Life and Times: Scumbag or not? (2026)

The Life and Times column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘He’s just a scumbag.’ That’s what my neighbour said to me about a local landlord who’s bought up literally dozens of properties in the areas and is letting them to students room by room. The neighbour doesn’t like to be surrounded by students since she sees them as potentially rowdy and trouble-makers. But she’s also indignant that, whenever this landlord purchases a property, he puts up one of his ‘To Let’ boards at the front. In our street there are currently seven houses in succession with those signs on them. In her estimation it makes the place look untidy – ‘like a slum’, as she puts it. And even when a property is let and people are living there, the board stays up – presumably for publicity purposes.

As for myself, though I don’t mind the students and don’t find them troublesome, like my neighbour I’m not particularly happy about all those boards up there permanently. I contacted the landlord’s letting company and actually spoke with him. He’s a young chap called Nick who I’ve known since he was little when his father ran the now defunct shop at the corner of the street. We had an entirely friendly conversation in which he said that it was ‘letting season’ at the moment but assured me that the boards would come down at the end of the month when that period was over. But the boards stayed up and, when I tried to contact him again, I couldn’t get hold of him personally and was told by people in his office that they’d pass on the message. Nothing happened and I’ve sort of given up on that.

Since his boards are not just in my street but on properties all over the area (there are literally dozens and dozens), I asked one of the local councillors whether landlords were entitled to keep their boards up long-term like that. He told me they weren’t and that local regulations state they should be taken down once properties have been let. But the rub, he told me, was that, since it would take too much in the way of time and resources for the council to go round checking and enforcing, all it would do was to inform landlords of their legal duty but with no follow up.

So is Nick a scumbag for what he’s doing? In fact, are all landlords scumbags, as a friend of mind once suggested, since what they’re doing is exploiting the very basic need people have for shelter and, if they (be they students or anyone else) don’t have the money to pay for it, then tough? But there again isn’t that how the money and buying and selling system works more widely, ie, if you can’t pay, you can’t have? In a conversation I once had with a different landlord about this very thing, he expressed the view that someone who grasps opportunities to make money is doing nothing wrong but simply being enterprising and deserves to be rewarded for, as he put it, ‘showing good judgement’.

Actually, looking around my area there’s a whole range of types of landlords. Some of them own just a single property or maybe two and use the income from that to supplement what they earn from working for an employer or from small-scale self-employed activity. Others, like Nick, make it their living, become small-scale capitalists, and are always looking to expand. Other properties still are bought by large private equity companies who spend significant time and expense improving them before letting them out and don’t need to get back the money they’ve spent on them in the short term, since they’re regarded as long-term investments which will ultimately turn a profit for the companies’ shareholders. Of course, there are also landlords (or would-be landlords) who come a cropper in all this in not being able to find tenants at all. The property or properties they own, and on which they may have taken out mortgages, become an albatross around their neck rather than a source of profit and they end up having to sell, so incurring a loss rather than any kind of profit.

But then that’s the way the dog-eat-dog, anarchic system we live in works at so many different levels. It creates winners and losers even among would-be capitalists. Of course, being a winner or loser in quite that way doesn’t apply to the majority of people, those who are members of what we would call ‘the working class’ and who have to sell their energies to an employer day by day in order to provide for themselves and their families. Some do it fairly comfortably, others a lot less so, but there are very few who don’t live with insecurity about whether their wage or salary will be enough to satisfy their material aspirations and indeed, in many cases, whether the employment that brings in that wage or salary will itself continue to be secure.

But coming back to Nick, is it fair to call him a scumbag? What he’s done is to inherit the couple of properties his father owned and taken things, as another neighbour put it, ‘to a new level’. He’s seen opportunities and grabbed them. Can we blame him for that? Probably not, after all making money is what capitalism invites us all to do if we can. And that will carry on until the majority of us collectively decide to get rid of it and bring in a new society of free access to all goods and services where we’re not constantly pitted against one another but follow the more natural human path of cooperation. Then we’ll truly be able to satisfy all our needs, for shelter as well as for life’s other necessities. In the meantime, no one would object if Nick took down those boards.

Howard Moss

Letter: . . . And another view (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

. . .  And another view 

Socialists have always attributed slums to capitalism, yet I have yet to hear them protest against the influx of immigrants into the slums. Have you? This shows how much they care about them, but of course they all have to toe the line like a regiment of soldiers. If all socialists were compelled to put up with immigrants in their houses they would call it downright dictatorship and that is what compulsory integration is nothing less. The landlords and property tycoons want the so-called socialists to tell the workers immigrants do no harm over here and while these money-grabbers are getting fatter the slum-dweller is stuck on a waiting list for a house because the capitalist classes with the co-operation of so-called socialists won’t let them have the houses that they can afford to rent because they are occupied by immigrants.

These immigrants have no sense of social responsibility, they come here knowing we are overcrowded, they drive up the rents of millions of workers, they occupy houses badly needed by our own people, they plant themselves in the slums where they are not wanted, they don’t know where they are wanted, and they are too lazy to fight for better conditions in their own country, and most people know what is meant by their country, but they have been taught that they have a right to stay here. I believe the slum-dweller should enjoy the same privilege as the rest of the community enjoy that is to keep immigrants out of their abodes, but that would be too democratic for integrationists.

Our “Moral Uplifters” tell us we should treat coloured immigrants with respect and decency. Should we really! Indeed! Do these black and white immigrants treat our own people with respect and decency? Do they not plant themselves in the very houses that are already overcrowded with previous immigrants and where they have no state protection from immigrants? It is true they are not wanted anywhere else but that is a sound reason for repatriation not to foist them onto the slum-dweller he has quite enough to put up with, without immigrants.

I have done my best to give a clear and logical answer to your article in the S.S. However if you hear of a more logical explanation for slums I do hope you will let me know.

John Binder

London W.4.

Reply:

Your letter in full would take up four pages of the Socialist Standard. Since it is largely repetitive, we have published a representative extract. We must add that, though you speak of “a clear and logical answer’’ to our article on immigration, most of your letter attacks Aunt Sallies in the form of views not stated by us at all. It also contains a fiction, repeated several times, that people are being forced to have immigrants living in their homes with them. This is not possible under existing legislation.

The single point you make that is relevant to our article is your contention about slums, and over this you present a series of striking self-contradictions. You complain of slums and say (1) that the slums are “lumbered with” immigrants, (2) that “without these immigrants the houses they are occupying would be available to our own people”. As far as we can see, this means that you want “our own people” to have the slums to themselves. You acknowledge that pre-war slums were not caused by immigration, but say “this does not invalidate the argument that immigrants are the cause of crowded slums”. That is not an argument: it is an assertion knowingly made against the facts.

However, what you miss altogether is consideration of the nature of slums. Slums are cheap housing. They are places unfit for habitation that are inhabited nevertheless. Why? Because the inhabitants cannot afford to live anywhere else. Our statement that capitalism causes slums refers to this and nothing else; their existence as dwellings is a direct consequence of working-class poverty. You do not explain how this would be changed by repatriating immigrants, which you advocate. Your assertion that “landlords and property tycoons” are getting “fatter than ever” through immigration is also mistaken. In recent years the number of dwellings let out by private individuals and companies has steadily declined because of the low return from it. This has nothing to do with immigration in any case, but is the result of housing legislation.

