Proper Gander: Grander designs (2026)

The Proper Gander column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kevin McCloud’s Listed Britain (Channel 4) is a tour round the country’s architectural heritage, particularly buildings which have been awarded ‘listed’ status. These are those which, because of their history, rarity or style, are deemed worth protecting. A listed building may not be demolished or altered without permission from its local planning authority, and renovations are expected to be carried out using sympathetic materials and techniques. Classifications differ across the UK: In England and Wales, ‘Grade 1’ confers the most protection, with ‘Grade A’ as the equivalent in Northern Ireland and ‘Category A’ in Scotland. The organisations which oversee this are various extensions of the state; in England and Scotland they are ‘executive non-departmental public bodies’.

Without safeguarding our most significant buildings, the country would become ‘a retail park with aspirations’, according to presenter Kevin McCloud. Old structures ‘speak through the generations’, being physical reminders of the past. When we see their brickwork, carvings or fixtures and fittings, we can imagine the people who made them and the circumstances in which they lived. However, buildings get built because of the prerogatives of landowners and business owners rather than in the interests of those who construct them. The series’ second episode covers structures which were intended to express the elite’s position in society: ‘the status symbols built to impress, dazzle and dominate’, as McCloud puts it. Chatsworth House and gardens in Derbyshire were intentionally designed ‘to communicate power’. Inside the main house, the most ostentatious display of wealth is the Painted Hall, which boasts an overwhelming range of murals above a cantilevered staircase, summed up by McCloud as ‘gargantuan’. The estate was and is owned by the aristocratic Cavendish family, whose successive Dukes of Devonshire prompted expansions during the 18th century, including demolishing part of a nearby village which apparently spoilt the view.

The building which most obviously embodies political power is the Palace of Westminster in London, completed in 1876 in the ‘Gothic Revival’ style. So, fittingly, Parliament is housed in an imposing, regimented relic of an outdated era. Also appropriate is that the structure has long been deteriorating and attempts to patch it up are too costly to be viable. McCloud wonders if the £35-40 billion needed to renovate the palace is worth it, as the same amount would fund the salaries of every NHS nurse for over two years. He asks ‘do you want to see democracy crumble? Do you want to see all vestiges of it disappear, turn to a pile of dust, or do you want to repair it, keep it going?’ ‘We as a nation have to collectively decide’ he adds, although the crumbling parliamentary democracy he describes doesn’t really enable us to ‘collectively decide’ how the state functions.

As illustrated by the Palace of Westminster, listed status doesn’t prevent a building from sliding into decline, and less prominent or unused sites are more vulnerable. The money system holds back buildings of historical and aesthetic importance being adequately maintained because the required skilled workers, specialist techniques and specific materials tend to be prohibitively expensive. Places attract income from visitors if there’s a lot to see, but there isn’t in 14th century Baguley Hall in Manchester, for example. ‘Financial viability and money is always the problem’ says heritage expert Catherine Dewar about the struggles with its upkeep.

Listed status isn’t only granted to buildings well over a hundred years old. Cathedrals in Coventry and Liverpool from the mid-20th century have Grade 1 classification, as does another place of worship. Being a hub for the insurance market, the Lloyds building in London is like a cathedral to commerce, where its congregation of underwriters and brokers put their faith in the economy. Completed at the height of yuppiedom in 1986, with its pipes, lifts and facilities on the outside to leave more space in the middle for business, the Lloyds building looks like it’s ‘made by machines’, and made for the machinery of capitalism.

Not all listed buildings reflect the power of the elite: a hidden grotto lined with seashells and London Zoo’s Modernist penguin enclosure were more personal passion-projects. The programme is also keen to emphasise the ‘positive energy’ of community groups, campaigners and craftspeople working to preserve heritage architecture.

A framework for listing buildings could exist in a socialist society, although the context would be different to that of today. The notion of a cherished building under threat of destruction sits more in capitalism than socialism, as the impetus for destruction is invariably money-driven. Any scheme for listing buildings in a socialist society would be shaped by how they are ‘owned’. The understanding and application of who owns buildings would be unlike that in capitalism, where possession is held by individuals or organisations, and ‘legitimised’ by legislation and money.

The situation with Mavisbank House in Midlothian, Scotland, highlights some of the quirks of ownership in our current society. Constructed in the 1720s as the first villa in the Palladian style in Scotland, by the late 20th century the building was a ruin. The Lothian Preservation Trust’s aims of restoration were complicated by Mavisbank’s ownership not being clear. Its last documented owner claimed he sold it to three probably fictitious people, and he also sold off its access roads so its actual owner may not legally be able to get to it.

In a socialist society, buildings and their environment would be the responsibility of the community as a whole. So, there would be no separation between ownership and who uses buildings, avoiding one of the restrictions of the capitalist system. As a socialist society wouldn’t ration its resources with money, another barrier to maintaining buildings wouldn’t apply. Any rules about protecting significant buildings would be decided democratically and managed by whatever method is most accountable and fair. There would still be disputes over whether or not a particular construction should be retained, but their resolution would be more straightforward and transparent, compared with the financial constraints, hierarchies and bureaucracy of capitalism.

