Abstract
Housing is obviously of central importance to the working class and any consideration of its living conditions and general welfare under capitalism. It is also of essential importance to ‘capital in general’, which requires a supply of labour power housed sufficiently close to the point of production and housed adequately enough to ensure reproduction. Working-class housing conditions have been one of the most crucial material factors pushing forward the class struggle, both at the level of wages struggle and in other arenas. Housing expenditure has always taken up a high proportion of working-class spending; over the post-war period, according to the Family Expenditure Survey, average personal expenditure on housing rose from 9 per cent of total consumer spending in 1953 to 14 per cent in 1973, and lower income groups spend proportionally more on their housing than higher income groups.1 Wage demands are highly sensitive to working-class housing costs, and hence the cost of housing to the working class is relevant to the interests of capital in general. Since the late nineteenth century the state has gradually come to play a central role both in processing working-class housing pressures and in ensuring the interests of capital in general in this sphere. The role of the state has largely been confined to housing consumption rather than its production; in the shape of central and local government agencies it has assumed the role of an exchange intermediary and regulator in the process of consumption.
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Notes and References
Roof, vol. 2, no. 1 (1977) p. 3. Similar proportions obtained in the nineteenth century according to E. Gauldie, Cruel Habitations (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974) pp. 164–5.
See B. Glastonbury, Homeless near 1000 Homes (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971) Chapter 3.
F. Engels, The Housing Question (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970) p. 42.
R. McCutcheon, ‘High Flats in Britain, 1945 to 1971’ in Political Economy and the Housing Question (London: Conference of Socialist Economists Housing Workshop, 1975) Chapter 5.
M. Ball, British Housing Policy and the House Building Industry, Centre for Environmental Studies Conference Paper (London: 1977) p. 12.
K. Marx, Capital, vol. III (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1972) Part IV.
See G. Stedman Jones, Outcast London (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976) Part II.
A. K. Cairncross, Home and Foreign Investment 1870–1913 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), p. 86.
This is documented, for example, in The History of Working Class Housing, ed. S. D. Chapman (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1971), especially the chapters by M. Beresford on Leeds and J. Treble on Liverpool.
The inequitable tax position of housing landlords is explained by A. A. Nevitt, Housing Taxation and Subsidies (London: Nelson, 1966) Chapter 4.
P. Dickens, Social Change, Housing and the State, Centre for Environmental Studies Conference Paper (London, 1977) p. 4.
P. Johnson, Land Fit for Heroes (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1968) p. 18.
P. Beirne, Fair Rent and Legal Fiction (London: Macmillan, 1977) p. 78.
See ibid., p. 86; P. Piratin, Our Flag Stays Red (London: Thames Publications, 1948)
B. Moorhouse, M. Wilson and P. Chamberlain, ‘Rent Strikes — Direct Action and the Working Class’ in The Socialist Register 1972, eds. R. Miliband and J. Saville (London: Merlin, 1972); P. Corrigan and N. Ginsburg, ‘Tenants’ Struggle and Class Struggle’ in Political Economy and the Housing Question, Chapter 9.
M. J. Barnett, The Politics of Legislation: the Rent Act 1957 (London: Weidenfeld, 1969) p. 78.
See R. Means, Social Work and the Undeserving Poor, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birmingham, Occasional Paper no. 37 (1977) Chapter 2.
See R. Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, volume 1, Minister of Housing 1964–66 (London: Hamish Hamilton and Jonathan Cape, 1975) p. 309.
M. Harloe, R. Issacharoff and R. Minns, The Organisation of Housing (London: Heinemann, 1974) pp. 114–16.
See S. Weir, ‘Red Line Districts’, Roof, vol. 1, no. 4 (1976) pp. 109–14
M. Boddy, ‘Building Societies and Owner Occupation’ in Housing and Class in Britain (London: Conference of Socialist Economists Housing Workshop, 1976) p. 39
S. Duncan, ‘The Housing Question and the Structure of the Housing Market’, Journal of Social Policy, vol. 6, no. 4 (1977) pp. 389–96.
J. Ford, ‘Building Society Managers’, Roof, vol. 1, no. 5 (1976) p. 144.
N. Finnis, ‘Mortgage Arrears: Tomorrow’s Problem’, Roof, vol. 3, no. 1 (1978) p. 10.
J. Tunnard, No Father No Home?, Poverty Pamphlet No. 28 (London: Child Poverty Action Group, 1976).
See N. Mcintosh, ‘Mortgage Support Scheme Holds the Lending Lines’, Roof, vol. 3, no. 2 (1978) pp. 44–7.
D. McKay, Housing and Race in Industrial Society (London: Croom Helm, 1977) p. 90.
R. Titmuss, Essays on the ‘Welfare State’ (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963) Chapter 2.
S. Clark, Who Benefits?, a Study of the Distribution of Public Expenditure on Housing (London: Shelter, 1977) p. 13. In 1966 the Labour government introduced the option mortgage scheme, which assists a small stratum of owner-occupiers who pay little or no income tax. This was the only aspect of housing policy mentioned in Harold Wilson’s memoirs of the 1964–70 Labour government.
N. Branson and M. Heinemann, Britain in the Nineteen Thirties (London: Panter, 1973) p. 205.
S. Pollard, The Development of the British Economy 1914–1967 (London: Edward Arnold, 1969) p. 238.
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© 1979 Norman Ginsburg
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Ginsburg, N. (1979). Private Housing, the State and the Working Class. In: Class, Capital and Social Policy. Critical Texts in Social Work and the Welfare State. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16169-0_5
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