We therefore find your letter to be ill-informed, lacking argument, and founded on beliefs similar to those of the Hindu caste system.

Editors.

The Forum: Concerning Rates and Taxes. (1909)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. John Rhind (Old Trafford) writes:

(1) I have often heard it stated in the Socialist Standard, as well as by members of your Party, that the working classes do not pay rates in the form of rent. I fail to see the truth of that statement in view of the fact that my landlord has raised my rent in consequence of the local rates being increased.

(2) Again, do not the workers pay taxes (national) in the form of additional charges being made on such commodities as beer, spirits and tobacco, when, as recently, the duty on these things has risen ?

(3) If rent is a portion of surplus-value, as you maintain, can it be rightly said that I, for instance, do not pay rent ? My experience is that I receive so much in wages and out of this I pay rent. Do you deny this?—John Rhind

[We have numbered the items for convenience sake.—ed. “S.S.”]

As to No. 1 (first correcting the point of the use of the plural—working classes. Our correspondent does not see this in the “S.S.”) Mr. Rhind also fails to see that landlords do not and cannot charge a rental at will, but only as the state of the house-room market allows. Of course the landlords are always on the look out for opportunities to get increased rentals, and the plea of the burden of higher rents will often serve to catch a “flat.” On the other hand an increased demand for house-room will enable the landlord to demand more, while the rates bogey is paraded as the reason. In some of the suburbs of London, such as Walthamstow, West Ham, and Tottenham, rentals have been lowered although rates have been rising. Mr. Chiozza Money, in his “Riches and Poverty” (p. 79), says, and gives supporting opinions for the contention, that the rates are, finally, a charge upon the landowner.

(2) No, the workers do not pay the taxes (national), that is to say are not, by so much, out of pocket; for if in some cases it can be shown that the imposts have the effect of raising the price of commodities, these latter if consumed by the workers enter into the cost of production of labour-power. As a consequence, and in the long run, such wages have to be paid as will meet this cost.

As to the extra duties imposed by the present budget upon beer, spirits and tobacco, we are of opinion that the last has not been heard, by any means, upon this matter. It were well to note that the price of alcoholic liquors has not risen all over the country, and that the Press reports cases where retailers have defied the orders of the brewers to raise the price; these same retailers, of course, doing a roaring trade in consequence. The tobacco trade is, to-day, very largely monopolised, its controllers being in a position, at least for a time, to raise prices, and they are, of course, only too glad of the opportunity to do so when, as at present, with the excuse of the increased duties they seem justified, and the least outcry is to be expected. Their power to exact higher prices is, however, curbed by the tendency of demand to slacken as prices rise. This point is emphasised in the recent manifesto of the brewers on the new budget duties, wherein they show the intimate connection of an increase in prices with a decrease in sales.

The attention of our correspondent is further directed to the following quotation (from the Star of July 19th), which speaks for itself.

“Notices have been received by the retailers announcing that the price of Messrs. Wills’s ‘Gold Flake’ cigarettes is to revert to the old figure.

When the Budget was announced, the price to the consumer was raised to 3½d., but the result has not justified expectation, for the price is now to go back to 3d.

It is probable that other brands of cigarettes will come into line and revert to the old retail prices.”

(3) Do we deny that our correspondent pays rent ? Not likely ! We are not in possession of the facts. However, taking our questioner as representative, he most certainly pays away part of his wages as “rent,” which in this ease is clearly the price of house-room. Now such rent is not all surplus-value, and we have never stated that it is such. Ground-rent, received by the ground-landlord, is distinctly “a portion of surplus-value.” Mr. Rhind’s difficulty is that he has only a confused notion of our position, and space is lacking for us to dual more fully with the matter here. He will find our position regarding taxation in general more fully explained in the October 1904 number of the Socialist Standard, while the particular question of the rates is dealt with at length in the issue of June, 1905.—Editor “S.S.”

Lords of the Land (2025)

Book Review from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis. By Nick Bano. Verso £10.99.

The author is a tenants’ rights lawyer, and here he gives a thorough account of the rise of private landlordism in Britain, its consequences, and how he believes it can be done away with. A number of examples of cases illustrate how devastating tenants’ situations can become.

Back in the 1970s, council housing was much more widespread than now, and private landlordism appeared to be on the way out, with just seven percent of households renting privately. But under Thatcher and later governments, council housing declined and private landlordism grew. It is mainly small landlords (about 2.5 million of them) who rent homes to tenants, while corporate landlords primarily invest in commercial property. The poorest tenants may pay over half their income to landlords; as Bano puts it, poorer people transfer the bulk of their wages to better-off people for poor-quality housing.

The 1972 Housing Finance Act attacked low council rents, and more generally the state has facilitated and supported the raising of rents. Tenants find it hard, and even impossible, to resist a rent increase, rent strikes are illegal, and landlords have the legal right to make someone homeless (‘no fault’ evictions are still legal). Assured shorthold tenancies give power to the landlord, and increases in Universal Credit mean that tenants who received these benefits can pay more in rent. Some landlords even charge viewing fees so that would-be tenants can have a look at a property.

Bano supports Marx’s view that the interests of landlords are opposed to everyone else’s. Tenants want lower rents; capitalists want this too, as it means lower wages, and they also want lower commercial rent for offices etc. Residential property is an attractive form of investment, and the author refers to ‘a large petty-bourgeois rentier class’ who are ‘dependent on housing wealth’. But small landlords are not a separate class, as in most cases they still depend on wage labour to survive, even if their income is topped up by rent.

The real problem, the author says, is not the supply of housing, but its cost. Around seventy percent of housing is under-occupied (though it would have been good to have a bit more detail on this). He advocates ‘the decommodification of housing to ensure universal access and good conditions’. But this is not going to happen under capitalism, and what is needed is the ending of production for sale, not just for housing but for all goods and services, which is what socialism will mean.

Paul Bennett

Housing in London (1965)

From the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The root cause of the housing problem in big cities like London is the capitalist system under which housing accommodation is bought and sold. For many years now the housing market has been subject to various controls but neither these, nor council houses, nor subsidies, alter the basic characteristic of housing under capitalism.

Once a city is established as such, the economics of capitalism ensure that the growth of demand for workers assumes a momentum of its own, for the great concentration of people in a city provides a vast market for so-called consumer goods and services. Even in times of depression the drift to the cities continues. But it is in times of full employment that the housing problem becomes acute because in such conditions the rate of growth of employment usually exceeds the rate of growth of housing. Inevitably this creates problems. This basically is what is happening in London today. As the Milner Holland Report puts it:

If the growth of housing does not match the growth o( employment there will be trouble of some kind.

Precisely, and they might have added that, given this basic situation, any measures applied to deal with it can only be palliatives. The Report is in fact a very useful document for exposing the futility of reformism on the housing question, though of course it was not meant to be.

Before going on to look into this, however, it will be useful first to clear up any misunderstanding that the words landlord and rent may create. The source of all Rent, Interest and Profit is the unpaid labour of the working class, using the term Rent to refer to the share of the proceeds of working class exploitation which those who own the land are able to extract from the capitalist class. It does not refer to house-rent which is a different thing altogether. House-rent is not a share of the unpaid labour of the working class but it is a price; in fact the price paid for accommodation.

