Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory & Practice 
Volume 26 (2022), pp. 69-101  
 

In Defence of Marx’s Labour Theory of Value:  
Vancouver’s Housing “Crisis” 

 
Elliot Goodell Ugalde1 

Queen’s University 
 

 
Abstract:  This document revisits Karl Marx’s often-overlooked Labour 
Theory of Value (LTOV) to offer an alternative analysis of Vancouver’s 
housing crisis, challenging the conventional supply and demand framework. It 
argues that housing, a commodity tethered to land—a fixed and finite 
resource—behaves uniquely compared to other commodities. Housing 
appreciates in value over time, incentivizing property hoarding and market 
manipulation, leading to artificial scarcity and inflated rental costs. This 
phenomenon is particularly evident in Vancouver, where high vacancy rates 
coexist with skyrocketing rental prices. The document posits that housing’s 
exchange-value, as per Marx’s LTOV, does not correspond with its escalating 
market-prices, indicating the presence of fictitious capital. By exploring the 
divergence between exchange-value and market-price, the document contends 
that the orthodox economic model fails to address the housing crisis adequately. 
It advocates for the decommodification of housing, arguing that removing its 
exchange-value can prevent market-price deviations and speculative bubbles, 
aligning with Marx’s critique of capitalism’s inherent contradictions. 

 
 

1. Rethinking Housing: Beyond Supply and Demand in Vancouver 
 
In July 2023, during my tenureship at the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre 

Society (VAFCS), I participated in a discussion with Premier David Eby, British Columbia’s 
Minister of housing Ravi Kahlon and other key stakeholders in Vancouver, British Columbia, 
aimed at addressing the ongoing housing “crisis” in the region. This meeting was part of a 
larger context, mirroring a phenomenon prevalent across Canada and the Western world, where 
there is a notable disparity between median household incomes and the increasing cost of rent.2 
Typical policy recommendations at the meeting were predominantly aligned within a “supply 
and demand” framework of orthodox economics, viewing housing as another commodity in 
need of further liberalisation.3 In more “radical” scenarios, certain stakeholders posited a 

 
1 My heartfelt gratitude goes to Elder Susan Tatoosh (Tii Thul’p) for her invaluable guidance and mentorship. I 
am also profoundly thankful to Dr. James Ingram, my MA supervisor at McMaster University, for his 
unwavering support and encouragement, which were crucial in overcoming the challenges encountered during 
this research. Furthermore, I extend my sincere appreciation to Dr. Inder Marwah, also of McMaster University, 
for his essential insights that significantly enriched the contents of this document. 
2 Gurstein, Penny, and Andy Yan. “Beyond the dreams of avarice.” The Past, Present, and Future of Housing in 
Vancouver’s Planning Legacy. In P. Gurstein & T. Hutton (Eds.), Planning on The Edge (2019): 215-246. 
3 Schumacher, Patrik. “Only Capitalism Can Solve the Housing Crisis.” Adam Smith Institute. Accessed 
January 16, 2024. https://www.adamsmith.org/capitalismcansolvethehousingcrisis 



 70  Cultural Logic 

Keynesian-esque injection of state capital into the housing market, particularly during times of 
stagnant supply,4 a situation that now seems to be perpetually the case. 

 
However, one stakeholder, my friend and mentor Elder Susan Tattoosh (Tii Thul’p5), a 

respected knowledge keeper, and Matriarch of the Hupačasath First Nation, proposed a unique 
framework for conceptualising housing policy in Vancouver. She posited that housing cannot 
be treated just as a “typical” commodity, both in the normative sense as per traditional 
Hupačasath epistemologies6 that posit that we ought not to reduce human means of subsistence 
to anything less than res extra commercium,7 but also in an analytical sense insofar as housing 
does not behave as any other commodity. Indeed, land, and housing by extension, cannot be 
analysed within the parochial purview of orthodox economics insofar as unlike other 
commodities, land, upon which housing is tethered to is a fixed resource.8 The finality of land 
qualifies it as one of earth’s planetary boundaries,9 and as such can be thought of as dialectically 
antagonistic to capitalism’s proclivity to infinitely expand in pursuit of new land, labour and 
markets.10  

 
Housing further differs compared against “typical” commodities, insofar as the value 

of housing appreciates (in market-price, not exchange-value), rather than depreciates overtime. 
In the case of most other commodities, the bourgeoisie, or capital-owning class, are motivated 
to manage or displace11 commodity surpluses that lead to crises of overaccumulation12 insofar 
as the depreciating value of a “typical” commodity compels capitalists to not let 
overaccumulated capital, often in the form of “typical” commodities, lie idle.13 Alternatively, 
due to the appreciating nature of housing as compared to other commodities, the accumulation 
of housing is incentivized and does not lead to crises of overaccumulation,14 motivating 
property hoarding and land monopolisation.15  This does not imply that landlords are indifferent 
to renting out their properties; indeed, having tenants increases their rate of return (RoR) 
compared to vacant properties. However, the trend of rising market-prices far beyond inflation 
in speculative housing markets means that properties, even when unoccupied, can generate a 
positive RoR in absolute terms.16 Moreover, in housing markets that are dominated by 

 
4 Taylor, Elizabeth, and Tony Dalton. “Keynes in the antipodes: the housing industry, first home owner grants 
and the global financial crisis.” In Housing in 21st-Century Australia, 153-172. Routledge, 2016. 
5 Tii Thu’p is the ancestral name bestowed upon Susan by xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Elder Shane Pointe during the meeting 
mentioned in this document. It translates to “big heart” in hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓, symbolising her enduring dedication to 
the urban Indigenous community of Vancouver. 
6 Booth, Annie L., and Bruce R. Muir. “Environmental and land-use planning approaches of indigenous groups 
in Canada: An overview.” Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 13, no. 4 (2011): 421-442. 
7 “Res extra commercium” is a term from Roman law describing things that are outside of commerce and cannot 
be owned, bought, or sold, such as air, sunlight, and sacred items. 
8 Tranjan, R. (2023). The Tenant Class. Between the Lines. 
9 Newbold, Tim, Lawrence N. Hudson, Andrew P. Arnell, Sara Contu, Adriana De Palma, Simon Ferrier, 
Samantha LL Hill et al. “Has land use pushed terrestrial biodiversity beyond the planetary boundary? A global 
assessment.” Science 353, no. 6296 (2016): 288-291. 
10 Klein, Naomi. This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. Simon and Schuster, 2015. 
11 Harvey, David. “The ‘new’ imperialism: accumulation by dispossession.” In Karl Marx, 213-237. Routledge, 
2017. 
12 A crisis of overaccumulation is a situation where excess capital and goods accumulate to the point where they 
cannot be profitably invested or sold, leading to economic stagnation or decline. 
13 Tranjan, R. (2023). The Tenant Class. Between the Lines. (1) 
14 Grant, Alex. “The Marxist Theory of Rent.” Lecture, YouTube video. Posted by “Révolution communiste,” 
June 17, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QcFx1zv95o 
15 Marx, Karl. “Rent of Land.” In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Marxists Internet Archive. 
Accessed January 17, 2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/rent.htm. 
16 Tranjan, R. (2023). The Tenant Class. Between the Lines. (1) 



 Ugalde  71 

monopolistic or oligopolistic entities, such as the situation observed in Vancouver,17 there is a 
strategic manipulation of property availability. Indeed, properties are sometimes deliberately 
left vacant by these entities to drive up scarcity,18 a practice that aligns with Marx’s theory of 
absolute rent, which posits that landlords can increase rents and maximise their RoR by 
artificially limiting the supply of available properties, regardless of the actual demand or 
exchange-value of the land itself. 

 
These reasons, and more later explored, which emphasise housing’s uniqueness as a 

commodity challenge the traditional orthodox economic paradigm that relegates the rising 
disparity between income and rental costs ravaging the western world “to supply restrictions”19 
on private investment. Indeed, the orthodox economic paradigm’s fixation on supply-side 
solutions is contradicted by examples such as the situation during the COVID-19 pandemic in 
Canada whereby despite a significant increase in the national vacancy rate from 2% to 3.2% (a 
60% rise), the surge in available housing did not lead to a reduction in rental costs, which 
instead increased by 3.6%.20 Vancouver in particular exemplifies this disconnect. It retains the 
highest number of unoccupied habitations among major Canadian cities, with a vacancy rate 
of 8.2%, translating to about 25,000 empty homes.21  This is particularly striking given that 
Vancouver was equally identified as having the highest rental costs in Canada as of 2023.22 
Even if increasing supply had demonstrated to be effective at lowering rental costs, the 
previously stated nature of viable land, and therefore housing, as a fixed commodity simply 
comes up against capitalism’s tendency to seek new vestiges of commodification23 resulting in 
the hyper-commodification of “ever smaller spaces.”24 Consider for example, one 2023 rental 
listing in downtown Vancouver that sought $800/per month for a “closet listed as a furnished 
den”25 or the single-room-occupancy (SRO) epidemic plaguing Vancouver’s downtown 
eastside (DTES).26  

 
To address the growing disparity between median household income and the cost of 

rent, particularly in Vancouver where this gap is the widest among major Canadian cities,27 it 
becomes clear that the orthodox “supply and demand” economic explanation falls short. In 
seeking a more comprehensive understanding of this issue, this document revisits a largely 

 
17 Statistics Canada. “Investment Status of Residential Properties.” Table 46-10-0070-01. Released October 18, 
2023.  
18 Grant, Alex. “The Marxist Theory of Rent.” Lecture, YouTube video. Posted by “Révolution communiste,” 
June 17, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QcFx1zv95o 
19 Schumacher, Patrik. “Only Capitalism Can Solve The Housing Crisis.” Adam Smith Institute. Accessed 
January 16, 2024. https://www.adamsmith.org/capitalismcansolvethehousingcrisis 
20 Tranjan, R. (2023). The Tenant Class. Between the Lines. (1) 
21 Hopulele, Andra. “‘Ghost’ Homes Across Canada: A Decade of Change in 150 Cities.” Point2Homes. 
December 2021. https://www.point2homes.com/news/canada-real-estate/ghost-homes-across-canada-decade-
change-150-cities.html 
22 Hudes, Sammy. “Vancouver leads the way as Canadian rent prices hit new high for 6th month in a row: 
report.” The Canadian Press. CBC News, November 13, 2023. 
23 Cutler, A. Claire. “New constitutionalism, democracy and the future of global governance.” In Critical 
Perspectives on the Crisis of Global Governance: Reimagining the Future, 89-109. London: Palgrave 
Macmillan UK, 2015. 
24 Madden, David, and Peter Marcuse. 2016. “In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis.” 45. 
25 Diment, Maria. 2022. “Closet ‘Den’ Available for Rent in Expensive Vancouver Apartment.” October 7, 
2022, 1:15 PM. 
26 Evans, Liz, and Steffanie A. Strathdee. “A roof is not enough: Unstable housing, vulnerability to HIV 
infection and the plight of the SRO.” International Journal of Drug Policy 17, no. 2 (2006): 115-117. 
27 Gurstein, Penny, and Andy. Yan. “Beyond the dreams of avarice.” The Past, Present, and Future of Housing 
in Vancouver’s Planning Legacy. In P. Gurstein & T. Hutton (Eds.), Planning on The Edge (2019): 215-246. 



