Nothing changes; it is urgent to end the system of exploitation

Recently, Dr. Sheinbaum delivered her Second Presidential Report , which, added to López Obrador's six years in office , allows us to speak of eight years—almost a decade—of social-democratic management of capitalism at the head of the Federal Government in Mexico. Hopes for change have faded .

While there are differences with the previous PRI and PAN governments, these are not essential nor do they satisfy the needs of the people and the working class.

Even in the programmatic elements on which they anchored their discourse and which gave them political identity, no assessment can dissociate them from the situation they committed to changing: the fight against corruption, the fight against poverty , the defense of sovereignty and the end of the violence that bleeds and grieves society.

If anything, they dismantled the corruption networks built by the PRI or the PAN, but not to end corruption, rather to create new networks and new mechanisms to plunder public resources and those of the population . Nor did they punish corrupt officials from previous administrations ; instead, in many cases, they chose to assimilate them. Former presidents Salinas, Zedillo, Fox, Calderón, and Peña Nieto were threatened, but in the end, impunity prevailed ; the page was turned, and nothing happened, nothing changed, everything remained the same.

All the acts of selling off national assets through privatizations, the erosion of sovereignty via agreements like the then-NAFTA, illicit enrichment , political assassinations , state crimes —all of this and more was swept under the rug. The plutocrats who profited from the fire sale of more than 1,100 privatized state-owned enterprises continue to accumulate profits and have found in the Fourth Transformation a paradise to maximize them, such that, during this period, Mexico, as a capitalist country, generally improved its position within the imperialist system.

Social programs initially appeared to be a solution, but the rising cost of living has ultimately rendered them insufficient. The assumption that they represent a lasting benefit for the elderly crumbles when older people, en masse, flood supermarkets like matchsticks , return to begging at traffic lights, or become precarious street vendors trying to scrape together a few pesos to survive. Furthermore, this evades a central issue: a fair retirement and pension system to which workers are entitled and which, as demonstrated by the case of education workers, will not be granted to them.

Meanwhile, scholarships are used to mask the neglect of public schools , where fees—mandatory despite official denials—are what allow for painting classrooms, maintaining desks, providing electricity, water, and internet access, and sometimes covering the meager salaries of some temporary teachers , in addition to other basic necessities for daily operations. Poor farmers remain neglected , without guaranteed prices for their crops and facing land dispossession.

The much-touted minimum wage only applies to a tiny percentage of the working class. Millions find themselves in the barbaric conditions imposed by employers , with wages below the minimum, no job security or collective bargaining agreements, precarious employment , increasing workplace accidents , and several million unemployed .

Meanwhile, the federal government is permissive of one of the biggest acts of corruption: employers registering millions of workers with the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) at salaries lower than their actual earnings in order to evade taxes and harm workers in case of dismissal. When the working class exercises its right to fight for better working or living conditions , it is criminalized , as happened recently with the CNTE teachers' strike.

Sovereignty was not restored . The Mexican state continues down the path of concessions to the United States , benefiting monopolies by submitting to the USMCA , anti-immigrant policies , and the White House's New National Security Doctrine . Neither Fox nor Calderón dared to suspend oil sales to Cuba , as is happening now, and history will not forgive them for that.

The violence did not stop . Thousands of families are searching for their missing children, parents, and siblings; Sinaloa is a war zone.

All of the above demonstrates that the issue is not about alternating between one form of capitalism and another , nor about determining whether one is more honest than the other. The path to achieving positive changes for the people and workers requires a decisive and direct struggle to end the system of exploitation , not a superficial cosmetic fix.

First Secretary of the Central Committee of the PCM

Article originally published in El Sol de Mexico