In the 19th century it was correct to speak of a landlord class distinct and separate from the industrial capitalist class, and indeed between these two classes there was a struggle over taxation and the control of the state. This landlord class was composed of landowners pure and simple. Today the term is also used to refer to those who are engaged in the business of selling accommodation. These two types of landlord should not.be confused; the Labour Party and other demagogues frequently attack “landlords” just as, long ago, John Stuart Mill or Lloyd George tried to dupe the workers into doing the dirty work for the capitalist class in dealing with their enemies, the landowners.

As a matter of fact most of the so-called landlords today are not landowners at all. It is a fact that among the groups which the notorious Rachman swindled were those who owned the land on which his houses stood. The basic point here is this: the worker is exploited at the point of production. He is not exploited anywhere else—and no more by the private landlord from whom he purchases accommodation than by the shopkeeper from whom he purchases the other things he needs. He can be swindled by such people—and the Milner Holland Report does expose some swindles by landlords—but this is a different matter altogether and besides is not confined to working class buyers. The worker is exploited as a producer, not as a buyer.

Further, many members of the working class are themselves technically landlords as the table reproduced from the Report shows.

As can be seen the vast majority of private landlords in London only have up to two or three tenants while sixty per cent have only one tenant. These figures speak for themselves. They suggest that many private landlords are members of the working class letting a room or two to supplement their income from working—a point which should be borne in mind when the demagogues shout about “private landlordism”. It means that measures taken against private landlords in general, while perhaps bettering the position of some members of the working class, hit those others who supplement their wages in this way. This, incidentally, confirms that it is impossible to unite the working class on any reform issue because reform movements are not based on the class interests of the working class as exploited producers. Housing reform movements are no exception.

The Table also shows inequality in the ownership of housing accommodation. This inequality is not as great as might be expected. Another Table in the Report shows that “only about six per cent of all dwellings in Greater London are financed by capital drawn directly from the capital market.” This figure also speaks for itself: investment in private houses for rent is unprofitable. This has various results. The big capitalists stay clear of housing, which is thus left to small capitalists and people like Rachman. The Labour Party went to town over Rachman but they overlooked the fact that he was the product of the policies, such as Rent Control, they had been advocating against private landlords. It was these measures which contributed in no small way to making investment in private housing for rent unprofitable—thus opening the way for the Rachmans!

When the Rent Act of 1957 was being discussed Socialists were invited to oppose it,—in effect to support Rent Control. Besides pointing out that at best Rent Control could only be a palliative, we drew attention to the fact that there was evidence to show that Rent Control gave rise to its own problems, in particular to the neglect and decay of privately owned and rented houses, thus worsening conditions for some workers. In other words it made the situation worse for some in improving it for others. A typical reform. Rent Control is in fact a classic case of the futility of reformism, of running fast to get nowhere. The Milner Holland Report contains many similar examples of much-touted reforms and their miserable results.

On compulsory purchase of sweating landlords by local authorities:

Some authorities expressed the view when giving evidence to us, that compulsory purchase was no way of dealing with this problem. They pointed out that even if a compulsory purchase order was confirmed the owner received the full market value of his house as compensation, inflated in some degree by the very high rents which he was charging. With the proceeds of the compulsory sale he was then able to buy another house and charge the same high rents, thus defeating the whole purpose of the exercise.

Of local authorities refusing to use statutory powers to improve conditions:

. . . statutory powers, though in theory adequate to deal with overcrowding and the worst effects of multiple occupation, are virtually unused in some districts where the problem is most acute. This may be due to the fear that any action taken is likely to result in evictions to relieve overcrowding, to obviate the need for extra facilities, to make room for extra facilities, or simply as a reprisal against tenants whose complaints have prompted action by the local authority. The use of the available powers in a situation of acute shortage therefore tends to improve the situation in terms of dwellings but may shift the people suffering bad conditions into equally unsuitable accommodation elsewhere, or may even make them homeless . . . The choice is between two evils: on the one hand, allowing over-occupation to continue, and on the ether, insisting on improvements which at best cause distress, and at worst result in homelessness.

Of slum clearance making the situation worse:

The progress of slum clearance intensifies the competition for living space, since it must cater for numbers of households substantially larger than the number of dwellings to be demolished, and it may also encourage a further subdivision of existing households into smaller and more numerous units.

Other examples of the futility of reformism which can be gleaned from the Report are: of slum clearance getting nowhere as slums appear faster than they are cleared; of tenants' legal rights as mere scraps of paper for fear of eviction; of concentration on building new houses leading to the neglect of old homes; of tenants refusing improvements because they could not afford the higher rents which would result.

In conditions of shortage it is always the supplier, in this case the private landlord; who has the upper hand. What is happening in London is that in the competition for housing accommodation those who can't pay get the worse. Some don't get anything. At present there are 1,500 homeless families, some 7,000 people, in London and their numbers are growing. These are the lower-paid section of the working class, who have to put up with really bad housing conditions.

It seems likely that the next reform in this field will be a measure to try to improve the position of this section by giving them greater security of tenure or subsidising special housing for them. No doubt this reform too will have its catch: some other section of the working class will find itself worse off. To quote again the passage from the Report: “if the growth of housing docs not match the growth of employment there will be trouble of some kind". The only question is of what kind, and for which section of the working class. The point is, given the basic situation some people must suffer. The politicians are merely arguing about who this should be.

Overcrowding, high rents, homelessness intimidation and the other ills from which many workers suffer are a direct result of fact that demand for accommodation exceeds the supply. In large cities like London this must happen and is likely to be permanent. The Report itself says as much: “the housing problems confronting great cities . . . are of a long term if not permanent character”. The Report also, very appropriately, draws attention to the fact that this problem is not new. They quote from a similar report made by Charles Booth in 1901. Of course since then some housing conditions have improved in many respects but as the Report points out the problem “remains fundamentally the same."

Adam Buick

Sharing our rising prosperity (1962)

From the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

A recent issue of the West Middlesex Gazette front-paged the story of the plight of Indian immigrants in Southall, West London. Unable on arrival in this country to compete with the native-born workers for housing, the Indians are forced to spend a sardine-like existence in houses owned by their fellow countrymen.

These landlords are determined to make something out of their investment and by living themselves in one or two rooms they can let off the rest, with complete disregard for comfort or sanitation. The small exploiter is often the more ruthless, for his field of operation and expansion is so much more limited. The wretched tenants are charged sums ranging from £4 for one room with little or no furniture. In some cases 15 persons are using a kitchen or 20 using one W.C. Housing laws are disregarded, no rent books are issued and attempts to protest are met by threats, or expulsion. The tenants often unorganised and being coloured and poor have only a remote chance of obtaining accommodation elsewhere. For this reason, the newspaper concerned was careful to suppress the names and addresses of the lodgers they had interviewed.

Local officials, councillors and M.P’s. all express concern and promise to look into the matter. When immigrants flock into areas already suffering from inadequate housing for the working class, one would have thought that local dignitaries must at least have some idea about where they are going to live and under what conditions.

