Them and us housing crisis for the billions luxury mansions for the billionaire

Marxist Analysis · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The article argues that the global housing crisis is not a malfunction of capitalism but its logical expression: the same system that produces luxury mansions for billionaires simultaneously generates homelessness and precarity for billions. The central claim is that housing has become a site of intensified class polarisation, where the super-rich treat property as a store of fictitious capital while working people face rising rents, unaffordable mortgages, and the threat of displacement. The crisis is presented as systemic, not cyclical — rooted in the logic of profit extraction rather than policy failure or market correction.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on the Marxist understanding of housing as a commodity under capitalism, where use-value (shelter, security, community) is subordinated to exchange-value (profit, speculation, asset accumulation). The article implicitly deploys the concept of fictitious capital: housing prices detached from real wages and productive investment, sustained by cheap credit and speculative demand until the bubble bursts. The distinction between "the billions" and "the billionaires" is not rhetorical but structural — the crisis is presented as a zero-sum relation in which the wealth of the few is directly proportional to the immiseration of the many. The piece sits within the Marxist tradition that treats housing as a terrain of class struggle, not a technical problem for reformist policy. It echoes Engels's The Housing Question in its insistence that capitalism cannot solve the housing crisis because it needs it: the exploitation of housing as a source of rent and speculative profit is integral to the system.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article is published in October 2022, at a moment of acute conjunctural crisis. The specific data points anchor the argument in the immediate conjuncture:

• USA: 3.8 million housing units short of population growth; Federal Reserve interest rate hikes pushing mortgage rates above 6 percent; corporate investors (like Wedgewood Inc.) buying nearly 1 in 7 homes in metropolitan areas; homelessness in Los Angeles approaching 70,000.
• Brazil: 5.8 million home deficit; 125,000 evictions between March 2020 and May 2022; Bolsonaro family implicated in purchasing 107 properties via cash payments, including through the rachadinha embezzlement scheme.
• Ireland: 716 homes available to rent nationwide for a population of 5.1 million; student bed-sharing arrangements; 30 percent rise in rental deposit fraud.
• UK: House prices up 20 percent since pandemic onset; household debt at 133.9 percent of disposable income; mortgage rates at 6 percent (highest since 2008); 600,000 fixed-rate deals expiring in second half of 2022; 1.8 million expiring in 2023; average monthly repayment increase from £863 to £1,490 at 6 percent.

The article situates these national crises within a global pattern: the super-prime London property market saw 155 sales above £10 million in the year to April 2022; the Hinduja brothers' £1.2 billion Old War Office development was permitted to build zero affordable housing; the "Secret Agent" broker sold a £16 million Kensington house via WhatsApp video without the buyer ever seeing it. The conjuncture is one of simultaneous inflation, interest rate rises, energy crisis, and the aftershocks of the Truss-Kwarteng mini-budget — a moment when the contradictions of British capitalism in particular are laid bare.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is a snapshot of a specific moment (October 2022) and does not follow through on subsequent developments. The argument continues in several directions:

• The trajectory of the UK housing market after the Truss-Kwarteng collapse, including the extent of negative equity and repossessions, is taken up in subsequent IDOM articles on the British economy and the cost-of-living crisis.
• The Brazilian situation after Lula's election victory in October 2022 — whether the new government addresses the housing deficit or continues neoliberal housing policy — is a live question for Marxist analysis of the Workers' Party's record.
• The role of corporate landlords and institutional investors in deepening the housing crisis is a recurring theme in IDOM's coverage of financialisation, including articles on BlackRock and the private equity buy-up of residential property.
• The political conclusions — the demand for expropriation under democratic workers' control — are developed in IDOM's broader strategic writings on the transition to socialism, particularly in relation to the housing question as a site of mass radicalisation.

Connections

• Engels, The Housing Question — the foundational Marxist text on housing as a capitalist commodity, arguing that reformist solutions (cooperatives, municipal housing) cannot resolve the contradiction between use-value and exchange-value.
• David Harvey, The Limits to Capital — on the secondary circuit of capital and the role of the built environment in absorbing overaccumulated capital, though the article does not explicitly engage Harvey's framework.
• IDOM articles on the cost-of-living crisis (2022-2023) — situating housing within the broader crisis of social reproduction under inflation and austerity.
• IDOM articles on the Truss-Kwarteng mini-budget — analysing the specific fiscal crisis that triggered the mortgage rate spike in the UK.
• Against the Stream episodes on financialisation and rentier capitalism — developing the theoretical link between fictitious capital in housing and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

Key Quotes

1. "The masses struggle to pay for somewhere warm to sleep at night; they are forced to sacrifice the bulk of income on rent and mortgage repayments; and risk being turfed out on the streets by a crisis they did not cause and have no control over. Meanwhile, the ultra-rich are living in the lap of luxury. Their decadent lifestyle is not only in stark contrast but directly proportional to the increasing misery facing the rest of us."

2. "Working and middle-class families already paying mortgages face the prospect of their repayments going up significantly. There are 600,000 fixed-rate mortgage deals due to expire in the second half of 2022, and 1.8m next year, according to UK Finance. Assuming a 6 percent rate, the average household on a two-year deal would see their monthly repayments increase by over 70 percent, from £863 to £1,490."

3. "The housing bubble in Britain is overdue for bursting and there are signs that the time is nigh. People could soon face a situation of negative equity, where their repayments are unaffordable, but falling housing prices leave them unable to cover the cost of their mortgages by selling up."

4. "Under British law, [the Hinduja brothers] should have been obliged to build 98 'affordable' flats as part of the £1.2bn development. But the Tory-controlled Westminster Council agreed to let the development go ahead without building any affordable housing, as this would 'not be economically feasible.'"

5. "The super-prime property broker, known only as the 'Secret Agent', gave an illuminating interview for Bloomberg, explaining that his clients are 'operating in a private jetstream, floating above [the cost-of-living crisis]… I don't think their wealth has been significantly affected.'"

6. "Housing is a basic social need. Only an insane society would allow it to be exploited by profiteers. The Marxists say these bloodsuckers should have their wealth and assets expropriated under democratic, workers' control, so that we can invest in a massive programme of house building, and guarantee every single person the security of a roof over their heads."