27. Preface to the Second Edition of The Housing Question
The following work is a reprint of three articles which I wrote in 1872 for the Leipzig Volksstaat. Just at that time the French milliards came pouring down on Germany[285]; public debts were paid off, fortresses and barracks built, stocks of weapons and war matériel renewed; the available capital no less than the volume of money in circulation was suddenly enormously increased, and all this just at a time when Germany was entering the world arena not only as a "united empire", but also as a great industrial country. These milliards lent young large-scale industry a powerful upswing, and it was they above all that brought about the short period of prosperity, rich in illusions, which followed the war, and immediately afterwards, in 1873-74 the great crash by which Germany proved itself to be an industrial country capable of holding its own on the world market.
The period in which an old civilised country makes such a transition from manufacture and small-scale production to large-scale industry, a transition, moreover, accelerated by such favourable circumstances, is at the same time predominantly a period of "housing shortage". On the one hand, masses of rural workers are suddenly drawn into the big towns, which develop into industrial centres; on the other hand, the concept applied in building these older towns no longer accords with the conditions needed for the new large-scale industry and the corresponding traffic; streets are widened and new ones cut through, and railways are run right across them. At the very time when workers are streaming into the towns in masses, workers' dwellings are pulled down wholesale.
Hence the sudden housing shortage for the workers and for the small traders and small manufacturing businesses, which depend on the workers for their custom. In towns which grew up from the outset as industrial centres, this housing shortage is as good as unknown; for instance, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Barmen-Elberfeld. On the other hand, in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna it took on an acute form at the time, and has, for the most part, continued to exist in a chronic form.
It was therefore precisely this acute housing shortage, this symptom of the industrial revolution taking place in Germany, which filled the press of the day with treatises on the "housing question" and gave rise to all sorts of social quackery. A series of such articles also found their way into the Volksstaat. The anonymous author, who revealed himself later on as A. Mülberger, M. D. of Württemberg, considered the opportunity a favourable one for enlightening the German workers, by means of this question, on the miraculous effects of Proudhon's social panacea.(1) When I expressed my astonishment to the editors at the acceptance of these peculiar articles, I was challenged to answer them, and this I did (see Part I: How Proudhon Solves the Housing Question). This series of articles was soon followed by a second series, in which I examined the philanthropic bourgeois view of the question, on the basis of a work by Dr. Emil Sax(2)
(Part II: How the Bourgeoisie Solves the Housing Question). After a rather long pause Dr. Mülberger did me the honour of replying to my articles,(3) and this compelled me to make a rejoinder (Part III: Supplement on Proudhon and the Housing Question), whereby both the polemic and also my special occupation with this question came to an end. That is the genesis of these three series of articles, which have also appeared as a separate reprint in pamphlet form. The fact that a new reprint has now become necessary I owe undoubtedly to the benevolent solicitude of the German imperial government which, by prohibiting the work, tremendously increased its sale, as usual, and I hereby take this opportunity of expressing my respectful thanks to it.[286]
I have revised the text for this new edition, inserted a few additions and notes, and have corrected a small economic error in the first part,(4) as my opponent, Dr. Mülberger, unfortunately failed to discover it.
During this revision it came home to me what gigantic progress the international working-class movement has made during the past fourteen years. At that time it was still a fact that "for twenty years the workers speaking Romance languages have had no other mental pabulum than the works of Proudhon",(5) and at a pinch, the still more one-sided version of Proudhonism presented by the father of "anarchism", Bakunin, who regarded Proudhon as "the schoolmaster of us all", notre maître à nous tous. Although the Proudhonists in France were only a small sect among the workers, they were still the only ones who had a definitely formulated programme and who under the Commune were able to take over the leadership in the economic field. In Belgium, Proudhonism reigned unchallenged among the Walloon workers, and in Spain and Italy, with a few isolated exceptions, everything in the working-class movement which was not anarchist was decidedly Proudhonist. And today? In France, Proudhon has been completely discarded among the workers and retains supporters only among the radical bourgeois and petty bourgeois, who as Proudhonists also call themselves "socialists", but against whom the most energetic fight is carried on by the socialist workers. In Belgium, the Flemings have ousted the Walloons from the leadership of the movement, deposed Proudhonism and greatly raised the level of the movement. In Spain, as in Italy, the anarchist high tide of the seventies has receded and washed away with it the remnants of Proudhonism. While in Italy the new party is still in process of clarification and formation, in Spain the small nucleus, which as the Nueva Federaciôn Madrilena[287] remained loyal to the General Council of the International, has developed into a strong party, which — as can be seen from the republican press itself — is destroying the influence of the bourgeois republicans on the workers far more effectively than its noisy anarchist predecessors were ever able to do. Among Latin workers the forgotten works of Proudhon have been replaced by Capital, the Communist Manifesto and a number of other works of the Marxian school, and Marx's main demand — the seizure of all the means of production in the name of society by a proletariat risen to absolute political power — is now the demand of the whole revolutionary working class in the Latin countries as well.
