Green Party's Landlord Purge: Marx's Ghost Haunts the West's Eco-Radicals, By Richard Miller (Londonistan)

Britain's Green Party just unleashed a policy bomb that's straight out of a socialist fever dream: "Seek the effective abolition of private landlordism." Passed overwhelmingly at their October 2025 conference under new "eco-populist" leader Zack Polanski, the motion brands private landlords as exploitative parasites funnelling wealth from renters to the "landlord class," with no societal upside. Their fix? A cocktail of rent controls, land value taxes, bans on buy-to-let mortgages, scrapping Right to Buy, and empowering councils to snatch properties from sellers, phasing out the private rental sector in favour of state-built council housing. Green MP Carla Denyer downplays the "eye-catching" title, insisting it's not outright abolition but a tenant-empowering shift to social housing. Yet, with the party polling high amid Labour discontent and Polanski's radical pivot, this isn't fringe chatter, it's a blueprint for chaos, ripped from Karl Marx's pages and echoed in green movements across the West. Adopt it, and expect economic implosion, housing shortages, and a state monopoly that history warns turns tyrannical.

This isn't innovation; it's Das Kapital redux. Marx and Engels hammered private property as the root of exploitation, demanding its abolition, especially land ownership that lets capitalists skim rents from workers' labour. In the Communist Manifesto, they called for "abolition of property in land and application of all rents... to public purposes," turning landlordism into a state tool for the proletariat. The Greens' motion mirrors this: Private renting is "inherently extractive," landlords add "no positive value," and the sector must be "decommodified" via taxes and seizures. Polanski, the former actor turned hypnotherapist and Extinction Rebellion arrestee, frames it as "eco-populism," linking housing woes to wealth inequality, much like Marx tied rent to capitalist alienation.

It's no coincidence. Green parties worldwide blend environmentalism with social democracy's Left flank, often veering into Marxist territory on property. In Berlin, voters backed expropriating corporate landlords in 2021, echoing calls to seize underused properties for public good. While not full abolition, it's the same logic: Private ownership hoards housing, exacerbating crises. In the US, Greens and leftists rally "abolish landlords" amid evictions, pushing rent cancellation and social housing. Canada's Greens advocate similar decommodification, tying it to anti-poverty eco-justice. This Western green wave isn't organic; it's a repackaged communist critique, greenwashed for the climate-anxious millennial vote.

The UK's motion outlines a "six-step plan": Secure tenancies, land value taxes on owners, business rates on Airbnbs, double taxes on empties, National Insurance on rents, and a state-owned housing manufacturer for mass council builds. Councils get first dibs on sales, especially for substandard or vacant homes, banning buy-to-let to starve the sector. Proponents like co-proposer Steve Jackson hail it as ending the "broken" private sector. But critics, including landlord groups, warn it'll "decimate" supply, nearly 20% of English households rely on private rentals.

Polanski's rise, elected in September 2025 with a vow for "bold" eco-populism, supercharges this. The party's four MPs (up from one) and record polls signal momentum, but hypocrisy bites: One Green MP rents out property, and the policy could boomerang on small landlords, pensioners or families supplementing income. Denyer's spin, that it's gradual tenant empowerment, can't mask the endgame: State dominance over housing, echoing green calls elsewhere for "people-powered" alternatives.

Adopt this and brace for bedlam. Historical bids to axe landlordism bred shortages, black markets, and state overreach. China's 1950s land reform confiscated landlord holdings without compensation, sparking "struggle sessions," executions (200K-5M deaths), and peasant upheavals, reducing inequality but at terror's cost. Soviet collectivisation starved millions, as private plots vanished into inefficient state farms. Even "successful" anarchic tries, like 1930s Catalonia, saw supply disruptions amid violence.

In the modern West, softer versions flop. Berlin's expropriation vote fizzled into legal limbo, deterring investment without boosting supply. UK's past private rental collapse (pre-1980s) led to shortages; reinflating it via Thatcher fuelled today's crisis, but killing it again risks evictions, rent spikes from scarcity, and councils overwhelmed, repairs lag, as experts note. Taxes and controls? They chase landlords away, slashing availability, New York's rent controls correlate with waitlists and decay. For Britain, with 1 in 21 adults a landlord, mass exodus means homelessness surges, black-market rents, and economic drag, property's a £7T asset class.

The Greens' landlord ban is Marxist fanfic for the eco-age, torn from Das Kapital's assault on private property, repackaged as climate justice. Common in Western greens from Berlin to US activists, it promises equity but delivers dystopia: Housing famines, state bloat, and eroded freedoms. Polanski's populism might thrill the base, but voters beware, adopting this spells chaos, not cures. Time to reject the red-green delusion before it turns homes into hostages.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/10/u-k-green-party-adopts-banning-landlords-as/