Industries and transport then needed certain types of labour (generally for the lower paid jobs) and politicians will seldom seriously interfere with the urgent needs of the capitalist class. After all, the working class elected them to office to run capitalism, whether they call themselves Tory or Labour.

Local councils will run into a problem if they force coloured landlords to unload their over crowded tenants. Where can they go? A strong prejudice prevents most white landlords from having them, and so does their low wage earning capacity. It would be a brave council unconcerned about the threat of not being re-elected, that placed coloured persons at the head of an ever-lengthening housing list. While such sores of human tragedies can be eased somewhat, there is a very real danger that coloured groups will remain in their plight. Capitalism pulls down and rebuilds the Gorbals and recreates at the same time a 20th century brown skinned Seven Dials in Southall and elsewhere.

Statements made by George Pargiter, Labour M.P. for Southall, reflect the mental floundering of our left wing planners. "We must deport the landlords," he says. But what if the landlords are native or have become naturalised? Property ownership has inflicted some shocking human misery on the needy, and nationality has little or nothing to do with it. Mr. Pargiter condemned the Tory government's Immigration Act; he now advocates that everyone, black or white, should be discouraged from settling in Southall. He need have no worry about keeping out one group in society; the capitalist class, irrespective of their colour, by virtue of their wealth have a strong objection to eating with a dustbin under the dining table or having their penthouse overshadowed by a gas works.

"The new towns must take more people” points out Southall’s M.P. Alas for our Labour planners, the mills of capitalism are now throwing up the evil of unemployment in such new towns as Stevenage and newcomers are not likely to be very welcome there.

People live in bad surroundings because their wages do not enable them to get anything better. Being without property, most people have to sell their energies to an employer in order to live. The wage we receive for that is basically determined by the social cost of producing our skill and knowledge. No matter how hard people may work, their wages remain low because it costs little to reproduce their labour power.

The working class as a whole are poor, especially when their incomes are compared with the amount of wealth they as a class produce. Within the wages system some sections of the working class are forced down to the point of degradation. We have the technical means to produce fine homes for everyone, but capitalist society will not readily do so unless a profit can be made from them. The higher the prospective profit the greater the incentive to production.

The threat of unemployment is always with us and with it can come more serious clashes between black and white, British and foreigners, over precious jobs. The maniacal theories of Hitler, despised and crushed only yesterday, can be revived again in certain conditions; and those conditions are always latent in capitalism. It is not yet too late for workers to start to overthrow the false conceptions that crowd into their minds.

T. Law

Proper Gander: Flipped Off (2024)

The Proper Gander column from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Property makeover shows have been a regular fixture-and-fitting in the TV schedules since the BBC’s ratings hit Changing Rooms in the ‘90s. This century, the genre itself has been made over, going upmarket from redecorating neighbours’ lounges to renovating entire houses. BBC One’s Homes Under The Hammer has been popular enough for 27 series of formulaic episodes of the presenters looking round tired properties being sold at auction, meeting the people who buy them, and catching up again after refurbishments have been carried out. Announcing any profit made from the homes’ recalculated monetary value is the programme’s punchline, and appropriately, its title sequence features model houses wrapped in banknotes.

Wanting to snare some of the BBC’s viewers, Channel 4 responded with The Great House Giveaway. This has taken the setup of before-and-after renovation and stretched it out to go into more detail about the process in between, adding a game show element with contestants and prizes. The ‘giveaway’ in the title is misleading, as the contestants aren’t given a house, but are there to win money towards a deposit to get on the ‘property ladder’. Paired up and with varying amounts of expertise, they revamp a dilapidated semi or bungalow purchased at auction by the programme makers. With a timescale and a budget to replace bathrooms, knock down walls or install new kitchens, the aim is to re-sell the house afterwards at a higher price. The format is televised ‘flipping’: the practice of buying a property to sell it again at a profit rather than live in it. This profit is the contestants’ prize, after costs for going over budget, stamp duty, council tax, auction fees, utility bills, loan interest, insurance, solicitors and surveyors are deducted. More recent editions were filmed when the property market ‘went haywire’, leading to many refurbished houses being sold at auction for less than expected, and sometimes at a loss.

We watch these programmes to see the buildings being transformed from run down to done up, with the financial stakes intended to add some tension and adrenaline. The programme makers realise that paying stamp duty or calculating loan interest aren’t as visual as someone swinging a mallet at a fireplace, so it’s understandable that they don’t dwell much on accounts and bureaucracy. But emphasising the renovation over the finances, at least until the reveal of the profit or loss at the end, distracts from the tawdry basis of The Great House Giveaway. The contestants slog for months doing up each property for an uncertain amount of financial reward, if any, making it harsher than the average gameshow.

Both The Great House Giveaway and Homes Under The Hammer illustrate the commodification of where we live. The property being renovated is understood in terms of its financial value: the amount of money it sells for, the cost of materials and labour, the admin and legal fees, the hoped-for surplus. It’s a good thing that a house gets renovated in each episode, but in The Great House Giveaway especially, this is a means to a monetary end rather than because it benefits whoever moves in. Alongside this commodification is the separation between who owns a house and who lives in it. If we’re renting, we’re beholden to the landlord, and if we have a mortgage, we’re in debt for decades, and in both situations we risk losing the right to live in our home if we don’t keep up with the payments. In capitalism, much of our sense of security comes from how secure our home is, and this depends on how strong we are in the turbulent economic market.

People living in a future society of free access and common ownership of land and industries will have a different kind of relationship to where they call home. We can’t really empathise with this now, as our view is shaped by living within capitalism’s alienating system. The sense of security which would come with a home in socialism wouldn’t rely on something external and out of our control, as in capitalism, but on whether it suits our own needs. With production directly aimed at satisfying what communities require, there would be no reason for people to live in overcrowded, damp buildings made of shoddy or dangerous materials. We could have the flexibility to choose whether to remain in one home for years or decades, or to travel around, staying in different places for shorter periods. There would likely be a wider understanding of what makes a household, with the freedom to live by ourselves, in families, with friends or as part of larger groups. These variations exist now, of course, but the difference is that in capitalism, our choices are constrained by our economic position, while in a socialist society, our choices would be based only on preferences and practicalities.

Communities would still need some oversight of how housing is organised, with frameworks agreed democratically based on what’s needed. The concepts of ‘owning’ and ‘renting’ properties as we understand them now wouldn’t apply, as these relate to an economic and legal context which won’t exist. There could be some kind of agreement between a household and a community about how long they plan to live in a particular home, if the circumstances require it. And communities would still have to make sure there are the resources, the know-how and the means to build and maintain homes, which will be more straightforward without having to take finances into account. A socialist society might even have television programmes about renovating properties, although any retro broadcasts of The Great House Giveaway or Homes Under The Hammer will be nigh-on incomprehensible.

Mike Foster

What to do about the Property Speculators (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whichever party wins the coming General Election will have had to promise to curb the property speculators. In the arguments over the three-day week, fuel shortages, and the belt-tightening enforced to try to deal with British capitalism’s troubles, they have become the universal bêtes noires. Why, it is said, should the miners be denied a modest wage-increase when the speculators roll in unearned riches ? Who is going to be impressed by the Government’s call for sacrifices while Harry Hyams swells his fortune by keeping a mammoth office-building vacant for years ?