If therefore Proudhonism has been finally supplanted among the workers of the Latin countries as well, if it — in accordance with its real destination — only serves French, Spanish, Italian and Belgian bourgeois radicals as an expression of their bourgeois and petty-bourgeois cravings, why then return to it today? Why combat anew a dead opponent by reprinting these articles?
First of all, because these articles do not confine themselves to a mere polemic against Proudhon and his German deputies. As a consequence of the division of labour that existed between Marx and myself, it fell to me to present our views in the periodical press, and, therefore, particularly in the fight against opposing views, in order that Marx should have time for the elaboration of his great main work. This made it necessary for me to present our views for the most part in a polemical form, in opposition to other views. Here too. Parts One and Three contain not only a critique of the Proudhonist conception of the question, but also a presentation of our own conception.
Secondly, Proudhon played much too significant a role in the history of the European working-class movement for him to fall into oblivion without more ado. Refuted theoretically and discarded practically, he remains of historical interest. Anyone who occupies himself in any detail with modern socialism must also acquaint himself with the "surmounted standpoints" of the movement. Marx's Poverty of Philosophy appeared several years before Proudhon put forward his practical proposals for social reform.[288] Here Marx could only discover in embryo and criticise Proudhon's exchange bank. From this angle, therefore, his work is supplemented by the present one, imperfectly enough, sad to say. Marx would have done it all much better and far more convincingly.
And finally, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialism is strongly represented in Germany down to this very hour. On the one hand, by armchair socialists[289] and philanthropists of all sorts, among whom the wish to turn the workers into owners of their dwellings still plays a great role and with regard to whom, therefore, my work is still appropriate. On the other hand, a certain petty-bourgeois socialism finds representation in the Social-Democratic Party itself, and even in the ranks of the Reichstag group. This is done in the following way: while the fundamental views of modern socialism and the demand for the transformation of all the means of production into social property are recognised as justified, their accomplishment is declared possible only in the distant, and for all practical purposes, unforeseeable future. Thus, for the present one has to rely on mere social patchwork, and sympathy can be shown, according to circumstances, even with the most reactionary efforts for what is known as the "uplifting of the labouring class". The existence of such a tendency is quite inevitable in Germany, the land of philistinism par excellence, particularly at a time when industrial development is uprooting this deeply rooted philistinism forcibly and on a mass scale. The tendency is quite harmless to the movement, in view of the wonderful common sense of our workers, which has stood the test so magnificently precisely during the past eight years of struggle against the Anti-Socialist Law,[29]
the police and the judges. But it is necessary clearly to realise that such a tendency exists. And if this tendency subsequently takes on a firmer shape and more defined contours, as is necessary and even desirable, it will have to go back to its predecessors for the formulation of its programme, and in doing so it will hardly be able to overlook Proudhon.
