Hong Kong social land management

[Michael Hoover]

discovered below in stored file:
> 
> By having essentially no landed capital in Hong Kong, what the government
> gets is not a tax, it is actually the ground rent. Under either system it
> could be said that such charges raise property prices and production costs. 
> I do not wish to prettify this, but to make a fundamental point about the
> tactical and strategic possibilities of left-wingers isolating and
> attacking landed capital, and eliminating it, *because Hong Kong shows it
> can be done*. I accept it would therefore be more correct to say in line
> with this analysis that the capitalist Hong Kong system is one in which
> there is only one landed capitalist, the government. It is a state
> capitalism in land.
> Nevertheless this may provide a transitional form which *with class
> struggle* could be used to slice up the capitalists, and move towards more
> effective socialisation of the market.
> Chris Burford
> 
> At 07:57 AM 11/14/98 -0500, Michael Hoover wrote:
> >because the gov't land policy is used to raise revenue, it is 
> >taxation in the form of higher property prices and rents...the 

I meant to place word taxation in quotation marks, although ground
rent would be correct term...point is the deriving of surplus value,
correct?

allow me to play devil's advocate here for a moment: HK gov't land
policy has kept direct taxes low and resulted in large budget
surplus that is, in effect, 'taxation' in excess of public spending
needs that should be returned to 'the people' or spent on public
& social services...real cause of housing crisis lies with govt's
high-land-price policy which deliberately restricts private sector
housing supply, so gov't intervenes in market with subsidized
housing program, also paid for 'the people'...barriers to entry
in the property market undermine people's interests, because
the market is not very contested, no new firms have become
significant suppliers of new housing stock...more market based
solutions to balancing long -term supply with demand and to 
increase competition in property development market is needed...

as for suggestion that leftists can seize control of the existing
capitalist state (even a state monopoly one) for socialist
purposes, didn't Marx write something to the contrary about
workers doing that?  Michael Hoover