This is something, of course, that the energy barons will fight tooth and nail to prevent from happening. V.I. Lenin, central organizer of the Russian Revolution, explained the hypocrisy of the imperialists defending their business secrecy in a wonderful passage from "The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It," written in 1917.

"When an engineer or banker publishes the income and expenditure of a worker, information about his wages and the productivity of his labor," Lenin wrote, "this is regarded as absolutely legitimate and fair. Nobody thinks of seeing it as an intrusion into the 'private life' of the worker.... Bourgeois society regards the labor and earnings of a wage-worker as its open book, any bourgeois being entitled to peer into it at any moment, and at any moment to expose the 'luxurious living' of the worker, his supposed 'laziness', etc."

Lenin explains, "What if the unions of employees, clerks, and domestic servants were invited by a democratic state to verify the income and expenditure of capitalists, to publish information on the subject and to assist the government in combating concealment of incomes? What a furious howl against 'spying' and 'informing' would be raised by the bourgeoisie! When 'masters' control servants, or when capitalists control workers, this is considered to be in the nature of things; the private life of the working and exploited people is not considered inviolable.

The bourgeoisie are entitled to call to account any 'wage-slave' and at any time to make public his income and expenditure. But if the oppressed attempt to control the oppressor, to show up his income and expenditure, to expose his luxurious living even in war-time...oh, no, the bourgeoisie will not tolerate 'spying' and 'informing'!"

The complete essay can be found in Volume 25 of Lenin's Collected Works.

B.K.
Albany, California
 
 
Views on energy crisis
On Saturday January 20 I and another supporter of the Militant newspaper went out to sell a few papers and talk to working people in the San Francisco area about the so-called "energy crisis."

Our first stop was the Electrical Workers Union hall, where about 200 men and women were lined up to get applications for a union apprenticeship program.

I spoke with a young auto body worker from Oakland, who told me the power in the shop went out the day before with no warning, causing the men to have to redo some work as their paint guns had cut out. He said that he didn't understand all the ins and outs of it but he knew they wanted him to pay for bailing out the power companies. He didn't think that was right.

We sold three Militants there and went down the road to set up a literature table at a Safeway store. As we drove there the traffic lights cut out. A rolling blackout had started. Folks navigated the intersections as best they could. Patrons and workers in the many shops and restaurants on Mission Street stepped out into the light or ate and worked in the gloom. Cash registers did not work.

At the Safeway we sold a Militant to a young Safeway worker who told us he and his co-workers were in the back of the store unloading product when the power cut out. There was no warning, he said, and no emergency lights in the back, so they had to feel their way out. He stayed to talk with us about 20 minutes and signed up on the forum mailing list. We sold six Militants.

Raul Gonzalez
Redwood City, California  
 
 
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