N.I. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky: The ABC of Communism
The privileges of the bourgeois class are more conspicuous in the matter of housing than in any other domain. The bourgeois inhabit the best quarters of the towns. The well-to-do classes live in the best streets, in those which are cleanest, those where there are spacious gardens and plenty of trees. The working class, on the other hand, is in all lands stabled in the mean streets and in suburban quarters. It is not because most of the factories are usually situated in the outskirts of the town that the workers must dwell in the suburbs. Even if a factory is in the centre of a town, those who work there will none the less be herded somewhere in the outskirts. But those factory owners whose works are situated in the remote quarters of the town, themselves live in the centre.
Bourgeois families occupy entire dwellings, or flats with a great number of rooms. Their houses have more rooms than inhabitants. There are spacious gardens, bathrooms, and all the conveniences of life.
Working-class families are crowded into cellars, into single-roomed tenements, into tiny flats. Often enough they live in barrack dwellings, like prisoners who are herded in a gaol. Throughout the day the worker inhales factory smoke, filings, dust of every kind; all night he breathes the air of a room in which as many as five or six children may be sleeping.
It is not surprising that statistics should show how quickly people die in working-class quarters — the folk whose working hours are too long, whose dwellings are too narrow, and whose lives are too short. Here are some of the data. In Britain the average deathrate is 22 per thousand. In the bourgeois quarters, the deathrate is only 17; in the working-class quarters, it is 36; in some districts, where the poorest among the workers dwell, the deathrate is between 40 and 50. Turning to Belgium, we find that in the working-class quarters of Brussels 1 person in 29 dies every year, whereas in the best bourgeois quarters only 1 person in 53 dies each year. Thus the working-class deathrate is nearly twice as great as the bourgeois deathrate.
The mean duration of life in the case of the bourgeoisie, in the case of those who live in well-lighted, dry, and warm dwellings, is nearly half as long again as the mean duration of life of those who are crowded into the cellars and attics of the working-class quarters.
In Budapest, the mean duration of life of persons dying at an age exceeding 5 years, was as follows:
| Years. | ||
| Among those living 1 to 2 persons per room | 47.16 | |
| ” ” ” 2 to 5 ” ” ” | 39.51 | |
| ” ” ” 5 to 10 ” ” ” | 37.10 | |
| more than 10 ” ” ” | 32.03 |
When we examine the figures relating to child mortality, the comparison between the working class and the bourgeoisie shows that the latter possess a still greater advantage in this respect. In those bourgeois dwellings where there is an average of only one person per room, the deathrate among infants (those under one year) is only one-fourth of the infantile deathrate in those working-class dwellings in which there are more than three persons per room. As regards children aged 1 to 5, the bourgeois deathrate is only half the working-class deathrate.
Not only do the workers in their gloomy and pestiferous habitations die on the average 15 years earlier than the bourgeois; in addition they have to pay capitalist landlords for the privilege. Tribute goes to the house-owner for every corner, every cellar, and every garret, not to mention every real room or tenement. If you don’t pay, here is the key of the street! House rent always swallows a large proportion of the workers’ wages, usually as much as 15 to 35 per cent. The cost of housing continually increases — for the workers — in capitalist lands. In Hamburg, for example, for every 100 marks [shillings] earned per month, there was paid in house rent :
| Annual income ranging from |
Percentages | ||||
| 1868. | 1881. | 1900. | |||
| 900 to 1200 | Marks | 19.8 | 24.1 | 24.7 | |
| 1200 to 1800 | ” | 19.9 | 18.9 | 23.2 | |
| 1800 to 2400 | ” | 20.3 | 19.5 | 21.6 | |
| 6000 to 9000 | ” | 16.5 | 15.7 | 15.1 | |
| 30,000 to 60,000 | ” | 6.7 | 8.1 | 6.0 | |
| more than 60,000 | ” | 3.7 | 3.9 | 3.1 | |
Thus the smaller the income, the larger the percentage of that income which has to be devoted to house rent, and the more rapid likewise is the annual increase in the proportion that must be assigned to rent. In the case of the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, the percentage of income devoted to house rent is only one-sixth of that which must be paid by the workers, and this percentage, far from increasing, positively diminishes.
The proletarian revolution effected an entire change in housing conditions. The Soviet Power nationalised the bourgeois dwellings; in some cases it completely cancelled the arrears of rent in the working-class quarters, and in other cases reduced these arrears. But this is not all. Plans are being drawn up, and have in part already been put into operation, for the complete abolition of rent for the workers living in the nationalised dwellings. In the larger towns, there has begun a systematic transference of the workers from cellar dwellings, from ruinous houses, and from insanitary tenements, into the bourgeois villas and mansions of the central quarters of the towns. Furthermore, the workers are being systematically supplied with furniture and all necessary domestic utensils.
It is the business of the Communist Party to continue this policy, to perfect its housing economy, to institute a campaign against rough usage of the nationalised houses, to see that they are kept clean and in satisfactory repair, and to ensure that the drains, the water-pipes, the steam-heating apparatus, etc., are kept in good order.
But the Soviet Power, while pursuing on broad lines this policy of nationalising large-scale capitalist house property, sees no reason why the interests of the lesser house-owners should be infringed — the house-owners who are workers, employees, and other ordinary folk living in their own houses. Attempts to effect a general nationalisation of the small houses as well as of the large ones (such attempts were made in the provinces) had as their only result that the nationalised houses large and small had no one to care for them properly; they fell into disrepair, and in many cases there was no one willing-to live in them. On the other hand, feelings of animosity towards the Soviet Power were aroused among the owners of the small houses.
The Soviet Power, which was faced in the towns by a severe housing crisis resulting from the complete suspension of building activities, had to undertake the arduous task of justly apportioning the available housing accommodation. The housing departments of the soviets take charge of all the free dwellings in the towns, and allot them in accordance with a definite plan. The departments make schedules of all the available accommodation in the large houses, in the dwellings of families and individuals who have more rooms than they really need.
When the civil war is over and when the crisis in production has come to an end, there will be a great growth in the urban population. The proletariat which has taken refuge in the villages will return to the towns, and the excess of population in the rural districts will also make its way to the urban centres. The Soviet Power will have to deal with the question of building new houses, dwellings which will satisfy the needs of communist society. At the present moment it is difficult to say what type of buildings will be best: whether they should be large houses, fully equipped, with gardens, common dining halls, and the like; or whether they should be small and well-designed separate dwellings for the workers. One thing is perfectly clear. The housing program must not conflict in any way with the proposed unification of industry and agriculture. It must favour the dispersal of the town over the countryside; it must not increase the concentration of hundreds of thousands and millions of persons in limited areas — persons who by this concentration are deprived of the possibility of breathing fresh air, are cut off from nature, and are foredoomed to a premature death.
ENGELS, The Housing Question. FEDEROVICH, Working-class Dwellings. DEMENTYEV, The Factory, its Merits and its Defects. SVETLOVSKY, The Housing Question in Western Europe and in Russia. POKROVSKAYA, The Improvement of working-class Dwellings in England.