 72  Cultural Logic 

abandoned Marxian economic paradigm that “most serious English-speaking economists 
regard . . . as an irrelevant dead end.”28 Regardless of whether the Marxist economic paradigm 
has been abandoned due to a vestigial lingering of cold-war era austerity politics,29 due to the 
capitalist mode of production’s epistemicide of knowledge(s) opposed to their interests,30 or 
due to its own limitations including its economic-determinism,31 Vancouver’s rising of vacancy 
rates alongside rental costs suggests that the “supply-side” solutions of orthodox economics 
have largely failed and, thus, alternative explanations are at least worth considering. At the 
same time, the element of Marxian economics least favoured by orthodox economists is Marx’s 
labour theory of value (LTOV),32 with these economists, influenced by Austrian school 
marginalists,33 positing instead “that the economic value [of a commodity] is subjective.”34  
Indeed, this document’s main grievance with the marginalist approach is its tendency to 
homogenise “market-price” and “exchange-value,” and in doing so, fails to provide an 
adequate framework for Vancouver’s housing “crisis.” As such, in looking for alternative 
explanations for this “crisis,” this document seeks to revisit Marx’s often-overlooked LTOV, 
which proposes that a commodity’s exchange-value reflects the socially necessary labour time 
(SNLT) embedded within it. This revisitation is justified due to both “supply-side” economists’ 
failure to address Vancouver’s housing “crisis” as well as due to the LTOV’s persuasive 
rationale for the occurrence of market bubbles, which is central to this conversation. 

 
Notwithstanding, this document acknowledges that beyond both Marxian economics 

and the hegemonic liberal economic framework dominating Canadian discourses on housing,35 
there exist a multitude of “peripheralized”36 economic epistemologies that offer alternative 
perspectives on housing. These include insights from Vancouver’s local Coast Salish traditions, 
specifically in regards to Indigenous land tenure and housing allocation practices. Such 
epistemologies encompass the traditional insights informed by Hupačasath knowledge(s), as 
initially made aware to me by Tii Thul'p and that had subsequently inspired the analysis 
presented in this document as well as insights tied to hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking 
peoples, particularly the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and 
səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations that have stewarded and tenured “Vancouver” from time 
immemorial.37 

 
Lamentably, considering my grounding within a Eurocentric academic tradition, to 

which Marxian economics certainly belongs,38 as well as the overlooked explanatory power of 

 
28 “The Wide, Wide World of Wealth.” The New York Times, 20 Mar. 1988. 
29 Lewis, Lionel S. Cold War on campus: A study of the politics of organisational control. Transaction 
Publishers, 1989. 
30 Mar Castro Varela, María, and Carolina Tamayo Rojas. “Epistemicide, postcolonial resistance and the state.” 
Postcolonial Studies 23, no. 2 (2020): 226-240. 
31 Resnick, Stephen A., and Richard D. Wolff. “Marxist epistemology: The critique of economic determinism.” 
Social Text 6 (1982): 31-72. 
32 Burgis, Ben. “Karl Marx Was Right: Workers Are Systematically Exploited Under Capitalism.” Jacobin, June 
11, 2022. 
33 Illinois Institute of Technology. “Remembering Karl Menger.” Archived from the original on April 2, 2009.  
34 Nash, Ronald. “The subjective theory of economic value.” Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 3, no. 1/2 
(1991): 31. 
35 Tranjan, Ricardo. The Tenant Class. Between the Lines, 2023. 
36 Lobao, Linda. “A Sociology of the Periphery Versus a Peripheral Sociology: Rural Sociology and the 
Dimension of Space 1.” Rural Sociology 61, no. 1 (1996): 77-102. 
37 City of Vancouver. “Land Acknowledgement.” Accessed January 20, 2024. https://vancouver.ca/people-
programs/land-acknowledgement.aspx  
38 Lindner, Kolja. “Marx’s Eurocentrism: Postcolonial studies and Marx scholarship.” In Marx, Marxism and the 
Question of Eurocentrism, 1-39. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022. 



 Ugalde  73 

Marx’s LTOV in analysing housing bubbles, this document will primarily engage with Marxist 
economic analysis in providing an alternate explanation and subsequent solution to 
Vancouver’s housing “crisis” when compared against a paradigm of orthodox economics.  
Nonetheless, this Eurocentric limitation on my part should be seen as an invitation for other 
knowledge(s) holders, particularly those with insights into local Coast Salish knowledge(s), to 
conduct either a wholly separate examination of Vancouver’s housing “crisis” as per their 
traditional economic-epistemologies, or conduct an analysis that hybridises their local 
knowledge(s) with Marxian knowledge(s) as a form of “border thinking, or border 
epistemology.”39 Indeed, this document does not purport to offer a comprehensive or impartial 
analysis of Vancouver’s persisting “housing crisis.” Rather, its aim is to contribute an 
alternative perspective that has been largely overlooked in the prevailing discourse on housing. 
With this caveat aside, this document’s predominantly Marxian analysis concludes that a 
resolution to Vancouver’s housing “crisis” can unitarily be resolved via the complete 
decommodification of housing. This argument hinges on the following premises:  

 
1) As per, Karl Marx’s Labour Theory of Value (LTOV), the exchange-value of a 

commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour time (SNLT) required for 
its production.40  

 
2) Considering that the SNLT involved in housing capital—such as its initial 

construction and ongoing maintenance—is relatively low, the significant rise in Vancouver’s 
housing market-prices suggests that these increases do not correspond with SNLT, indicating 
the presence of fictitious capital.41  

 
3) The 2008 housing crash in the United States (U.S.) exemplifies how substantial 

discrepancies between the exchange-values and market-prices of housing commodities can 
lead to the accumulation of fictitious capital, culminating in economic detriment.  

 
4) The process of commodification is defined by imposing on a good an exchange-

value on top of its pre-existing use-value.42 Therefore, decommodifying housing would 
eliminate its exchange-value, leaving only its inherent use-values, like providing shelter, 
security, and privacy. Thus, without an exchange-value, there is no basis for market-price 
deviation, ensuring that housing retains only its practical uses, preventing future housing 
crashes. 

 
2. Beyond the Housing Crisis: Unmasking Rhetoric and Reality 

 
Although it is not usually Marxians, but rather Foucauldian postmodernists, who 

express criticism against ideologies that strategically utilise linguistic semantics and 
euphemism in their rhetoric,43 it is worth noting that the term “housing crisis” can be considered 

 
39 Mignolo, Walter. “The many faces of cosmo-polis: Border thinking and critical cosmopolitanism.” Public 
culture 12, no. 3 (2000): 726. 
40 Marx, Karl. Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy. Washington, D.C.: Eagle, 1996. 
41 Fictitious capital refers to financial assets that represent future claims on wealth or income, such as stocks, 
bonds, and other financial instruments, whose value is derived not from tangible assets or productive activities 
but from market speculation and expectations. 
42 Marcuse, Peter, and David Madden. 2016. In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis. London: Verso 
Books, 16. 
43 Miller, Seumas. “Foucault on discourse and power.” Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 76 
(1990): 115-125. 



 74  Cultural Logic 

a misnomer insofar as the ethos44 of a “crisis” suggests a temporary departure from the norm, 
not a permanent state of affairs.45 As per the dominance of orthodox economic epistemologies, 
a “housing crisis” is colloquially regarded as a result of deficient housing policy, which can 
presumably be rectified through targeted policy revision conducted by liberal, wonk 
economists.46  

 
Nonetheless, the term “crisis” is, at best, a euphemism, given that advocates for 

linguistic neutrality are often “unknowingly… dedicated to the support of the status quo.”47 At 
worst, it is willfully deceptive, considering that a steady, entrenched system which “serves all 
but one group is not in a state of crisis.”48 Indeed if the latter explanation is true, the present 
housing situation in Vancouver, and the global-north generally, can be seen as a mode of 
housing allocation functioning exactly as intended, that is, to serve “someone or some 
purpose,”49 with the “someone” in question being the landlord class.50 
  

Linguistic grievances aside, Marxian analysis, similar to the perspective of Tii Thul'p, 
acknowledges the distinct characteristics of land, and by extension, housing, as a commodity 
even within its own purview of the LTOV. The LTOV, traditionally posits that the exchange-
value of a commodity is determined by the total amount of Socially Necessary Labour Time 
(SNLT) invested in its production.51 To be sure, a commodity’s exchange-value is related to 
but not the same as its market-price, as Marx posits: “the imaginary [market]price-form may 
sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real [exchange]value-relation.”52Under this 
framework, market-price, unlike exchange-value, is not determined by a commodity’s SNLT 
but rather refers only to the monetary amount a commodity is sold for in the market. Therefore, 
exchange-value consistently represents the SNLT inherent in a commodity, while market-price 
can vary due to various factors. As a result, a commodity’s market-price may not always align 
with its underlying exchange-value.53 Reiterated, exchange-value refers to price at equilibrium 
and although these equilibrium prices are present in the markets, the actual market-prices we 
observe often do not match them exactly and tend to fluctuate around these levels. Nonetheless, 
when exchange-value and market-price fluctuate significantly, it can lead to market instability 
and inefficient production. These fluctuations are argued to exacerbate economic inequalities 
and lead to speculative bubbles and crashes, further distorting economic signals and potentially 
resulting in significant economic downturns.54  

 
Given this distinction between exchange-value and market-price, it is important to 

clarify that acknowledging the limitations of a commodified housing model does not negate 
the influence of the “supply-demand” paradigm of orthodox economists on the literal market-

 
44 Ethos is used here not as a rhetorical appeal to emotion rather defined as essence, referring to the underlying 
character, values, or fundamental spirit. 
45 Tranjan, R. (2023). The Tenant Class. Between the Lines. 
46 Marcuse, Peter, and David Madden. In Defence of Housing: The Politics of Crisis. Verso Books, 2016. 
47 Tranjan, R. (2023). The Tenant Class. Between the Lines. 1. 
48 Tranjan, R. (2023). The Tenant Class. Between the Lines. 1. 
49 Cox, Robert W. “Social forces, states and world orders: beyond international relations theory.” Millennium 
10, no. 2 (1981): 126. 
50 Tranjan, R. (2023). The Tenant Class. Between the Lines. 
51 Marx, Karl. Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy. Washington, D.C.: Eagle, 1996. 
52 Marx, Karl. “Chapter Three: Money, Or the Circulation of Commodities, Section 1: The Measure of Values.” 
Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm 
53 Mattick, Paul. “Value and Price.” Science & Society 23, no. 4 (1959): 289-297. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1959/value-price.htm 
54 Yaffe, David. “Value and Price in Marx’s Capital.” 1974. Accessed January 17, 2023. 
https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/yaffed/1974/valueandpriceinmarxcapital.htm 



