Debate in Berlin: Who expropriates whom?

The other day I was standing at the traffic light on my bike, waiting for the green light, when a VW Beetle came to a stop right next to me. It was decorated in that 1960s shade of gray and sparkled in the sun as if it had been freshly painted. Childhood memories. According to Wikipedia, the Beetle was once the best-selling car in the world. My parents could afford it. He was cheap.

VW was founded during the Nazi era. Hitler wanted an affordable car for the German people. However, forced laborers then built armaments instead. The Beetle only came out of the factory after the war. Building cheap cars for everyone was still the goal. VW was later partially privatized.

Change of scene. We are in the year 2026. The Left party has become the strongest force in Berlin. It promises what a tenants' initiative called “Deutsche Wohnen & Co expropriate” has been fighting for for years and for which a referendum achieved the majority: the socialization of around 240,000 apartments, previously owned by listed real estate groups.

Sabine Nuss dropped out of the twelfth grade, trained as an office clerk, got her high school diploma, volunteered as a journalist at Springer, studied political science and did her doctorate on private property. At the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung she was head of political communication and managing director of Karl Dietz Verlag. Today she lives in Berlin as a freelance author, journalist and podcast host. In her column she regularly guides us through the foggy region of capitalism. It lifts the veil of conditions in which it seems as if we are all free and equal.

I already discussed the topic in my first column. But because there is a lot of screaming at the moment and the election results are shocking the world (especially Bavaria - they now want to cut off Berlin's money supply), it has to be done again.

Since it became apparent that a possible left-wing government could implement this referendum, the “most violent, petty and hateful passions of the human breast, the furies of private interest, have been called to the battlefield” even more vehemently than before, to use Marx's words. Apart from the warnings about collapsing houses, the Gulag, the decline of Germany and Trump's revenge, the essential argument is: expropriation, even just talking about it, would deter private investors, worldwide. Nobody would build a house anymore. Berlin in ruins.

Expropriation, expropriation, expropriation - that's what is now sounding horrified from all conservative and neoliberal loudspeakers. Expropriation is a common constitutionally covered measure. There is constant expropriation, and the CDU also supports this, in favor of building motorways or mining coal. However, even the last journalist must have understood by now that the Berlin project is not about expropriation (Article 14 GG), but about socialization (Article 15 GG): the transformation from a profit-oriented use of a good, be it means of production or land, to a non-profit use.

Back to the beetle. The Federation of German Industries, a representative of capital interests, found state entrepreneurship disruptive as early as the early 1950s. At that time there was discussion about privatizing VW. The SPD was against it, the economic policy spokesman for the Bundestag faction at the time said that “supplying cheap Volkswagens, even to those with low incomes, should be the task of the public sector.” The federal association saw it differently. State entrepreneurship would be tantamount to expropriation, it was said.

To this day, VW is important enough to the state to retain a say; the state of Lower Saxony has a blocking minority. When it comes to housing, a basic need that is much more important than – sorry – a small car, things are different. Without hesitation, a vital need is subjected to the interest of profit.

As corporations continue to increase rents - profit knows no limit - they are not only reducing tenants' disposable income, they are also depriving them and their children of important life chances and opportunities for development. This raises the question: Who is expropriating whom here?