[Housing is increasingly treated as both a speculative or an
investment commodity for the rich and satisfied, and a charitable
donation for the poor and precarious, in a system of corporate
capitalist rule obfuscated by the language of human rights.]
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HUMAN RIGHTS AND HOUSING  
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Peter Eglin
July 2, 2023
Socialist Project: The Bullet
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_ Housing is increasingly treated as both a speculative or an
investment commodity for the rich and satisfied, and a charitable
donation for the poor and precarious, in a system of corporate
capitalist rule obfuscated by the language of human rights. _

,

 

“Shelter and housing can and should be a basic human right,” said
Pastor Mark, invoking also John Lennon’s ‘Imagine
[[link removed]]’ to move his audience
to continue the drive by the non-profit sector to provide affordable
and supportive housing for those in need. We were gathered at St.
Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in downtown Kitchener, Ontario,
to mark the official ‘ground-breaking
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of partner Christian charity Indwell’s 41-unit supportive housing
project. The mood was celebratory, if also reflective, loving, and
committed, in the best Christian tradition. I grew up in that
tradition. It moved me too.

That background is also, no doubt, why it was Dom Hélder Câmara’s
famous words that came back to me listening to the speakers, not least
of them Pastor Mark.

“When I give food to the poor, I am called a saint.
When I ask why the poor have no food, I am called a communist.”

‘Communism’ and Human Rights

Those remembered words recall, in turn, what I will refer to as the
‘conjunction’ of ‘communism’ and human rights. No, I am not
referring to US Republicans’ penchant for regarding the idea of
‘human rights’ as itself a ‘communist’ conspiracy, just the
kind of thing you’d expect in ‘socialist Canada’. No, I’m
thinking back to 10 December 1948 when the nations of the world under
the aegis of the United Nations proclaimed the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (UDHR). That wondrous aspirational document included,
as part 1 of Article 25
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the following:

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the
health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food,
clothing, _housing_ and medical care and necessary social services,
and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness,
disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in
circumstances beyond his control” (emphasis added).

Notice the beautiful, unqualified simplicity of the
statement: _everyone_, without exceptions, without conditions, has
the _right_, not because they are deserving (implying there are those
who are _un_-deserving), not only as long as they work hard (implying
the lazy and indigent are out of luck), not because they are citizens
(therefore, tough on the undocumented migrant or refugee), but because
they are human. And notice, too, that the article
includes _housing_ as a human right. Yes, in 1948, a mere 75 years
ago.

OK, but where does ‘communism’ come in? Well, consider the
historical context. The UDHR was promulgated in 1948 by the United
Nations (UN), the international body created in 1945 at the end of the
Second World War (in Europe). If it was the intervention in the War by
the United States in December 1941, following Japan’s attack on the
US naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawai’i, that swung the conflict
in favour of the Allies in Western Europe, it was the sacrificial
defence and subsequent repulsion of the Nazi army in Eastern Europe by
the Soviet Union that won the War for the Allies in the end. That not
only meant that the Soviet Union (subsequently, Russia) became one of
the five permanent members of the UN Security Council but also that
‘communism’ gained considerable global prestige on the world stage
(indeed, setting that stage for the ensuing Cold War between the
Capitalist West led by the United States, emerging from the hot War as
the most powerful country in the world, and the Communist East led by
the Soviet Union).

That Cold War is already presaged in the UDHR itself. For not only
does the declaration not have the force of law – being adopted by
the UN General Assembly as a statement of principle only – but it
includes as part 1 of Article 17 the right that is crucial from the
Capitalist West’s point of view:

“Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in
association with others.”

That innocuous phrase, “in association with others,” establishes
the place of the capitalist corporation as a rights-bearing
“person.”

“In 1886 the US Supreme Court ruled for the first time, without
argument, that business corporations were entitled, as ‘persons’,
to protection from the arbitrary authority of the states under the
Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, an amendment intended for
the protection of freed slaves” (Noble, 2005, p. 117).

This means, in the end, that the formulation of the UDHR reflects the
West’s determination to keep ‘communism’ at bay by making what
it regards as concessions to the demand by the people of the world to
establish a world order in which the immense privations of both the
Great Depression of the 1930s and WW2 itself could not only not be
repeated, but also be overcome in the name of social and economic
equality. Yes, we the people could be granted “rights,” including
those stated in Article 25, but only notionally, and only alongside
the same rights accorded to the capitalist corporation, which
effectively circumscribes the scope of the rights accorded to actual
people (Teeple, 2004).