These are the voices of common-sense and fair play — and the sad truth is that they are irrelevant. If the appeals to run speculators out of town were responded-to, no difference would be made to the situation. That is why the present Government or its successor will not mind responding to them, if it has to. The Left, with its unvarying stupidity, has been demanding that “something be done” for years; in the agitation over housing and homelessness Hyams’ Centre Point remains an obligatory gathering-place and his name daubed on protest banners galore. A recent newspaper report showed the ultimate cure for profiteering in the Land of the Left:

Two directors of a Soviet drinks factory have been shot for leaving the fruit out of the fruit juice they were producing. The newspaper Babinski Rabochi says the two from the Southern Republic of Azerbaydzhan, sold a mixture of water, citric acid and sugar, pocketing more than £400,000. Their appeal was rejected and they were shot.

(Guardian, 3rd Jan. 1974)

No doubt this sounded, to some, like the way to treat them. But will it stop privileged sections raking-in in Russia ? Not likely. Will it make a single worker better off? Of course not.

Profits Galore

Property developers have indeed had a bonanza in Britain since the war. Joe Levy’s profit from the development of the Euston Centre in 1967 was estimated at £22 million (Oliver Marriott, The Property Boom). In September 1972 it was said that sales of land in the Tolmers Square Development Area of London had “been taking place at the rate of £800,000 to £1,000,000 per acre’’ (Town Clerk’s report to Camden Council, 28th Sep. 1972). Of Hyams, The Observer on 23rd December said that his personal fortune

has increased by £300 million in the past six years — at a time when he has hardly been engaged in active development at all, but simply sitting on his steadily appreciating portfolio of office blocks.

Astronomical as figures like these may seem, it is absurd to imagine they are unique to property development and dealing. The same page of the Observer business section on 23rd December reported that the British Leyland motor company’s profits for the year had risen to £51.3 millions, and a race-horse owner was offering to give Cambridge University £10 million. A “Guide to Property’’ recently distributed by the First National Finance Corporation contains graphs of Financial Times Share Indices that put this in perspective. The all-share index includes property. It will be seen that while property in its recent boom period has been the best investment, other shares rise proportionately; and at other times have compared favourably. Incidentally, Counter Information Services have just issued (16th Jan.) a report on the enormous profits of insurance companies and pension funds, of which £4,000 million is estimated to have gone to back property developers—including substantial support for Hyams by the Co-operative Insurance Society.

Someone to Hiss

Supporters and revisionists alike of the capitalist system love a scapegoat. There is nothing admirable about the speculators. The illustrations to Marriott’s book are mostly portrait photographs of well-known property tycoons, and it would be hard to find another collection of faces of such ugliness and vulgarity. Nevertheless, they are only the latest in a succession of ogres but for whom, it is conveyed, the capitalist system would make us all as happy as kings. Their place in the nineteen-twenties was held by “the hard-faced men’’ who had done well out of the 1914-18 war. In the ’thirties it was the arms manufacturers. Malcolm Muggeridge says in his autobiography:

Armament manufacturers — commonly known among us as merchants of death — were a godsend in the way of providing us with an identifiable villain; one of the great needs of the political left being to be able to point an accusing finger at someone, or some corporate body, as being responsible for public and private wrongs and misfortunes.

It is part of the same tradition that the property speculators’ diabolic reputation rests largely on their immunity, so far, to legislation. Laws aimed at quelling them have helped them boom again. The post-war Town and Country Planning Acts, intended to snuff out speculative building, created favourable new conditions for it. The taxation laws in force till 1965, by assuming the developer who did not sell to be making no profit, gave him a magnificent advantage. Most uproarious of all was George Brown’s 1964 prohibition of office-building in London, which pushed up rents and profits and earned Brown the title of “the developers’ best friend”.

The most recent piece of legislation was Antony Barber’s taxation measures in his budget of 17th December 1973. The chief provision was to tax first lettings of new buildings as equivalent to outright sales. Financial writers like Bennie Gray and Christopher Booker in The Observer (as well as Labour critics) were quick to point out that applied to established examples this was anything but crippling, and concluded:

In other words, the situation whereby property profits have generally come to be regarded as the most conspicuous example of economic injustice in pur society is likely to remain.

It is interesting that Oliver Marriott, when his book appeared in 1967, thought the property boom had been demolished. He wrote at the end:

The era of the property tycoon as the arch-symbol of capitalism is over. Forces of competition and taxation have ended the days when an individual could rapidly amass a fortune with a few well-chosen deals and developments.

A Simple Answer

The rise of the office-building tycoons has been a direct outcome of the workings of capitalism. Its main sources have been wartime destruction; obsolescence; amalgamations of companies and the growth of fresh forms of commerce; the spread of administrative machinery; and the compulsion to rebuild town centres on account of road traffic. Given that proliferation of causes, there is no difficulty in seeing why fortunes have been made and why legislation has failed. Indeed, the motives of such legislation are always contradictory ones — acquiescing in the need for more development while hoping not to be shown the “unacceptable face” it inevitably wears.

It is worth remarking also on the belief that little or nothing is done about the speculators because Conservatives in government will not harm their capitalist friends. This could apply to Labour also. But the capitalist class is not united in its commercial interests; at any time, a section will be sent to the wall to suit the more vital needs of other sections. An example is the Act of 1915 which smothered landlords in the interests of industrial capitalists and the war. If the need were strong enough, any government would come down on property speculators. What must always be borne in mind, however, is that legislation is enacted for severely practical purposes and hardly ever for moral ones.

The contrast between poverty and plenty is an inevitable feature of capitalism: a class-divided society cannot help but display it. Likewise, in a society built round production for profit, it is no use lamenting that excessive profits are made. One can imagine fat capitalists tittering behind their hands at the naiveté of “radical” sentiments like Michael Duane’s in a letter to The Guardian on 7th January:

In the national emergency of war it was found impossible to create the unity necessary for survival until, by rationing food, clothing and fuel, we had demonstrated the good faith of our democratic protestations.

That is the kind of assurance rulers want. Given it, they know a few sops and humbug-gestures of “good faith” will quieten the murmurs — and the system will go on as before.

Rather than talking of injustice as if there were an alternative to be had, working men and women should ask why the benefits of their labour are unfailingly taken by somebody else. When the working class decides that this state of affairs can continue no longer and capitalism must go, the end of speculation in property, shares and lives will have come at last. The sight of vast wealth being accumulated by parasites who simply happened to be in the right place at the right time, understandably makes people sick; but none of us will feel better until we have established Socialism.

Robert Barltrop

Cooking the Books: Buying to leave empty (2007)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the 1970s Centre Point, a 32-storey office block in the centre of London at the junction between Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, was the centre of a scandal. It had been built with money put up by a notorious property tycoon of the time, Harry Hyams. Once built Hyams kept it empty for many years because, with a boom in the property market, its value rose constantly – but only as long as it remained empty; if it had been let the rent, and so its value, would have been fixed for 10-15 years. A classic case of property speculation.

At the same time homelessness was becoming a problem and people, quite rightly, asked why was a building with the amount of space that Centre Point had being kept empty when more and more people had to sleep on the streets or in hostels. It became a symbol of what Edward Heath, the Prime Minister of the time, called in another context “the unacceptable face of capitalism”. There is still a housing charity pointedly called “Centrepoint”.

