New York City, the wealth capital in the most powerful country, has the worst subway system in the world. Chronic breakdowns and track signal problems have caused the on-time train rate to plummet to 65 percent (NYT 11/18/2017).
Governor Andrew Cuomo said the MTA “estimates it will cost $43 billion and take about 15 years to turn around New York City’s struggling subway and bus systems…That comes in addition to the approximately $50 billion in capital improvements the systems are likely to need over the next 15 years (Wall street Journal, 5/23). As the politicians and capitalists hash out an MTA plan this week, we look at the racist profit motives of the subways.
MTA is an example of how the profit drive destroys even the useful things under capitalism. Infrastructure like the subway system is only built, maintained, and renewed when the bosses need it for profits or to fight their wars. The MTA, which is not profitable to run except to the banks, historically has been minimally maintained leading to succeeding crisis. Only a communist society will build an infrastructure system to serve the needs of the working class worldwide.
Built to profit & segregate
The expansive train network connecting the city was considered a modern wonder in the early 20th century. Today it’s filthy stations and literally rotting track beds stand as a stark example of how capitalism in decay is failing to serve one of the basic needs of society: getting people to work.
The impetus to build the subway was to increase property values in a growing Manhattan by pushing workers out of then-densely populated lower Manhattan. Since then, MTA fell into a cycle of crises. As Black and Latin workers were forced to bear the brunt of segregation, the subways suffered decades of neglect and decay in the second half the 20th century.
With each crisis, the banks lent billions of dollars to a broken system. The interest payments on those loans has continued to bleed the system dry to this day by eating up money that could be going to maintenance but instead goes into the pockets of the ruling class.
The initial system was built by the City by borrowing from the banks and then leased out to private companies. The working class bore the cost as the city cut back on other services to pay the banks back from city tax revenue. Eventually the private companies, unable to raise fares because wages were so low, abandoned their franchises and the city took them over. (From a Nickel to a Token by Andrew J. Sparberg)
Post-World War II segregation
The next subway crisis was triggered by the ruling-class imposed segregation of workers after World War II. Soldiers, returning from defeating fascism in Europe, were demanding equality. The working class, through the international communist movement, was in the leadership of a large part of the world. The capitalists, terrified of a united working class, built racism and decimated the cities.
After World War II, the Federal Housing Administration (a precursor to HUD) and the Veterans Administration hired builders to mass-produce American suburbs…in order to ease the post-war housing shortage. Builders received federal loans on the explicit condition that homes would not be sold to Black homebuyers. (CITYLAB, 9/2/2015)
The loss of population, businesses and jobs devastated the tax base in the cities, leaving Black and Latin workers to live in the decayed shells of cities starved of funds. The MTA rapidly declined.
Recession
As New York City was bled dry, local bosses didn’t pay for even the most basic maintenance of infrastructure and social services. Public schools, hospitals and the transportation system fell into ruin. The ruling class tried to shift the cost further onto workers by raising fares. The working class rebelled and refused as much as it could and still make it to work. By 1976, ridership had fallen to 1.5 billion from a 1946 peak of 2.5 billion (MTA).
As cities were dismantled, the short period of post-war capitalist growth came to a screeching halt. The 1973–75 recession signaled a qualitative change to a period of low economic growth in the U.S. and other post WWII powers (Fortune 2/2/2016).
The 80s
In the 1980s, the NY bosses returned to the banks for more loans. The money to get new subway cars and modernize stations kept the subway system running. But the reprieve was short lived. The underlying problem of low economic growth/low tax environment deprived the system of needed funds.
The interest payments on new loans made things worse and successive Republican and Democratic Mayors and Governors from Rudolph Giuliani and George Pataki to Bill de Blasio and Mario Cuomo have cut spending on the subways and diverted tax money intended for basic maintenance (NY Times 11/18/2017).
Subway improvements for gentrification?
Much of the system’s core, the track and signals, has been neglected for 100 years. Instead of fixing the core, the bosses’ solution has been to spend billions on small expansions in the wealthy Upper East Side and to the formerly industrial area on Manhattan’s far West Side. These few subway stops were built with over $6 billion in new loans. They are designed to increase property values and raise tax dollars by moving white wealthy people into the city and push out the remaining Black and Latin workers in Manhattan.
Even as the NYC bosses would like to improve the subways for the newly gentrified increasingly white city, they are saddled by the lack of taxes and the increasing problems from lack of maintenance over the last 50 years. The short-term nature of pressures on a society that is decaying inhibits the bosses from solving basic problems even when they are willing to spend money on them.
