Cost of living: seven countries, one rent to pay, one shared anger

According to franceinfo, associations and unions in seven European countries are calling for demonstrations against the cost of living on 20, 21 and 22 November. Their main demands concern a "guarantee of the right to housing" and "control of the prices of housing, food and energy". The rest, we do not yet know: the report does not say which organisations are behind the call, in which cities people will march, or how many are expected. What follows is our reading, not an established fact.

Look at the list: the roof, the plate, the heating. These are not three random lines on a supermarket receipt. They are exactly what a household needs to stay upright, so that everyone can, the next morning, go back to work, to school, to the bedside of someone who needs them. Economists call this, with a certain coldness, the reproduction of the labour force. We would put it more simply: what makes it possible to live so that you can work.

Yet this foundation costs more and more, and the bill is not shared equally. When rent climbs, it is a transfer of wealth from tenants to landlords: housing is no longer just a place to sleep, it is an asset that must pay. The needs of those who live in a home and the value extracted from it come into conflict, and it is rarely the former who win.

And when prices rise, who absorbs the shock? Most often, women. When the supermarket trolley gets heavier, someone does the sums at the kitchen table, cuts back on the shopping, juggles between special offers, turns the thermostat down while thinking of the children. This work appears in no production statistic; it is unpaid or badly paid, and it stretches as public services retreat. Cuts to health, care and housing do not eliminate this burden: they dump it on households. This is the well-known double burden, a wage outside and a second day inside, which the cost of living weighs down a little more.

There is also a trade-union dimension not to be overlooked. That unions are joining tenants' and homeless associations says something: the fight is no longer confined to the payslip. What is the point of winning a fifty-euro rise if the landlord takes back sixty? Marx reminded us that the struggle over wages is necessary, but that it deals with effects. Tackling the price of housing, energy and food means shifting the focus to what erodes wages after the fact.

Whether the call will go beyond a statement of intent remains to be seen. Price controls and a guaranteed right to housing are words that make markets and landlords grind their teeth. But for those who count every end of the month, they are very concrete words. See you on 20, 21 and 22 November, to see who takes to the street.