On the 30th January 2026 the price of silver  stood at 84.634 dollars per ounce. This was lower by 31.156 dollars on previous day, a drop of 26.91 per cent.

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodities

The below is from the Socialist Standard February 1980

‘Since inflation is a monetary question and nothing but a monetary question, it cannot be understood without first knowing what money is. To most people money is the notes and coins they use to buy things, a convenient technical device for ensuring the smooth exchange and distribution of goods. While it is indeed such a medium of exchange, the currency we use today is not, strictly speaking, money at all, but only tokens for it. But to explain money it is convenient to start with this role of medium of exchange.

Exchange, as the exchange of goods, only exists in societies where there is private property: the goods involved pass from one property owner to another. In societies where there is no private property, where wealth is regarded as the common property of all the members of society, there is no exchange. People don’t get what they need through exchange but directly, either by being given it or by taking it in accordance with established rules for sharing wealth. The original human societies were organised on this basis, without property and without exchange –and without money.

Exchange probably originated not within such primitive communistic societies but between them, and would have been on the basis of barter, the direct exchange of so much of one good for so much of another. Barter is the most primitive form of exchange and has obvious problems which don’t need explaining at length. A person with two pots who wants a blanket must find another person with a blanket who wants two pots before any exchange can take place. At a certain stage in the evolution of exchange, the need becomes apparent for a good which can be exchanged for all goods. Then the person with the two pots can exchange them for this good and then later exchange this good for a blanket. The good that can be exchanged for all other goods is precisely money, and this gives us the basic definition: money is the good or commodity that can be exchanged for all others.

Various goods have functioned as money in the history of humanity, from cowrie shells to cattle (the word ‘pecuniary’ comes from pecunia, the Latin word for cattle), but in the end the most convenient have proved to be the precious metals, silver and gold. With barter, goods exchange in proportions determined by the amount of time it took to make them. Primitive people would have had a pretty shrewd idea of how long it took to make particular goods and would have regarded an exchange as fair where the goods involved had taken more or less the same period of time to make (or to gather from nature). Thus, if two pots habitually exchanged for one blanket, a blanket took twice as long to make as a pot.

In other words, commodity exchange is essentially an exchange of equivalents. When one good becomes money, this is not altered. The person with the two pots is not going to exchange them for the money-good unless both goods are considered equivalents. The money-good itself must therefore have value, must be the product of labour. This leads us to the second function of money, that of being a store of value. Someone who has exchanged their goods for the money-commodity is not obliged to exchange the latter straight away for some other good. They can keep and, if wanted, store and accumulate the money-good.

The money-commodity can best perform its role if it is not too bulky — if, in other words, it concentrates a relatively large amount of value in a relatively small bulk. This is precisely what the precious metals do. They are ‘precious’, or valuable, because it takes considerable labour to obtain a small amount of them. This feature would be a disadvantage had the precious metals not another characteristic — that of being easily divisible. A precious stone such as a diamond also concentrates much value in a small bulk, but because it cannot be easily divided it can’t serve as the money-commodity, since the differing values of goods to be exchanged (the different times it took to make them) demand that the money-good be available in finely distinguished different amounts.

The precious metals, gold and silver, because they possessed these two features and had a fairly stable value, eventually emerged everywhere as the money-goods. Once one good has become money then exchange becomes buying and selling. Selling is the exchange of a good for the money-good, while buying is the exchange of the money-good for a good. This is still the case today but is no longer obvious because of the complications brought about by the subsequent evolution of money. The price of a good is its labour-time value expressed in amounts of the money-good. (1) This, being the standard of price, is money’s third function. Prices were in fact originally expressed directly as weights of gold or silver.

The next stage in the evolution of money is the introduction of coins. About 2,500 years ago a ruler of Lydia (now Turkey) struck the first coin by stamping its weight on a piece of precious metal (electrum, an amalgam of gold and silver). This stamp served as a guarantee that it really did weigh the amount indicated. And this is all coined money is: a piece of the precious metal which is the money-commodity stamped with a guarantee of weight. At first anybody could issue coins, merchants as well as rulers, but this soon became a government monopoly.