MTA makes workers pay
The MTA is already busy lining the banks’ pockets. “The MTA’s debt is greater than that of at least 30 of the world’s nations…[This] heavy reliance on borrowing to fix transit is crushing riders like a packed subway car at rush hour” (Gothamist, 2/12/2015). To pay off its $38.6 billion in debt, a whole 16 percent ($2.6 billion) of the MTA $16.6 billion budget will go to its annual debt service (NY Daily News, 2/13). This has made it impossible for the MTA to keep up with basic maintenance.
As the subways continue to rot, NYC Mayor de Blasio and NY Governor Andrew Cuomo are in a finger pointing war. This is going on even as under de Blasio “the city’s contribution to M.T.A. operations…dropped by almost 75 percent” (NY Times 11/18/17) and Cuomo continues to feed the banks a steady diet of transit loans and resulting interest payments.
Bosses’ deadly solution to crisis is fascism
The bosses that de Blasio and Cuomo front for will eventually end the infighting. But the ruling class’ way of settling their differences in this period of capitalism in crisis will be brutal for the working class. The Italian fascists claimed Mussolini made the trains run on time. While that’s a pro-fascist myth, fascism is capitalism’s go-to method when faced with crisis. In Italy and Germany, the bosses moved to save their crumbling system by forcing bosses to pay more to the state and forcing the working class to kill and die in the name of the nation.
Fascism is rising and it is the way the bosses will try to deal with their problems like crumbling infrastructure. Our struggle is to fight the stealing and their service cuts and fight for a system that serves the working class. They can’t fix capitalism. It is crisis after crisis, war after war.
Our liberation from this cycle of destruction comes from recognizing that the bosses’ politicians aren’t going to save us and that the working class, organized in the Progressive Labor, can build a communist society that will serve the needs of workers around the world.

As sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry leads to larger wars and fascism, the U.S. capitalist rulers are trying to solve the crisis of their failing profit system by attacking the working class. Over the next several issues of CHALLENGE, we will be writing about how these attacks are affecting workers—and how a communist-led revolutionary movement can fight back.

On May 18, eight students and two teachers were shot and killed at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas. Coming on the heels of the February murder of 17 people at a Florida high school, the latest massacre reflects a horrifying trend. Since 2000, more people have been killed or wounded in mass school shootings in the U.S. than in the entire 20th century (Science Daily, 4/18). In 2018, the shooting death toll in U.S. schools is higher than in the U.S. military (Washington Post, 5/18). As families and friends mourn the loss of young lives, it is time to hold accountable the rotting U.S. capitalist system that drives teenagers to become murderers.
Metal detectors and armed school custodians won’t stop this senseless violence. Reformed gun laws and more careful parents won’t stop it. When people have reached the point where they are ready to slaughter their classmates, they won’t be deterred by a locked cabinet or a background check.
Capitalism alienates our youth
The root cause of the recent rash of school shootings is a rotten capitalist culture that is spiraling into even deeper decay. U.S. capitalism in the 21st century is a story of economic dislocation, cuts in mental health services, and a society that lacks concern for the collective good.
The world capitalist order put in place by World War II is coming apart. As old alliances fray and U.S. bosses lose ground to China and Russia, capitalists around the world are racing to find cheap labor as they prepare for the next global war. Advances in technology are used to destroy workers’ living standards. The five largest private U.S. employers—Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, Yum! Brands. and Home Depot—overwhelmingly hire people for low-paying service jobs.
U.S. rural areas are disinvested wastelands. The cities are bastions of extreme inequality and segregation, with underpaid immigrants and Black workers serving a mainly white elite class. Seven of ten U.S. workers are falling behind economically: “Most population segments experienced flat or falling incomes in the 2002–12 decade [and] young, less-educated workers were hardest hit” (McKinsey Global Institute, 7/16).
In the U.S. in 1970, according to the Financial Times, a 30-year-old “had a 90 percent chance — almost a guarantee — of earning more than what their parents earned at the same age, adjusted for inflation… This cornerstone of U.S. identity — that if you put in hard work, a better future awaited…is increasingly evading the country’s young people.” By 2016, about half of 30-year-olds were earning less than their parents did at the same age (12/16/16). Trying to start a business is even more hopeless than trying to find a decent job. Within the first 18 months, 80 percent of entrepreneurs crash and burn” (Forbes, 9/12/13).
The hard reality is that the capitalist ruling class views the masses of working people as disposable—a reality deliberately obscured by capitalist schools and the myth-making entertainment industry.
Winners and losers
Capitalist culture pushes the destructive idea that people don’t matter unless they set themselves apart from others in the working class. A society defined by winners and losers is a breeding ground for selfishness, narcissism, and a lack of empathy. Capitalist culture teaches us to care only about ourselves, and perhaps a small group of friends and relatives—and to “get ahead” at all costs.   
