On June 24, capitalism killed an untold number of people in Surfside, Florida, when a high-rise apartment complex fell without warning. Dozens of bodies have been recovered from what used to be Champlain Towers South; more than 100 people remain unaccounted for. According to the New York Times, it may be “the deadliest accidental building collapse in American history” (6/27).
But what happened to these Florida condominiums was no accident. It was the result of a system that values profit over workers’ lives. It exposed a United States in decline, where a divided ruling class has neglected basic infrastructure for decades. The world’s wealthiest “developed nation” is a mess of crumbling roads and bridges, asbestos-ridden school buildings, and toxic public water systems. And while the capitalist bosses cheat and steal and dodge paying taxes, the working class pays the price—often with our lives.
The main wing of the U.S. ruling class, the finance capitalists represented by the Joe Biden administration, knows it needs to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy to prepare for inter-imperialist war with an increasingly aggressive China. But the main wing lacks leadership, unity, and a general willingness to sacrifice their own shorter-term gains for the long-term interests of their class. They’re also facing stiff resistance from the isolationist wing led by ex-president Donald Trump and domestic capitalists like the Koch, Mercer, and DeVos families. To get the war budget they need, they’ll need to impose more open fascism against any bosses who refuse to get on board. To get the soldiers they need to fight and die for their failing empire, they’ll need to do the same against the working class.
Capitalism cannot protect the working class—not from the next infrastructure disaster, not from the next bloody global conflict. Workers will never be secure until we smash capitalism with communist revolution. Only communism—a society without money, exploitation, racism, and sexism—will put workers’ lives first. Only a state run by and for the working class can guarantee that all workers will have safe and decent shelter, just as communists did in the past (see housing article, page 3). Under communism, we will use our collective power to meet the needs of the working class.
Workers pay for capitalist decay
As investigators sort through the rubble, there is no shortage of theories on what caused the building to fall: design flaws, shoddy construction, lax building codes, erratic code enforcement. A New York Times report pointed to malfeasance by a negligent city inspector (7/1). A class action suit has accused the Champlain condo association of “reckless and negligent conduct” for ignoring years-old reports of major damage to the building’s concrete structure (CNN 6/29). In an area vulnerable to hurricane winds and corrosive saltwater, capitalist over-development may also have contributed to the collapse. In 2019, a member of the condo board expressed concerns that heavy construction next door may have damaged the Champlain structure. Surfside officials ignored him (NYT, 6/27). That’s a typical response in cities that are dominated by contractors and real estate interests—basically Anytown, U.S.A.
The tragedy in Florida is no isolated event. In Puerto Rico, schools are in danger of collapse from earthquakes. In New York and New Jersey, the Hudson River tunnels have yet to be repaired, nearly nine years after Hurricane Sandy (Wall Street Journal, 4/2). From Newark to Flint, Michigan, more than 5 million people get their drinking water “from systems that exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s lead action level of 15 parts per billion” (theatlantic.com, 9/11/19).
Death and taxes
The decay and destruction of capitalism trickles from the top down. Biden’s “compromise” infrastructure bill—already cut from $2.3 trillion to $579 billion in new spending—reflects both the split in the U.S. ruling class and the bosses’ drive toward war. Biden has pushed to raise the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent (msn.com, 6/13).  
As the U.S. president fake cries in Florida, he's proposing to use taxes stolen from workers to fund $753 billion for U.S. military “defense.” That’s two percent more than the previous year’s budget, even “as the Biden administration pulls the nation out of the U.S. military’s longest war [in Afghanistan] and shifts focus away from the Middle East to address emerging threats from China” (cnbc.com, 5/28). But none of these measures will give the finance capitalists anything close to what they need both to repair critical infrastructure and prepare for conflict with China.
On June 12, Biden and other imperialist leaders from the G7 (see editorial from 7/7) launched their Build Back Better World (B3W) partnership, a strategy to compete with China by meeting  the “tremendous infrastructure needs of low- and middle-income countries” (whitehouse.gov, 6/12). This “unified vision” is aimed to “create new opportunities to demonstrate U.S. competitiveness abroad and create jobs at home”—code for intimidating rival imperialists while unifying the U.S. working class in a patriotic war drive.
There is a long history of infrastructure projects that were ultimately geared toward military dominance. As reported by the Center for American Progress, the largest U.S. government investments of the 20th century include the Panama Canal, Ellis Island, the Marshall Plan, the Interstate Highway System, and the Apollo space program. From generating cheap labor to occupying strategic territory to bribing essential ruling-class allies, all of them were driven by the bosses’ agenda to reinforce their economic and military dominance.
Fight for communism!
This tragedy in Florida is a material reflection of the sharpening contradictions of capitalism. The future of our class depends on workers’ ability to see through the manipulations of the Big Fascist finance capitalists and their phony “solutions” to the problems generated by the profit system. We in Progressive Labor Party must continue to lead the march toward communist revolution and a society that is built for a safe and decent life for the working class. Join PLP!