The Islington Tribune sought the opinion of
our local candidate upon the Conservative manifesto promise to extend the
right-to-buy to include housing associations. It is unclear if the paper will
print in full our reply but this is the text of our response.
The new extension of the right-to-buy is another hilarious
example of the Tories making despotic inroads into the rights of private
property: after changing the law to allow fracking under people's homes, they
now want to seize the assets of private charitable associations to give away as
electoral bribes.
It is part and parcel of the problem of reforming
capitalism, that so long as the market remains in place, any reform can be
undone in a knock down fire sale by any party in government. In this case, the
right-to-buy seems, to my mind, to be a smoke screen for making councils sell
off their most valuable homes. In any case, the temptation to buy votes with
state assets will always exist for governing parties.
If any party succeeded, through taxation or borrowing, in
building thousands more new social properties, they can be given away by the
stroke of a Secretary of State's pen at any future date.
This is what we call primary accumulation, or accumulation
through expropriation, where piles of money are made for individuals by sales
of public or common properties. It has a history as old as the dissolution of
the monasteries and the Enclosure Acts. As long as representatives of the
capitalist class wield political power this sort of thing will go on.
Bringing the wealth of the world into common and democratic
ownership would prevent such accumulation of wealth, since land assets would
have no economic value, only use value. There would be no more buying and
selling, so there would be no means of disposing of common assets as private
wealth. There would be no state power to sell them off at the whim of a
minority. This is especially so, as common ownership is not possible without
the active conscious decision and action of the overwhelming majority of
people: why would they vote to give their homes away again?
The Tory's plan is to enrich a minority. We could all own
our homes, and have secure tenures, through common ownership.
Hope that suffices.
Cheers,
Bill Martin
Socialist Party PPC
for Islington North
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