The names of coins were originally weights of the metal of which the coins were made. Thus a pound (£) was originally, in early medieval times, a pound (lb) of silver. But over the years, if only because coins lose weight through wear and tear (but in practice for other reasons as well, as we shall see), the names given to coins came to differ from the names of the units of weight. This did not mean that the money-commodity had ceased to be measured in terms of weight; it merely meant that the money-commodity could always be translated into the more usual unit. Indeed, the new unit of monetary weight was legally defined in terms of the general unit of weight. Thus, in Britain for most of the nineteenth century, the gold coin known as a sovereign or pound was legally defined as being slightly more than a quarter of an ounce of gold (one ounce of gold was equal to £3 17s l0½d). In other words, ‘pound’ was an alternative name for about a quarter of an ounce of gold. Similarly, other names of currencies – dollar, mark, franc –were also alternative names for (other) weights of gold (or silver).

Gold and silver coins can lose weight not only through wear and tear but also through people deliberately filing them down, a criminal offence generally punished in the past by death. But there was a third way which was perfectly legal and unpunishable, since the ‘criminal’ was the government itself! Governments discovered soon after the invention of coins that issuing underweight coins – stamping one weighing, say, only 0.24 ounces as a ‘pound’ or 0.25 ounces –was an easy source of finance, at least in the short term. Such debasement of the coinage, however, had an unfortunate side-effect: it led to a rise in prices, not just of some goods but of all goods, a rise in the general price level. Since exactly the same mechanism operates here as with modern inflation, let’s examine it in more detail.

Exchange, remember, is the exchange of equivalents (of equal amounts of socially necessary labour), selling is the exchange of a particular good for a certain amount of the money-commodity; and price is the expression of the value of a good in terms of amounts of the money-commodity. Say that four blankets are worth the same as an ounce of gold. That means that it takes as much socially necessary labour to produce four blankets as it does to produce one ounce of gold. The price of one blanket would then be a quarter of an ounce of gold, or £l.

This is an underlying real economic relationship which remains in force whatever the government does. If the government debases its coins by stamping ‘pound‘ (quarter-ounce) on coins weighing only one-eighth of an ounce, (2) then this economic reality does not change. One blanket will still tend to exchange for a quarter-ounce of gold. If the government, by debasing the coinage, in effect changes the weight designated by the name ‘pound’ from a quarter-ounce to one-eighth of an ounce, then the price of one blanket will no longer be £1, since this now signifies one-eighth not one quarter of an ounce. The price will now be £2, the new way of indicating a quarter-ounce of gold. All other prices will also rise in the same proportion of 100 per cent. Prices will in fact tend to rise in the same proportion that the coinage has been debased. This would not happen immediately and all at once but would be spread out over a period of time as the effect of the debased coinage worked its way through, but the end result will be the 100 per cent rise in prices.

What will have happened is that the government’s action will have changed the standard of price. This is a purely monetary matter and is in the end just a question of definition, of the weight of the money-commodity named by the word ‘pound’.

The general level of prices can also change for real economic reasons as well as through the action of a government, intended or otherwise. If the amount of socially necessary labour required to produce an ounce of gold changes — if its value changes — then the prices of all other commodities are necessarily affected. To come back to our example of four blankets equal to one ounce of gold, we saw that this meant that four blankets and one ounce of gold contained the same amount of socially necessary labour, let us say five hours. Suppose that as a result of a new mining machine the average time it takes to produce one ounce of gold falls by ten per cent, to 4½ hours, while the time taken to produce four blankets remains unchanged. Four blankets will now no longer tend to exchange for one ounce of gold but for the amount of gold that can now be produced in five hours, 1.11 ounces. Since no government monkeying with the currency is involved here, ‘pound’ remains the name of one ounce of gold, so the price of four blankets now rises to £1.11. This happens to the price of all other goods too. This has in fact occurred a number of times in history, the last being in the thirty years up to the First World War when the value of gold fell due to the opening up of the South African and Alaskan gold mines.

A rise in the value of gold, on the other hand, due for instance to geological difficulties in working mines as they get older, would have the opposite effect, leading to a fall in the general level of prices.

