The housing market is inherently driven by capitalism, no amount of economic policy can stabilize the price without challenging the root cause

Certain reform-oriented struggles, especially those around  and expanded , offer important opportunities for on-the-ground socialist organizing. But we also shouldn’t be shy about our  diagnosis.

Socialists have to make the case, loudly, publicly, and globally: capitalism can never meet our needs for high-quality, affordable housing. The reason is straightforward: the profit motive.

In a capitalist society, land and housing stock are treated as commodities, basic goods and services that can be bought, rented, and sold for a profit. And like all commodities under capitalism, it is the profit motive that rules the production and maintenance of housing.

Profit is the lifeblood of the capitalist system. Karl Marx described the process of capital accumulation using the letters M-C-M’, or Money-Commodity-More Money. This abstract formula points us to a really important conclusion. The purpose of capitalist production and exchange is not to create commodities; commodities are only a means to achieve more money than a capitalist began with.

In other words, capitalists don’t stay in business based on the quality or quantity of the commodity they produce — they stay in business based on whether they turn a profit.

What does this mean for housing? Creating and maintaining housing is decidedly not the primary goal of developers, construction firms, mortgage lenders, and landlords. Housing is just a convenient medium through which capital can reproduce itself — through which these developers, construction firms, lenders, and landlords can make more money.

While socialists challenge the profit motive in consumer and industrial production, from cars and computers to steel and soybeans, it is just as important that we challenge the profit motive in the realm of what’s called “social reproduction.”

Social reproduction encompasses the activities and services (like housing, health care, childcare, elder care, education, etc.) that are necessary to maintain the existence of a productive working class. This realm of human labor has been historically unpaid or underpaid, and its burdens have tended to fall on working-class women.

Under , the privatization and commodification of social reproduction, expanding the free market into that realm of care work, has been a primary capitalist growth strategy. The expansion of charter schools, the selling off of water systems and other basic infrastructure, the huge rise of college tuition, “public-private partnerships” for basic services, for-profit elder care, and the rise of 401(k) retirement plans are just a few examples of this dynamic.

The hyper-financialization of home mortgages in the mid-2000s is perhaps the most dramatic example of how treating housing like a speculative commodity can spiral out of control, grotesquely distorting the provision of a basic necessity.

After the 2007–2008 financial crash, many liberal capitalists argued that better regulations on the secondary mortgage market might have prevented the worst aspects of the crisis. There might even be good reason to welcome such regulations. But the constant oscillations of housing prices will never disappear under capitalism, because these boom-bust cycles are inherent to any kind of capitalist commodity.