The essence of both the big-bourgeois and petty-bourgeois solutions of the "housing question" is that the worker should own his dwelling. However, this is a point which has been shown in a very peculiar light by the industrial development of Germany during the past twenty years. In no other country do there exist so many wage labourers who own not only their dwellings but also a garden or field as well. Besides these there are numerous others who hold house and garden or field as tenants, having in fact fairly secure possession. Rural domestic industry combined with gardening or small-scale agriculture forms the broad basis of Germany's new large-scale industry. In the West the workers are for the most part owners, in the East chiefly tenants, of their homesteads. We find this combination of domestic industry with gardening and agriculture, and therefore with a secure dwelling, not only wherever hand weaving still fights against the mechanical loom: in the Lower Rhineland and in Westphalia, in the Saxon Erzgebirge and in Silesia, but also wherever domestic industry of any sort has established itself as a rural occupation, as, for instance, in the Thuringian Forest and in the Rhön area. At the time of the discussion of the tobacco monopoly, it was revealed to what great extent cigar making too was being carried on as a rural domestic industry. Wherever distress spreads among the small peasants, as for instance a few years ago in the Eifel area,[291] the bourgeois press immediately raises a call for the introduction of a suitable domestic industry as the only remedy. And in fact both the growing plight of the German allotment peasants and the general situation of German industry urge a continual extension of rural domestic industry. This is a phenomenon peculiar to Germany. Only very exceptionally do we find anything similar in France; for instance, in the regions of silk cultivation. In England, where there are no small peasants, rural domestic industry rests on the work of the wives and children of the agricultural day-labourers. Only in Ireland can we observe the rural domestic industry of garment making being carried on, as in Germany, by real peasant families. We are not, of course, concerned here with Russia and other countries not represented on the industrial world market.
Thus, as regards industry there exists today a state of affairs in large parts of Germany which appears at first glance to resemble that which prevailed generally before the introduction of machinery. However, this is so only at first glance. The rural domestic industry of earlier times, combined with gardening and agriculture, was, at least in the countries in which industry was developing, the basis of a tolerable and, here and there, even comfortable material situation for the working class, but at the same time the basis of its intellectual and political insignificance. The hand-made product and its cost determined the market price, and owing to the infinitesimal labour productivity compared with the present day, the sales markets as a rule grew faster than the supply. This held good at about the middle of the last century for England, and partly for France, particularly in the textile industry. In Germany which was at that time only just recovering from the devastation of the Thirty Years' War[292] and working its way up under most unfavourable circumstances, the situation was, however, quite different. The only domestic industry producing for the world market there, linen weaving, was so oppressed by taxes and feudal dues that it did not raise the peasant weavers above the very low level of the rest of the peasantry. Nevertheless, at that time the rural industrial worker enjoyed a certain guaranteed existence.
With the introduction of machinery all this changed. Prices were now determined by the machine-made product, and the wage of the domestic industrial worker fell with this price. However, the worker had to accept it or look for other work, and he could not do that without becoming a proletarian, that is, without giving up his little house, garden and field, whether owned or rented. Only in the rarest cases was he ready to do this. And thus the gardening and agriculture of the old rural hand weavers became the cause by virtue of which the struggle of the hand loom against the mechanical loom was everywhere so protracted and has not yet been fought to conclusion in Germany. In this struggle it was demonstrated for the first time, especially in England, that the same circumstance which had previously served as a basis of comparative prosperity for the worker — the fact that he owned his means of production — had now become a hindrance and a misfortune for him. In industry the mechanical loom defeated his hand loom, and in agriculture large-scale cultivation got the better of his small-scale cultivation. However, while the collective labour of many and the application of machinery and science became the social rule in both fields of production, he was chained to the antiquated method of individual production and hand labour by his little house, garden, field and hand loom. The possession of house and garden was now worth much less than complete freedom of movement. No factory worker would have changed places with the slowly but surely starving rural hand weaver.
Germany appeared late on the world market. Our large-scale industry dates from the forties; it owed its first upswing to the revolution of 1848, and was able to develop fully only after the revolutions of 1866 and 1870[293] had cleared at least the worst political obstacles out of its way. But it found the world market occupied to a large extent. The articles of mass consumption were supplied by England and the elegant luxury articles by France. Germany could not beat the former in price or the latter in quality. For the moment, therefore, nothing else remained but, following the beaten path of German production up to that time, to wedge its way into the world market with articles which were too petty for the English and too shoddy for the French. However, the favourite German custom of cheating, by first sending good samples and afterwards inferior articles, soon met with sufficiently severe punishment on the world market and was pretty well abandoned. On the other hand, the competition of overproduction gradually forced even the respectable English onto the downward path of quality deterioration and so gave an advantage to the Germans, who are matchless in this sphere. And thus we finally came to possess a large-scale industry and to play a role on the world market. But our large-scale industry works almost exclusively for the home market (with the exception of the iron industry, which produces far beyond the limits of home demand), and our mass export consists of a tremendous number of small articles, for which large-scale industry provides at most the necessary semi-manufactures, while the small articles themselves are supplied chiefly by rural domestic industry.
