Thus the smaller the income, the larger the percentage of that income which has to be devoted to house rent, and the more rapid likewise is the annual increase in the proportion that must be assigned to rent. In the case of the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, the percentage of income devoted to house rent is only one-sixth of that which must be paid by the workers, and this percentage, far from increasing, positively diminishes.
126. The Housing Problem in the proletarian State.
The proletarian revolution effected an entire change in housing conditions. The Soviet Power nationalised the bourgeois dwellings; in some cases it completely cancelled the arrears of rent in the working-class quarters, and in other cases reduced these arrears. But this is not all. Plans are being drawn up, and have in part already been put into operation, for the complete abolition of rent for the workers living in the nationalised dwellings. In the larger towns, there has begun a systematic transference of the workers from cellar dwellings, from ruinous houses, and from insanitary tenements, into the bourgeois villas and mansions of the central quarters of the towns. Furthermore, the workers are being systematically supplied with furniture and all necessary domestic utensils.
It is the business of the Communist Party to continue this policy, to perfect its housing economy, to institute a campaign against rough usage of the nationalised houses, to see that they are kept clean and in satisfactory repair, and to ensure that the drains, the water-pipes, the steam-heating apparatus, etc., are kept in good order.
But the Soviet Power, while pursuing on broad lines this policy of nationalising large-scale capitalist house property, sees no reason why the interests of the lesser house-owners should be infringed — the house-owners who are workers, employees, and other ordinary folk living in their own houses. Attempts to effect a general nationalisation of the