2023-02-19 08:00:00
The release of large quantities of toxic chemicals from a freight train derailment in Ohio, USA, is a catastrophe with palpable societal causes.
The enormous catastrophe in East Palestine and the no less unscrupulous nature of both the railway company and the authorities are shocking but not surprising.
More than 1,000 train derailments occur in the United States each year, averaging about three a day. In the few days since the East Palestine tragedy, there has been a train derailment in Houston, Texas, which killed one person, and another in Van Buren, Michigan, also involving a chemical tank car.
For the approximately 120,000 employees of the railroad companies in the USA, the reasons for this high accident rate are obvious. Locomotives, infrastructure, equipment and manpower have been ruined by years of cost cutting. The trains have been extended to a length of almost five kilometers and are controlled by just two people. Due to the so-called “precision timetable” and the corresponding working time regulations, the operators of the huge locomotives often only get a few hours of sleep between their jobs.
The Model 32N involved in the East Palestine derailment, known as the 32 Nasty, has long been known to be particularly dangerous.
Not only the life and health of the railway workers, but also the entire public were deliberately put at risk. The more the railways are bled dry and the more endangered the towns along the railway lines, the higher the profits of the railway companies.
The railroad industry is the most profitable industry in America. Norfolk Southern, which operates the disaster train, reported record profits of $3.2 billion last year. Rather than investing in infrastructure, not to mention working conditions, the company has spent $18 billion on share buybacks and dividend payments over the past five years. This pattern is repeated for all major railway companies.
Enormous resources are expended on the ruling class’s quest for world power, while the elementary social infrastructure decays. The US military and intelligence services receive about $1 trillion each year, and Congress approves tens of billions a month for the escalating conflict with Russia.
When it comes to killing people as effectively as possible, no expense is spared. But there is no money for the safe transport of goods and the prevention of disasters.
Here is a fundamental reality of capitalism: the contradiction between social need and private profit.
Workers are becoming increasingly aware of the fundamental dichotomy between their interests and corporate profits. “I’m not a senator or a congressman, I have to work for a living,” said one participant at a public meeting in East Palestine last week. A local resident said WSWS: “They knew what was in those wagons and they didn’t care. They didn’t care about the people, they just cared about the money.” Another added, “We feel like they contaminated an entire city just to keep the railroad running.”
Although the science of disaster risk reduction has made great strides, disaster after disaster has simply been allowed to happen, with no preparedness and no organized post-event response to speak of.
Residents of East Palestine liken their situation to lead poisoning of the city of Flint, Michigan’s drinking water. There have been countless other disasters of this nature, think of the Love Canal (New York) toxic waste scandal in the late 1970s, the BP oil spill of 2010 and of course the coronavirus pandemic.
The same basic pattern can be seen all over the world. The death toll from the earthquake in Turkey and Syria has now risen to over 45,000. Thousands of men, women and children are buried under rubble, although the quake that brought down their homes was foreseeable and predicted.
As usual, the Ohio incident is being covered up by government officials. Gov. Mike DeWine tweeted Wednesday morning that the water in East Palestine is safe to drink. However, videos from the area show that the surface of streams is covered with a film of oil and the water literally bubbles when stones are thrown into it.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg of the US federal government downplayed the disaster in an interview: “This dire situation has attracted a lot of attention, but there are about 1,000 train derailments a year.” Statements of this kind show that the government no longer even pretends that to take care of, leaving the residents of eastern Ohio to fend for themselves.
The leading media are also actively involved in the cover-up. In the major newspapers, any questioning of the official account is dismissed as far-right delusion or social media “conspiracy theory”. In an article of New York Times is the title “Chernobyl 2.0? Ohio train derailment sparks wild speculation”: “Many influencers across the political spectrum go far beyond the known facts with their claims about the environmental impact of the train derailment.”
These media outlets – the same ones that are spreading tales of the end of the coronavirus pandemic – expect uncritical belief in the government’s narrative.
As long as social decision-making power remains in the hands of a tiny capitalist oligarchy, further disasters and cover-ups are inevitable. Again and again, the selfish profit interests of this stratum prove incompatible with the functioning of modern society and are a constant source of chaos, disorganization and outright criminality.
The alternative to this is the organization and mobilization of the working class. The same causes that led to the poison cloud in Eastern Palestine are provoking considerable resistance from the railroad workers. Last year, more than 99 percent of workers voted in favor of a strike in ballots. The workers want to fight for decent and safe working conditions, both for themselves and for society.
They were prevented from doing so by a corporatist conspiracy involving the railroads, Democrats, Republicans, and the union bureaucracy. The unions put off a strike as long as possible to push through their collective bargaining agreement and cover Congress’s back until after the midterm elections in November.
Eventually, the agreement was imposed by law on the railroad workers. Just days after Congress voted to do so, three railroads, including Norfolk Southern, unveiled pilot programs to reduce crews from two to one — a long-standing corporate goal that would make disasters like the one in East Palestine worse.
A strike to enforce safe standards of staffing and maintenance and against the government’s co-conspirators would have overwhelming popular support in the current situation.
However, it is about far more than a wage war: it is about workers’ control over production. The Wall Street speculators who own the railroads have proven in practice that they cannot be trusted with critical infrastructure.
The Socialist Equality Party is demanding that those responsible for the East Palestine disaster, including Norfolk Southern leaders, be held accountable. Those injured must be provided with alternative housing until conditions in the city and surrounding region are effectively safe again, and fully compensated for the economic and other consequences of the disaster.
The companies must be socially owned, placed under democratic working-class control and oversight, and run as public utilities.
The huge corporate profits and the wealth of the capitalist oligarchs financed with them must be confiscated and used to rebuild the social infrastructure and to fulfill the basic right of the working population to quality housing and decent living conditions.
Ultimately, the struggle for safe railway conditions is closely related to the socialist organization of society. He begs the question: which class should rule? The capitalist class, which subordinates all of society to profit and war, or the working class, which reorganizes economic life on the basis of social needs.
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