The amount of money in circulation — the total weight of the coins made of the money-commodity (say, gold) which circulate as the currency — is determined by the workings of the economy and depends on three factors and their changes in particular:

the number of buying and selling transactions to be carried out, or the level of economic activity; the total of the prices of the goods and services involved in these transactions (reflecting their value as measured by the amount of socially necessary labour they contain); the average number of transactions carried out by a single coin in a given period (since coins of course circulate and are not cancelled after use), or the ‘velocity of circulation’ of money.

Other factors can be introduced, such as the number of debts to be settled and taxes, to be paid, and their amounts, but the basic formula is:

Amount of money (total weight of gold) needed = Number of transactions x total price Velocity of circulation

This has been expressed algebraically as M = TP/V, and is known in the history of monetary theory as the Quantity Theory of Money.

Various versions of it exist, not all of which are correct. But if it is understood not as an equation but as a formula for what determines the amount of money (weight of gold coins) needed by the economy, then it is a key concept for understanding inflation. For it is saying that the amount of money needed by the economy at any time is a real economic fact determined by other economic facts, and as such not something that can be changed at will by government action. In fact it continues to be valid even when gold itself does not circulate as the currency and has been replaced in this role by paper and metallic tokens.’

Adam Buick

1. “A relation between a weight of metal and the value of an object” is how Belgium’s leading economist, Fernand Baudhin, who died in 1977, defined price in his Dictionnaire de l’économie contemporaine (1973 edition).

2.  This of course is an unreal example, but the mathematics is easier to follow.

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-evolution-of-money-from-barter-to.html

 

 On the 30th January 2026 the price of gold stood at 4887.07 dollars per ounce. This was lower by 489.67 dollars on previous day, a drop of 9.11 per cent.

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodities

From the Socialist Standard May 2007

‘“Gold prices could pass $850 record” read a headline in the Financial Times (5 April), reporting a forecast by a metals consultancy of what might happen over the next 12 months. As gold is currently selling at around $670-80 an ounce, this would be a huge increase. If something like this had happened a hundred years ago, it would have brought about financial and economic chaos by causing a huge fall in the general price level.

This was because at that time gold was still the money-commodity, as the product of labour having its own value in which the values of all other commodities were expressed. Prices were expressed in units of currency, but these were defined as a given weight of gold. A pound, for instance, was defined as about ¼ oz of gold. This meant that anything taking the same amount of socially necessary labour time to produce as an ounce of gold would have a price of £4.

If the amount of socially necessary labour needed to produce an ounce of gold fell, a rise in the general price level would result since other commodities, containing more value, would exchange for more gold. If, on the other hand, the labour-time cost of producing gold increased, the result was the opposite: a fall in the general price level. Which is why an increase of the order of from $680 to $850 an ounce would have caused chaos a hundred years ago.

The reason it won’t do so today is that gold is no longer the money-commodity. Up to WW1 gold was used to settle international payments. Also, there were gold coins in circulation, along with paper notes that were convertible into gold at a fixed rate. This system collapsed with the outbreak of war in 1914 and, despite attempts to revive it between the wars, never really worked again. Nearly all currencies became “inconvertible”, i.e. no longer exchangeable on demand into a given amount of gold, which has remained the case ever since.

At the end of WW2 a new system for settling international payments was established based on the dollar. The exchange rate between other currencies and the dollar (and so between the other currencies) was fixed, but, since the dollar was defined as 1/35 oz of gold, gold still played an indirect role as the money-commodity as a standard of price.

This system, with its repeated devaluations of the different currencies, came to an end in 1971 when the US government abandoned its commitment to pay $35 for an ounce of gold. After that, all currencies floated and, though central banks still retained gold reserves for a while, gold became an ordinary commodity, another precious metal alongside silver and platinum, whose price fluctuations have no effect, either way, on the general price level.

The price of gold is still expressed in dollars but, nowadays, rather than a change in the price of gold leading to a change in the value of the dollar, it’s the other way round. One of the reasons for the expected rise in the price of gold is the current weakness of the dollar. Another is perceived future economic insecurity in that gold, as a product of labour, is still a store of value which, if the fears are realised, is better to be left holding than a mere piece of paper.