 Ugalde  75 

price of housing. The market-price of housing is indeed affected by supply and demand 
dynamics, but this does not necessarily reflect the true exchange-value of housing, which 
orthodox economists fail to distinguish. Marx emphasises this in his work “Value, Price and 
Profit,” where he asserts: “the oscillations of market prices, rising now over, or sinking now 
under the [exchange]value… depend upon the fluctuations of supply and demand.”55 

 
In the context of Vancouver, the housing market is characterised by an increasing trend 

of monopolisation and oligopolization in the rental sector.56 This concentration of market 
power among fewer rentiers has significant implications for housing availability and 
affordability as per Marx’s theory of absolute rent. These rentiers often engage in practices 
such as deliberately keeping homes vacant, which creates artificial scarcity. This scarcity, in 
turn, allows these rentiers to drive up rental costs, exacerbating the affordability crisis in the 
housing market.57 Further, this practice highlights a divergence between the market-price of 
housing, driven by manipulated supply and artificially curated demand, and the intrinsic 
exchange-value of housing, which reflects a house’s SNLT. The manipulation of the housing 
market by the rentier, or landlord class, demonstrates the need for a critical examination of 
housing as a commodity and the exploration of alternative models, such as decommodification, 
to address the distortions and inequities in the housing market insofar as significant deviations 
between housing’s exchange-values and market-prices are likely to end in economic collapse.  
 

3. Land as Fictitious Commodity: Unravelling Urban Housing Economics 
 
Having gone over the differences between market-price and exchange-value, a 

distinction neglected by most orthodox economists, land, which is ontologically bound to the 
housing-commodity, still seemingly transcends Marx’s LTOV insofar as it contains no SNLT 
embedded within it and is instead “only another name for nature, which is not produced by 
man”58. Reiterated, land represents a unique commodity, not just as per its finite nature but also 
insofar as the emergence of land as a resource does not necessitate labour power, with the 
exception of certain specialised cases such as the creation of artificial islands.59 For these 
reasons, political economist Karl Polanyi, who, while not strictly a Marxist but rather Marxist-
adjacent,60 designates land as a “fictitious commodity.”61 This assertion does not negate the 
presence of SNLT within the concept of 'housing' entirely. To be sure, a house, as a commodity 
distinct from the land it is situated on, necessitates significant labour. This includes the SNLT 
inherent in the means of production (MoP) that encompasses both the SNLT embedded in the 
constant capital (technologies of production) used in building the house,62 as well as the 
domestic labour involved in (re)producing and maintaining the variable capital (construction 
worker’s labour power) needed for construction.63 Nonetheless, it is important to note that two 
identical dwellings, each embodying an equivalent amount of SNLT, can exhibit substantial 

 
55 Marx, Karl. “Value, Price and Profit.” In Economic Manuscripts. Accessed January 23, 2024. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch02.htm#c6 
56 Statistics Canada. “Investment Status of Residential Properties.” Table 46-10-0070-01. Released October 18, 
2023. 
57 Grant, Alex. “The Marxist Theory of Rent.” Lecture, YouTube video. Posted by “Révolution communiste,” 
June 17, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QcFx1zv95o 
58 Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press, 74. 
59 Schaffer, Sierra. “The ‘World’ Is Sinking Back Into The Sea, Dubai’s World Islands That Is.” Archived from 
the original on May 24, 2016. 
60 Luban, Daniel. “The Elusive Karl Polanyi.” Dissent Magazine, Spring 2017.  
61 Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press. 
62 Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume I. Penguin UK, 2004. 
63 Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch. Autonomedia, 2004. 



 76  Cultural Logic 

differences in market-price when situated in divergent locations. In the context of Vancouver’s 
diverse real estate market, it is pertinent to analyse the disparities in market-prices, ostensibly 
commensurate in terms of SNLT, between distinct neighbourhoods such as the West-end, 
characterised by its high property values, and the Hastings-Sunrise neighbourhood, known for 
its relatively lower housing costs.64 Certainly, if the two lands under consideration were used 
for commodity production, not habitation, the disparity in production costs between these two 
areas, relative to the average production cost, would influence the variation in market-price of 
their ground rent, in line with Marx’s concept of differential rent.65 Nonetheless, urban 
residential tenancy, when used solely for living purposes, does not play a direct role in 
economic productivity, excluding the reproduction of labour power itself.66 Yet, although the 
reproduction of labour power typically happens within one’s home, it does not embed its value 
into the housing commodity nor the land it is situated on. Thus, the deviation between both of 
these hypothetical houses’ market-prices despite retaining equal amounts of SNLT implies that 
factors beyond labour alone influence the pricing of housing, which further corroborates the 
atypicality of land reaffirming its designation as a fictitious commodity. From the perspective 
of a marginalist economist, this deviation in market-prices without deviation in “house-
commodities” labour inputs might seem to discredit Marx’s LTOV.67 However, understanding 
the difference between market-price and exchange-value exposes a more complex, and 
deliberately mystified,68 phenomenon. 
 

4. Industrial Capital Versus Speculative Housing: Dual Modes of Accumulation 
 
To better understand how land, and housing by extension, should be regarded as a 

fictitious commodity, it is advisable to consult Volume 1 of Marx's Das Kapital.69 In this text, 
Marx explores the dialectically opposed dual roles, or competing valuations of money: as (1) a 
facilitator of exchange (its exchange-value) and (2) as a store of value (its use-value).70 It must 
be noted that “money,” not unlike “land,” may also be considered a fictitious commodity 
insofar as its exchange-value is also not reflective of its SNLT and instead “comes into being 
through the mechanism of banking or state finance.”71 Nonetheless, such caveat is not 
important for this document’s analysis. Returning to the point at hand, Marx posits that money 
simplifies trade by providing a standard value measure, overcoming barter’s limitations as a 
“universal equivalent.”72 Yet, because money is a superior store of value than other 
commodities which, as prior established, depreciate in value over time and can thus suffer 
crises of overaccumulation, there emerges a tendency among the bourgeoisie, or property 

 
64 Kergin, Brendan. “Map: Here are Vancouver’s Cheapest Neighbourhoods to Rent this August.” Times 
Colonist, August 8, 2023. Accessed January 17, 2024. 
65 Marx, Karl. “Chapter Thirty-Eight: Differential Rent II - Second Case: Rising Price of Production.” In Capital 
Volume III. Marxists Internet Archive. Accessed January 18, 2024. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch38.htm 
66 Federici, Silvia. Revolution at point zero: Housework, reproduction, and feminist struggle. PM press, 2020. 
67 Menger, Carl. Principles of Economics. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, (1950): 121. 
68 Mystification, in a Marxist context, describes the obscuring or distortion of social and economic realities 
through ideological manipulation, making it difficult for individuals to perceive the true nature of capitalist 
relations and exploitation. 
69 Marx, Karl. Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy. Washington, D.C.: Eagle, 1996. 
70 Marx, Karl. Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy. Washington, D.C.: Eagle, 1996. 
71 Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press, 74. 
72 Lapavitsas, Costas. 2005. “The Universal Equivalent as Monopolist of the Ability to Buy.” In Marx’s Theory 
of Money, edited by Fred Moseley, 50-68. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 
https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523999_7 



 Ugalde  77 

owning class, to hoard it.73 This hoarding contradicts money’s function in facilitating exchange, 
creating a material contradiction. In line with Marx’s thesis-antithesis-synthesis schema 
adopted from Hegelian dialectics,74 material contradictions, such as that found within money’s 
contradictory functions, lead to a temporary resolution or “synthesis.”75 From here, Marx posits 
that the contradictory nature of money’s duelling functions is reconciled, or “synthesised,” 
through the advent of passive investments which promise a Rate of Return (RoR) on a 
capitalist’s initial investment. In this document, the term “passive investments” is defined in 
two distinct ways. First, (1) it can mean holding an ownership share in industry, which we 
categorise as “industrial capital.” This refers to investing in industries where the investor does 
not actively contribute their labour-power in the industry’s production. Second, (2) “passive 
investments” can also pertain to putting money into “speculative housing,” where the investor 
expects to gain returns from real estate without contributing personal labour. However, it 
should be acknowledged that while other forms of passive investments exist, this analysis will 
focus solely on “industrial capital” and speculative “housing capital” for pragmatic purposes. 
As such, the notable characteristic of “passive investments” is that they involve the expectation 
of a rate of return (RoR) without the direct, active involvement or labour contribution of the 
bourgeois-investor (Fig 1). 

  
 

 

Figure 1. Depicts the contradictory functions of money and their subsequent resolution as 
depicted by Marx in Chapter 2.3 of Das Kapital: Critique of Political Economy.76 

 
 
Continuing, it is useful to briefly analyse Marx’s basic cycle of commodity circulation 

from the viewpoint of a worker, or proletarian, coerced to sell their labour power, as unlike the 
bourgeoisie, they do not possess surplus capital for passive investment.77 From this proletarian 

 
73 Marx, Karl. “Money.” In Critique of Political Economy, Chapter 2, Section 3. Marxists Internet Archive. 
Accessed January 17, 2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-
economy/ch02_3.htm 
74 Cooper, Rebecca. 1925. “The Logical Influence of Hegel on Marx.” Accessed January 18, 2024. 
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/cooper/hegel-marx/introduction.htm 
75 Colletti, Lucio. “Marxism and the Dialectic.” New Left Review 93, no. 4 (1975): 3-29. 
76 Marx, Karl. “Money.” In Critique of Political Economy, Chapter 2, Section 3. Marxists Internet Archive. 
Accessed January 17, 2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-
economy/ch02_3.htm 
77 Marx, Karl. “Money.” In Critique of Political Economy, Chapter 2, Section 3. Marxists Internet Archive. 
Accessed January 17, 2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-
economy/ch02_3.htm  



 78  Cultural Logic 

perspective, where one must sell their labour power in order to survive, Marx posits that there 
is an assumed, albeit simplified, cycle of commodity-money-commodity (C→M→C),78 where 
one’s labour power can be thought of as the initial commodity (C) insofar as it has been bought 
by their employer. This model outlines that under capitalism, the process of exchanging 
commodities and money involves workers selling their labour power, as a commodity (C), for 
wages (M), which they then use to purchase necessities like food and housing (C).79 Orthodox 
economists, including those who previously attributed Vancouver’s housing crisis wholly to 
supply and demand dynamics, may argue that every variable at each stage of this economic 
cycle is equal in exchange-value, although perhaps without explicitly referring to it as 
“exchange-value.” For orthodox economists, this means that the wage a worker receives is 
assumed equivalent to the exchange-value of their contributed labour power, the commodities 
the worker purchases with their wage is assumed equal in exchange-value to the wage itself, 
and the exchange-value of the commodities purchased by the worker are again assumed equal 
to the exchange-value of their labour power.80 As a caveat, it is notable that contemporary 
Marxists such as Silvia Federici suggest that Marx’s original C→M→C schema may overlook 
the role of domestic labour in reproducing labour power;81 however, we will ignore this 
stipulation for the time being.82 