And here is seen in all its glory the "blessing" of house and landownership for the modern worker. Nowhere, hardly excepting even the Irish domestic industries, are such infamously low wages paid as in the German domestic industries. Competition permits the capitalist to deduct from the price of labour power that which the family earns from its own little garden or field. The workers are compelled to accept any piece rates offered them, because otherwise they would get nothing at all and they could not live from the products of their agriculture alone, and because, on the other hand, it is precisely this agriculture and landownership which chains them to the spot and prevents them from looking around for other employment. This is the reason which maintains Germany's capacity to compete on the world market in a whole number of small articles. The whole profit is derived from a deduction from normal wages and the whole surplus value can be presented to the purchaser. That is the secret of the extraordinary cheapness of most German export articles.
It is this circumstance more than any other which keeps the wages and the living conditions of the German workers also in other industrial fields below the level of the West European countries. The dead weight of such prices for labour, kept traditionally far below the value of labour power, depresses also the wages of the urban workers, and even of the workers in the cities, below the value of labour power; and this all the more so as poorly paid domestic industry has taken the place of the old handicrafts in the towns as well, and here too depresses the general level of wages.
Here we see clearly that what at an earlier historical stage was the basis of relative well-being for the workers, namely, the combination of agriculture and industry, the ownership of house, garden and field, and guarantee of a dwelling place, is becoming today, under the rule of large-scale industry, not only the most terrible shackle to the worker, but the greatest misfortune for the whole working class, the basis for an unprecedented depression of wages below their normal level, and that not only for separate branches of enterprise and districts, but for the whole country. No wonder the big and petty bourgeoisie, who live and grow rich on these abnormal deductions from wages, are enthusiastic over rural industry and home-owning workers, and they regard the introduction of new domestic industries as the sole remedy for all rural distress!
That is one side of the matter, but it also has its reverse side. Domestic industry has become the broad basis of the German export trade and therefore of the whole of large-scale industry. Due to this it is spread over wide areas of Germany and is extending still further by the day. The ruin of the small peasant, inevitable ever since his industrial domestic labour for his own use was destroyed by cheap ready-made clothing and machined products, as was his animal husbandry, and hence his manure production, by the dissolution of the mark system, the common mark and compulsory crop rotation — this ruin forcibly drives the small peasant, having fallen victim to the usurer, into the arms of modern domestic industry. Like the ground rent of the landowner in Ireland, the interest of the mortgage usurer in Germany cannot be paid from the yield of the soil but only from the wages of the industrial peasant. However, with the expansion of domestic industry one peasant area after another is being dragged into the present-day industrial movement. It is this revolutionising of the rural districts by domestic industry which is spreading the industrial revolution in Germany over a far wider territory than was the case in England and France. It is the comparatively low level of our industry which makes its extension in area all the more necessary. This explains why in Germany, in contrast to England and France, the revolutionary working-class movement has spread so tremendously over the greater part of the country instead of being confined exclusively to urban centres. And this in turn explains the tranquil, certain and irresistible progress of the movement. In Germany it is perfectly clear that a victorious rising in the capital and in the other big cities will be possible only when the majority of the smaller towns and a great part of the rural districts as well have become ripe for revolutionary change. Given anything like normal development, we shall never be in a position to win working-class victories like those of the Parisians in 1848 and 1871, but for just that reason we shall also not suffer defeats of the revolutionary capital by the reactionary province, such as Paris suffered in both cases. In France the movement always originated in the capital; in Germany it originated in the areas of large-scale industry, of manufacture and of domestic industry; the capital was conquered only later. Therefore, perhaps in future too, the initiative will continue to rest with the French, but the decisive struggle can be fought out only in Germany.
