[D66] The Detroit water cutoffs

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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/03/29/pers-m29.html

The Detroit water cutoffs and the social counterrevolution in America
29 March 2014

Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

— “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In a city that lies alongside the largest surface freshwater system in
the world, the authorities have begun a shutoff of water services,
targeting 3,000 households every week for the next several months. If
these plans are fully implemented, by the beginning of the summer tens
of thousands of families will no longer have access to one of the most
fundamental necessities of life.

This is not only a stark expression of the irrationality of capitalism,
it is a social crime, and those who are responsible are criminals.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) is setting its sights
on those who are delinquent on their bills. Incredibly, nearly 50
percent of all accounts (150,000 out of 324,000) fall into this
category, in a city where more than a third of the population lives
below the poverty line.

The consequences of this policy are easily foretold. It will mean a
sharp increase in hardship, disease and death, as families are forced to
live without basic sanitation or choose between running water and other
necessities such as food, clothing and health care.

Lack of access to running water means an inability to shower, use the
toilet, cook or take medications. It can lead to buildings or homes
being condemned, forcing residents onto the street. It can mean the
breakup of families, as children are shifted to relatives or removed by
the state on charges of neglect. Like the cutoff of gas or electricity—a
mass phenomenon in Detroit—a water shutoff is a destabilizing,
debilitating and psychologically devastating experience.

That this fate is now facing tens of thousands of people in Detroit—a
former center of manufacturing in America, which once boasted the
highest per capita income in the country—is a damning indictment of
American capitalism and the corporate and financial elite that runs the
country.

Historically, access to water was seen as a benchmark of social
progress. It was considered a national disgrace that, in 1950, a quarter
of the population (and half of the rural population) did not have access
to plumbing.

Government programs, along with a general increase in living standards,
established plumbing for the vast majority of the population—though some
2 million Americans still have insufficient or no running water. At the
same time, the cost of water for consumers was kept low as a matter of
policy. Most water companies were set up as public utilities, subsidized
by local and federal government spending.

As with all the gains of the working class in the post-World War II
period, these advances were the product, directly or indirectly, of
social struggle. But for more than three decades there has been a
systematic effort by the ruling class to turn back the clock—a massive
retrogression that, since the financial crisis of 2008, has turned into
a social counterrevolution.

As it has targeted the jobs and wages of the working class, the ruling
class has systematically slashed spending on social infrastructure. A
recent report by the Georgetown Law Human Rights Institute noted:
“Historically, federal and state governments would cover some long-term
costs in the form of infrastructure grants. Since the 1980s, however,
these grants have given way to infrastructure loans, pushing water
systems to charge their customers full-cost, or near full-cost, rates.”
(“Tapped Out: Threats to the Human Right to Water in the Urban United
States”)

Between 2000 and 2012, water rates in Detroit increased a shocking 119
percent. Over the same period, median household income in the city
declined by about 15 percent. Today, the average monthly water bill in
the city is $75 ($900 a year)—or about 3.5 percent of the median income.

The high rate of delinquency is a direct consequence of these changes.
And Detroit is not alone. A USA Today report in 2012 found that water
rates have surged nationwide over the past decade, more than doubling in
a quarter of the 100 cities surveyed.

Rather than a necessity of life, the provision of water is increasingly
seen as a money-making opportunity. Some 85 percent of US water agencies
are still nominally public utilities, though many, including the Detroit
Water and Sewerage Department, have been aggressively financed through
loans to big investors and bondholders—loans that are repaid by raising
rates and eliminating services for those who cannot pay.

Moves to outright privatization are also well advanced. Detroit
Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr is pushing for the possible sale of the
water department, or its leasing to a regional authority in preparation
for a future sale. The DWSD is the third largest water utility in the
country, with $1 billion in annual revenue. It is considered a potential
cash cow. To make the DWSD fully profitable, however, delinquent
accounts must be ruthlessly eliminated.

This is the real face of the Detroit bankruptcy. While the media and the
political establishment proclaim the “revival” of Detroit, what is
taking place is the wholesale theft of public resources and the pensions
and benefits of city workers and their families.

After undermining the finances of the city through the shutdown of auto
production, predatory bank loans, tax abatements and other corporate
handouts, and massive cuts in state and federal financial aid, the
ruling class is moving to reduce large parts of the city to the type of
conditions that prevail in the slums of Haiti and other impoverished
countries. Other working class areas will simply be evacuated and made
available to real estate speculators.

Detroit is seen as a model for the entire country, and, indeed, the
world—in the shutoff and privatization of water services and the overall
restructuring of which it is a part. It is for this reason that the
bankruptcy of Detroit has been fully supported by the Obama
administration and the political establishment as a whole, Democratic
and Republican.

The source of the catastrophe lies not in the productive capacity of
mankind, nor in the resources provided by nature, but in the social
system of capitalism—a system based on private profit and the
subordination of every social right to the rapacious dictates of the
corporate and financial aristocracy.

The Socialist Equality Party calls on workers throughout the city to
mobilize in opposition to the criminal policy of water shutoffs.
Committees must be organized in every neighborhood to protect homes from
the actions of city officials. We make an appeal to water and sewerage
workers, who face a brutal attack on their own jobs and wages, to refuse
to carry out the orders of their bosses.

This popular mobilization must be connected to a political struggle by
the entire working class. The resources necessary to guarantee free and
full access must be obtained by confiscating the fortunes of the
corporate-financial elite. The water system in Detroit and throughout
the country must be placed under genuine public ownership and the
democratic control of the working population, as part of the socialist
reorganization of economic life.

Joseph Kishore