Playing alongside this American Dream fantasy are media glorifications of extreme alienation, where the new generation of heroes are sociopathic gangsters, self-justifying drug kingpins, and narcissistic hit men. In hit TV shows like “Breaking Bad,” “Barry,” and “Assassin’s Creed,” angry, frustrated men are made sympathetic as they mow down innocent people.
The end result is that masses of youth feel they are doomed to be society’s losers. Squeezed between the pressure to “make it” and a lack of hope for the future, many will break. As the bosses put the failure of their system onto the backs of children, millions of young people fall into mental illness, drug addiction, and crime. In many parts of the world, frustrated teenagers get blinded by anger into committing acts of terrorism. For a desperate few in the U.S., shooting their schoolmates becomes a demented way to be recognized—to stand out.
What way out?
Ending school shootings will require a revolutionary change of culture. Capitalist schools, media, organized religion, unions, and political parties are too invested in maintaining the profit system to confront the urgent problems faced by workers and their families. That leaves the international working class, led by the Progressive Labor Party, with both a tremendous task and a great opportunity: to build a revolutionary communist culture and a society run for and by the working class.
Most of us try to be good as individuals, but careers and money, fatigue and isolation overwhelm us. Capitalist culture, its selfishness and individualism, poisons the institutions we rely on every day. But it also resides inside us, and will not be undone easily.
Building a new culture doesn’t start when the working class seizes state power. It begins now, today, in the class struggle to fight racism, sexism, and division. The basis for a new and better world lies in the struggle to change the one we live in. As Fredrick Douglas said, “Without struggle there is no progress.”
What we have on our side is our fighting history of class struggle. The fortitude of Harriet Tubman and Nat Turner. The iron will of the Red Army in smashing the Nazis. The fearlessness of the miners in Harlan County, Kentucky. The courage of the young people of Ferguson, Missouri, who stood up against tanks and machine guns to demand justice for Michael Brown.
The movement for a workers-led society is tiny today. But in every issue of CHALLENGE you can see the seeds of its potential. And with every struggle we move forward, we lay the foundation for the communist culture of the future.

*****

The bosses’ deadly racist tool

From the time that the Spanish, French, and British colonial powers committed genocide against indigenous peoples to grab the land and treasures of the New World, guns have been an essential tool for the imperialist U.S. ruling class to terrorize and control the U.S. working class. Guns were used to enslave Black people from Africa and to discourage rebellion on profit-generating plantations. The so-called Founding Fathers denied gun ownership to slaves and free Black people alike (Atlantic, 9/11), a selective gun control policy reaffirmed in the post-Civil War “Black Codes” and later in the Uniform Firearms Act (Arc Digital, 4/4). The Second Amendment “was essentially written to protect the interests of Southerners in the states that formed militias—often known as “slave patrols”—to crush any attempt at what was called … a ‘servile insurrection’” (Daily Beast, 12/6/2015).
The same lethal, racist dynamic persists today, with police using the threat or reality of legalized shootings to preserve wage slavery and the super-exploitation of Black workers. In 2017, U.S. cops killed 1,129 people, with Black workers three times more likely than white workers to be on the wrong side of a bullet (Newsweek 12/29/17).
A system that relies on guns as the primary instrument of oppression has spawned a culture of pervasive gun ownership. There are more than 300 million guns in the U.S.; four of 10 households own at least one (CNN 2/15). While most individuals keep guns for hunting or sport, the National Rifle Association—a historical ally of the Ku Klux Klan—has stoked racist fears to push gun sales, a $13 billion industry, and to lobby for state-level “Stand Your Ground” legislation. According to a study by the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute, in states with SYG laws, 34 percent of white-on-Black homicides in states with SYG laws are ruled justified, as compared to just 3 percent of Black-on-white homicides (Arc Digital, 4/4).

The rivalry between top imperialists keeps getting sharper. This intensifying struggle pressures all local ruling classes and leads various factions to more openly fight it out. One clear example is the May 9 move by U.S. President Donald Trump to dump the Iran nuclear deal and escalate economic sanctions against the struggling country. Trump’s move reflects competing strategies within the U.S. ruling class, which is split into two camps: the dominant multilateralist wing versus a more domestic-oriented, isolationist wing.
In recent years, going back to the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the multilateral imperialist U.S. strategy has been to keep control over Middle East oil by playing regional powers off against one another and limiting any one country’s influence. The Iran nuclear deal of 2015, in accord with Europe, Russia, and China, was designed  to keep Iran relatively stable by relieving economic sanctions.