Today the same problem has arisen again, though not in such a spectacular fashion. According to an article in the Bricks and Mortar section of the Times (19 October) there are over a “million vacant homes” in the UK, made up, according to the Empty Homes Agency, of 840,000 actual homes (houses and flats) and 420,000 homes that could be provided in disused commercial property.

One reason is that some owners can’t afford to repair them. But there’s another reason:

“Another factor is speculation, where a buyer has bought a property for its investment potential but does not wish to find tenants. David Ireland, chief executive of the Empty Homes Agency, says that this is a growing problem, especially in the new-build market, which has attracted ‘buy-to-leave’ investors who take the view that keeping the property empty will extend its new-build premium. House prices in recent years have made this worse, as generous capital appreciation has reduced the need of some buyers to secure rental income.”

So, once again, there is homelessness alongside empty homes because market conditions make it more beneficial for the owners to keep them empty rather than let them.

This is par for the course under capitalism where houses are not built primarily for people to live in, but are commodities produced for sale with a view to profit. This is why people have to buy or rent their homes, so realising a profit for the building firms or the landlord – and the middlemen such as banks, building societies and estate agencies.

Houses are different from other commodities in one important respect: they last a long time and are fixed on land. It was in fact the price of the land on which Centre Point was built that went up, not that of the building itself. It’s the same with the buy-to-leave-empty houses. And it is this that allows owners, big and small, to speculate on rising land values.

The price of land is “irrational” in the sense that, land, not being the product of labour, has no value in the Marxian sense. Its price depends purely on supply and demand, a pure monopoly price which an owner is able to extract from the rest of society simply because they happen to have a legal right to a piece of the Earth’s surface. But then, as a system geared to making profits instead of satisfying needs, the whole capitalist system is irrational from the human point of view.

Letter: More about Rents (1972)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Editorial Committee is slipping. The reason why Glasgow people won their rent strike had nothing to do with house building having ceased. There had been housing shortage before the war, as indeed there still is, but the tenants did not and do not effectively challenge the landlords as they did in 1915 when the landlords tried to put up the rents; it seemed to them quite a natural thing to do since the butchers, grocers, etc. were all putting up their prices. People had to have food but, as they discovered, they did not have to pay the landlords; indeed, there was a decided advantage in not doing so, they had more money to spend in the shops. That is what forced the Government to step in and save the rent system.

If tenants could not be forced to pay rent in 1915 it is obvious they could not be forced to pay rent today if they stood together and refused to do so.

The Editorial Committee also assume that if tenants refuse to pay rent it will enable the non-landlord members of the capitalist class to reduce wages by that amount. Why? If, by combined action, the workers free themselves against the burden of rents they will find themselves strong enough to refuse to accept reduced wages; in fact, they would rapidly, having realised their strength, demand increased wages, finally making profit taking impossible and so ending the capitalist system. This is the reply to the last paragraph in the Committee’s reply to me; it shows them what the working class would achieve by first of all destroying the landlord class. Certainly, every household would be better off by spending money for themselves instead of giving it to the rent collector.

It is quite likely that I am about the oldest reader of “Socialist Standard” still alive. I started in 1907, I used buy it off “Hutch” ‘a member of the Tooting S.P.G.B., after that I got it in Charing Cross Road and now that I am a refugee on the South Coast I get it by post direct from Clapham. I have always read it to the great advantage of my faith in Socialism. It is only on this matter of rents that I have found the S.P.G.B. not agreeing to any working class struggle. I am well aware that, at the same time, they warn the struggle can’t succeed until all the workers of the World become Socialists which, of course, is absurd. For instance, in Bulgaria today the workers pay no rent or rates or suffer any deduction from their pay for pensions. Why? Because the Bulgarian State owns 80 per cent of all productive work, the present remaining 20 per cent is covered by a very small income tax.

Tom Braddock,

East Preston.

Reply:

The questions referred to here arise from the article Why Must the Rent Go Up ? in the Socialist Standard for January this year. Tom Braddock’s first letter disputing the Socialist Party’s attitude to rent control appeared, with our reply, in the July issue.

On the question of what happened in Glasgow in 1915 having “nothing to do with house building having ceased”, we quote from Housing Finance and Development by A. J. Merrett and Allen Sykes (Longmans, 1965). In the opening chapter they say:

“House building virtually ceased with the advent of war and rents began to rise, particularly in munitions-producing areas. This provoked an outcry such that in 1915 the government passed the first rent restriction Act — the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act, 1915. It froze the rents of all unfurnished tenancies (approximately 85 per cent of the total) below certain limits at the August 1914 level, and landlords were virtually forbidden to evict protected tenants save for obvious defaults such as non-payment of rent.”

This passage also makes clear that Braddock’s assertion in his second paragraph is untrue. It is correct only in the technical sense that — of course — tenants could not be forced to pay rent raised above the level permitted by their wages, i.e. to produce money they had not got. The alternative to the 1915 Act would have been for the government to let wages go up to meet increasing rents; instead, the Act restrained wage demands by keeping rents low — and provided also that workers, in Glasgow or anywhere else, were forced to pay them. Braddock appears not to realize that this “blow against landlords”, as he called it in his previous letter, was struck not by the workers but by the government in the wider interests of capitalism.

Second, our reply did not say that the non-payment of rent would enable employers “to reduce wages by that amount”. Wage cuts have not operated for a number of years. What happens nowadays is that pay increases endeavour to keep up with the cost of living, and where part of the cost of living is artificially held down by subsidies or controls the effect is to check the pressure for pay increases. Braddock must have read, of late, that the Labour Party wants the new rent rises postponed for just this reason: that the keeping down of rents is essential to make “an incomes policy” — that is, wage restraint — work.

Last — leaving aside the remarks about Bulgaria, which show more confusion than is possible to deal with in a short reply — Tom Braddock says the contention that the majority of workers in the developed countries must become Socialists or “the struggle can’t succeed” is absurd. It is nothing like as absurd as the urging that what workers should continue with is rent strikes and attempts to reform capitalism. This sort of “struggle” has been going on for more than a century without the workers’ position in society changing; and we are asked to support more of the same thing!

Editorial Committee.

Blogger's Note:

Not sure what happened with the fact checking for the Editorial Committee's reply to Tom Braddock's letter but the article Why Must the Rent Go Up ? actually appeared in the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard, not the January issue and Tom Braddock's first reply to that article appeared in the September 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard, not the July issue.

A Look Round. (1906)

From the January 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

A comrade sends me what he describes as a “Problem for Socialists.” At an Eastern seaside town, much frequented during July, August, and September by holiday makers, there was a small piece of land near the sea, of no value, too sandy for cultivation and too shifty for house building. It was let to a few fishermen for three or four shillings a year to dry their nets upon.

* * *

One Spring, however, two men went to the landlord and offered to hire the land during the summer mouths at a rental of £4 per month, to which the landlord willingly consented. The hirers fenced the land, erected a booth and dressing-room, obtained two or three hundred chairs, and announced that, weather permitting, concerts would be given twice a day during the season. The troupe, consisting of three women and four men, soon arrived. They were successful and at the end of the season were at least £100 to the good.