 
Continuing, let us reconceptualize Marx’s C→M→C model from the perspective of a 

bourgeois-investor seeking a RoR via what we previously defined as “passive capital.” In this 
situation, the model is inverted into M→C→M.83 For this primary reconceptualization, let us 
assume that the bourgeois-investor decides to invest into an ownership share of an industry or 
“industrial capital,” rather than choosing to invest in “speculative housing.” As per this 
scenario, the initial monetary investment (M) is exchanged for an ownership share in a 
particular industry (C). This ownership includes a share of control over the industry's means of 
production, encompassing both variable capital (labour-power) and constant capital 
(technologies of production and raw materials).84 These elements work together to produce 
goods and when these goods are sold, they generate an increased RoR on the original 
investment (M+RoR). Nonetheless, if bourgeois-investors are enticed to invest with the 
promise of a RoR as a synthesis to the previously explored contradictory functions of money, 
the cycle from the perspective of the bourgeois-investor can be better conceptualised as 

 
78 Marx, Karl. “Money.” In Critique of Political Economy, Chapter 2, Section 3. Marxists Internet Archive. 
Accessed January 17, 2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-
economy/ch02_3.htm  
79 Marx, Karl. “Money.” Critique of Political Economy, Chapter 2, Section 3. Marxists Internet Archive. 
Accessed January 17, 2024. Marx, Karl. “Money.” In Critique of Political Economy, Chapter 2, Section 3. 
Marxists Internet Archive. Accessed January 17, 2024. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02_3.htm 
80 Marx, Karl. “Money.” Critique of Political Economy, Chapter 2, Section 3. Marxists Internet Archive. 
Accessed January 17, 2024. Marx, Karl. “Money.” In Critique of Political Economy, Chapter 2, Section 3. 
Marxists Internet Archive. Accessed January 17, 2024. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02_3.htm 
81 Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch. Autonomedia, 2004. 
82 The neglect of domestic labour in commodity production tends to be a recurring theme in both Marx’s and 
Engels’ analyses. 
83 Marx, Karl. “Money.” In Critique of Political Economy, Chapter 2, Section 3. Marxists Internet Archive. 
Accessed January 17, 2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-
economy/ch02_3.htm 
84 Marx, Karl. “Money.” In Critique of Political Economy, Chapter 2, Section 3. Marxists Internet Archive. 
Accessed January 17, 2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-
economy/ch02_3.htm 



 Ugalde  79 

M→C→(M+RoR), which Marx simplifies to M→C→M’, where M’ is greater than M.85 This 
raises a question: if, as orthodox economists may believe, every variable in the C→M→C, and 
M→C→M configurations are equivalent in exchange-value, how can M’ be greater than M?  

 
This dialectic contradiction challenges the orthodox economists’ belief in the 

equivalence of exchange-value at each stage of the commodity exchange process. Indeed, 
Marx’s response to such contradiction asserts that each variable is in fact not equivalent and 
the increase in any given industry’s RoR, or “profit,” that has been generated is equal to the 
theft of industry’s workers’ surplus labour value.86 That is, that the RoR of investment into 
industrial capital, reflects the difference between what workers are paid and the actual 
exchange-value they create through their labour with this difference being referred to as 
“surplus value,” “profit” or “RoR” depending on your class interests (Fig 2) and that the 
obfuscation of these exploitative relations of production can be regarded as a fetishization87 of 
industrial capital. 

 
  

 

Figure 2. Marx’s basic cycle of capital accumulation as he applies to industrial capital.  

 
 
Revisiting the concept of housing as a “fictitious commodity,” let’s re-examine the 

previous scenario again from the perspective of a bourgeois-investor. However, in this 
iteration, we will assume that the bourgeois-investor decides to channel their funds into 
speculative housing rather than industrial capital. As a caveat, this analysis requires conjecture 
as Marx’s ruminations on the cyclicality of tenancy-rent were largely unfinished before his 
passing.88 Caveat aside, as per this situation, the cycle would again be represented as 
M→C→M’, and again M’>M. However, this time the initial investment (M) is spent on 
purchasing housing-capital (C). When the housing appreciates in value, and if the property is 
eventually sold, the investor then acquires (M+RoR), again denoted as M’. Yet where does this 
RoR come from if nothing has been produced? Certainly, if the RoR is viewed solely in terms 
of market-price untethered to exchange-value, a portion of the RoR can be attributed to their 
tenant’s monthly rent. However, as long as the extraction remains devoid of production—
excluding remedial upkeep, and the reproduction of labour power, which is exploited by the 
tenant’s employer rather than their landlord—the house-commodity cannot be said to have 
increased in exchange-value. Therefore, the extracted rent transcends exploitation89 and instead 

 
85 Marx, Karl. “Money.” In Critique of Political Economy, Chapter 2, Section 3. Marxists Internet Archive. 
Accessed January 17, 2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-
economy/ch02_3.htm 
86 Marx, Karl. Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy. Washington, D.C. Eagle, 1996. 
87 Fetishization, in Marxian theory, refers to the obfuscation of a commodity, or capital’s relations of production. 
88 Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume III. Penguin UK, 1992. 
89 Exploitation, in Marxian theory, refers to the process by which capitalists extract surplus value from the 
labour of workers, who are not fully compensated for their contribution to the production of goods and services. 



 80  Cultural Logic 

constitutes a form of dispossession.90 Furthermore, even in situations where the habitation is 
vacant, the bourgeois-investor, or rentier can still expect a RoR insofar as housing, unlike other 
commodities, appreciates in value.91 In Vancouver, this appreciation, or the cumulative annual 
growth rate (CAGR), accounting for inflation, between January 2005 and December 2023 has 
been around 6.5%, signifying an increase of approximately 231% over this time frame.92 

 
The expectation of an investment appreciation on housing implies that the RoR has 

been accumulated devoid of any increase in labour, and consequently, devoid of any increase 
in exchange-value. Consequently, this RoR, in terms of its rent component, serves to directly 
dispossess tenants of their earnings (which, if the tenant is a member of the proletariat class, 
their earnings have already been garnished by their employer via the theft of their surplus 
labour value). Furthermore, the RoR also represents a fictitious form of return, in the sense that 
it refers to “money that is thrown into circulation as capital without any material basis in 
commodities or productive activity.”93 This augmentation in market-price, perceived as a type 
of fictitious capital, implies a continuously widening disparity between the exchange-value of 
a house and its market-price (Fig. 3). 

 
 

 

Figure 3. Reinterpreting Marx’s basic cycle of capital accumulation onto speculative 
housing investment. 

 
 
Comparing these two cycles of passive capital accumulation (industrial capital and 

speculative housing) discredits the Proudhonist belief that “as the wage worker in relation to 
the capitalist, so is the tenant in relation to the house owner.”94 Indeed, in reality one relation 
is characterised by exploitation and the other by dispossession. Reiterated, the relationship 
between the bourgeoisie and the landlord, as understood through the investment of industrial 
capital, is characterised by exploitation. This is because the process is inherently linked to 
production, and the surplus-value of the thing produced is kept by one’s employer. On the 
other hand, the relationship between the landlord and the tenant is defined by dispossession, 
as it involves no production outside of the reproduction of labour power which does not 
embed itself into the house-commodity, and consequently, the house-commodity does not 
generate any new exchange-value. In other words, the landlord contributes no labour, exploits 
their tenant of no labour, and somehow, still receives an RoR in the form of monthly rent and 

 
 90 Dispossession, in Marxist theory, describes the process by which capitalists acquire and control resources and 
means of production, often through the exclusion or marginalisation of others, particularly the working class. 
91 Tranjan, Ricardo. The Tenant Class. Between the Lines, 2023. 
92 WOWA.ca. “Vancouver Housing Market: Jan. 6th, 2024 Update | Map Regional Breakdown.” Accessed 
January 21, 2024. https://wowa.ca/vancouver-housing-market 
93 Harvey, David. The limits to capital. Verso books, 2018. 
94 Engels, Friedrich, and C.P. Dutt. 1935. The Housing Question. Vol. 23. New York: International Publishers, 
1. 



 Ugalde  81 

fictitious CAGR. Indeed, Friedrich Engels, Marx’s frequent collaborator corroborates this 
prescription in asserting that the relationship of exploitation between the bourgeoisie and the 
proletarian is one in which “extra [exchange]value is produced.”95 Contrasting, he posits that 
the relation between a landlord and tenant is wholly different insofar as it reflects “a transfer 
of already existing, previously produced [exchange]value, and the total sum of 
[exchange]values possessed by the landlord and the tenant together remains the same after as 
it was before.”96 Admittedly, as per this quote, Engels, not unlike Marx, also failed to 
consider the (re)production of labour-power occurring within one’s domicile insofar as the 
“total sum”97 should not be thought of as the “same after as it was before”98 if we can 
measure the exchange-value of labour power itself by the SNLT of domestic labour required 
to produce it. Nonetheless, since this increase in exchange-value is exploited by the tenant's 
employer and not embedded in the housing commodity itself, it still cannot be said that the 
house-commodity has increased in exchange-value. Consequently, housing relies on accruing 
returns through the dispossession of tenants and through the emergence of fictitious capital, 
leading to a situation where the market-price of a house significantly exceeds its exchange-
value. If this divergence continues unchecked and is replicated on a large scale, it has the 
potential to trigger serious economic detriment. (Fig. 4). 

  
 

 

Figure 4. Contrasting investment in industrial capital as a form of “exploitation” versus 
investment in housing as a form of “dispossession.” 

 
 

5. Dispossession, Exploitation and Differential Ground Rent 
 
Considering that investment into housing as a form of capital accumulation both 

dispossesses tenants of their already expropriated wages (if the tenants are members of the 
proletarian class) as well as introduces swaths of fictitious capital into the economy, there are 
two primary arguments to be made in favour of decommodifying housing, one normative, and 
one analytical. Firstly (1), accumulation by dispossession can be considered a more predatory 
form of capital accumulation compared to exploitation insofar as it reflects a direct seizure of 
resources and, as political geographer David Harvey suggests, is significantly more efficient in 

 
95 Engels, Friedrich, and C.P. Dutt. 1935. The Housing Question. Vol. 23. New York: International Publishers, 
1. 
96 Engels, Friedrich, and C.P. Dutt. 1935. The Housing Question. Vol. 23. New York: International Publishers, 
1. 
97 Engels, Friedrich, and C.P. Dutt. 1935. The Housing Question. Vol. 23. New York: International Publishers, 
1. 
 98 Engels, Friedrich, and C.P. Dutt. 1935. The Housing Question. Vol. 23. New York: International Publishers, 
1. 



