A presentation by Joanna Kusiak
‘We are high-risk capital!’ – that’s one of the campaign statements with which Berlin tenant movements hope to repel real-estate investment. It turns out that it is also – at least partly – true.
On the 26th of September, 2021, over million Berliners voted Yes in a referendum that proposes socialization of corporate-owned housing. Berlin’s case offers insight into a tangle between democracy and financialized capitalism on all geographic scales. The shareholders of Berlin’s corporate landlords operate globally and include infamous shadow banks such as BlackRock. In order to successfully confront them, a grassroots local initiative has leveraged the most powerful legal framework of the national scale – the German constitution. As Germany is also one of the power engines of global capitalism, a large scale de-privatization and de-financialization of housing could become a political and legal precedent of global importance. But this, of course, cannot be so easy. Despite the landslide vote in the referendum, we currently observe an unsurprising stalemate between democracy and capitalism. As the referendum is binding politically but not legally, both politicians and lobbyists are now trying to strategically delay or avoid its implementation.
My paper analyses the field of forces created by radical tenant initiatives in Berlin through an investigation at the intersection of law, political economy and grassroots politics. It also reflects on my own position as a scholar-activist and one of the spokespersons of the movement. Can state law, under globalization, still be used as a tool for socio-economic emancipation? What is the relationship between economic risk and democratic politics?