* * *

In the following Spring they again went to the landlord and proposed to hire the land as before. But the “ramrod man” would not agree unless the hirers would pay £16 per month. And in that manner, without any effort on his part, the landlord was enabled to take to himself all the profit that the musical troupe, by their work, ability and persistency, could make.

* * *

“What a shameful affair. How unjust.” And my correspondent adds that the landlord was the Town Council ! He asks whether this fact made the transaction any juster, and what would occur under Socialism in similar circumstances.

* * *

Now, excepting to those persons who imagine that a municipality under capitalism is anything but a capitalist body, trading on capitalist lines with the object of making a profit out of their enterprises for the benefit of the property owners, the action of the particular municipality will evoke no surprise or condemnation. Is it not urged by land “reformers” that Public Bodies should secure and retain possession of land in order that they may obtain the “unearned increment,” which now goes to the individual landlord ?

* * *

As to what would happen in similar circumstances under Socialism, my correspondent will agree, upon reflection, that there could be no similar circumstances. Under Socialism the people will not only produce, by their own highly organised collective effort, the material wealth necessary to existence, but will also, by associated effort, provide their own amusements and pastimes, where desirable. You would not have, in the Socialist State, some folks providing amusement for others, as a speculation, depending for their sustenance upon individual contributions from pleased or pitying members of the community.

* * *

Of course, no Socialist, unless he is a very raw recruit, wastes his time putting forward any cut-and-dried scheme which he claims will be the method of detailed organisation in the Socialist State. He knows that when the necessary mental revolution which must precede the economic revolution has been accomplished, the people will be more capable of settling the details of the new society than anyone now living. The Socialist can only advocate the principles upon which he believes Society should be based and upon which he believes it will be based. Because, unless that which he thinks should happen is likely to happen, he is simply wasting himself. He claims that Socialism is scientific because he has carefully studied the history of pre-capitalist states of society and watched the developments and tendencies of the present. He can show that the tendency is towards the most economical and effective organisation of the production of wealth. But to-day this organisation is in the hands of a class, comprising the individual capitalist, the trust and the capitalist municipality, all making up the capitalist state. The interests considered are capitalist interests and the function of the Socialist is to convince the people of the advantages of this organisation being controlled by and in the interests of the wealth producers. When this is accomplished the people will establish the Socialist Republic.

* * *

It sometimes happens that municipal enterprise is uneconomical and reactionary as compared with the enterprise of the Trust and Combine and it is just a question as to whether Socialists should not oppose this form of capitalist development.

* * *

Rent is robbery. It matters not to me whether I am robbed by the ducal landlord or the municipal landlord and the extent to which municipalities claim to be enabled to reduce the rates by trading is no concern of the working-class. Rents are not reduced because rates go down. In fact, the opening up of a tramway route, by which the municipality may be enabled to reduce rates by a halfpenny or so, often causes rents to rise, by rendering more accessible districts where hitherto competition for house accommodation, which determines rents, was exceedingly restricted. Moreover, trains, tubes, etc., which are being provided everywhere, even for school children, are producing a race that cannot walk—a “born-tired” people.

* * *

If all those who have at some time or another emphasised the fact that the working-class are not affected by rates would always adhere to that position there would be less confusion of thought amongst the working-class. Here, for instance, is Mr. Will Thorne, the L.R.C. candidate for South West Ham, who has declared that it would make no difference to the working-class if the rates in West Ham were twenty shillings in the £, putting on the front-page of his election address : Nationalisation of Education, Poor Hates, Mine Rents, and Mineral Royalties. Mr. Thorne does not explain how these matters concern the poverty-stricken workers of South West Ham. In the body of his address he says he is strongly in favour of “Nationalisation of the Land, Canals, Railways, Mine Rents, and Mineral Royalties, the private ownership of which acts as the real barrier to British Industry in the Markets of the World” !

* * *

This is an interesting pronouncement for a man whom the S.D.F. claim as their candidate, although he is nothing of the sort and they are not responsible for one penny of his election expenses. As a matter of fact, admitted by the capitalist Press, British Industry has been supplanted because production naturally tends to locate itself where natural conditions are most favorable. But why concern ourselves about Britain’s position in the markets of the world ? For the capitalists, whether Free Traders or Tariff Reformers, the matter is of interest, but the concern of the Socialist is to stop the exploitation of the working-class, not to help one set of capitalists to exploit at the expense of another.

* * *

That is a capitalist struggle, like the fiscal fight. One set of capitalists say that we (i.e., British Capitalists) are losing because our fiscal system requires changing ; another set say that we hold our position because of our fiscal system and shall lose it if we change. And so their struggle continues. It is a matter of indifference to me whether I am plucked by a Free Trade Kite or a Protectionist Crow : I object to the plucking.

* * *

I am glad that some of Mr. Thorne’s friends recognise this. In last week’s “Justice” Mr. D. Carmichael writes:

“Members should insist, during the coming election, on making the workers realise that, while the fiscal question may be of interest to their masters, it is of little importance to them, and by heckling the capitalist candidates on every possible occasion expose the folly of depending on the robber class helping the robbed.”

* * *

Mr. D. Carmichael is one of the unemployed “leaders” who have been “demanding” that the robber class shall help the robbed !!!

* * *

But Mr. Will Thorne does not agree with Mr. Carmichael. He declares for “No Tariff Barriers” and is a “determined opponent of the imposition of any Tariff burdens on the food of the people.”

* * *

The whirligig of time, we are told, brings its own revenges. In “Justice” for the 16th of last month I read:

“Our veteran comrade Dadabhai Naoroji, whose services to India for more than 50 years are well known, is standing as a Liberal candidate in North Lambeth. We are no friends to Liberal candidates, and we are certainly not enamoured of the set which is supporting Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji. But we should regret, nevertheless, if he were opposed by a working man. There are exceptions to all rules and this case is that exception. Mr. Naoroji, more than any Indian living, voices the aspirations of 300,000,000 people under our rule. On that ground we hope he will be returned to the House of Commons.”

* * *

It occurred to me when I read the above that I had seen something in “Justice” to the opposite effect. I turned up my index and found the following, which appeared on the 22nd September, 1894 :

“Social-Democrats can lose the ‘Progressives’ certain London seats by mere abstention. Why shouldn’t we ? We owe the Progressives’ nothing—less than nothing. They are a miserable lot. We thought Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji one of the best of them. He owes his seat to our votes. If we abstain at the next election, he at least must go. What should we keep him in for ? He has been of no use whatever to us and of very little use to India. The Liberal Party may seem to our Parsee friend a very grand and glorious institution, but we fail to see how acting the part of a mere Liberal Hanger-on rewards Social-Democrats for the trouble they took in going to the poll for Mr. Dadabhai.”

* * *

What a virtue is consistency !

* * *

“Justice” is owned and controlled by the Twentieth. Century Press Ltd. In 1894 Mr. Naoroji held 80 shares in the Company, he now holds 280. These figures relate to the ordinary shares of 5s. 0d., not to the debentures. So that, apparently. “our Parsee friend” has paid £50 for the support of “Justice.” Let us hope he is satisfied with his bargain.