 82  Cultural Logic 

accumulating capital as compared to the exploitation of workers’ surplus labour value.99 
Further, given housing’s appreciating market-price, housing as a commodity cannot be subject 
to crises of overaccumulation, and thus becomes increasingly hoarded100 and additionally, 
given the nature of land as a fixed resource, also becomes increasingly monopolised and 
oligopolized, creating new avenues for artificial market-price inflation through artificial 
scarcity as per Marx’s theory of absolute rent.101 Consequently, due to the enhanced efficiency 
of dispossession in amassing capital and the capacity of housing to evade crises of 
overaccumulation, speculative housing becomes a preferable investment to industrial capital, 
reducing an economy’s rate of production. Further, the speculative housing-capital, although 
in the form of fictitious housing-capital, becomes more rapidly concentrated in the hands of 
fewer individuals. For this reason, “housing and commercial real estate have become the 
commodity of choice for commercial finance.”102 This not only reduces an economy’s 
productive output, since investment is wholly devoid of production, but also hastens the pace 
of wealth inequality growth beyond the level achievable solely through the exploitation of 
worker labour value.103  In Canada, for example, in 2023 the top 20% of the wealthiest 
individuals held a substantial majority (67.8%) of the nation’s net worth,104 which includes 
housing. In contrast, the bottom 40%, representing the least wealthy segment, accounted for a 
mere 2.7%,105 a disparity, which as per this document’s analysis could have been minimised, 
or at least temporally displaced,106 via the decommodification of housing.  

 
Nonetheless, a Proudhonist, extrapolated from Arthur Mülberger’s musings in 1872,107 

may posit that a tenant’s payment of rent does not constitute dispossession in the conventional 
sense, given that the rent remitted to a landlord might be interpreted as a further expropriation 
of a worker’s surplus value, redirected towards the landlord instead of their employer.108 This 
concept might be understood by envisioning a scenario where, rather than paying rent, a 
tenant’s salary is reduced, and the deducted amount is directly paid to the landlord, thereby 
exacerbating the worker’s rate of exploitation (ROE), reflected by Marx as the ratio between a 
worker’s wage (variable capital, or “V”) and the surplus value (S) they produce (ROE = 
S/V).109 Still, two critical issues with this theoretical framework are (1) its tendency to 
homogenise the role of landlords and business owners by depicting them as a monolithic group 

 
99 Harvey, David. “The New Imperialism: accumulation by dispossession.” In Karl Marx, 213-237. Routledge, 
2017. 
100 Grant, Alex. “The Marxist Theory of Rent.” Lecture, YouTube video. Posted by “Révolution communiste,” 
June 17, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QcFx1zv95o 
101 Das, Debarshi. “A Model of the Marxist Rent Theory.” UMass Amherst Economics Working Papers, no. 248 
(2018). https://doi.org/10.7275/12237530 
102 Farha, Leilani. “Housing is a Human Right, Not a Commodity.” The Globe and Mail, March 30, 2017. 
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/if-housing-was-a-human-right-the-bubbles-would-
burst/article34492283/ 
103 Harvey, David. “The New Imperialism: accumulation by dispossession.” In Karl Marx, 213-237. Routledge, 
2017. 
104 Statistics Canada, “Distributions of Household Economic Accounts for Income, Consumption, Saving and 
Wealth of Canadian Households, First Quarter 2023,” released July 4, 2023. 
105 Statistics Canada, “Distributions of Household Economic Accounts for Income, Consumption, Saving and 
Wealth of Canadian Households, First Quarter 2023,” released July 4, 2023. 
106 Subaşi, Erol. “David Harvey and Bob Jessop on Spatio-Temporal Fixes.” İdealkent 11, no. 30 (2020): 701-
716. 
107 Mülberger, Arthur Der Volkstaat, February 10, 1872. 
108 Engels, Friedrich, and Clemens Palme Dutt. The housing question. Vol. 23. New York: International 
Publishers, 1935. 
109 Marx, Karl. “Chapter Eighteen: Various Formula for the Rate of Surplus-Value.” In Capital Volume One. 
Accessed January 20, 2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch18.htm 



 Ugalde  83 

that collectively accumulates a shared pool of capital not unlike a feudal mode of production110, 
as well (2) as the framework assumes that every tenant necessarily pertains to the proletarian 
class.111 In reality, as stated by Engels “even if [the renter] has to buy this credit from the house 
owner himself at a usurious price as an addition to the rent. It is a simple commodity sale; it is 
not an operation between proletarian and bourgeois.”112 Furthermore, in cases where land is 
explicitly tied to production—specifically, non-housing capital, such as in commercial, 
agricultural, or industrial rent situations—the interests of landlords and business owners are, in 
fact, diametrically opposed. This is because one’s rent is dispossessed by the other, and neither 
belongs to the proletarian class. To be clear, this does not mean that landlords and the business 
owners as capitalists are not opposed in a principled sense. Rather, as Marx states, “it is their 
material conditions of existence, two different kinds of property, the rivalry between 
[productive] capital and [non-productive] landed property” that constitutes their differences.113 

 
Nevertheless, even if we accept the Proudhonists’ assertion that tenancy rent reflects an 

increased ROE, not dispossession, when an economy’s ROE rises, it also accelerates the 
transfer of capital into the possession of fewer people. Within a Proudhonist’s framework 
where rent is viewed as a form of hyper-exploitation114 rather than dispossession, this group 
includes both the workers’ landlords and employers. Thus, regardless of how one 
conceptualises this paradigm, whether as one of hyper-exploitation or dispossession, what 
remains true is that the commodification of housing presupposes a predatory form of 
accumulation which in turn increases inequality. From a normative perspective, we ought not 
intensify the rate of inequality as a principle of fairness as corroborated by international law.115  

 
Yet, from an analytical standpoint, this situation can be problematized via Marx's base-

superstructure dialectic which, posits that a society’s economic base (the forces and relations 
of production) both shapes and maintains, and is in turn cyclically shaped and maintained by 
its superstructure (ideologies, culture, society). Here, rising inequality, as a material condition 
(the base), influences “what people are”116, notably alienated117 and melancholic (the 
superstructure)118, which, in turn, cyclically reduces productivity and the rate at which value is 
produced (the base again), penalising not just the proletarian but also the bourgeoisie. Indeed, 
this dialectical contradiction is even corroborated by the undeniably neoliberal International 
Monetary Fund (IMF)119, which states that increased inequality “erode(s) social cohesion,”120 
and thus, lowers productivity.  

 

 
110 Marx, Karl. “Chapter Twenty-Six: The Secret of Primitive Accumulation.” In Capital Volume One. Accessed 
January 20, 2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm 
111 Marx, Karl. “Chapter Twenty-Six: The Secret of Primitive Accumulation.” In Capital Volume One. Accessed 
January 20, 2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm 
112 Engels, Friedrich, and Clemens Palme Dutt. The housing question. Vol. 23. New York: International 
Publishers, 1935. 
113 Marx, Karl. “Chapter 3.” In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. DigiCat, 2023. 
114 Hyper-exploitation refers to an extreme and unethical level of exploitation where workers are subjected to 
intense, often degrading, working conditions with minimal compensation or regard for their well-being. 
115 United Nations. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Article 25, sec. 1. December 10, 1948.  
116 Martin, James. “The rhetoric of the manifesto.” The Cambridge companion to the communist manifesto 
(2015): 55. 
117 Manoochehri, Jamileh. “Social Sustainability, Housing and Alienation.” Smart Futures, Challenges of 
Urbanisation, and Social Sustainability (2018): 49-67. 
118 Harnecker, Marta. “Base and Superstructure.” Elementary Concepts of Historical Materialism (1976): 32-35. 
119 Toft, Jessica. “Neoliberalism.” In Encyclopedia of Social Work. 2021. 
120 Introduction to Inequality.” International Monetary Fund. Accessed January 19, 2024. 
https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/Inequality/introduction-to-inequality 



 84  Cultural Logic 

The second argument (2) for decommodifying housing focuses on the part of a housing 
investment's RoR that is not linked to a tenant’s rent. This refers to the rise in the market-price 
of housing, completely detached from production and its SNLT. As a result, this increase can 
only be viewed as a form of fictitious capital presupposing an increasing-disconnect between 
housing’s exchange-value and market-price. Indeed, we know this fictitious capital exists, 
because as stated prior, even vacant properties generate a RoR despite that fact, that as best 
articulated by Marx, “where there is no [exchange]value, there is also eo ipso nothing to be 
expressed in money,”121 and properties used wholly for habitation are untethered from 
production (again, this excludes the reproduction of labour-power itself, which does not 
manifest its exchange-value into the housing commodity).122 Further, as per Marx’s theory of 
ground rent, even forms of rent that are more explicitly tied to production such as 
commercial/industrial/agriculture rent that may possess a natural feature that enhances 
productivity, and can derive exchange-value from the disparity between the amount of SNLT 
required to produce a commodity on that land and the average amount of SNLT needed on less 
productive land123 still see annual increases in market-price far surpassing inflation despite the 
land in question not adopting any novel “natural features” that may enhance production. In fact, 
due to capitalism’s furthering of the metabolic rift characterised by over-exploitation of the 
environment, soil depletion, loss of biodiversity, and other forms of ecological damage, the 
natural productivity boosters of urbanised land, such as that in Vancouver, on average are being 
exhausted, rather than replenished.124 In urban centres, regarding both commercial and non-
commercial habitation rent, this metabolic rift’s differential depreciation of its exchange-value, 
despite its “artificial” appreciation in market-price, is corroborated by Friedrich Engels, who 
states, “the growth of the big modern cities [including Vancouver which is one of Canada’s 
fastest urbanising cities125] gives the land in certain areas, particularly in those which are 
centrally situated, an artificial and often colossally increasing value; the buildings erected on 
these areas depress this value, instead of increasing it.”126 

 
This is not to say that there are no situations whereby additional capital is infused into 

land to increase its differential productivity, via say fertilisers for example, something Marx 
refers to this as differential rent two (DR2), as opposed to differential rent one (DR1) which, 
as explored prior, accounts only for the productivity boosters of a given plot of land’s natural 
features.127 However, given that DR2 primarily pertains to non-urban agricultural land, and 
excludes house-commodities, its integration is not useful in our analysis.  