Now, this rural domestic industry and manufacture, which due to its expanse has become the decisive branch of German production and is thus revolutionising the German peasantry more and more, is itself, however, only the preliminary stage of a further revolutionary change. As Marx has already proved (Capital, Vol. I, 3rd edition, pp. 484-95(6)), at a certain stage of development the hour of downfall owing to machinery and factory production will sound for it also. And this hour would appear to be at hand. But the destruction of rural domestic industry and manufacture by machinery and factory production means in Germany the destruction of the livelihood of millions of rural producers, the expropriation of almost half the German small peasantry; the transformation, not only of domestic industry into factory production, but also of peasant farming into large-scale capitalist agriculture, and of small landed property into big estates — an industrial and agricultural revolution in favour of capital and big landownership at the cost of the peasants. Should it be Germany's fate to undergo also this transformation while still under the old social conditions, it will unquestionably be the turning point. If the working class of no other country has taken the initiative by that time, Germany will certainly strike first, and the peasant sons of the "glorious army" will bravely lend assistance.
And with this the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois Utopia, which would give each worker the ownership of his little house and thus chain him in semi-feudal fashion to his particular capitalist, takes on a very different complexion. As its materialisation there appears the transformation of all the small rural house-owners into industrial domestic workers; the destruction of the old isolation and, with it, of the political insignificance of the small peasants, who are dragged into the "social turmoil"; the expansion of the industrial revolution over the rural areas and thus the transformation of the most stable and conservative class of the population into a nursery for revolutionaries; and, as the culmination of it all, the expropriation of the peasants engaged in home industry by machinery, which drives them forcibly into insurrection.
We can readily allow the bourgeois-socialist philanthropists the private enjoyment of their ideal so long as they continue in their public function as capitalists to implement it in this inverted fashion, for the greater good of the social revolution. London, January 10, 1887
Frederick Engels First published in Der Sozialdemokrat, Printed according to the book Nos. 3 and 4, January 15 and 22, 1887 and in the book: F. Engels, Zur Wohnungsfrage, Hottingen-Zurich, 1887
Endnotes
[285] The reference is to the five-milliard-franc contribution imposed on France under the Frankfurt Peace Treaty of 1871 signed after the Franco-Prussian War.
[286] The reference is to the ban on the printing and distribution of socialist literature in Germany (Engels' work The Housing Question included). It was introduced under the Anti-Socialist Law passed in October 1878 (see Note 174).
[287] The Nueva Federaciôn Madrilena (New Madrid Federation) was formed on July 8, 1872 by the members of La Emancipacion editorial board expelled from the Madrid Federation by the anarchist majority for the paper's exposure of the activities of the secret Alliance of Socialist Democracy (see Note 283) in Spain. A major part in its foundation was played by Paul Lafargue. On August 15, 1872, the General Council admitted the New Madrid Federation to the First International. The New Madrid Federation fought against the spread of anarchist influence in Spain, popularised ideas of scientific socialism, and helped establish the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party in 1879.
[288] During the revolution of 1848, Proudhon advanced several concrete projects of social and economic reforms. In very general terms, they were expounded in the book: P. J. Proudhon, Idée générale de la Révolution au XlX-e siècle, Paris, 1851.
[289] Armchair socialism (Kathedersozialismus), a trend in the German bourgeois political economy that emerged in the last third of the 19th century as a reaction to the growth of the workers' movement and the spread of scientific socialism in it. Its representatives advocated bourgeois reformism from university rostrums under the pretence of commitment to socialism. They asserted, among other things, that the state, specifically the German Empire, had a supra-class character and could be used to improve the position of the working class through social reforms.
[29] See Note 17.
[291] Eifel (the Rhine Province of Prussia), a mountainous area with vast swamps and wastelands, had a harsh climate and barren soil. Engels refers to the events of 1882, when, following a series of crop failures and the earlier drop in prices for agricultural produce, the area was struck by famine.
[292] See Note 220. p- 429
[293] The reference is to the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. See also Note 169.