8-01-05, 8:21 am

I was reading the Sunday New York Times this week, the 'newspaper of record' as they say in international establishment circles to understand what was the range of choices in what I was expected to think.

I happened upon the Real Estate Section that had a lead story about well off people 'struggling' to find places to live in Manhattan. A woman described as a lawyer for a bank was upset because 'the stuff I was looking at in the $800-900 range escalated to $1.4 million, $1.5 million…. I’ve actually switched my focus to houses in Brooklyn and that’s pretty bad, too.' A 29-year-old 'pharmaceutical consultant' had better luck in finding a condo at $600,000. 'About a year ago, I upped the price to $500.000 when I earned enough to increase my down payment…. I got into a bidding war and offered $15,000 over.' A couple with a child, the woman a general counsel in real estate, the man a financial services executive, are still looking for a three bedroom coop in the $1 million to $1.5 million range. The woman noted 'we’re very frustrated and discouraged…. We have a house in Connecticut and we are going to buy a nicer house there.' The man talked wistfully about the luxury apartment they rent and said s sadly 'there’s not a lot of value out there. Everything is out of control. It is insane to pay $1 million plus and have to renovate.'

And the right-wing media still denounce the New York Times as a 'liberal' newspaper. I had planned to write a satirical article Capitalism Gone Mad article about these people 'buffeted by cruel fate' but I will save that because there are more important points to make.

Housing is a basic necessity for human beings. Under capitalism it is a commodity like anything else, including labor and money for that matter, not a human right as it was proclaimed in socialist movements and societies. However badly those societies may have screwed up in the production of housing in terms of quality, there was never anything like this 'triumph of the free market' in housing. Except during war, never any homelessness. De facto slum housing in countries like the USSR were seen as examples of socialism’s failure. Meanwhile, invisible urban and rural slums that stand in close proximity to visible luxury housing are examples of a sort of capitalism’s 'success.'

That lawyers, 'consultants,' and executives at banks, brokerage houses, pharmaceutical firms, and other sectors of finance capital who benefit from their firms’ super profits feel 'frustrated' by real estate interests which make them pay millions to purchase apartments that their grand parents would have considered respectable middle class housing is a wonderful example of the jungle world that capitalism produces for everyone.

The 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes characterized society as a 'war of all against all.' This characterization exists not only for the poor but for the wealthy, as landlords and real estate brokers exploit lawyers, analysts and executives who earn high six and seven figure salaries {not counting stock options and other forms of 'compensation').

Add to this group some higher income self-employed professionals, for example the orthopedic surgeon who in the article presented a picture of a society that educates and rewards elites to maximize profit in all areas of life, housing, health care, education, recreation, and offers no solution to anyone, even its corporate lawyers and company executives, but the acquisition of more personal wealth to get more and bigger houses, cars, designer clothes, access to elite private schools starting with pre school for children, more and more conspicuous consumption for less and less socially useful work. If a paper like the (link www.pww.org Peoples Weekly World> were the newspaper of 'record' in the United States, we would of course be living in a very different society, a socialist one. Where housing was concerned, the upgrading of existing housing and the production of new housing for the general population would be the center of interest. There might be feature stories on successful urban planners who had helped to create new multi-cultural and multi-purpose communities with housing that was both comfortable and conducive to community building and social integration, not separation and isolation in the tradition of the contemporary suburb and the new gated 'communities' of the wealthy.

Nobody would be earning millions while others were earning less than $10,000 but there would still be income differentials. Since most enterprises in a socialist society would be either directly publicly owned (like some local public transportation) or cooperatives, those whose skills directly advanced and improved the quality of life for the people, criminal justice officials who achieved rates of rehabilitation that reduced the prison population, medical personnel who increased general health levels and reduced the need for both prescription drugs and various dangerous and expensive medical procedures by developing preventive health policies, might get the bonuses reserved today for stock traders and high managers. Of course I mean that, figuratively, not literally, since the higher incomes of socially productive people would and could not be millions more than most workers.

People would own personal property, like cars and houses, but, this would be considered property for use and its sale to others would be regulated so as to prevent the speculation and profiteering which under capitalism today in New York and many other major cities has dramatically pushed up the cost of housing so as to make housing costs for both renters and owners soar, along with regressive property taxes which make the concept of home 'equity' a cruel joke for many millions.

This may sound utopian to some, but in a society like ours so unevenly developed, whose people have the highest money incomes on earth and the lowest rate of saving in the developed world, it really makes sense. Waiting to get old and pay off your mortgage only to fight regressive property taxes while trying to live on social security in the richest country in the world makes no sense. Taking out second and third mortgages so you will never pay the mortgage out and hoping that a rising real estate market will enable you to sell your house at a profit and then move to something much more modest to realize that profit (a comparable home will cost you more) makes no sense. Watching landlords pass onto you as a renter the higher 'property values' and tax assessments while you get absolutely nothing except possible eviction makes no sense. In a developed country with modern forces of mass production, a socialist system is the only one that really makes any sense.

Reading about people who are frustrated because they can’t find a satisfactory New York condo at $1 million should lead you to say to yourself that something is very wrong—either with you and with 98% of the population whose only relationship to those people would be in a Real Estate Fantasy League, or with the larger capitalist system which is organized around a 'free market' that caters to such people in the construction of new homes and the renovation of old ones.

If you come to the latter conclusion you will be on the road to understanding the society around you instead of being imprisoned intellectually by its fantasies and fears. And that may be worth more to you than a million dollar New York condo in the right neighborhood, which under capitalism is constantly shifting.



--Contact Norman Markowitz at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.