When socialism, where of course money will be redundant, has been established, there will be a long-standing proposal as to what to do with gold waiting to be considered. In his book Utopia in 1516 Thomas More proposed it be used for making chamber pots. Some 400 years later Lenin moved an amendment to replace the words “chamber pots” by “urinals”. In the end, we’ll probably just use it for jewellery and other ornaments.’

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/05/just-yellow-metal-2007.html

Demagogue

 

It all sounds like hubris, vainglorious

Bluster, rantings of megalomania,

Domination via the media,

As if there is nothing left to discuss.

A tsunami of personality

Surging around the world, inundating

With a flood of words beyond debating,

Such is the depth of this banality.

Afraid of drowning, there are those who try

To swim against the tide, but distracted

By their efforts, they are misdirected

From all that is unobserved floating by.

Judgement saturated by anger and dread,

Becomes unaware of what’s not being said.

 

D. A.

 

According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on 27th January 2026 the clock was adjusted by four seconds and now stands at 85 seconds to midnight.

The below is reposted from SOYMB 4th August, 2025. It’s titled ‘How many seconds to midnight?’

‘In the August 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard these words appeared,

‘A writer in the “Daily Chronicle” (29/7/14) outlining the probable results of the threatened war says:

. Let us all, whatever our party, stand together and do what we can to avert this coming disaster.”

Tom Sala

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/search/label/August%201914

On  the 4th August 1914 Britain declared war on Germany. Unfortunately, the propaganda machine of many states ensured that the various national working classes of many countries went out and for the next four years engaged in industrial slaughter of each other on behalf of their capitalist masters.

‘The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was about 40 million, with estimates ranging from around 15 to 22 million deaths and about 23 million wounded military personnel, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. The total number of deaths includes between 9 and 11 million military personnel, with an estimated civilian death toll of about 6 to 13 million.

Of the 60 million European military personnel who were mobilised from 1914 to 1918, an estimated 8 million were killed, 7 million were permanently disabled, and 15 million were seriously injured. Germany lost 15.1% of its active male population, Austria-Hungary lost 17.1%, and France lost 10.5%. The human cost of the war left the world with millions of casualties prompting leaders to create new memorials for the deceased.’

Internet’s response to the question of casualties.

Later in the twentieth century, capitalism repeated its deadly game. Following the end of the second lethal conflict there continued to be almost permanent ‘minor’ conflicts up to the present day. ‘Minor’ being a relative term given the events that occurred in places like Vietnam and West Asia.

We are presently in a situation where a bellicose and belligerent USA, supported by Western European countries, is threatening to go to war with another nuclear power state.

Followowing on from  SOYMB https://soymb.com/2025/07/three-generals.html

we now have another American General, Alexus G. Grynkewich, NATO Supreme Commander, issuing war-ridden statements that in a rational twenty first society should have mental health professionals treating him for articulating delusions, shared by many in various positions of power, that, if translated into actions would have devastating consequences for the whole of the world.

Upon reflection we have perhaps been too unkind to this General. Our comments are more apposite when applied to the present President of the United States.

Grynkewich says that by 2027 Russia could attack Europe whilst in coordination China could launch military action in the Pacific.

The report says that he, ‘emphasised the need for closer military collaboration with industry and the need for companies to develop systems at a faster pace. Grynkewich said a key focus for him also will be making sure that NATO allies are keeping up with recent pledges to increase defence spending to 5% of gross domestic product and that those increased investments are directed toward the right military priorities.

“Time is of the essence, and I intend to keep highlighting that and letting everyone know that we’ve got to move out and we’ve got to move quickly,” he said.’

https://www.legion.org/information-center/news/security/2025/july/top-us-commander-in-europe-nato-must-be-ready-for-two-front-conflict-with-russia-and-china

One wonders if he, and the previous three Generals referenced have ever read Major General Smedley Darlington Butler’s ‘War is a Racket’ where he says he eventually realised that he had been used as a racketeer on behalf of capitalism..

