June 2015, San Salvador, El Salvador Fighting evictions; fighting for communism
CALIFORNIA (USA), Dec. 11—There are some 63,500 homeless people and some 106 billionaires in the San Francisco Bay Area. Something is rotten in an area where tent cities sprout in the cold rains of winter next to the heated mansions of billionaires.
Something is rotten to the core when there are 4 to 5 times more vacant houses than homeless people! That something is capitalism. Its operating principle is if you can’t pay for it, you can’t have it. Human needs are nothing next to capital’s need for profits.
Of course, it’s not just the Bay Area. There are 60,000 unhoused people in Los Angeles and at least 150 million (and growing) worldwide. There is no longer such a simple thing as “land” or “earth” on this planet. Every square inch has become (or is becoming) “real estate,” or a precisely measured, privately owned, potentially profitable piece of land! The feet of humans are only allowed on this land under special circumstances.
The capitalists own it and we, the human masses, must pay them rent, mortgages (to the banks) or be homeless. They use their state, laws, police and courts to enforce their ownership. Homelessness is a product of this system. It is especially a product of industrial capitalism. The only way we can end it is through communist revolution.
The revolution will restore the earth to humankind. We, the masses, will contribute what we can – building, converting and sharing what we have to meet the needs of our brothers and sisters.
Real Estate Investment and Crisis
It won’t be easy. The real estate industry is worth $217 trillion worldwide. It makes up 60% of the world’s assets, mainly in housing. It’s protected by everything from handcuffs to nuclear bombs to an information industry that says communist revolution is either undesirable or unattainable. You can bet the 106 billionaires in the Bay Area are up to their necks in making and defending these investments.
To them the 15% to 20% profits the owner of high end apartment buildings can make is not just irresistible, it’s essential. Due to factors we’ve outlined elsewhere, the rate of profit in manufacturing, mining and transportation has fallen drastically. Real estate is one of the few areas where capital can grow. The capitalists (and this is their strategic weakness) have no choice: they have to invest in real estate, driving up the rents and mortgages, gentrifying workers’ neighborhoods.
To them homelessness is just unavoidable collateral damage. So are the millions displaced and migrating in search of housing and jobs.
Banks, hedge funds and private equity firms like Blackstone are now the world’s largest landlords. Rent burdens, the percent of income tenants put toward housing, is going way up, especially in black and latinx neighborhoods. The construction workers who build houses can’t afford to buy them.
Reform makes housing crisis worse
In November, Apple, Facebook and Google announced plans to invest a combined total of $4.5 billion in “affordable housing” in California. Amazon is doing the same in Seattle. “Invest” is the key word. They are not out to build homes for the masses. They are making loans so they can make big profits by building expensive housing and as a cover for causing homelessness.
We need communism! The communist masses will resolve the contradiction between private property and the masses’ needs by abolishing private property, along with the capitalists and their state, through communist revolution.
Production centers, land, transportation, water, and all natural resources will be the collective resources of the masses—to share and use to meet our needs and to take care of for future generations. Money, rent and mortgages will be bad memories of the past.
We will all contribute what we can and receive what we need. We will, however, have personal property: our own toothbrush, eye glasses, etc.
The masses, through ICWP will organize housing, collective dining halls and common spaces. We won’t “own” homes or apartments, but live in and care for them. As peoples’ needs and household size change, they may move to another place or other housing. Everyone will have adequate housing.
Masses of workers mobilizing for communism can take over the bosses’ private property and make it useful for us all. Mobilizing for communism now is the way forward.
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