 
Thus, considering the aforementioned factors, it can be concluded that in urban settings 

such as Vancouver, there is an increasing divergence between the exchange-values and market-
prices of both commercial and noncommercial rent, a result of the infusion of fictitious capital 

 
121 Marx, Karl. “Chapter Thirty-Eight: Differential Rent II - Second Case: Rising Price of Production.” In 
Capital Volume III. Marxists Internet Archive. Accessed January 18, 2024. 
122 Currie, P. 2018. “A Wondrous Spectacle.” In Rent and Its Discontents, edited by N. Gray, 3-16. London: 
Rowman & Littlefield. 
123 Marx, Karl. “Chapter Thirty-Eight: Differential Rent II - Second Case: Rising Price of Production.” In 
Capital Volume III. Marxists Internet Archive. Accessed January 18, 2024. 
124 Saito, Kohei. “Marx’s theory of metabolism in the age of global ecological crisis.” Historical materialism 28, 
no. 2 (2020): 3-24. 
125 Chan, Kenneth. “Metro Vancouver’s Population Could Reach 3 Million in 2024.” Urbanized, January 15, 
2024. https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/metro-vancouver-population-forecast-2024 
126 Engels, Frederick. “The Housing Question.” Marxists Internet Archive. Accessed January 22, 2024. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/ch01.htm 
127 Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. Marx & Engels Collected Works Vol 37: Karl Marx Capital: Volume 3. 
Lawrence & Wishart, 1998. 



 Ugalde  85 

into the economy. This divergence might be interpreted by orthodox economists as a “housing 
bubble”128. In this sense, Marx’s LTOV, which is rejected by “most [orthodox] economists — 
including many who are committed Marxists”129 — may be the most apt way of conceptualising 
how and why such bubbles happen.  
 

6. Exchange Value Versus Market Price, Housing Bubbles and Crashes 
 
An escalating disparity between the exchange-value and market-price of a commodity, 

particularly regarding a commodity of subsistence such as housing, can precipitate substantial 
detrimental effects. For instance, Marxian geographer David Harvey attributes the 2008 
financial housing crash, which indeed did impact Vancouver, albeit to a lesser extent compared 
to the United States (U.S.),130 to these kinds of divergences. Nevertheless, this case study 
provides a relevant caution regarding the risks associated with allowing the market-prices of 
dwellings, or any commodity for that matter, to significantly surpass their exchange-values.  

 
Harvey's analysis of the 2008 housing crash can again be conceptualised through 

Marxian dialectics, highlighting another of capitalism’s internal contradictions. The 
contradiction in question involves the capitalist’s drive to maximise profits, leading to a 
disproportionate investment in constant capital (automation, technology and raw materials) 
over variable capital (labour power). This situation presents a dialectical contradiction: if 
variable capital represents the wages of the working class, then reducing these wages results in 
a diminished capacity for the working class to purchase the commodities that the bourgeois 
class aims to sell. This creates a conflict between the capitalists' pursuit of profit and the 
sustainability of their consumer market.131 This contradiction, identified by Harvey, can be 
thought of as a contemporary reimagination of Marx’s explanation for the tendency of the rate 
of profit to fall (TRPF), which posits that a disproportionate investment into constant capital 
over variable capital tends to reduce an economy’s rate of profit.132  

 
Continuing to follow the thesis-antithesis-synthesis schema, Harvey posits that the 

solution, or “synthesis” to such contradiction was the increased ease of consumer credit and 
mortgage finance via interest-rate reductions, a measure undertook not just in the U.S. but also 
paralleled by the Bank of Canada.133 Indeed, the exacerbation of consumer credit and mortgage 
finance presupposing a novel, albeit fictitious, money-pool for the working-class permitted 
workers to: (1) continue purchasing their means of subsistence to sustain their labour-power 
for the bourgeoisie to exploit, (2) acquire products sold by the bourgeoisie, thus generating 
profits for this class, and (3) allow the bourgeoisie to collect an additional RoR via interest, 
although admittedly a Keynesian-informed reduction in interest-rates is what stimulated the 
exacerbation of consumer lending, thus the bourgeoisie’s collection of interest was hardly the 

 
128 “Real Estate Bubble: Myth or Reality?” National Bank. National Bank of Canada. March 5, 2021.  
129 Burgis, Ben. “Karl Marx Was Right: Workers Are Systematically Exploited Under Capitalism.” Jacobin 
Magazine, 2022. 
130 Rozworski, M. (2019, June 14). The roots of our housing crisis: Austerity, debt and extreme speculation. 
Policy Note. Retrieved from https://www.policynote.ca/the-roots-of-our-housing-crisis-austerity-debt-and-
extreme-speculation 
131 Harvey, David. “The Crisis of Capitalism.” Lecture, RSA, 8 John Adam Street, London, April 26, 2010. 
Unedited transcript.  
132 Marx, Karl. Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 13: “The Law As Such.” Marxists Internet Archive. Accessed January 
20, 2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch13.htm 
133 Bank of Canada. “A Chronology of Crisis Response Measures.” Accessed January 20, 2024. 
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/markets/market-operations-liquidity-provision/a-chronology-of-crisis-response-
measures/ 



 86  Cultural Logic 

primary motivator for the increased ease of procuring consumer credit.134 Nonetheless, the 
increased accessibility of consumer lending, whether in the form of consumer credit or 
mortgage finance, existed only as fictitious capital, detached from tangible assets, and thus 
detached from any SNLT, which only embeds itself within tangible assets. Indeed, Marx 
himself describes the system of public credit during its advent throughout the Middle Ages as 
a form of both dispossession and fictitious capital insofar as “it endows barren money… and 
thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles and risks 
inseparable from its [productive] employment in industry.”135 

 
Following Marxist dialectics, each “synthesis” proposed as a resolution to a “thesis-

antithesis” contradiction becomes itself a new thesis, and with it develops its own set of 
contradictions.136 Harvey better articulates this idea in stating that “capitalism never solves its 
crises, it just moves them around”137 either spatially or, in this case, temporally. As per Harvey's 
analysis, the proliferation of fictitious capital intended to stimulate consumer spending, thereby 
boosting bourgeois earnings and resolving the prior examined contradiction, led to a novel 
“antithesis” of overspending fictitious capital, much of which was spent on housing-
commodities. As a result, the housing market experienced a dramatic divergence between its 
housing-commodities’ market-prices and their exchange-values. This unsustainable growth 
culminated in a market collapse, precipitating a notable decline in median income levels and 
an escalation in poverty rates. Specifically, in the U.S., family net worth diminished by 
approximately 40% between 2007 and 2010, erasing the equivalent of 16 years of savings for 
numerous households (Fig 5).138 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
134 Blakeley, Grace. Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation. Repeater, 2019, 195. 
135 Marx, Karl. “Chapter Thirty-One: Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist.” In Capital Volume One, 1867. 
Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm 
136 Cooper, Rebecca. 1925. “The Logical Influence of Hegel on Marx.” Accessed January 18, 2024. 
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/cooper/hegel-marx/introduction.htm 
137 Hardcastle, Edgar. “The Falling Rate of Profit.” Socialist Standard, June 1960. 3.  
138 Awan, Abdul Ghafoor. “Analysis of the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on the economic, political and 
health systems and societies of advanced countries.” Global Journal of Management and Social Sciences 1, no. 
1 (2015): 1-16. 



 Ugalde  87 

 
 
Admittedly, unlike 2008, the increasing gap between the exchange-values and market-

prices of contemporary house-commodities in Vancouver is indicative not of individual home 
ownership but rather of an oligopolistic acquisition pattern by the rentier class, encompassing 
“wealthy families, small businesses, corporations, and financial investors.”140 This is evidenced 
by the 2023 data from British Columbia, where 25.1% of all property types and 36.6% of 
condominiums were categorised as either vacant or rented “investment properties,” in stark 
contrast to only 8.7% that were “owner-occupied investment properties.”141 

 
Nonetheless, Harvey’s analysis of the 2008 housing crash proves useful for analysing 

the situation in Vancouver for two reasons. Firstly, (1) his analysis exemplifies the risks 
associated with the significant divergence between the market-price and exchange-value of 
housing. Secondly, (2) the housing crash, which resulted in widespread defaults on loans and 
loss of homeownership, which indeed occurred in Vancouver, although on a more limited scale 
when compared against the U.S., enabled speculative investors to rapidly acquire a substantial 
number of homes, effectively dispossessing them from their former-owners142 and 
subsequently artificially reappraising their market-prices via speculation, artificial scarcity, 
gentrification,143 or a form of state-invoked gentrification which Engels refers to as 
“Haussmannization.”144 In this sense, the housing crash led to a reduction in the market-price 
of homes, aligning them more closely with their exchange-value. This transition enabled a 
significant reallocation of housing-capital from individual homeowners to private rentiers 

 
139 Harvey, D. (2018). Universal Alienation. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, 16(2), 435. 
https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v16i2.1026 
140 Tranjan, Ricardo. 2023. The Tenant Class. Toronto: Between the Lines, 39.2 
141 Statistics Canada. “Investment Status of Residential Properties.” Table 46-10-0070-01. Released October 18, 
2023. Accessed January 23, 2024. 
142 Tranjan, Ricardo. The Tenant Class. Between the Lines, 2023. 
143 Harvey, David. “The urban roots of financial crises: reclaiming the city for anti-capitalist struggle.” Socialist 
register 48 (2012). 
144 Engels, Friedrich. “The Housing Question.” In Marx/Engels Collected Works, Vol. 23. Accessed January 23, 
2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/ch02.htm 

 

Figure 5: Dialectically maps out the contradictions leading up to the 2008 housing 
crash as per David Harvey’s analysis.139 



 88  Cultural Logic 

which would then artificially re-evaluate the properties’ market-price through artificial scarcity 
and other market-mechanisms.145 Thus, because the crash had a limited, yet notable, impact on 
Vancouver, Harvey’s analysis might, at least in part, shed light on the city’s large transfer of 
housing-capital from home-owners into the hands of the rentier class following the crash.146 
 

7. How the Hell Do We Fix This Mess? 
  

Certainly, the continued injection of fictitious capital into the housing market via 
financial instruments, austerity politics and overvalued speculation which presupposes the 
growing disparity between housing’s exchange-values and market-prices as well as the 
continued oligopolization of housing cannot continue. Undoubtedly, tenants have a vested 
interest in securing a standard of living that is conducive to the health and well-being of 
themselves and their families. This principle is supported by international human rights law, as 
demonstrated by Article 25(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights147 and Article 
11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,148 both of which 
identify housing as a fundamental human right. Yet beyond this, the contemporary housing 
model presents a paradox within the context of bourgeois interests. Analogous to the 2008 
housing crisis, the substantial discrepancy between the market-prices of housing and their 
inherent exchange-values has resulted in widespread negative repercussions for the general 
population. Notably, during the 2008 crisis, certain capitalists exploited the depressed market-
prices as an opportunity to augment their portfolios. Nevertheless, in the scenario of a future 
housing market collapse in Vancouver, it is the rentier class, rather than individual 
homeowners, that will predominantly shoulder the risk, particularly in light of the current 
oligopolistic tendencies observed in the Vancouver housing market. Additionally, as initially 
overlooked by Marx and Engels, housing serves a fundamental function in facilitating the 
reproduction and sustenance of the workforce’s labour power, which is indispensable for the 
sustenance of the bourgeois-class that seeks to exploit labour power.149  

