Please, not this again… Personally, I am a lot in favour of communism. But some people, especially US Americans, have a fundamentally wrong idea about the housing shown in the upper picture.
This is often neither cheap, nor does it reduce homelessness. And it’s also not the goal of that kind of rental homes to reduce homelessness.
That is just normal homes of average people in many places.
Those houses were built by state-backed actors to support growing urbanization and create a housing surplus for that urbanization to give the workers more power since they no longer have to deal with aggressively rent-seeking private landlords.
No they weren’t built to give “the workers more power”. You still have landlords and sometimes hefty prices on these apartments. Depending on the country/city.
Welfare state would be if the state took over half the rent payments, for example. Building more houses, that are not owned by the government is examplatory of a planned economy and the aspect of doing it to give more negotiating power to the average worker is a communistic idea.
In the 2000s and onwards yes. Because often these were sold to private investors in the capitalization of former communist/socialist countries.
At the time when they were built they did provide a great improvement in housing, especially as most of eastern Europe has been terrible destroyed by the Nazis.
Please, not this again… Personally, I am a lot in favour of communism. But some people, especially US Americans, have a fundamentally wrong idea about the housing shown in the upper picture.
This is often neither cheap, nor does it reduce homelessness. And it’s also not the goal of that kind of rental homes to reduce homelessness.
That is just normal homes of average people in many places.
It’s not “cheap housing for everyone”.
Those houses were built by state-backed actors to support growing urbanization and create a housing surplus for that urbanization to give the workers more power since they no longer have to deal with aggressively rent-seeking private landlords.
Wait, isn’t that communism?
No they weren’t built to give “the workers more power”. You still have landlords and sometimes hefty prices on these apartments. Depending on the country/city.
Excess housing supply doesn’t commoditize housing and give working-class people more choice? Hmm…
No, that’s a welfare state
Welfare state would be if the state took over half the rent payments, for example. Building more houses, that are not owned by the government is examplatory of a planned economy and the aspect of doing it to give more negotiating power to the average worker is a communistic idea.
There is a reason why cringe tankie bullshit is the worst enemy of actual leftist policy.
In the 2000s and onwards yes. Because often these were sold to private investors in the capitalization of former communist/socialist countries.
At the time when they were built they did provide a great improvement in housing, especially as most of eastern Europe has been terrible destroyed by the Nazis.