In response to a ‘mean tweet’ from Dmitry Medvedev a former President of Russia Donald Trump has announced the moving of two American nuclear submarines closer to Russia.

‘Ohio-class submarine: A class of nuclear-powered submarines used by the United States Navy, consisting of 18 vessels in total, including 14 ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) and four guided missile submarines (SSGNs) converted from the original SSBNs These submarines are the largest ever built for the U.S. Navy, measuring 560 feet (170 meters) in length and displacing 18,750 tons when submerged They form the sea-based leg of the U.S. nuclear triad, providing a secure second-strike capability and carrying approximately half of the U.S. active strategic thermonuclear warheads The SSBNs are armed with up to 20 Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), each capable of delivering multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) with a range exceeding 6,100 nautical miles . The four SSGNs, following conversion, can carry up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles and support special operations forces, including up to 66 Navy SEALs. Internet.

Launch time from submarine to impact in Russia, twenty minutes.

Medvedev reminded Trump of Russia’s ‘Dead Hand’ system.

‘Russia’s “Dead Hand,” officially known as the Perimeter system, is a Cold War-era automatic or semi-automatic nuclear weapons control system developed by the Soviet Union to ensure a retaliatory nuclear strike even if the country’s leadership was destroyed in a first strike. The system is designed to detect a nuclear attack through seismic, radiation, light, and pressure sensors, and if communication links with top military command are severed, it can initiate the launch of Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The system is reportedly activated during times of crisis and is said to be capable of sending launch orders via command rockets flying over the country, even in the presence of radio jamming. While some sources suggest it operates fully automatically, more recent accounts indicate it is likely semi-automatic, requiring some level of human approval after activation.

The system’s core is believed to be located in deep underground bunkers south of Moscow and at backup sites. It was reportedly brought online in 1985 and remains in use by the Russian Federation. The system is a key component of the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, ensuring a retaliatory response to a decapitating strike. Despite some scepticism about its existence and functionality, Russian officials have confirmed its existence, with General Sergey Karakaev stating in 2011 that the U.S. could be destroyed in 30 minutes if the system were activated. The system has been reported to be upgraded to include radar early warning systems and Russia’s new hypersonic missiles.’ Internet.

As of January 2025 the Doomsday Clock- Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is set at eighty nine seconds. What will it perceived to be on its next reset?

Capitalism, more than it has ever done, represents an existential threat to every man, woman and child on the planet.

The words from the August 1914 Socialist Standard are more relevant than ever., ‘perhaps the working classes, hitherto so loyal and patriotic, will turn savagely against the powers that be.’

How much longer before we all recognise where our collective interest lies and we abolish capitalism for ever before capitalism abolishes us?

 

In the Green Party’s Party Political Broadcast of 22nd January its new eco-populist leader Zach Polanski ran through the various problems people face. He pointed out that most of the wealth we create ends up in the pockets of the super-rich. He observed, “This isn’t just an economic failure. It’s a failure of leadership. The people we elected choose to serve the wealthy. And, yes, that is obscene. Good leaders put people before profit”.  In other words, vote for me and the Green Party and we’ll be good leaders. Oh yes? He couldn’t be more wrong. The people workers elect don’t choose to serve the wealthy. The nature of capitalism, as a profit-making system that can only work for the profit-takers, obliges them to do this. That’s what’s obscene. The system — the organ-grinder not the monkeys. Replacing them with “good leaders” who want to do good  won’t change things. They, too, would end up having to serve the wealthy. What is needed is not a change of leaders, but to realise that no leader can do anything for us. What is needed is to understand that capitalism just cannot be changed to work for us. What is needed is to organise ourselves and act together to end capitalism. What is needed is to do it for ourselves without leaders of any kind.

Security

 

More guns, bigger bombs, longer range missiles,

Thicker armour, smarter drones, firm allies,

Control of the land, the oceans, the skies,

Compliant nation of bellumophiles,

A leader blessed with infallibility,

Martialled prelates to assure the laity

That they have conscripted the deity;

Add political instability.

