary gentrification, I guess, which eventually London will have to pay for itself, but probably not yet.
But I don't need to. The answer, to a significant extent, is 'everywhere but London'. Twice.
First, because the UK economy and employment and culture and everything else has for a very long time gravitated towards London and the SE, draining people and opportunities out of areas like the North of England, and even the husks of "commuter towns" which now encompasses most of Hampshire.
Then a second time in the early stages of London destroying itself, as Londoners migrate out en masse usually with wealth to their second chances like Bristol, destabilising life and displacing people in those places. Secondary gentrification, I guess, which eventually London will have to pay for itself, but probably not yet.
newbie
undisambiguated
well I dunno, I think a lot of this is fluid, and snapshotting an individual at a specific point can be misleading.
A friend went to boarding school then RAF officer training, so clearly had a m/c upbringing. Then he dropped out and worked for 15-20 years as a lorry driver, for much of that time renting a flat, so was identifiably w/c. Then three relatives, including a sibling, died in very quick succession (poor sod) and he inherited far, far more than he'd ever expected, and he's been squandering it ever since. Over the course of his lifetime so far he's clearly m/c but for best part of 2 decades in the middle was obviously w/c.
The posturing of many of the class warriors on here has to be read in that sort of light.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Fair enough. I'm no Marxist, and certainly not expert enough in such matters to assume my definitions are "correct".
I do still think having enough capital to no longer have to work (on a permanent rather than temp basis) is at least a step away from w/c.
But it's one factor amongst several, all centred (I agree) around your relationship to the MOP.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
No, this is all pretty much bollux.
Using the WC definition of having to sell labour to survive actually casts those having to exist on benefits as MC.
That's why it seems more productive to think about ownership of the MoP.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
traditionaly the bulwark of fascism once its beyond a street movement #justsaynin'
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Although many on benefits are sort of selling their labour - receiving said benefits in return for being part of the "reserve army of labour" that helps hold wages down innit?
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
They're selling it twice for the same amount if you count Workfare exploitation.
'Working class' and 'middle class' are so imprecise as to be useless. 'Proletarian' and 'bourgeois' are precise. Anyone who works for a wage is a proletarian, anyone who receives income from capital is bourgeois. Most people in our society are both at the same time.
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