The Social History of Eviction and the Political Bankruptcy of Reformism

Eviction as a Window into the Class Nature of Society

The eviction of seventy households—including pensioners, disabled residents, and low-income families—from a working-class estate, as detailed in Jessica Fields' book Eviction: A Social History of Rent, exemplifies a broader pattern in British capitalism. It highlights that heritage rights do not take precedence over property rights, and community bonds do not outweigh financial interests. These two statements clearly summarise the core rationale behind eviction policies and their role in the political economy.

This article doesn't merely recount families' suffering. Instead, it places that suffering within the broader context of capitalist urban growth, the decline of Labourism, and Engels' ideas in The Housing Question. Evictions serve as a lens through which the working class can examine the system they oppose and identify the political steps necessary to dismantle it.

The Social History of Rent: From Industrial Slums to Financialised Landlordism

In 1872, Engels challenged the Proudhonists, who believed that rent-to-buy schemes could resolve the housing crisis. He emphasised that the housing shortage is not merely due to poor policies but is an inherent aspect of capitalism. Capitalism requires concentrating labour in cities, which inflates land prices, results in overcrowding, and causes periodic population displacement. The bourgeoisie "resolves" these issues by demolishing working-class housing and relocating workers outward. The destruction of council estates exemplifies this ongoing process.

Following the Second World War, municipal housing initiatives somewhat diluted Engels’ idea. However, these were not socialist endeavours; rather, they were concessions obtained by a militant working class during the expansion of capitalism. Housing remained a commodity, as councils built homes without challenging private land ownership. The core contradiction remained, only shifting to different aspects.

After 2008, the conflict intensified dramatically. Housing became a global financial asset, attracting heavy investments from private equity firms, REITs, offshore entities, and pension funds. Landlords shifted from individual owners to financial institutions, turning rent into a securitised income. Evictions began to serve as a means of capital growth.

Councils like the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) are subject to this trend. While the extent of malice within councils like RBKC is uncertain, they are now integrated into a global system of financialised landlordism. The council's plans to demolish estates and replace them with developments for the private rental market are not merely local issues but reflect a broader, historic global pattern.

Financialised Landlordism: The Globalisation of Rent and the New Mechanisms of Capital Accumulation

Evictions from council estates reflect more than just the actions of a social landlord. They signify a new phase in capitalism's evolution: financialised landlordism, where housing shifts from being mainly a home to serving as a financial asset, facilitating the flow and increase of capital.

Tracking the evolution of financialised landlordism from the 1970s crisis through the neoliberal counter-revolution, the decline of social democracy, and the post-2008 transformation of global capitalism reveals that eviction, demolition, and displacement are not anomalies but essential tools for capital accumulation in this era. The post-war economic boom depended on industrial production, rising wages, and regulated finance. However, by the late 1960s, this model faced a crisis: profit margins dropped, inflation surged, and labor unrest increased, prompting capital to seek new ways to accumulate wealth. The neoliberal shift dismantled the post-war regulatory system—liberalising finance, increasing capital mobility, weakening the welfare state, and opening housing, once protected by municipal regulation, to market forces.

The Thatcher government’s “Right to Buy” was more than just a policy; it represented a fundamental shift. It shifted millions of homes from public to private ownership, established a new petty-bourgeois class of homeowners, reduced municipal housing stock, and set the stage for land commodification. Labour governments continued this trend, with councils demolishing estates and transferring properties to housing associations increasingly connected to financial markets.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers sparked a worldwide crisis of excess capital. Trillions of dollars were sought for secure, profitable investments, with housing emerging as a preferred asset due to its stable returns, physical collateral, rising land values, and state-backed rent enforcement. Private equity firms, REITs, sovereign wealth funds, and pension funds all invested heavily in residential real estate. As a result, landlords shifted from individual property owners to financial institutions. Companies such as Pemberstone participated in this global trend.