Meanwhile the bottom-liners try to gauge

Where the rarest rare earth minerals lie,

The cost/benefit of those who will die

And the profits to be made from carnage.

Behind rhetoric, where’s the surety?

Only real change can secure security.

 

D. A.

 Donald Trump comes across as a spoilt, narcissistic child who demands and gets other people’s toys (eg Maria Machado’s own Nobel Peace Prize). He sulkily told the Norwegian prime minister that, since they didn’t give him the peace prize, he won’t bother to prioritise peace. His demand for Greenland – another toy – has caused a geopolitical crisis.

Is this Kissinger-like Great Power brinkmanship, or deranged MAGA swagger? Capitalism is a dangerous world ‘order’ even when its leaders act like responsible adults. Right now, America’s nuclear button is under the finger of someone who seems divorced from reality and isolated inside a bubble of toadying sycophants. Totalitarian despots and wannabes can barely contain their glee. What could possibly go wrong?

In the USA ‘Foreclosures — when a bank or lender takes back a home after missed mortgage payments — rose 14 percent from a year earlier.

In total, 367,460 US properties faced foreclosure filings in 2025, meaning they were in some stage of being taken over by a lender, according to ATTOM’s data.

Indeed, the outlook for the housing market — and the wider economy — is increasingly bleak. In total, the US added only around 584,000 jobs in 2025, making it the weakest year for job growth outside a recession since 2003. 

As foreclosures rise, neighbourhoods are flooded with discounted, bank-owned homes, dragging down nearby property values. For homeowners, that often means losing equity simply because of where they live. A surge in foreclosure filings are a symptom of deeper financial problems: homeowners squeezed by higher taxes and interest costs are falling behind, as they fail to pay other debts, such as credit cards and car loans, as well.’ Mail Online.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/real-estate/article-15464081/banks-seize-homes-foreclosures.html

The below is from the Socialist Standard August 2020

‘Decent, functional and even beautiful living accommodation is unarguably one of humanity’s prime needs. It is the one prime need in fact that, more than any other, save food and water, is vitally conducive to harmonious and pleasant living at all. Conversely, the lack of it is almost always a cause of misery, meanness and domestic strife. The question of housing allocation in a socialist society is therefore by no means a novel one, and has been discussed and debated for a very long time. That old Fabian fraud George Bernard Shaw, for example, once said that he was often asked who would live in the big house on the hill in this socialist society of his, and Bernard Shaw’s ever-ready response was ‘The same as now, whoever can afford to live there will’.

We beg to differ. All of what we say below notwithstanding, if there is one certain fact concerning life in a future socialist society that we can predict, it’s that how much money you have will most definitely not be the deciding criterion that determines where you live. There won’t be any money for a start – bits of colourful paper, or, more so these days, numbers on a computer screen, that denote how deserving you are of living decently as a human being.

Shaw’s solution to capitalism’s housing problem, like that of the other 56 pseudo-brands of ‘socialism’, was simply an ill-thought out version of reformed capitalism, inexorably welded to and determined and dictated by the market for houses. In socialism, there won’t be any market for houses. Shaw’s ‘solution’ was, bizarrely, simply predicated on the continuing existence of the very cause of the housing problem in the first place.

But, to be fair to him as much as possible, Shaw’s non-solution of reforming capitalism in such a way as to solve the housing problem, has been practically everybody else’s non-solution too. Long before Shaw was preaching his illogical nonsense, one of the pioneers of socialist ideas, the co-author and life-long friend of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, wrote a short series of articles entitled The Housing Question. Engels was writing in the mid-Victorian period, a time when the ‘success‘ of British capitalism was at its height and yet, a time also, when the housing conditions of the working class were especially miserable, unspeakably wretched and degrading. Needless to say, then as now, all manner of reformist nostrums were proposed by a whole range of political activists; from followers of the French anarchist Proudhon, who advocated that every worker within existing capitalism should have their own little private property dwelling, bought on the ‘never, never’, to representatives of the capitalists themselves, with their ‘factory-provided houses’ abominations. These, needless-to-say, were not only factory-provided, but factory-owned and job dependent, with all of the horrors of job loss and consequent eviction that were entailed. Indeed, in criticising these proposed multi-various reforms, Engels’ work is almost entirely devoted to dealing with the ways and means of how not to solve the housing question.

