Destroy Liberal Anti-Communist Lies: Housing Crisis Shows Urgency of Communist Revolution
LOS ANGELES (USA), August 12—People without homes and other activists disrupted LA City Council meetings to protest increasingly repressive laws against homeless people. When a council member tried to lead the patriotic Pledge of Allegiance, audience members booed.
Council President Nury Martinez outrageously compared the protesters to the fascists who invaded the US Capitol in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021.
“As if making the poorest people ‘go away’ is a solution,” declared a comrade. “Comparing them to the privileged ARMED mob is ridiculous. Blatant attempt to demonize the most harmed population!”
Worldwide, some 150 million members of our working-class family are homeless. As many as 1.6 billion lack adequate shelter.
This crisis is 100% manufactured by capitalism’s relentless pursuit of maximum profits, whatever the cost to the masses. Communism will solve it.
Capitalism drives wages down and housing costs up, forcing more and more workers – many with jobs! – into the streets from Egypt to Honduras and beyond.
Capitalist-imperialist proxy wars from Syria to Somalia to the Central African Republic displace growing numbers from their homes.
No worker anywhere is safe.
Millions in LA are a paycheck away from homelessness. Over fifty thousand children and youths in Los Angeles County have no stable home. The LA City Council’s response to the massive housing crisis is to outlaw homeless encampments near schools and daycare centers.
It’s already illegal to be unhoused near libraries, freeway overpasses and other locations. Democrat-run LA is approaching the fascist former Filipino president Duterte’s infamous “war on loitering.”
This housing crisis is a racist attack on the whole working class. Black people are 8% of L.A.’s population and 34% of the unhoused. But 25% of all those experiencing homelessness are white workers and youth.
The obvious cause of rapidly increasing homelessness is an estimated shortfall of half a million affordable homes in LA County. Less obvious is that investors keep tens of thousands of units off the market on purpose – more than enough to house everyone in need.
Finance capitalists own two-thirds of all LA residential units. “Thousands of luxury units are empty, owned as second homes or pure investments. … Over 22 square miles of vacant lots are owned and kept vacant by corporate entities.” (The Vacancy Report)
This illustrates the law of capitalism that Marx described whereby increasing concentration of wealth in a few hands drives production away from workers’ necessities into luxury goods. Capitalists like those behind the LA City Council pass laws protecting the wealth they have stolen from the labor of their wage slaves—us.
The groups that produced The Vacancy Report only offer reforms (like a non-occupancy tax). What workers need is communist revolution.
The January 6 fascist coup attempt has given insurrection a bad name. “Rule of law! Electoral process! Peaceful Protest! Protect Democracy!” Thus cry the liberal news media and even some calling themselves Left.
It’s the old lie that falsely links communism and fascism although, historically, communists have been the fiercest anti-fascist fighters. It’s a lie that tries to hide the real-world class struggle (workers versus capitalists) behind an abstract and mechanical opposition of “extremism” and “moderation.”
Which side of the class struggle are you on? The January 6 insurrectionists stormed the Capitol in support of Trump’s capitalist faction. In contrast, those who disrupted the LA City Council meeting fight on the side of the working class. But without a communist outlook and organization, they can’t win.
Communist revolution will destroy all records of property “ownership” and the capitalist state power that enforces them. Workers with homes can stay in them without paying another dime to landlords or banks.
Small-holding former landlords won’t suffer from losing rental income because nobody will need money for anything. We’ll produce and distribute everything based on need, not exchange.
Party-organized neighborhood committees will inventory unused or underused dwellings and allocate them based on need. We’ll organize masses to provide the labor to repair and build housing. We’ll design new housing to foster community rather than individualism.
None of this can happen peacefully or legally under capitalism’s rule of (property) law. But past communist-led revolutions – despite their tragic errors – show how we can do it.
Let’s not ask the 1.6 billion inadequately housed members of our international working-class family to wait for capitalism to meet their most basic needs. It won’t.
Let’s ask them – and all our friends, co-workers, neighbors, and family—to join the ICWP in mobilizing the masses for communism.
Read the ICWP pamphlet “Mobilize the Masses for Communism”
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