Frederick Engels's Argument On Housing Shortage

Engels’s Argument on Housing Shortage

In 1887, Frederick Engels published his book called “The Housing Question” where he strongly advised to abolish the system of capitalism. In this paper, one will look into Engels’s logicality on the steps he uses to connect capitalism and housing shortage. Through the process of capitalism, the rise of Haussmannization, and the never-ending circle of housing shortage, readers will understand why Engels believes that capitalism should be removed to solve housing shortage.

Engels and other communists claim that capitalism oppresses the working class and makes them suffer. According to Engels (1887), the current social order allows the capitalists to overuse workers’ labor value unnecessarily. Not
Started in Paris, Humanization improves the landscape, streets, utilities etc of the city. As a result, Engels points out that under the influence of Haussmannization from France, other capitalists from Europe also exercised such method to achieve their personal enrichment. To understand how capitalism works with Haussmannization, Engels (1887) explains by saying that the expansion of modern cities provides sections of land, and buildings erected in areas where the land value is depressed must be simply replaced by others. However, if the land and building value go up, the price to live in the city increases as well.[2] As a building inside the city depreciates, the land value also goes down. Therefore, the working class will be able to live there cheaply at the beginning. Eventually, the buildings depreciate at a certain level that the capitalists decide to tear them down and build the new ones. Corresponded with Haussmannization, old buildings inside the center of the city must be removed and replaced by newer models. After remodeling the buildings, the land values increase and the capitalists once again become