Financialised landlordism goes beyond just “big landlords.” It involves specific accumulation mechanisms: rent is no longer just payment for land use but is securitised, bundled, sold to investors, and used as collateral, integrating housing into global financial markets. The tenant becomes a revenue source, and the home becomes a bond.

Eviction is not a flaw in the system; rather, it serves as a tool for capital accumulation. It enables landlords to clear "underperforming" tenants, redevelop land for greater profits, turn low-yield housing into high-yield assets, and discipline tenants through precarity. Evictions from social housing are part of this process and not exceptions; they reflect the system functioning as intended.

Demolition of estates is not about destruction; it's about creating value. It allows for densification, luxury redevelopment, conversion of social housing into private properties, extraction of planning gains, and increases in land values. However, this process often displaces the working class, allowing capital to intensify the exploitation of urban space.

Financialised landlordism relies heavily on debt, with tenants accumulating rent arrears, landlords handling leveraged buyouts, councils participating in PFI schemes, and housing associations issuing bonds. Debt interconnects all parties within the financial market system, which depends on state support such as enforcement of eviction laws, policing authority, planning policies, tax incentives, deregulation, and eviction powers related to immigration. Labour’s role includes expanding Section 8 eviction powers, implementing the digital possession process, and applying Ground 7B regulations.

This is not a deviation; it represents the state performing its typical function. The state is inherently not neutral but acts as the guarantor of rent extraction. Financialised landlordism is supported by an ideological framework that masks its class interests.

Regeneration frequently conceals demolition and displacement, portraying capital growth as progress, modernisation, and renewal. The term 'affordable housing' is misleading, as it refers to market-rate rents rather than a social right, thereby embedding working-class housing in financial markets. Consultation often seems superficial, merely legitimising predetermined decisions and turning democratic language into bureaucratic procedures. The idea of mixed communities is a euphemism for social cleansing, replacing working-class residents with wealthier populations to boost land values.

The Emotional Power and Political Weakness of Local Campaigns

The main contradiction in localist housing campaigns is that, despite stirring strong emotions, they lack a clear strategy. While community, heritage, and shared suffering foster solidarity, these feelings do not translate into political power. They remain in the moral sphere, appealing to a system that lacks consciousness. Local campaigns are easily bypassed as councils “consult,” “engage,' and “listen,” only to proceed with demolition or evictions. The moral appeal becomes part of bureaucratic formalities, reducing the campaign to a mere mention in planning documents. This underscores the ideological link between localism and Labourism.

Localism is inherently ideological and not politically neutral. It aligns with Labourism, which claims to protect community and heritage but ultimately serves financial interests. As mentioned, Labour councillors “deploy police to bar residents from town hall meetings.” Local campaigns often appeal to the same institutions that are evicting residents—the Dialectical Critique: Localism as Economism. Localist housing initiatives resemble trade-union economism by tackling symptoms rather than addressing the root social relations. They stay at a pre-class-conscious stage of struggle and cannot move beyond reformism without breaking away from Labourism’s political framework.

Labour isn't genuinely a workers’ party but rather a bourgeois party supporting capitalism. Its aim is to manage capitalism's contradictions, not eliminate them. This isn't a flaw; it's central to who it is. Labour’s Post-2024 Housing Strategy reveals increased Section 8 eviction powers and easier digital procedures for possessions. Ground 7B evictions over immigration led Labour MPs to be booed at the 2026 housing rally. This isn't a failure to forget history but a reaffirmation of property rights.

The New Left Review, Verso Books, and the Ideology of Housing Reformism

The New Left Review (NLR) and Verso Books position themselves as prominent voices of radical thought in Britain. Over time, they have regularly published books, essays, and monographs on issues such as housing, urbanism, gentrification, and “neoliberalism.” Their contributors—such as Stuart Hodkinson, Anne Power, John Boughton, Loretta Lees, and Danny Dorling—are committed to portraying tenant struggles with sincerity and in detail.