Mike Foster

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global real worker pay fell 12 percent while real CEO pay surged 54 percent between 2019 and 2025. At least four CEOs of major corporations each pocketed over $100 million in pay and bonuses last year. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan led the pack at over $205 million. Billionaires were paid $2,500 per second in dividends in 2025. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and Oxfam are calling for urgent action to rein in extreme wealth, including higher, fairer taxes on the richest and binding limits on CEO pay.

[Common Dreams]

In 2011, he spent 81 days detained in China for criticizing the government following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which 90,000 people died. Ai Weiwei worked with hundreds of anonymous volunteers to identify and publish the names of more than 5,000 children who died under the rubble of poorly constructed schools, information that the government sought to censor. 

[El Pais]

…. the Housing and Land Rights Network, have argued that the real numbers are significantly higher and estimate at 3 million…Shelters, where available, are frequently inadequate, overcrowded, unsanitary, unsafe for women, or located far from work opportunities. Instead of treating shelter as a right linked to dignity, many city administrations treat it as temporary charity. During mega-events such as the Commonwealth Games 2010 or the G20 Summit gatherings hosted in India, homeless people are often subjected to eviction drives in the name of beautification. Pavements are cleared, encampments removed, and poverty hidden so that cities may appear modern to visitors.

[Countercurrents]

The right to life in Kenya is often treated as if it begins at conception and ends at birth. As in much of the world, self-described ‘pro-lifers’ claim to defend life at all costs – yet too often stop short of defending the lives already being lived, and those cut short too early.

[openDemocracy]

…the central question of his book, which is built around a concept Marx called ‘disposable time’—the time left over after workers have completed the labor necessary to sustain themselves and their families. Marx traced this idea back to an obscure 1821 pamphlet he discovered in the British Museum, in which the author argued that a nation’s true wealth lies not in gold or goods but in free time: ‘Wealth is disposable time, and nothing more’.

[People’s World]

The communist revolution, if it arrives in the nick of time to prevent humankind’s suicide, is a seismic event that changes everything. It is difficult to imagine it but it will leave nothing untouched. People will change. In the heat of the struggle for survival, proletarians will come together and become the self-conscious collective worker, which he/she already was but didn’t know it. All human relationships (between producers, family members, men-women, young-old, teachers-students and more) change in the process. The entire way in which society reproduces itself changes. Work changes. It no longer means labor.

[Internationalist Perspective]

(These links are provided for information, Target sites don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Cooking the Books: Economic leverage (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Workers face worst squeeze on real pay since 2022’ was the headline of an article in the Times (20 May) by its Economics Editor Mehreen Khan. In the first three months of this year, average weekly earnings increased by 3.4 percent, which was more or less the same as the rise in the Consumer Prices Index. ‘However’, Khan writes,

‘while real incomes are on course to flatline this year, the jump in global oil prices is expected to push annual inflation close to 4 per cent in the coming months’.

If average earnings go up by 3.4 percent and consumer prices go up by 4 percent, that’s a reduction in real pay for workers. So why don’t they simply go on strike and push up wages to keep up?

The answer is that workers don’t have the power to put up the price of what they have for sale — their labour power — just because they want to, even to cover a rise in the cost of what they need to produce what they are selling. They, like all other sellers, can only charge ‘what the market will bear’. And, as Khan and the economists she quotes note, the current state of the labour market will not allow an increase:

‘Rising prices, combined with a weakening job market — where unemployment has risen to 5 per cent — means workers are losing their bargaining power to demand pay rises, economists said.’

One of the economists, Josie Anderson of the financial services group Namura, used the term ‘soft labour market’. This doesn’t mean what you might expect — surely, the current labour market is a ‘hard’ one as far as workers are concerned? — until you realise she was writing from the employers’ point of view as buyers of labour power. An AI definition of the term (cobbled together from other definitions) makes this clear:

‘A soft labor market (also called a “cooling” or “loose” labour market) is an economic environment where the supply of available workers outpaces the demand for labour. In this climate, hiring slows down, job seekers face stiffer competition, and employers regain negotiating leverage.’

Whether or by how much real pay goes up or down is a question of the respective bargaining strength of employers and workers, which in turn depends on the state of the labour market, but that is not something we are usually told by the media. Normally the story is of greedy workers causing inflation by forcing employers to agree to excessive wage demands.

Sometimes workers are in a favourable bargaining position and can maintain or push up real pay: when business is booming, finding a job is easy, and employers are making good profits; this ‘hard’ labour market for employers gives workers some ‘negotiating leverage’. That is the time to strike or threaten to strike. But the reverse of this is a ‘soft’ labour market for employers; it is they who are then in a stronger bargaining position, as at present and, according to one of the economists, for the fourth time ‘in less than two decades’.

We are talking here just about changes in bargaining leverage over the shortish-time price of labour power. Ultimately, over wages, the capitalist class have the upper hand as they monopolise productive resources. This gives them leverage to force workers to sell their labour-power for a wage in the first place. There is no bargaining about this; it’s just a fact of capitalist life that is imposed on workers. The way out for them is political not economic: to take political action to make the means of life commonly owned and democratically controlled by the whole community. Then there will be no labour market and no wages system.