I know these kinds of hypothetical questions are kind of boring, but I was curious what you guys that about this.
The situation is: I am a relatively wealthy person, with enough investment properties to rent out for income and live off. I decide to rent at a price below the market value and attempt to get tenants who are trying to live in the area but are not financially stable, so I can provide some sort of assistance by giving to them cheaper than they can get elsewhere.
I now don't have to work a single hour a day.
I use a full-time work schedule to do all of the following tasks (aside from other things like cooking, cleaning, exercise) (in no particular order):
- Manage the properties I own
- Study theory
- Attempt various worker organisation activities/union activities
- Participate in Communist Party meetings
- Partake in Communist Party activities
- Volunteer for numerous mutual aid groups
- Protest
- Write (online articles) and all the other sorts of activities. In other words, attempt to be a "professional revolutionary" as I believe Lenin put it.
Would this be a moral course of action? Or does living purely off the rent of workers outweigh dedicating basically my whole spare time to my nation's socialist movement?
Edit: Just for context I'm not actually in this position lol.
the issue with the idea that the landlord does work by maintaining the property is that the work done to maintain the property contributes and maintains the value of the property which the landlord owns thus they do work, keep the value all while charging the tenant.
I agree but that isn't what I meant by work. I'm including the agitation and study as work as well here. This hypothetical landlord would be doing work that might, hypothetically, equal the amount of money they take in. The labour and the income would be decoupled but there would still, again hypothetically be worthwhile labour done.
I think the problem comes down to whether it's reasonable that those specific renters have to pay "for" that specific labour. Would this professional revolutionary and class traitor really make enough of a difference locally that it would be worth the cost to that group of people? Unlikely. So it depends on how you frame it whether this one good landlord™ would be a leech. In a bigger picture perhaps not because useful labour is being done, but if you place the frame around just the landlord-tenant relationship, definitely.
I will say however, if you restrict your revolutionary activities to those that look good and balanced from any angle, in any framing, you limit your chances significantly. Assuming you are doing truly good revolutionary work, those who would call you a hypocrite wouldn't have taken you seriously or engaged with you in good faith anyway.