The tripling of automobile registration fees in California, which began this week, is blamed on a government budget crisis that follows the earlier electrical blackouts, soaring energy and fuel prices, and massive payouts by capitalist politicians to the powerful energy monopolies and the state’s bondholders that resulted from the “energy crisis” in 2000-2001. The profit gouging is accompanied by the energy magnates’ callous disregard for the safety of workers, endangering life and limb on the job while threatening the health and environment of the surrounding communities.

Only the Socialist Workers Party campaign is putting forward solutions that confront the real problem at its root—the private ownership by a handful of super-rich capitalists of the energy and power industries, a vital resource for society as a whole.

In response to the capitalist rulers’ moves to put their economic and governmental budget crises on the backs of working people—with the devastating effects it has had on millions throughout this state—the labor movement needs to demand the nationalization of the energy and power companies, to take them out of private hands and run them as public utilities under workers control for the benefit of the majority.

We must demand that these energy trusts open their books. Working people have a right to know the “business secrets” of these powerful monopolies, to expose the behind-the-scenes deals and swindles, and to get a real picture of the share of the national income that is pocketed by the individual capitalists who own them.

When the energy monopoly Enron went belly-up last year, a hint of these “business secrets” was revealed. At a time when the rates that working people were paying for electricity in California were tripling, that company hid away an additional $1.5 billion in profits squeezed out of working people. One executive told the New York Times that the company “made such an incredible amount of money that we didn’t want to recognize it all in earnings. We were supposed to make $500 million in a quarter and we were doing it in a day.”

Making public the machinations of exploitation, robbery, and fraud that these private owners hide under the veil of “business secrecy” is a necessary step to confront the shortages, breakdowns, and periodic crises caused by the deepening capitalist economic crisis.

When the bosses cry “bankruptcy”—as the energy companies Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison have done—the capitalist politicians bail them out and demand that working people “sacrifice” to save the company. The current Democratic Party administration and all of its predecessors, whether Republican or Democratic, start with the interests of the wealthy owners, taking steps that defend their profits and property.

Working people should reject the demands for more “regulation” of these monopolists—measures designed not to benefit the majority but to protect the profit prerogatives of the wealthy families that control the power companies.

What is needed is workers control of the energy and power industries—both to open the capitalists’ books and gain knowledge about everything big business and its government hide from us, as well as to control all conditions on the job. Workers must have veto power over safety and health questions, the pace of work, and how each job is organized. This means guaranteeing safe conditions on the job and reducing work hours to a sustainable level, as well as regard for the health and welfare of the neighboring communities.

In face of the crisis caused by the profit system, working people should say, “We can run this enterprise better than you.” This is our answer to the squandering of human labor and periodic crises that are the result of the anarchy of the capitalist system and the naked pursuit of profits.  
 
Reject bond system swindle
The Socialist Workers Party campaign also rejects the state-organized swindle of the bond system. For a handful of the wealthiest families in the United States, the California energy crisis has been a bonanza. Sacramento sold billions of dollars in high-interest state bonds to wealthy individuals for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece. Bonds issued by the state of California to pay the energy monopolies in 2000 and 2001 totaled $11.25 billion. An additional $6.4 billion in profit is being collected in the form of interest payments on those bonds—more than a dollar of profit for every two dollars invested!

This is what lies behind the capitalists’ so-called budget crisis. Instead of touching the billions streaming from the state coffers into the accounts of the wealthy bondholders, the representatives of big capital in both the Democratic and Republican parties are seeking to balance their budget on the backs of working people—aiming the axe at social services and infrastructure and pushing to increase taxes and all kinds of fees on working people. The Socialist Workers campaign rejects all of these assaults on the living standards of working people.

This is the employers’ budget crisis, not ours. We demand: Not one more penny to these wealthy profiteers!

In the coming years, as working people through our trade unions fight to defend ourselves against the bosses’ attacks on our wages and on the hours and conditions of work that we face, we must also demand that the power and energy industries be taken out of private hands, exposing the true debits and credits of capitalist society in the process. We will develop confidence in the capacities of working people to run not only these individual enterprises but the whole of society.

Some one-third of the world’s population—2 billion of the earth’s inhabitants—is without access to modern electricity. This glaring inequality is the direct result of the plunder and dividing up of the world’s resources and labor by the billionaire ruling families in a handful of superwealthy countries.

To begin to address this and strengthen the unity and fighting capacity of working people throughout the world, the Socialist Workers campaign calls for the immediate cancellation of the immoral and unpayable Third World debt. Through these unending debt payments to the banks based in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo, this powerful handful of families extracts super-profits from the exploitation and oppression of toilers the world over.

If we fight to carry out measures such as these, working people can begin to address the effects of the sharpening crisis that capitalism is producing worldwide. We will also have to learn to defend ourselves and our unions from assaults by the hired goons and fascist gangs of the capitalists, who historically have shown that they will viciously resist the inroads made by working people into their prerogative to run society.

Along this road we will gain consciousness of and confidence in our own capacities to control our destiny—without the bosses. This is the road toward a fight for power, for establishing a workers and farmers government that will begin not with the profits of the tiny super-rich minority, but with the interests of the vast, toiling majority.  
 
 
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