On January 9, racist killer capitalism struck again—this time in the Bronx, when it murdered 17 working-class immigrants from Gambia, including eight children. After a faulty space heater ignited, the fire ripped through the Twin Parks North West building. Thick, black smoke enveloped the staircases and killed whole families as they tried to escape. Their deaths were the direct result of racism and the capitalists’ callous obsession with profits. In the 1970s, to save money, developers built this 19-story tower—and countless other buildings for low-income workers—without fire escapes or sprinkler systems. Though New York City later tightened its rules to require these basic safety measures, a loophole left “older” buildings exempt—even though buildings constructed in wealthier areas in the same period included these safety features (NPR, Up First, 1/10).
This racist inequality reflects the stranglehold that landlords and real estate interests hold over the local bosses. The Bronx fire was more than a tragedy. It was an inevitable repercussion of this racist, profit-driven system, where murderous landlord negligence is the norm. Liar Eric Adams, New York’s new liberal Black mayor, disgustingly blamed the victims for not closing the apartment door behind them as they fled for their lives. He neglected to mention that these doors should have been self-closing and were a violation of the city’s building codes. Like so many other buildings that house the working class, Twin Parks North West has a long history of management neglect, unaddressed code violations, and resident complaints over a lack of heat and ventilation.
Capitalism’s law of maximum profit makes it impossible to protect the international working class from burning buildings, crumbling housing, skyrocketing rents, or homelessness. In response to this tragedy, workers have responded with working-class solidarity. A GoFundMe account has raised over a million dollars. Workers have collected supplies for those left homeless and given emotional support to victims’ families. These efforts should give us confidence in the future—in a better world to come. A state run by and for the working class can guarantee safe and decent shelter for all workers, just as communists once did in the Soviet Union and China. Only communism—a society without money, exploitation, racism, and sexism—can put out the raging fire of this disastrous system.
Global housing and infrastructure crisis
Three days before the tragic inferno in the Bronx, an “accidental” fire wiped out three adult sisters and their nine children in a Philadelphia row house where four smoke detectors failed. Under capitalism, “accidents” are code for racism and the disproportionate killing of Black workers.
 The legacy of early zoning laws across the country that promoted segregation exists today in housing instability that forces Black people into neglected rental units rife with maintenance issues that place them at higher risk for everything from fire deaths to lead poisoning. Black workers are more likely than people of other races to die in accidents like fires. Though Black people make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, they represent 25 percent of individuals killed in residential fires across the country, according to the New York State Department of Health (CNBC, 1/13).
The everyday atrocity of workers forced to live in death traps extends far beyond U.S. borders:
“About 1.6 billion people live in substandard housing and 100 million are homeless, according to United Nations’ statistics” (Forbes, 5/21/21).
Last October, a fire tore through a 13-story building in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s main port, killing at least 46 people and injuring dozens more. According to the city’s fire chief, “the majority of residents were elderly; the stairwells were full of debris; and the building materials did not meet fire safety standards” (cnn.com, 10/14/21).
 In 2018, the Grenfell Towers in London ignited, killing 72 mostly immigrant workers because profit-driven owners used cheaper, highly combustible materials to refurbish the building.
Meanwhile, international corporations and private equity firms are amassing obscene wealth by the minute as they create the conditions for worldwide home prices and rents to soar. “In 2015, corporations purchased $1 trillion in real estate in the world’s top 100 global cities…” (Bloomberg, April 2018). As these real estate profiteers build a glut of luxury housing, much of which sits empty, rents for basic apartments skyrocket. Millions of workers are jammed into unsafe living conditions. In this nightmare system, substandard housing—much of it lacking electricity, running water, or basic sanitation—is the norm worldwide. War and poverty displace millions more, forcing our brothers and sisters into dilapidated shantytowns.
The real fire starter is capitalism, a system spiraling into fascist decay as the bosses put their short-term profits above workers’ lives. The rulers use their capitalist state to blame the victims and to win the working class to accept mass slaughter. There’s no way to reform this rotten system—we need to burn it down!
Decay of capitalism and growing fascism
In recent weeks, the liberal finance capital wing of the U.S. ruling class has tried to divert our attention to last year’s January 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol, an insurrection organized by Donald Trump and his gutter racist supporters. But it is the liberal racist bosses and their stooges—from Joe Biden on down—who pose the greatest danger to the working class.
Eric Adams’ predecessor, the fake leftist Mayor Bill de Blasio, created a sham affordable housing plan (Reuters, 1/29/21), paving the way for developers like Rick Gropper and his Camber Property Group to leverage generous tax breaks and purchase thousands of Section 8 buildings, including Twin Parks North West (Yahoo News, 1/13; The Guardian, 1/14). Not long before the fatal fire, Adams invited Gropper to join his transition team for housing issues (NYT, 1/9).
When government officials and the media openly justify mass death in service of capitalist profit, it is a sign that fascism is around the corner. As capitalist interests gain tighter control of the state, Black liberal fascists like Adams will continue to toe the line. Ultimately, as they move toward inter-imperialist war to defend their profits and the failing U.S. empire, the rulers are planning the deaths of millions of more workers. That genocide will be anything but an accident.
Communism is the only solution
During the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen workers intensify the fight for decent housing. They have bravely resisted eviction, exposed predatory landlords, and taken over vacant buildings. Through these struggles, workers are learning the important lesson that the capitalist rulers can never meet the needs of our class.  Under capitalism, affordable housing for all is an impossibility—even though it’s the working class that builds all the housing. When the bosses and their profits call the shots, whether it’s for housing or food production or public health, workers lose out every time. Only by fighting for communism can we smash the profit motive and build a world to meet worker’s needs. Under communism, workers will collectively own all resources and our own productive capacity.
 We can look to past revolutionary societies for a glimpse of what is possible. After the Chinese Communist Revolution, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, tenants in the countryside forced landlords to stand trial. The oppressors’ land was confiscated and redistributed to workers in need. Unfortunately, these gains were reversed with the emergence of capitalism in China. Our brightest hope is to rebuild a revolutionary communist movement led by Progressive Labor Party. Join us!