Saturday, 10 January 2009

How The Local State Deals with Workers Housing Needs

This story from the BBC to day Norwich Housing shows how the local capitalist state bureaucracy deals with workers housing needs. Pensioners were told they had to leave their bungalows, by local state bureaucrats, because they were going to be demolished. Then the Head bureaucrat, who, according to the BBC, is paid over £50,000 a year, along with other bureaucrats from the Housing Department, moved into the same housing, and paid even lower rents than the pensioners that had previously been housed there!!!!

The housing is apparently conveniently close to the centre of Norwich. Local Councillors have sacked the Housing Manager, but the question is why they were not aware of this in the first place. The answer is that the local state, like the central state, is not under the control of elected politicians, but of a permanent, capitalist, state bureaucracy. The elected politicians simply give this Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie a democratic veneer. It also shows why workers cannot rely on even the best elected politicians to keep this capitalist state bureaucracy in check, but must rely on their own vigilance and organisation.

It also shows the idiocy of those on the left who want to offer, as solutions to workers problems, appeals to this capitalist state bureaucracy to act in workers' interests. Workers need to develop their own Co-operative housing so that it is under their ownership, and control. Co-operative housing is the most efficient form of housing in Britain as has been shown.

"Ownership co-ops are traditionally quite small, but they give the greatest amount of control of any of the housing co-op models, and research carried out in 1996 found that they were the most successful housing providers in the country."

See here: Owner Housing Co-ops

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