 
In light of these considerations, if one accepts Vancouver’s housing “crisis” as one 

characterised by the increasing divergence between housing-commodities exchange-values and 
market-prices as per the Marxian paradigm posited by this document, there are three (3) 
solutions one might posit in response. Of the three, this document advocates only for the first 
(1), that is, the complete decommodification of housing insofar as Marx states, things are “only 
commodities because they have a dual nature, because they are at the same time objects of 
utility and bearers of [exchange]value.”150 Reiterated, in contexts where exclusive private land 
ownership is res extra commercium, land does not possess an intrinsic “exchange-value” nor 
does it command a market-price. It is the establishment of monopolistic and oligopolistic 
ownership that introduces a pricing mechanism, that is, a demand for a RoR. Therefore, the 
fictitious market-pricing in question pertains to monopoly-, and oligopoly-, induced prices as 
well as the exacerbation of mortgage finance encouraging investment into housing-
commodities, thereby increasing housing-commodities’ market-price devoid of any new labour 
inputs. Thus, to decommodify housing means to strip it of any exchange-value and without an 

 
145 Harvey, David. “The urban roots of financial crises: reclaiming the city for anti-capitalist struggle.” Socialist 
register 48 (2012). 
146 Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. “Housing Market Outlook: Vancouver and Abbotsford CMAs.” 
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 2009. 
147 United Nations. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Article 25, sec. 1. December 10, 1948.  
148 United Nations. “International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” Article 11, sec. 1. 
December 16, 1966. 
149 Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch. Autonomedia, 2004. 
150 Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume I. Penguin UK, 2004. 



 Ugalde  89 

exchange-value there is nothing for market-price to deviate from, retaining only its use-values 
such as shelter, security, and privacy. 

 
8. The Revisionist’s “Solution” 

 
The second (2) so-called solution, which is the one advocated for explicitly by Marxian 

revisionists, and less explicitly by social-democrats, involves adopting regulatory measures to 
lessen the gap between the market-prices of housing and their exchange-values.  
This method entails aligning housing prices more closely with their SNLT exchange-value. 
The aim is to reduce rental costs, thereby enabling more renters to transition into homeowners. 
Proponents of this strategy might advocate for rent control and market caps. Provincially, the 
New Democratic Party (NDP) government of British Columbia, as evidenced by policies 
implemented by David Eby’s administration, appear to favour this approach, contrasting with 
the previous Provincial Liberal government’s more austere, exclusively supply-side solutions. 
A prime example is the introduction of a speculation tax in British Columbia, highlighting the 
NDP government's commitment to regulatory strategies.151 This is not to say British 
Columbia’s NDP are Marxian revisionists, rather, that their housing strategy of helping British 
Columbians’ “own their own homes”152 is effectively indifferent to a revisionist’s strategy of 
lowering the divergence between housing-commodities’ exchange-values and market-prices so 
that homes may become affordable.  

 
There are a number of issues with this proposed solution, the first (1) being its inability 

to address the inherent contradiction between the market-price and exchange-values of 
commodified housing. Instead, it merely provides spatio-temporal mitigation. Again, this 
observation is in alignment with David Harvey's argument that capitalism does not solve its 
contradictions but rather redistributes them across space and time.153 Consequently, strategies 
aimed at minimising the disparity between the market-price and exchange-value of housing 
merely postpone, or perhaps even exacerbate, the manifestation of this contradiction as a 
“temporal fix.” 

 
Consider, for example, how the 2008 housing crash resulted in widespread 

dispossession of individuals from their homes, concurrently aligning the market-price of 
housing more closely with its exchange-value. This period saw capitalists leveraging the 
diminished market-prices as an opportunity for substantial acquisition, effectively contributing 
to an increased concentration of ownership within the housing market. Such actions 
precipitated a subsequent artificial inflation in market prices, thereby exacerbating the 
discrepancy between the market-price and exchange-value of housing. Indeed, in such a 
situation, the “temporal fix” was a consequence of a market collapse, yet whether the reduction 
in housing’s market-price to align more closely with its exchange-value is a product of willful 
revisionist/social-democratic policies meant to help first-time home buyers or, alternatively, a 
product of an unexpected housing crash, the capitalization and temporal displacement of the 
crisis remains the same (Fig 6). 

 
 

 
151 “Speculation Tax Expanding to New Communities to Deliver More Homes for People.” BC Gov News, 22 
Nov. 2023,  
152 David Eby, town hall meeting, Vancouver, July 2013. 
153 Harvey, David. “The Crisis of Capitalism.” Speech at RSA, 8 John Adam Street, London, April 26, 2010. 
Unedited transcript. 



 90  Cultural Logic 

 

Figure 6. Displays how regulatory measures may have the same effect as the 2008 housing 
crash allowing further capitalization of the crisis by speculative investors. 

 
 
At the same time, revisionist/social-democratic policies meant to shrink the gap 

between housing’s exchange-value and market-price may prompt speculative investors to 
geographically shift their focus to housing speculation in alternative locations, representing a 
“spatial fix.” This is exemplified by the rapidly escalating housing costs in the Greater 
Vancouver Area (GVA), which follow a similar, yet temporally delayed, trend to those in 
Vancouver.154 Indeed, just as Marx states, “the peculiar character of social-democracy is 
epitomised in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of 
doing away with two extremes,”155 the reduction of housing’s divergence in exchange-value 
and market-price via institutional measures does not do away with contradictions embedded 
within the housing commodity; it only displaces them. 

 
Engels underscores a further complication inherent in the social-democrats' objective 

of facilitating universal homeownership without extracting from it its commodity-form. 
Indeed, Engels posits that even if the achievement of universal home ownership were 
successful, assuming that such policies triumphed over the potential spatial-temporal fixes 
explored prior, universal homeownership would not suffice to eradicate economic 
dependencies or the threat of dispossession. Rather, this shift would only alter the nature of the 
dispossession relationship from a landlord-tenant interaction to a new dynamic involving 
homeowners and financial entities such as mortgage lenders or banks.156 This shift implies that 
the underlying economic vulnerability and potential for accumulation by dispossession would 
persist, just in a different form. Again, such a shift does not eradicate the exchange-values 
associated with housing but merely transforms the nature of these relationships reflecting 
another of capital’s “fixes.” Indeed, this is precisely how Harvey had characterised the 2008 

 
154 Ali, Amir. “Surreal estate: A BC city is catching up to Vancouver for highest rent in Canada.” Daily Hive, 
December 11, 2023. https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/rent-vancouver-bc-rentals-report-december-2023 
155 Marx, Karl. “Chapter III.” In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. Accessed January 24, 2024. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/hist-mat/18-brum/ch03.htm 
156 Engels, Friedrich. “The Housing Question.” In Marx/Engels Collected Works, Vol. 23. Accessed January 23, 
2024. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/ch02.htm 



 Ugalde  91 

housing crash, as one of individual home-owners dispossessed of their ownership due to any 
inability to repay their mortgages.157 

 
The final challenge in implementing regulatory strategies to narrow the disparity 

between housing market-prices and their exchange-values lies in the complexity of actually 
quantifying housing’s exchange-value. This quantification is essential for assessing the extent 
of its divergence from market-prices as to measure the efficacy of the social democrats’ 
policies, a dilemma known as the transformation problem. Indeed, we know that housing 
possesses an intrinsic exchange-value, as houses themselves, devoid of land, embody SNLT. 
Furthermore, we also know that the market-price of housing often diverges from its exchange 
value, as evidenced by its price appreciation independent of labour inputs. However, the 
process of actually converting values based on SNLT into market-prices, which harmonise the 
rate of profit across various industries, lacks a reliable method for precisely measuring and 
quantifying the degree of discrepancy between housing’s exchange-values and market-prices, 
as well as the impact of regulatory interventions on this gap. Therefore, pragmatically speaking, 
instead of endeavouring to decipher Marx’s unresolved musings regarding the transformation 
problem,158 it is simply easier to decommodify housing entirely as this approach would 
eliminate both its market-price and exchange-values, sidestepping the need to reconcile these 
complex economic relationships. 
 
 

9. The “Accelerationist” “Solution” 
 
Within a Marxian paradigm, there is perhaps a third solution equally emphatically 

dismissed by this document, which advocates for the deliberate exacerbation of the disparity 
between the exchange-values and market-prices of housing, with the intention of precipitating 
a housing market collapse. This line of reasoning contends that, given the increasing 
monopolisation and oligopolization of contemporary housing in Canada,159 including 
Vancouver, a potential housing bubble burst would predominantly impact rentiers and 
financiers, unlike the collapse that predominantly affected private homeowners during the 2008 
crisis.160 This perspective, rooted in Marxian teleology and identifiable as a variant of 
accelerationism, posits that by amplifying capitalism’s fundamental contradictions—
exemplified here by the widening gap between the exchange-values (thesis) and market-prices 
(antithesis) of housing—thereby exacerbating prevailing conditions, it is possible to foster the 
emergence of a more equitable “synthesis.” Alternatively, from the standpoint of orthodox 
accelerationists, such intensification may lead to the complete disintegration of the capitalist 
mode of production.161  

 
Nonetheless, this third solution should be disregarded for two reasons. Firstly (1), as 

per Harvey’s insights that capitalism never resolved its crises, rather displaces them, a more 
“equitable synthesis” post-collapse is unlikely. Take, for instance, when Brazilian President 
Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva lauded the 2008 housing market collapse in interpreting the event 

 
157 Harvey, David. “The Crisis of Capitalism.” Lecture, RSA, 8 John Adam Street, London, April 26, 2010. 
Unedited transcript.  
158 Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume III. Penguin UK, 1992. 
159 Tranjan, Ricardo. The Tenant Class. Between the Lines, 2023. 
160 Duignan, Brian. “Effects and Aftermath of the Crisis.” In the Financial Crisis of 2007–08. Britannica. 
Accessed January 22, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/money/topic/financial-crisis-of-2007-2008/Effects-and-
aftermath-of-the-crisis 
161 Brassier, Ray. “Wandering Abstraction.” Mute, February 13, 2014. 
https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/wandering-abstraction 



 92  Cultural Logic 

as indicative of the failure of a predominantly “white, blue-eyed”162 population to fulfil their 
mortgage obligations, victimised by the inflation of housing market-prices. His commending 
the crash stemmed from the belief that it was finally the U.S.’s turn to experience a situation 
mirrored by Brazil’s repeated experiences with predatory lending practices presupposing the 
divergence between the market-price and exchange-value of rent in the region, facilitated by 
the International Monetary Fund (IMF).163 However, the outcome or “synthesis” of the housing 
market collapse did not lead to greater global equity. Instead, this led to a “spatio-temporal fix” 
which eventually had a detrimental impact on Brazil’s economy. This was evident from the 
effects of the crash, which reduced the purchasing power of former U.S. homeowners, 
including their ability to purchase Brazilian goods, most evident in Brazil’s own housing crash 
during the latter part of 2008.164 

 
In another example, Mark Fisher, who identifies as a capitalist realist, again examines 

the aftermath of the 2008 housing crash. He theorises that following the crash, some adherents 
of accelerationism had hoped to intensify the exchange-values and market-prices of housing-
commodities. Their expectation was that this intensification would lead to a more equitable 
resolution or “synthesis” emerging from the crisis. However, Fisher observes that this 
anticipated synthesis did not materialise. Instead of fostering a desire to seek alternative 
economic models, the resolution of this contradiction resulted in the U.S. Federal Reserve's 
bailout of mortgage financiers, essentially representing another instance where a crisis was 
capitalised upon rather than leading to systemic change.165 

 
The second (2) critique of the “accelerationist” approach hinges on the premise that it 

requires a significant deterioration of material conditions before any improvement can be 
realised presupposing significant suffering for tenants, assuming improvement is even a 
feasible outcome. This argument is predicated on the uncertainty that even in the face of 
worsening circumstances, there is no guarantee that a better “synthesis” will emerge.  
Indeed, given, Vancouver’s housing market’s increasing displacement of residents evident in 
seeing market-prices surge by 230% over the past 19 years, outpacing the 47% inflation rate 
and wage growth and that as of November 2023, the average home price in Greater Vancouver 
reached $1,285,414, marking a 7.2% annual increase.166 Advocating for further aggravation of 
this crisis in the hopes of a market collapse would lead to significant hardship for the city’s 
tenant class and existing houseless constituents. 