Not a problem of housing

As a matter of fact, as Engels explained repeatedly, the real issue is not at all a ‘housing’ problem – that is, a shortage of labour power or a dearth of nature-given materials that are necessary to provide everyone in society with housing accommodation commensurate with their needs – but a capitalism problem. Deal with the real issue of capitalism’s general diktat of production for profit, and the housing question, like every other misnamed ‘problem’ in capitalism, will solve itself. It is the only concrete solution to the problem of lack of housing, the inferior quality of housing and the location of housing. If there is any other solution, apart from the common ownership of resources proposed by the Socialist Party, it has never been revealed. All we hear today, from Housing Associations, charities and political parties are mere echoes of the ideas and social quackery that Engels exposed and lambasted as absurd nonsense 150 years ago.

Having stated the general solution to the housing ‘problem’ we are invariably questioned as to how the solution of common ownership will work in practice. Socialist society will undoubtedly require administration at a local level, a regional level and even a world-wide level. How this administration is organised and functions will be a matter for the inhabitants of socialism. What decisions these socialist bodies take, and how they will be implemented and even enforced if necessary, will be entirely up to them. That goes without saying. Although we refrain from crystal ball-gazing, we can, of course, make some general points as to what might happen in regard to housing provision in socialism. There are two things, we would imagine, a socialist society will want to deal with immediately. The first is the homeless problem.

For the first time ever, a problem that has been grappled with constantly in all modern societies, that has been discussed ad nauseam, fought over, lied about, written about endlessly, and thousands of charities and other organisations have done to death for as long as capitalism has existed , will at last be capable of solution. The administrative bodies in a socialist society will know best at the time how to do this.

The second task will be to look at the existing occupied housing stock, its condition and the needs of its occupiers, with a view to rehousing those in the worst of circumstances immediately. Again, decisions will need to be taken by socialism’s representative bodies over how best to implement this aim.

As a party, we have never claimed to be in possession of ready-made solutions for each and every question that the future socialist society will need to take up. Nor would it be sensible or desirable for us to do so. In regard to housing alone, the actual considerations and requirements are seemingly inexhaustible. The production and transportation of bricks, copper piping, slates, sand, cement, glass, wooden batons, joists and fencing, to name but a few of the most obvious that spring to mind, are each a major operation in themselves. Plumbers, electricians, roofers, bricklayers, joiners, glaziers and gardeners, will all need to be coordinated. Further, surveying, land availability, planning, road traffic considerations, amenities provision, public transport, again to name only those that readily spring to mind, give an additional idea of the complexities involved. It is absurd to suggest that we living today should make concrete plans for all this.

Likewise, the number of people involved in existing professions that are tied economically (and are mostly useless, with little or no connection to the actual construction of buildings) to housing in capitalism, that will be unleashed by socialism’s construction for use economy, run into the tens of millions. Our pamphlet From Capitalism to Socialism, lists over 70 of these professions themselves. And that’s only in regard to housing. The number of people engaged in useless jobs in capitalism generally and not connected with housing but who would be available to be deployed in that area where required is astronomical.

We don’t know

How will socialist society allocate Shaw’s big house on the hill? Our answer is, and can only be, we have no blueprint. It will be up to the inhabitants of socialism to decide ‘who gets what’. More importantly, even if such a question is legitimate, it certainly has no significant bearing on the case for socialism that we argue in the present.

However, such questions can be useful in one sense, for they highlight the chief difficulty of prediction: why should we assume that the social norms of today will be exactly those of the future? Certainly, there is no reason to believe that the attitudes of those living in an entirely different type of society will be exactly the same as today. To expect the norms of life in capitalism as it exists now to remain exactly the same as when there are, for example, a billion socialists, is naive enough. To expect a socialist society to be, in the first place, established on the notions and ideas of capitalism, and even more unlikely, remain completely static, is patently absurd and flies in the face of all past human experience.

