"Cities are a capitalist abomination. When people are herded out of the countryside and into the city, they lose the ability to grow their own food self-sufficiently. They become part of what the Roman census called the proletarii, the urban lower class who have no land.

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Because they have no land, the urban poor are 100% dependent on a capitalist boss to provide them with food and shelter. This condition is what socialists call "wage-slavery". Even though yes, technically, an urban worker is at liberty to leave their capitalist job at any time, the harsh reality is that they would face immediate starvation and homelessness if they did so. It is the fear of starvation and homelessness that is the "whip" that scourges the urban poor onwards and onwards.

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As a democratic socialist, I believe the only way to free the urban poor from the shackles of capitalist slavery is to set up self-sufficient local communities. A local community can quite easily grow its own food through community gardens, set up its own rainwater catchment, grow and mill its own timber forestry for the construction of housing. There is no reason at all for local communities to be so dependent on outside resources, or to have any homelessness or unemployment. Self-sufficient communities can also massively reduce resource consumption, helping to heal the current environmental crisis we are all going through..."