Vol. 72/No. 7 February 18, 2008
Electrification is a fundamental precondition for developing modern industry and agriculture, as well as access to culture. Yet there is a huge gap in the world. The imperialist countries, with only 14 percent of the worlds population, consume 60 percent of the electricity. Meanwhile, sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 9 percent of the global population but only 1 percent of electricity usage. In Pakistan, more than 40 percent of the people have no power, and in Nepal, the figure is more than 90 percent. As always, it is the workers and farmers who bear the brunt of this crisis.
Washington and other imperialist powers are all too quick to offer loans to governments of semicolonial nations in return for hefty interest payments and increased exploitation of their resources and labor. But when it comes to real aid that could qualitatively increase the productivity of labor in these countries and make them less dependent on the advanced capitalist countries, the imperialists will block thatand anything that jeopardizes their opportunity to exploit and profit.
They arrogantly deny the semicolonial world the right to take whatever measures necessaryincluding the development of nuclear powerto meet their energy needs. They claim industrial growth for these nations wastes scarce resources, pollutes too much, or causes global warming. In a similar way, workers in the industrialized countries are told we should drive our cars less, turn off the lights more, and turn down the heat so we can save energy. But that is a false we. There are workers and farmers of the world who produce the wealth, on the one sidethe real usand the landlords and capitalists who appropriate that wealth for their own benefit, on the other.
The labor movement should support the efforts of nations oppressed by imperialism to acquire and develop the energy sources needed to bring much of humanity out of darkness, including nuclear power. We should champion the cancellation of the Third World debt and the lifting of all U.S. tariffs and anti-dumping, fair labor, and environmental protection regulations, which reinforce the world inequalities in trade.
After the 1917 Russian revolution, working people in that country embarked on a campaign to spread electrification throughout the country, to close the gap between city and countryside and strengthen the alliance of workers and peasants. Workers did the same after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Today, 95 percent of the population in Cuba has access to electricity and the revolutionary government is extending its availability further.
The toilers in Russia and Cuba were able to accomplish this because they had taken political power out of the hands of the landlords and capitalists and formed their own government. Thats whats needed today the world over.
Related articles:
Blackouts in China, S. Africa highlight energy gap in world
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