This year, Trump replaced main wing ruling-class figures Rex Tillerson and H.R. McMaster with Mike Pompeo and John Bolton as Secretary of State and national security adviser, respectively. Pompeo, the former CIA director and a darling of the Koch brothers, the domestic-oriented wing’s chief funders, and Bolton, a George W. Bush-era war hawk, now have Trump’s ear. Both have been vocal opponents of the Iran nuclear deal.
Trump’s decision to pull out of the deal is an apparent move toward provoking regime change in Tehran. Iran has long supported rebel groups and factions that threaten the interests of U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Israel. Iran backs Houthi rebels fighting Saudi Arabia in Yemen, along with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both constant threats to Israeli borders. In addition, Iran has significant influence in Iraq.
Trump and Co. willing to brush off EU
Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal was sharply rebuked by foes and allies alike. The European Union has much to lose if the deal falls apart. Overall, the EU is Iran’s number-one trading partner, with trade soaring from $9.2 billion (U.S.) in 2015 to $25 billion in 2017 (Guardian, 3/25). Germany has gone so far as to announce that it would stay in the deal in defiance of the U.S..
It’s apparent that the U.S. bosses influencing Trump are comfortable with alienating traditional, post-WWII European allies and doubling down on Saudi Arabia and Israel. Emboldened by the U.S. withdrawal, Israel may decide that now is the moment to take on Hezbollah, the Iran proxy that has previously achieved some success against Israeli forces. In 2000, Hezbollah forced Israeli troops to withdraw from southern Lebanon; in 2006, it blunted Israel’s offensive there. Now the militant group is expanding into Syria (Council on Foreign Relations, 03/18).
Israel wants to stop three things: advanced weaponry reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon;, the Syrian civil war spilling into the Israel-occupied Golan Heights; and Iran militarily entrenching itself on its northern frontier. In this carpe diem moment, by widening the scope of its airstrikes against Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria, Israel is deliberately challenging Iran (Stratfor, 05/2018).
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has been ratcheting up its own tensions with its main regional rival. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “warned that the battle for influence over the Middle East ought to take place ‘inside Iran’” (CFR, 03/2018). It’s important to point out that the U.S. is an active backer of the three-year, Saudi-led bombing campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, a proxy war that has slaughtered thousands of civilians, wounded tens of thousands more, “created the world’s largest food security emergency, and led to a cholera outbreak….” (bbc.com, 11/1/17).  
Russian, Chinese bosses making inroads
In response, Iran has increasingly turned to China and Russia, which re-entered the region in 2015 on behalf of its ally in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad, and has emerged as a decisive factor in that country’s brutal civil war. As detailed in the March issue of Foreign Affairs:
Russia could not have made these gains without Iran. Iranian ground presence gave Russia its victory in Syria. And in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, Iran and Russia have worked together closely to counter U.S. influence….Iran sits at an important geographic location and is an
energy-rich country of 80 million people, with a network of allies and clients that spans the Middle East—all outside the United States’ sphere of influence.
China, one of the biggest buyers of Iranian crude oil, has signaled that it intends to continue trading with Iran: “By driving away American, European and Japanese companies, sanctions could increase opportunities for Chinese businesses,” said Hu Xingdou, an economist at the Beijing Institute of Technology (Agence France-Presse 3/18).
Chinese businesses involved in Iranian development are worth at least $33 billion, with many of them connected to China’s massive One Belt, One Road global infrastructure initiative. Beijing is seeking a leading stake in developing a Iranian gas field project as well, “with state-owned oil company CNPC set to replace Total if the French energy behemoth withdraws from the project over U.S. sanctions” (AFP, 5/18).
Lose-lose proposition for U.S. rulers
After disastrous imperialist interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. ruling class has been trying to lower its military profile in the Middle East. The main wing needs to keep its powder dry to prepare for an eventual big-power showdown with ascendant imperialist rivals China and Russia. The domestic wing, meanwhile, is strenuously opposed to paying higher taxes for a ground war in the Middle East. They want to defend their interests on the cheap, with a nuclear deterrence strategy.
The bosses’ problem is that neither wing’s strategy can address their fundamental problem, a relative decline as the leading imperialist superpower. The U.S. is losing influence and control in the Middle East, and will continue to lose regardless of the Iran deal. The post-World War II liberal world order just isn’t what it used to be.
Workers in Iran must rise again with PLP
Despite recent government crackdowns and the reinstitution of U.S.-led sanctions, workers in Iran have a rich history of fighting back against fascist exploitation. In the 1970s, workers organized against the CIA-backed Shah; more recently, they have mounted a militant fightback against the fascist fundamentalist regime.
