Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Central Brooklyn DSA Night School!
After our brief hiatus, we are starting back up again. Please note, the Night School has now moved to Thursday nights.
We’d like to announce the ninth session of the Night School.
We will meet at:
June 7, 2018
7:00-9:00PM
For the ninth session of the Night School, we will be looking at three texts: excerpts from the pamphlet “The Housing Question” by Friedrich Engels from 1872, an article by David Madden and Peter Marcuse entitled “The Permanent Crisis of Housing” published in Jacobin in 2016 (which was republished in the full length book In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis), and an article by Ivo Balmer and Tobias Bernet entitled “Housing as a Common Resource? Decommodification and Self-Organization in Housing – Examples from Germany and Switzerland” from 2015.
You’ll find some questions below to consider as you go through the readings.
You may download a PDF of the excerpt from “The Housing Question” here, the article “The Permanent Crisis of Housing” here, and the article “Housing as a Common Resource?” here.
Please arrive on time, and come ready to share your thoughts. We look forward to continuing the series with lots of lively discussion!
Pizza will also be provided!
Discussion Questions:
“The Housing Question”:
- In the excerpt from “The Housing Question,” Engels writes,
“The breeding places of disease, the infamous holes and cellars in which the capitalist mode of production confines our workers night after night, are not abolished; they are merely shifted elsewhere! The same economic necessity which produced them in the first place, produces them in the next place also. As long as the capitalist mode of production continues to exist, it is folly to hope for an isolated solution of the housing question or of any other social question affecting the fate of the workers. The solution lies in the abolition of the capitalist mode of production and the appropriation of all the means of life and labor by the working class itself.”
How does Engels relate the housing question, both its cause and solution, to the system of capitalism and class society? What are the implications of seeing the struggle for housing as a distinct “front” of class struggle when applying the critical framework of Engels?
2. At many points in the text (pages 1, 2, 5-7), Engels refers to Sax’s argument that existing bourgeois society should provide small houses to workers as a means to simultaneously solve the housing problem and turn the industrial worker into a capitalist. What are the reasons he gives for doubting this proposal as a solution to the housing question? Over the course of 20th century, working class home-ownership grew, particularly in the US, through the expansion of the mortgage industry. How might this phenomenon and its effects relate to Engels’ criticisms of Sax’s proposal, and how might it reflect broader patterns of class relations over the 20th century?
“The Permanent Crisis of Housing”
- In “The Permanent Question of Housing,” Madden and Marcuse refer directly to Engels’ “The Housing Question,” stating that, “For Engels, housing struggles were derivative of class struggle. Housing problems, then, could only be addressed through social revolution.” What do you make of Madden and Marcuse’s argument that residential struggles today are no longer simply derivative of other conflicts, and that while “the housing question is embedded within the structures of class society,” that housing movements are significant in their own right as sites for an “urban strategy” to revolutionize society? How do you see the campaigns of the Brooklyn DSA Housing Working Group in relation to the arguments of Madden and Marcuse?
“Housing as a Common Resource?”
- On pages 9 and 10 of the excerpt we read from “The Housing Question,” Engels describes building societies and limited dividend housing as speculative investment opportunities for the petty bourgeoisie rather than solutions to the housing question. The article by Balmer and Bernet presents housing cooperatives, operating under a different class and legal regime, as a potential route towards de-commodification of housing. What do you make of Balmer and Bernet’s proposition in light of Engels’ argument?
General Questions
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Public housing was constructed in the post-war era in Europe and America, especially cities like New York City, to an extent scarcely seen before or since. As socialists and historical materialists, how do we explain and analyze the growth of public housing during a period when capitalism also developed and globalized, and how does public housing fit into our understanding of the struggle against capitalism, the commodity form, and class society?
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How can the Housing Working Group campaign organized by Brooklyn DSA around the issue of universal rent control serve as a means of contesting commodification and as a front of class struggle? How might these approaches differ from more liberal defenses of rent control?
Central Brooklyn DSA Night School 