Quiz: The Housing Question

11 questions drawn at random. Score 80% for a silver medal.

1. What is Mülberger’s plan for abolishing the rented dwelling? Houses are confiscated without compensation and handed over to the tenants who occupy them The state builds dwellings on public land and lets them to workers at the cost of upkeep Rents are frozen by law at their present level until wages have caught up with them Rent is turned into instalments on the purchase price, so the tenant becomes the owner
2. Whose manufacture, according to Engels, are ready-made practical panaceas for all social evils? Bourgeois philanthropists, eager to reconcile the workers to the existing order Scientific socialists, who derive their programme from the study of political economy Founders of sects, appearing while the proletarian movement was in its infancy Trade-union leaders, seeking quick gains for their members within the existing order
3. Why are centrally situated workers’ dwellings pulled down in big towns? Their owners can no longer find tenants once the factories move out of the old town centres The workers themselves leave the centre for cheaper rents and cleaner air on the outskirts Rising land values make it pay to clear them for shops, offices and public buildings Sanitary laws condemn them as breeding grounds of disease, and their owners must demolish them
4. Which Proudhonist proposition does Engels call “totally false”? “As the peasant is in relation to the landlord, so is the artisan in relation to the merchant prince” “As the wage-worker is in relation to the capitalist, so is the tenant in relation to the house-owner” “The wage-worker sells his labour-power to the capitalist at its value, and no more” “The housing shortage is an evil that the oppressed classes of all times have suffered”
5. For which paper did Engels write the three parts of The Housing Question in 1872–73? The Neue Zeit The Volksstaat, published in Leipzig The Neue Rheinische Zeitung The Vorwärts of Berlin
6. Whom does Engels say approached “the definite concrete conditions of society” more closely than anyone? Lassalle Proudhon Marx in Capital, after twenty-five years of study Mülberger himself
7. Which manufacturer does Engels name as already selling workers houses paid for in instalments, to tie them down? Titus Salt Alfred Krupp M. Dollfus of Mulhouse Robert Owen
8. Which French model of workers’ housing does Engels examine and dismiss? Lyons Familistère of Guise The workers’ town of Mulhouse in Alsace Le Creusot
9. Who, according to Engels, exploited the tendency of rising town land values “to the utmost” through Haussmann? The London County Council Bonapartism in Paris The Prussian monarchy in Berlin The Vienna municipality
10. How many people had the London building companies housed, according to Engels? None Under 15,000 Over a million About 100,000
11. Why does Engels call Mülberger’s lament for “hearth and home” reactionary? Workers in the big towns have long since come to prefer rented flats to cottages and gardens The state already owns most of the land, so home ownership could never become general Owning a home makes the worker a petty capitalist, who will then exploit tenants of his own The worker’s tie to the land had to be cut to create the revolutionary proletariat

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