As the Trump regime tries to sway Iranian workers to join a movement for regime change, these workers must look to the lessons of the co-opted Arab Spring movements, which wound up replacing one set of U.S.-backed puppets for another. Only a communist revolution, led by the Progressive Labor Party, can destroy capitalism and serve workers’ needs.

TEXAS, May 30—In the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD), over 60 layoffs were recently announced. SAISD has 91 percent Latin and 75 percent “at risk” students. Teachers are targeted based on claims of low performance evaluations—including seven teachers in the district’s historically Black high school. A letter written by an SAISD assistant principal exposed how district bosses forced principals to create lists of teachers to target and then ordered them to give teachers poor evaluations to justify mass layoffs.
Across Texas, school boards in major cities have announced mass layoffs. Schools face massive reduction in enrollment and as a result millions of dollars in budget cuts due to the loss of state and federal funds. In Houston, administrators announced a $115 million budget cut and the layoff of over 200 district employees.
Last year there was 100 percent teacher turnover in several middle schools as Texas state administrators seized control of school boards in smaller, poorer districts. The schools under attack educate mainly the lowest income working-class Latin and Black children.
Inequality under capitalism guarantees that these students will face a future of the highest unemployment rate and lowest wages. U.S. capitalism superexploits Black, Latin, and Asian workers and uses high unemployment to keep white workers’ wages lower, with the threat that they can be replaced easily if they don’t keep their mouths shut and take what they can get.
These cuts are connected to charter school chains—KIPP, IDEA Academy, Great Heart, Energized for Excellence Inc.—pulling students out of neighborhood schools. In addition, charters are being hired to take over schools in the working class neighborhoods in San Antonio and Houston. The SAISD’s recent hiring of a charter chain, Democracy Prep, to take over a local school, was met with outrage by teachers and their unions. Charters aren’t better for teachers, either—teachers at charter schools are also being screwed, often receiving half the pay of public school teachers.
Profit system hurts students the most
When public school funds are cut by the state, every student suffers. Although some families support this effort because they’ve been convinced they might get a slightly better education for their kids, the big picture is that there is a movement amongst the ruling class to kill off sections of public education because it costs too much to educate kids who will be underpaid in unskilled jobs or face unemployment, and to lower working-class youth’s expectations of their future.
The current attacks are only the most recent phase of a more general attack on the state’s public schools that has been occurring for several years. In 2010, Progressive Labor Party stood with parents and prevented the closing of several SAISD schools. Eight years later, though, many of those same schools are under attack. These attacks on public schools are intensifying because to stay competitive, U.S. businesses must raise profits. Lower pay and higher unemployment of workers is inevitable.
Students, parents, teachers denounce layoffs
In Houston, parents, students, and teachers are united to confront the school board. At an April board meeting, they angrily demanded that the board stop the charter school takeover, wearing shirts that read “Save Our Black and Brown HISD Schools.” They boldly called out the Black liberal board president for her complicity in carrying out the state’s racist plans. Outnumbered and afraid, the board revealed their fascism, forcibly removing and arresting two parents who went over their allotted speaking time, and then ordering police to clear the room. Because of the mass resistance to the board’s plans and outrage following the arrests, the board has since backed off their charter plan, but are still moving forward with hundreds of layoffs.
At this month’s SAISD board meeting, over 300 teachers and parents turned out to denounce teacher layoffs. The protest was so large that it spilled into the hallway, and outside the building. Many teachers being targeted with layoffs bravely spoke out and exposed the hypocrisy of a school board that gets rid of its best, most dedicated teachers. Even teachers with over 30 years of experience who have been honored in the past for their achievements were on the chopping block. Parents stood in unity, erupting with the chant, “Save Our Teachers!”
Working class unity creates potential for revolution
Members of PLP discussed the recent teacher strikes around the country with the teachers in the crowd. Some agreed that a strike in Texas could have put them in a stronger position. The struggles over the past two months have made it clear that all workers must unite to fight the bosses. Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, and Angela Merkel, Germany’s Chancellor, have instituted similar attacks on civil service workers, teachers, airline employees and many others, all intensifying in the last few months. These attacks are being met with street protests, and as in West Virginia, Arizona, and Kentucky, by wildcat strikes of school teachers. The parents and teachers in these schools are leading the way and PLP is working to deepen our base in these areas of growing struggle.
We must explain to workers and students how the daily, systemic attacks against the working class inherent in the capitalist system are just as violent as any mass shooting. The anger and energy of the working class around mass layoffs and cuts shows that in a period of increasing crisis, there is increasing potential to grow and build a movement for communism.