 
10. How the Hell Do We Decommodify Housing in Vancouver? An Uphill Battle 

 
Given that if we accept Vancouver’s housing predicament as a consequence of housing-

commodities’ divergence in market-prices and exchange-values, and if we emphatically 
dismiss both the revisionist and accelerationist resolutions for reasons given above, we are left 
in grappling with the complex task of identifying an effective strategy to decommodify housing 
in Vancouver. The scholarly debate as to how this may be achieved is polarised between two 
prominent perspectives. David Madden and Peter Marcuse advocate for a top-down approach, 

 
162 Reuters. “Brazil’s Lula Repeats ‘Blue Eyes’ Crisis Comment.” Last modified April 15, 2009. 
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE53E76B/ 
163 Pinheiro, Armando Castelar. “Structural adjustment and privatisation in Brazil.” (1994). 
164 de Barros, José Roberto Mendonça. “The impact of the international financial crisis on Brazil (ARI).” 
International Cooperation & Development (2010). 
165 Fisher, Mark. Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative? John Hunt Publishing, 2022. 
166 WOWA.ca. “Vancouver Housing Market: Jan. 6th, 2024 Update | Map Regional Breakdown.” Last modified 
January 6, 2024. https://wowa.ca/vancouver-housing-market 



 Ugalde  93 

positing that the state can serve as a pivotal agent in facilitating decomodified housing 
solutions.167 Conversely, Friedrich Engels suggests a bottom-up approach, stating that “it is 
perfectly clear that the existing state is neither able nor willing to do anything to remedy the 
housing difficulty,”168 emphasising the state’s allegiance to protecting property rights and its 
fidelity to the rentier class.169 This allegiance is manifested both materially, through the state’s 
monopoly on violence,170 and ideologically, as illuminated by Antonio Gramsci’s concept of 
cultural hegemony.171 This ideology is further perpetuated by a widespread tenant false 
consciousness,172 disseminated through institutions such as education, media, and religious 
organisations, which misleadingly portray landlords as benign entities like “individuals, 
families, and mom-and-pop shops.”173 

 
Marx corroborates Engels’ stance on the so-called “housing question”174 and posits that 

since the advent of capitalism, the state’s primary role has been to actively support the 
commodification of land and labour,175 especially following the Black Death’s decimation of 
the peasant class and increasing the relative value of their labour-power as such.176 Indeed, the 
evolution between feudal and capitalist modes of production necessitated substantial 
accumulation of both variable and constant capital, with the latter encompassing land acquired 
through colonial endeavours and the forcible enclosure of commons in feudal Europe. Marx 
describes this initial capital accumulation as primitive accumulation,177 an early instance of the 
capitalist mode of production’s state-endorsed “accumulation by dispossession.”178 

 
The case of Vancouver exemplifies this process through its ongoing settler-

colonialism,179 which resulted in the dispossession of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), 
Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations of their lands.180 Yet, 
despite these historical injustices, the Vancouver experience provides a basis for optimism in 
addressing the housing crisis through decommodification strategies. 

 

 
167 Madden, D., & Marcuse, P. In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis. 143. Verso, 2016. 
168 Engels, Friedrich, and Clemens Palme Dutt. The housing question. Vol. 23. New York: International 
Publishers, 1935. 
169 Engels, Friedrich, and Clemens Palme Dutt. The housing question. Vol. 23. New York: International 
Publishers, 1935. 
170 Gerth, H. H., and C. Wright Mills. “Politics as a Vocation.” From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946): 
77-128. 
171 Gramsci, Antonio. “Selections from the prison notebooks.” In The applied theatre reader. 141-142. 
Routledge, 2020. 
172 False consciousness is a Marxist concept referring to the misguided belief by the working class in the fairness 
of the capitalist system, which prevents them from recognizing their exploitation and oppression. 
173 Tranjan, Ricardo. 2023. The Tenant Class. Toronto: Between the Lines, 39. 
174 Engels, Friedrich, and Clemens Palme Dutt. The housing question. Vol. 23. New York: International 
Publishers, 1935. 
175 De Angelis, Massimo. “Marx and primitive accumulation: The continuous character of capital’s 
‘enclosures.’” The commoner 2, no. 1 (2001): 1. 
176 Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch. Autonomedia, 2004. 
177 De Angelis, Massimo. “Marx and primitive accumulation: The continuous character of capital’s 
‘enclosures.’” The commoner 2, no. 1 (2001): 1. 
178 Harvey, David. “The New Imperialism: accumulation by dispossession.” In Karl Marx. 213-237. Routledge, 
2017. 
179 Coulthard, Glen Sean. Red skin, white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. Minneapolis: 
Minnesota (2014). 
180 Baloy, Natalie JK. “Spectacles and spectres: Settler colonial spaces in Vancouver.” Settler Colonial Studies 
6, no. 3 (2016): 209-234. 



 94  Cultural Logic 

Firstly, if Engels’ perspective on the necessity of a bottom-up approach for 
decommodifying housing holds true, then the historical context of settler-colonial 
commodification of Indigenous lands in Vancouver offers insightful precedents. This history 
indicates that a decommodified housing-tenure model was once a reality in the region, 
suggesting the possibility of its replication. Furthermore, Vancouver’s “strong tradition of 
militant tenant organising,”181 often incorporating mechanisms such as Community Land 
Trusts (CLTs),182 and rent-strikes play a crucial role in challenging the commodification of 
housing insofar as rent-strikes quite literally refuse to acknowledge a house-commodity’s 
market-price. These movements actively resist the acknowledgment of housing’s artificially 
inflated market-prices, effectively extracting the commodity-form from housing. This 
collective action demonstrates that while the task of decommodifying housing in Vancouver is 
arduous, it is not an insurmountable endeavour. 

 
Secondly, considering the proposition by Marcuse and Madden that the state could 

effectively facilitate housing alternatives, the example of Canada’s constitutional 
decommodification of healthcare through the Canada Healthcare Act (CHA)183 offers a glimpse 
into the potential for a top-down approach to decommodify housing. This perspective 
recognizes that housing, much like healthcare, plays an essential role in sustaining labour 
power, a critical aspect overlooked by both Engels and Marx in negating a top-down approach 
for housing decommodification. The decommodification of housing, therefore, aligns with the 
interests of both the rentier class and tenants. By ensuring a dignified standard of living for all 
members of society via quality, decommodified public or social housing,184 this approach not 
only benefits individuals in need of housing but also contributes to the overall stability and 
productivity of the labour force. This mutual benefit suggests that a top-down strategy for 
decommodifying housing could be both feasible and advantageous in addressing broader 
societal needs for both the tenants and the rentier class.  

 
11. Concluding Remarks 

 
The aim of this document is not to provide an exhaustive or unbiased examination of 

Vancouver's ongoing “housing crisis.” Instead, its purpose is to re-introduce Marxist economic 
theory as a valuable, yet often sidelined, economic epistemology in challenging the prevailing 
orthodoxy of economic discourse surrounding housing in the city. Indeed, my initial realisation 
of this dominant narrative’s prevalence came through traditional Hupačasath knowledge(s), as 
informed by Tii Thul’p, rather than through Marxist economics. Furthermore, this document 
does not endeavour to outline a definitive strategy for the decommodification of housing in 
Vancouver; such a discussion is a separate matter entirely, hence its minimal discussion in this 
document. The central thesis of this document is unitarily to advocate for the 
decommodification of housing as a strategic response to the housing crisis in Vancouver, 
drawing on insights from the Marxist Labour Theory of Value. This theory highlights how the 
disparity between housing's exchange-values and market-prices through mortgage finance and 
increased housing oligopolization/monopolisation can lead to adverse impacts. Consequently, 
this document encourages the consideration of other marginalised economic epistemologies, 

 
181 Tranjan, Ricardo. 2023. The Tenant Class. Toronto: Between the Lines, 78. 
182 Fu, Samantha, and Gabi Velasco. 2023. “Decommodification and Its Role in Advancing Housing Justice.” 
Urban Institute, February. 
183 Canada. “Canada Health Act, RSC 1985, c C-6.” Ottawa: Department of Justice Canada, 1985. 
184 Fu, Samantha, and Gabi Velasco. 2023. “Decommodification and Its Role in Advancing Housing Justice.” 
Urban Institute, February. 
 



 Ugalde  95 

especially those of local Coast Salish knowledge(s) keepers. It invites these perspectives to 
reassess the housing crisis in Vancouver, either in conjunction with or independently from this 
document’s Marxist framework, and to offer their insights on the potential realisation of 
decommodified housing should their knowledge(s) align with the Marxist paradigm’s 
conclusion presented here. 

 
 

 
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Author 

 
Elliot Goodell Ugalde is a multifaceted scholar and professional with a notable background in 
political science, particularly focusing on international relations and Indigenous issues. Born 
and raised in Vancouver, he pursued his Bachelor of Arts Honours in Political Science at the 
University of Victoria, followed by a Master of Arts in Political Science, with a concentration 
on Political Theory, at McMaster University. Elliot is currently embarking on a Doctorate of 
Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Political Science, specialising in International Relations, at Queen’s 
University under the supervision of Dr. Wayne Cox.



 

 
 

Since 1997 
ISSN 1097-3087 

https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/index 
 

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San Diego State University 

 
Martha Gimenez  
University of Colorado (retired)  

 
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