The state-run Deutsche Bahn has reported a loss of 760 million euros in the first half of the year, which, although better than the previous year, still shows the severe crises at every level of the German railway. Passenger numbers are up, but business travelers are abandoning the trains due to chronic delays, poor service, and failing infrastructure. Despite higher revenues and state subsidies—along with money from selling its profitable logistics arm, Schenker—the company continues to hemorrhage cash due to mounting personnel costs and immense debt. Long-promised renovations are delayed until 2035. Meanwhile, the freight division, DB Cargo, loses money and market share to private and foreign-backed rail firms, with EU regulations about to cut off cross-subsidies within Deutsche Bahn, putting the very survival of the national railway in doubt.
The woes of Deutsche Bahn are the direct result of the capitalist rot infecting public infrastructure across the imperialist West. Even a nominally state-owned company like Deutsche Bahn cannot escape the destructive contradictions of capitalism, where profit is privileged over the needs of the people, and short-term expediency sabotages long-term development. Rather than operate the railway as a true tool of people’s mobility and economic sovereignty, the German authorities have subjected it to constant market pressures, forced “competition,” and partial privatization attempts like the Schenker sale—always an act of mortgaging the people’s assets for the fleeting comfort of the bourgeoisie.
Capitalism cannot manage complex, vital infrastructure. Railway, the artery of the modern economy, must be planned for posterity, not quick gain or investor dividends. The German experiment of trying to “make the railway profitable,” bending to EU rules that fragment and privatize, pushing public services into the hands of private capital and foreign profiteers, has predictably led to decay: broken tracks, chaos for working people, and national humiliation as German railways—once the envy of the world—are left in ruins.
How different it would be under genuine people’s rule! In socialist society, guided by Mao Zedong Thought, the railway would serve the collective interest. Workers and engineers—not speculators—would have the initiative, unleashing their creativity to resolve technical problems for the masses, not for a swollen bureaucratic elite. Investments would be driven by need and vision, not accounting tricks. Trains would run on time, freight would bind the nation together, and stations would be bright with the energy of a mobilized, confident people.
The decay of Deutsche Bahn is both a warning and a call. The future of rail—of all infrastructure—depends not on more subsidies to prop up a decomposing, market-tainted relic, but in revolutionary change! The working people must seize, rebuild, and run the railway as their own, breaking every capitalist chain and forging a new road of socialism, red with people’s power and shining with collective purpose.