Is it likely that people in a future socialist society will have the same desires, concerns, views, needs, aspirations or requirements that we find so ‘natural’ and indispensable in capitalism today? No matter how rigid and seemingly set in stone they appear now, it is absolutely certain that our present concerns for property ownership, for big houses, for big cars, for the baubles and trinkets so beloved of capitalism’s apologists, and in a nutshell, a concern for ‘who gets what’, will be simply looked upon with astonishment and incredulity and, eventually, intense curiosity.

Is such a belief in the possibility of such a profound change taking place idealistic or utopian? The history of a mere couple of decades or so tells us no. Not even the imaginative genius of Oscar Wilde could have ever dreamed of such an utterly unimaginable event as two men getting married – to each other! Think about that and consider the extraordinary change in attitude that has taken place in such a short historical time span, so that, apart from a small minority of religious bigots, no one bats an eyelid at what once was, barely yesterday in historical terms, such an inconceivable proposition as to be simply dismissed out of hand by practically every human being on the planet. Yet now it is widespread and the ‘norm’.

But to speculate, perhaps, in the immediate aftermath of the transition from capitalism to socialism, as a start, the inhabitants of socialism will decide, after making adequate provision for the existing occupants, to agree a list of the 500 (1000? 2000? 5000?) biggest and most beautiful private dwelling buildings in a metropolis such as London. Perhaps they will then decide to convert 100 into havens for the mentally ill, 100 into centres for the care and healing of victims of sexual abuse, 100 into centres for the study and treatment of those suffering from seemingly uncontrollable and socially harmful sexual urges, and 100 into recuperation centres for those suffering the effects of being incarcerated under capitalism for crimes against property.

Perhaps also, in an advanced socialist society of 20 years standing, when most or all of these problems have been eradicated, the majority of the very same buildings will, one by one, be simply left to run themselves as examples of by-gone notions of desirable (or even undesirable) architecture, with accommodation upstairs for those who want to preserve and protect them. The point is, we simply cannot predict what will happen.

How will socialist society come into ‘possession’ of these buildings? Again, we don’t know. Is it possible that they will be simply requisitioned for the use of everyone? Absolutely. After all, to describe the matter bluntly, the capitalist revolutions of the past were to privatise the earth and everything in it and on it, to proclaim the rights of private property and to convert it into the ownership of a few.

A socialist revolution will be aimed at taking the property back we have created, taking it out of the hands of a parasitic few and to place it at the disposal of society. That is what a socialist revolution is.

How the inhabitants of a future socialist society will act, what their priorities will be, and what is important and desirable for them, can be safely left to them to decide.

What happens to an insignificant number of ‘more desirable than others’ buildings is only one aspect of the matter, and by far the least important. The question of housing provision in general, both now – as in the lack of it – and the potential that socialism will undoubtedly open up, is far more important.

To make glib, possibly well-intentioned – though usually ultimately utterly futile – proposals to deal with housing problems in capitalism’s restrictive profit-driven market for houses is one thing; to deal with the necessity to provide healthy, decent, and even – a purely subjective opinion, of course, beautiful – living accommodation in socialism’s production for use on the basis of a free access economic system, is quite another.

We would make it abundantly clear again, in any discussion of how a socialist society will deal with the general allocation of housing, that we cannot speak for a future society in regard to what decisions will be necessary in the construction or location or provision or allocation of housing – any more so than we can on the future prospects for harmonicas or hairnets.

Our only concern at present is to drive home the necessity for the one over-riding solution to the problems of capitalism and that is socialism. This will create the only possible basis for solving the so-called housing problem. And this, as we say repeatedly, for the simple reason that it isn’t a problem at all, but merely a consequence of the artificial scarcity in housing created by capitalism’s disgraceful and disgusting inherent drive for profit. Socialism will unleash the tremendous construction capability necessary so that we can begin practical steps towards not only solving issues like homelessness and slum-dwelling, but constructing beautiful housing accommodation – we are, after all, admirers of the ideas of the early Marxist William Morris – so as to meet the self-defined needs of every human being.’

Nigel McCullough

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2022/08/what-happens-when-there-is-no-housing.html