However, documentation does not equate to politics. The stance of the NLR/Verso environment is more of a refined, scholarly Labourism than a genuinely radical position. It emphasises capitalism's violence but suggests solutions like “better policy,” “more democratic planning,” and “politicians listening to historical narratives." This part of the article contends that the NLR/Verso housing discourse is not only inadequate but also an ideological barrier hindering the development of revolutionary consciousness.  

Founded in 1960, the New Left Review emerged from the merger of The New Reasoner and Universities and Left Review. It faced a fundamental contradiction: while it opposed Stalinist bureaucratic authoritarianism and Labourism’s parliamentary gradualism, it did not endorse a Marxist revolutionary platform. Instead, it presented itself as a “radical” intellectual journal that critiques capitalism from within the bourgeois democratic framework.

This inherent contradiction has influenced its political perspective since then. Starting from the 1970s, scholars linked to NLR became key analysts of Britain’s housing issues, producing detailed ethnographies of council estates, examining “regeneration” projects, critiquing gentrification, documenting the history of social housing, and proposing policies for “democratic planning." Although these works are often rich in empirical detail, they generally remain politically passive, describing capitalism’s violence without explicitly pointing to its fundamental cause: private ownership of land and housing.

Verso Books: The Publishing House of Academic Reformism

Verso Books describes itself as a "radical publishing" house. Nonetheless, it operates more like the literary wing of the academic left, a community that has long documented social crises without directly challenging Labourism.

Their housing titles, such as Safe as Houses, Estate Regeneration and Its Discontents, Municipal Dreams, The New Urban Crisis, and Eviction: The Social History of Rent, exhibit three key ideological traits: 1. They view housing mainly as a policy issue rather than a class struggle, describing it as a “crisis,” "failure,” or "challenge," but not as an intrinsic aspect of capitalism. 2. They focus on politicians instead of the working class, assuming policymakers can be convinced to counter capitalist interests. 3. They minimise Labour's role, criticising Conservative governments while often depicting Labour as a potential reformer—even though Labour-led councils have historically been responsible for mass evictions, estate demolitions, and social cleansing.

The NLR/Verso milieu is not politically neutral; it is structurally linked to universities, research grants, policy institutes, Labour councils, think tanks, and NGOs. Its authors rely on these institutions, which also oversee eviction processes. Consequently, they cannot promote revolutionary politics without risking their careers. Their reformism is grounded in material realities, not just ideology.

Verso housing books frequently promote ideas like “stronger regulation,” “community involvement,” “democratic planning,” “ethical regeneration,” and “fairer development models.” These notions are illusions, presuming that the capitalist state can be reformed to oppose capitalism.

Verso authors romanticise community campaigns, highlighting successes such as Focus E15, Newham mothers, West Hendon, and local fights. However, they never address the political reality: these campaigns failed because they relied solely on moral appeals. “Community does not defeat the rate of return.” Regarding “Heritage,” Verso books often reference estate histories, community dignity, and working-class culture, but heritage lacks legal weight against property rights. It remains sentiment, not a strategic tool.

Engels dispelled reformist illusions in 1872, highlighting that housing shortages stem from systemic issues. He stated that eviction serves as a means of capital accumulation and emphasised that reform alone cannot eliminate the commodity nature of housing. The only solution, according to him, is the abolition of private land ownership to resolve the housing problem.

The NLR/Verso milieu has overlooked this analysis for fifty years. They reference Engels but ignore his insights, considering his revolutionary conclusions as mere historical curiosities rather than urgent political calls. The book’s call is for politicians to heed the stories of history… But which politicians?”

The NLR/Verso environment provides no route to victory as its political approach is a dead end. The working class cannot secure housing through heritage, community efforts, moral appeals, Labour councils, academic research, or policy changes. The fight for housing is a fight against the capitalist class... transforming housing from a commodity into a social right."