The struggle against the displacement of residents from established working-class neighborhoods stemming from sudden spikes in real estate investments and the resultant rise in property values, and thus rents, at its heart, is a struggle against capitalism itself.
But why? Can’t the system be reformed enough to guard workers against the disruptions, hardships, and mass layoffs caused by the migratory nature of capitalist invest, on one hand, and the boom and bust cycles of capitalism itself, on the other? History and logic tell us that the struggle for stability, including housing as a human right, cannot be won and secured as long as long as capitalism remains the dominant mode of production.
The Long Struggle Against Gentrification
Take gentrification for example. It is not a policy choice of individual landlords and capitalists, but is reflective of the laws of capitalist accumulation. As a result, working people have been fighting against various forms of perpetual-displacement since the dawn of the capitalist era [1].
The history of gentrification, like the history of capitalism more generally, is a history marked by periods of working-class resistance and revolution followed by periods of capitalist class counter-revolution and reaction. Socialism is the answer to this never-ending cycle of resistance and revolution, on one side, and repression and counter-revolution, on the other.
The Housing Question
Frederick Engels, known for his collaborations with Karl Marx, offers important insights for our struggle against revitalization in his 1872 pamphlet, “The Housing Question” [2]. In the current fight against displacement it is important to understand that the relationship between the tenant and landlord is still very similar to the relationship between the worker and the capitalist.
However, unlike the relationship between the working class and the capitalist class, the rent collected from the tenant by the landlord doesn’t involve the exploitation of labor-power and the creation of new value. Rather, the landlord collects a portion (an increasingly large portion) of the workers’ wages, which is value already produced. When working-class neighborhoods are gentrified, rents are increased without a corresponding increase in workers’ wages. Again, the result is displacement.
Engels points to Paris in 1853 when working-class neighborhoods were torn up to widen the streets and build luxury apartments. Following this revitalization workers were driven out of the city and into the suburbs. Yew York City underwent the same process with the same results in the 20th century.
Engels notes that this process of revitalization does not, and is not intended to, solve the housing problem. Rather, it relocates the problem of insecure, insufficient, and unfit housing for workers. In other words, “Investment in one area is accompanied by disinvestment in another. This occurs in cyclical fashion: investment brings development, which brings over-development, which brings decline, which brings revitalization” [3].
Tenant Movements
While the tenants’ movement in the US can be dated back to at least the emergence of industrial cities in the mid to late 1800s, only in New York City was the poor and working-class able to win rent control in the 1920s.
In an early wave of activism between 1907-08 thousands of tenants went on strike against rent increases in the Bronx and Manhattan. By 1919 more than 25,000 NYC tenants were affiliated with the Tenant League.
Even though rent control was won in the 1920s, landlords and investors have found new ways to extract more from tenants and by 1963-64 the rent strike movement in New York City spread like wildfire involving more than 100,000 people. [4]
Counter-Revolution
Nothing is ever static or standing still. Capitalism is a dynamic system always shifting and morphing as it seeks to perpetually reproduce and expand itself by expropriating value from the working-class. When working people win a victory against capitalism, it is only secure in so far as the capitalist class is unable to reverse or co-opt it.
Many of the victories against housing displacement have been reversed or somehow made ineffective by the capitalist class counter-insurgency.
One of the most recent examples is the chipping away of rent control in New York City [5]. For example, in 1985 the power of the Rent Stabilization Association in NYC was terminated. Under the Rent Regulation Reform Act of 1993 the process of deregulating rent regulation gained momentum. Today NYC’s unelected Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) has jurisdiction over roughly one million rent stabilized apartments and the two and half million people who live in them.
Every year the RGB meets to vote on increasing the rent on rent-stabilized apartments. In the summer of 2023 the landlord-driven RGB proposed a 15% hike to rents. After organized public outcry and resistance the RGB settled on a two to seven percent increase depending on the length of the lease.
It is clear that no partial victory will ever pacify the tenants movement. Workers will continue to fight for the right to housing until capitalism is defeated once-and-for-all.
The Struggle Continues
Even though we know there are no safe victories as long as the capitalist class holds state power and the monopoly on repressive violence, Chester County Liberation Center volunteers will keep fighting against every injustice of capitalism, including urban center revitalization.
Only with socialism can we end the cycle of working-class resistance followed by capitalist-class repression. We therefore approach the struggle against revitalization, for example, as part of the process of building the people’s movement capable of defeating capitalism and ushering in a new socialist era.
References
[1] Frederick Engels. The Housing Question.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Derek Ford and Curry Malott. The Housing Question
[4] Anne Jaffe. “The Tenant Movement in New York City, 1904-1984.” NYLS Journal of Human Rights. 1(IV), Part One, Fall 1986 – Homelessness, 329-340.
[5]