* * *

Mr. Ebenezer Howard, founder of the Garden City, presided at a meeting held last month at this very latest paradise, to consider the question of the provision of dwellings for working men. The Dean of St. Albans addressed the meeting on the desirability of proper housing for the working classes and urged the men to support a scheme for proper dwellings. Others also spoke.

* * *

Was not the Garden City one of those brand new patent schemes for solving the Housing problem ?

* * *

Mr. Isaac Mitchell, Secretary of the Federation of Trade Unions, was, as usual, unable to be present at the meeting, but, again as usual, sent his blessing by letter.

* * *

No meeting of “reformers” is now complete without a letter from Mr. Isaac Mitchell.

Jack Kent

Landlordism ! (1905)

From the December 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

A gentleman in New Orleans was agreeably surprised to find a plump turkey served up for dinner one day, and enquired of his negro servant how it was obtained. “Why, sar, ” said Sambo, “dat turkey him roost on our fence tree nights, so dis morning me seize him for de rent ob de fence.”

News in Review: What do they stand for? (1963)

The News in Review column from the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

What do they stand for?

It is obviously time for somebody to remind the nuclear disarmament movement what they are supposed to stand for.

Remember the days when, they only inscribed upon their banners slogans about banning the bomb? When they appealed that everyone, regardless of their political views, could co-operate in the appeal to save us from nuclear destruction? When they trotted out tame Tories (in much the same way as the Tories trot out tame trade unionists) to try to prove this point?

You do remember? Well, forget it.

The recent demonstrations organised by the Committee of 100 against bad housing, and against the Greek government, show that the unilateralists are going the same way as the other reformist organisations which have sprung up full of fire, have had their day and have vanished.

This process has followed a familiar, wearisome pattern. As unilateralism has failed to have any impact upon that great mass of working class votes which so faithfully support capitalism, the movement has found itself confronted with a choice.

It could have stuck to its original purpose and declined quickly into the ranks of the organisations whose objects may sound very desirable, but have no relevance to the needs of capitalism. Or like any other reformist group, it could have looked out for fresh fields to exploit.

This is what the unilateralists have done, which is not to say that their new preoccupation with issues like democracy in Greece will win them any more support than they gained from advocating banning the bomb. Here, once again, is evidence that, even on their own terms, reformist organisations are seldom logical.

It was not from any notion of superiority, nor any wish to detach ourselves from the problems of capitalism (if that were possible) that we said from the beginning that the nuclear disarmament movement would go the same way as the rest. We have seen so much of this in the past. There is no satisfaction now in seeing our forecast proved correct.

Because as each reformist movement rises and dies, it absorbs the energies and the enthusiasm of the very people who should be working for the new social order which will settle the things they fear and dislike once and for all.

Rachman, a scapegoat

As a scapegoat, Peter Rachman had just about everything. Fat. Balding. Property speculator. Keeping women. Just the man, in fact, to vent a little spleen on if you have been kicked out of your house or if you envy somebody else’s ability to buy feminine favours.

And a scapegoat Rachman has been made, not least by the Labour Party in their transparently clever attempt to win votes by using what they know of Rachman's affairs to attack the Rent Act.

So perhaps a word or two to put Rachman in his place will not come amiss.

First of all, it is nonsense to suggest that it was the Rent Act which gave Rachman his chance. As the papers have pointed out, the heavy glove boys operated against precisely the people who were still protected under the Act.

What Rachman did was to exploit the loopholes in the housing laws and to hide his transactions in a maze of legal complications. This is something which will happen, provided it is profitable, whether there is a Rent Act or not.

Capitalism has always been interested in the cost of housing, because working class rents can have an explosive effect upon wages and upon an election. The shady operator knows that it can often be very remunerative to probe for the weak spots in the law and when he has found them to exploit them to the full.

If Rachman had not cast his shadow in the field of properly speculation he may well have made his pile in some other way. Or indeed, if Rachman had never lived there would have been somebody else to do exactly the same sort of unsavoury deal.

In any case, was not Rachman, in a way, one of capitalism’s heroes? A penniless refugee who became a self-made man of riches? Who is to say that, if his gamble on the oilfields in the North had come off, he may not have become a nationally respected man, his racketeering days forgotten, and ended his life with a title?

Why not? It has happened before.

If the Rachman story is sordid, if it shows up a sort of human behaviour which is unpleasant, if it evokes some of the most regrettable of human reactions—it is only typical of capitalist society itself.

Criminal waste

The trains which, packed to suffocation, are pulling out of the big cities, and the roads to the coast wedged tight with traffic, tell us that holiday time is here and with it one of capitalism’s silly seasons.

High summer is the time when all sorts of fruit and salad is liable to be produced in such abundance that the price falls to the point when it becomes economical for the farmers to plough the stuff back into the ground or leave it rotting on the trees.

But now here is another, even sillier, example of the waste which the profit motive brings with it—one which need not happen only at the height of summer.

The Times of July 31st last reported that Cerebos Ltd., of Hartlepool, plans to dump a hundred tons of meat and fish paste into the sea because they are changing the shapes of their jars.

Hartlepool is in the stricken North-East; perhaps some of the unemployed up there would not say no to a few free jars of fish paste. Or perhaps the stuff might help out with some of the underfed children of the world.

Never mind. Presumably some accountant somewhere has worked out that it will be cheaper for Cerebos to sink the pastes. Just like any other company, they have to keep a close eye on their balance sheet.

Silly is too mild a word to describe the social system which not only allows the criminal waste of the world’s resources but actually, at times, requires and encourages it.

Mail Train robbery

The two-and-a-half million pound mail train robbery was audacious and glamorous enough to have come from the pen of the most imaginative crime fiction writer.

In that, it was typical of a recent strengthening trend in crime. The big, well planned robbery is becoming increasingly profitable for the crooks and so more and more of a headache for the police.

This is hardly surprising. The existence of private property elevates money into the key to a secure life. The moneyed man is always the privileged man and he does his best to make sure that he keeps both the money and the privileges.

There are plenty of such privileged— and honoured—men whose wealth has been amassed from the exploitation of the other class in society. Or perhaps they inherited it from their ancestors’ historical equivalent of the Cheddington hold-up.

This sort of wealth is respectable—it has come from what has been well called legal robbery, which conforms to capitalism's needs and so its moralities.

Robbery, forgery, embezzlement, and so on, do not conform and the men who try to get rich by practising them are anything but honoured.

Be that as it may, crime is inevitable as long as capitalism lasts; offences against property make up die overwhelming majority of crimes today. Capitalism without crime, in fact, is simply impossible.

Ironically, it is capitalism itself which asks for some of its crime. Do not the armed forces, so essential to capitalism, encourage just the sort of knowledge and the mental attitudes which are useful in a desperate, quick-fire robbery?

The driver of the Cheddington train said that one of the gang advised him to keep quiet because there were some “right bastards” there. Well, it is the “right bastard” who makes an excellent Commando or bomber pilot.

All of this is not to justify nor to condone the criminal. Indeed, any one who tried to take away from the Cheddington gang any of the money they have stolen would soon find that, in their own unmistakeable way, they are as firm in their support of property rights as any bank boardroom.

Capitalism is an unpleasant social system and crime is only one of its many excrescences.