This ‘compromise’ was made further evident in the International
Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966, in which the
UDHR’s Article 25 is effectively repeated as part 1 of Article 11
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“The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of
everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family,
including adequate food, clothing and _housing_, and to the
continuous improvement of living conditions. The States Parties will
take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right,
recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international
co-operation based on free consent” (emphasis added).

The Covenant, like its sister International Covenant of Civil and
Political Rights, while representing a step forward from the UDHR by
being a treaty enforceable in principle under international law, is
made moot by including in part 1 of Article 2 the following
highlighted provisions:

“Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps,
individually and through international assistance and co-operation,
especially economic and technical, _to the maximum of its available
resources_, with a view to achieving _progressively_ the full
realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant by all
appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative
measures” (emphasis added).

Canada ratified the Covenant; it came into force in 1976, a mere 47
years ago. As a result, the State is required to submit regular
reports to the UN Committee overseeing nations’ compliance with the
Covenant, detailing how well it is doing “tak(ing) steps … _to
the maximum of its available resources_, with a view to
achieving _progressively_ the full realization of the rights …”

Housing Today

And so it is that, 75 and 47 years later, there can be a worsening
national affordable housing and homelessness crisis at the same time
as the human right to housing is re-discovered – assisted in Canada,
indeed in Kitchener, by the hard-hitting documentary Push
[[link removed]] by Toronto’s own Leilani Farha, the
former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing.

This situation of repeatedly stated but permanently unfulfilled human
rights aspirations has been captured unforgettably in these words of
Wallace Shawn from his play The Fever:

“And so, in our frozen world, our silent world, we have to talk to
the poor. Talk, listen, clarify, explain. They want things to be
different. They want change. And so, we say, ‘Yes’. Change. But
not violent change. Not theft, not revolt, not revenge. Instead,
listen to the idea of gradual change. Change that will help you, but
that won’t hurt us. Morality. Law. Gradual change. We explain it
all: a two-sided contract: we’ll give you things, many things, but
in exchange, you must accept that you don’t have the right just to
take what you want. We’re going to give you wonderful things. Sit
down, wait, don’t try to grab. The most important thing is patience,
waiting. We’re going to give you much much more than you’re
getting now, but there are certain things that must happen first –
these are the things for which we must wait. First, we have to make
more and we have to grow more, so more will be available for us to
give. Otherwise, if we give you more, we’ll have less. When we make
more and we grow more, we can all have more – some of the increase
can go to you. But the other thing is, once there _is_ more, we have
to make sure that morality prevails. Morality is the key. Last year,
we made more and we grew more, but we didn’t give you more. All of
the increase was kept for ourselves. That was wrong. The same thing
happened the year before, and the year before that. We have to
convince everyone to accept morality and next year give some of the
increase to you” (Shawn, 1991, pp. 50-51).

Since at least 1948, and more pointedly, since the late 1970s
following the collapse of the welfare state and the coming of
neoliberalism (“promotion of the primacy of private property
rights”) under the name of ‘globalization’ (Teeple, 1995, p.
76), the rulers of the world – the capitalist plutocrats and their
complicit enablers – have been engaged in what is effectively a
class war to prevent, at worst, and take back, at best, any moves on
the global stage to establish economic democracy – that is, the rule
by the common people (the meaning of ‘democracy’) over their
material circumstances, otherwise known as ‘communism.’ That means
keeping the levers of power out of the hands of the people at large by
keeping just enough of them affluent enough to keep buying into the
system, and enough of them just poor enough to fear losing what little
they have from taking things into their own hands.

And so it is that housing remains – in fact, is increasingly treated
as – both a speculative or an investment commodity for the rich and
satisfied, and a charitable donation for the poor and precarious, in a
system of corporate capitalist rule obfuscated by the language of
human rights. •

References:

* Noble, David F. Beyond the Promised Land: The Movement and the
Myth. Toronto, ON: Between the Lines, 2005.
* Shawn, Wallace. The Fever
[[link removed]]. New York: Noonday
Press, 1991.
* Teeple, Gary. Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform.
Toronto, ON: Garamond Press, 1995.
* Teeple, Gary. The Riddle of Human Rights. Aurora, ON: Garamond
Press, 2004.

_Peter Eglin is Professor Emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University,
Canada, where he taught Sociology from 1976 to 2016._

_The Bullet is an online publishing venue for the socialist Left in
Canada and around the world. It solicits, publishes and republishes
articles that advance socialist ideas and analysis of important
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Bullet is produced by the Socialist Project, but its editorial
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* Housing
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* homelessness
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* Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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* United Nations
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* Globalization
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* neo-liberalism
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