On the Collapse of Pittsburgh’s Fern Hollow Bridge

On the 28th of January, while we were preoccupied with our tri-annual international Riunione Generale, President Joe Biden came to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to give a speech about the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in his typical incoherent presentational style. A few hours before he was to give his speech, however, a major arterial bridge in the city, the Fern Hollow Bridge, which transports more than 14,000 cars per day, collapsed into Frick Park. 10 people were injured, but fortunately nobody had died (dare we say because it happened during the Winter, in the early morning, before rush hour? The park underneath generally is very active; had it collapsed during any other season of the year, well…).

The spectacle made both national and local news, which used the event as pretense for drumming up support for Biden’s infrastructure programme and measures for the strengthening of and improvement of government organs related to infrastructure presented by city council representative Corey O’Connor. (We should briefly mention that both O’Connor and the city mayor, Ed Gainey, have received thousands of dollars worth of election campaign donations from construction companies, most notably general contractors, alongside utility companies – the bridge collapse also disrupted a gas line – and city developers).

Nobody can deny that the collapse of the bridge was neither an isolated incident nor a freak accident. The bridge had been considered in poor condition since at least 2011 and it existed in the broader context of a Pennsylvania-wide bridge infrastructure crisis. But – and surely, this is one of the ways in which we differ from both the Republicans and the Democrats – we acknowledge that the bridge collapse was, like a large number of disasters under this wretched and decrepit mode of production – from nuclear disasters (see Communist Left, no. 31-32) to train derailments (see The Communist Party, no. 27) – ultimately a result of the general social tendencies deriving from the capitalist relations of production. In this case, it was a result of the tendency (resultant from the division of society into classes) of all bourgeois States towards an ever greater bloating of their repressive apparati: the military, and, in this case specifically, the police.

O’Connor has said the city was unable to properly repair the bridge due to lack of funds. Fair enough; in 2019, there were minor repairs to the bridge, costing $100,000, so it’s not like the government put in no effort. But well, Mr. O’Connor, you see, it was discovered that, between 2012 and 2019, 4.25 billion dollars worth of funds had been siphoned off from bridge and road repairs and towards the Pennsylvania State police. Pennsylvania’s auditor general at the time, Eugene DePasquale, had the following choice remark: “More than 2,800 State-maintained bridges across Pennsylvania are structurally deficient and our bridges average over 50 years in age – beyond what they were designed to last. That $4.25 billion could have cut that list in half and if PennDOT could use all of the gas tax money for roads and bridges we could get that number to zero in about 5 years.”

But enough about the causes. Anyone on our side of the fence has heard these conclusions plenty of times from our favorite gentleman, Monseiur Captain Obvious. It does not require a so-called “expert” to draw the necessary connections. It interests us much more how the government representatives of construction capital and of the national bourgeoisie in general, most notably our beloved and luminous Joe Biden, are exploiting the spectacle of the collapse – and the particular interests of the “American” proletariat – for the sake of prettifying the exploitation of construction and manufacturing proletarians and whitewashing preparation for a future military conflict with China.

See, currently the American national bourgeoisie, with its government, is attempting to throw off its economic dependence on Chinese imperialism. Part of this effort is an attempt towards building up the manufacturing and industrial sector in the United States as a counterweight to especially Chinese manufacturing. Notably, during his speech, Joe Biden stated that he aims to bring manufacturing jobs back to Pittsburgh, ’somberly’ (we should say: cynically) recalling the near total disintegration of Pittsburgh industry. This, he says, will create more jobs for Americans. Fair enough; this is correct. But, we should remember exactly what waged labor is:

«Capital can multiply itself only by exchanging itself for labour-power, by calling wage-labour into life. The labour-power of the wage-labourer can exchange itself for capital only by increasing capital, by strengthening that very power whose slave it is. Increase of capital, therefore, is increase of the proletariat, i.e., of the working class.

«And so, the bourgeoisie and its economists maintain that the interest of the capitalist and of the labourer is the same. And in fact, so they are! The worker perishes if capital does not keep him busy. Capital perishes if it does not exploit labour-power, which, in order to exploit, it must buy. … To say that the interests of capital and the interests of the workers are identical, signifies only this: that capital and wage-labour are two sides of one and the same relation. The one conditions the other in the same way that the usurer and the borrower condition each other» (Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital, ch. 6)

One could imagine – and we dare to imagine it – a society under which labor is solely done for satisfying the wants and needs of the species, not for profit; under which everyone is guaranteed work; and under which every advance in technology, or any loss of demand for labor in general, results not in unemployment but in a shortening of the working day and an easing, not intensification, of the burden of toil. And so we must remind our “friends” in office (though we doubt they will actually read this) of the ridiculousness of a mode of production which requires that the worker perish if capital does not keep them busy. And they know this, but they don’t dare even mutter it because – believe it or not – they represent the interests, not of the proletariat (whether Chinese or American), but of the bourgeoisie.

And more jobs for Americans! One could just as easily remark that importing manufacturing products creates more jobs abroad. Likewise, a cessation of imports means fewer jobs abroad. So we see that Joe Biden is attempting to exploit the immediate interests of a particular section of the international proletariat – at the expense of other sections – for the sake of glorifying preparation for an impending war for a redivision of the world among imperialist powers, a war which would kill billions of proletarians, again, regardless of nationality. And so, yes, you, future industrial worker: you will be tasked with producing vital resources for military armaments and, consequently, your workplace will become a military target for foreign powers; you and your coworkers will be collateral. This is the real content of Biden’s speech: you, your friends, your family will be sacrificed before the altar of profit, and the world bourgeoisie, those bastards, won’t even remember your names.

Naturally, we haven’t fallen for Biden’s facade because, as we said all the way back in 1848, «In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, [the Communists] point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality» (The Manifesto of the Communist Party). We are an international party, we represent an international class, and consequently our politics have an international character.

Do you know another way to “create” new jobs? A general shortening of the working day and regulations on the intensity of work and upon minimum employment: measures which the bourgeoisie as a whole and its government would not dare to implement – because it would increase the demand for labor, and thus an increase in wages – unless compelled by force by the collective might of a militant and unified world proletariat.