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.