Erek Slater

Febuary 9th, 2007

Public Presentation on Energy and Environment at Pathfinder Bookstore, Chicago

1On sept 3rd 6 children died after a fire burnt them alive in their crowded Rogers Park
home. The family didn’t have enough money to pay for electricity, so they used candles
for light at night. Fire officials said that the problem was the immigrant family neglected
to use a fire detector. This is not a personal problem of an individual family; this is a
social problem. That much of the world -even many in the wealthiest nations- do not
have access to or are unable to pay for the basics of human civilization; this is a world
problem.

1/3 of the world -2B people- do not have access to any kind of modern energy such as
electricity or heating fuels. This is not just unfair- it also means that much of the world is
literally in darkness, unable to read or write after working during the day. How can we
participate in real politics, the act of collectively ruling ourselves, if we are too tired from
work or don’t have a warm place to meet with each other at night? Much of the world is
thus shut off from that which makes human beings so great and separates us from all
other life and matter: our connection to all of human history: our culture.

Here in Chicago, people die daily from lack of simple protection from the elements.
Each night, more than 20,000 people cannot find a place to sleep. I know the truth of this
as I see it every day driving the city transit bus: people sleeping in bus shelters or just
hoping they’ve found a driver who wont kick them off the bus because they have no
place to get out of the cold. Chicago cold will kill you, and quickly.

The local electric company, Commonwealth Edison, is going to raise their prices by 24%.
Without the price hike, they say, they will go out of business. Yet, last year ComEd
made $527M, and Exelon, its parent company, made $2.1B. Perhaps it is true; perhaps
they cannot make a profit. The only way to know for sure is to throw open the books for
everyone to see just exactly where all of this money is going. And if it is still true that
they cannot make a profit? What of it? Thousands are without heat in this lethal cold,
and we are to worry about profits of the energy companies? We call for ComEd, as well
as all of the US energy industry, to be run as public utilities for the benefit of all. Only
workers can make sure we have enough people, equipment and time to ensure
uninterrupted and affordable energy service to all.

But these companies are not bankrupt, at least not financially. Just this week, the big oil
companies got to boast to their investors of their record profits in 2006. Chevron Corp.
recorded its third straight year of record profit; this year at $17.1B, which was 17%
higher than last year. Royal Dutch Shell made $25.4B. Exxon Mobile recorded the
largest profit of any public US company in history, breaking its own record from last
year, $39.5B, or $108M/Day. Exxon promptly handed out $32.6B of the $39.5B directly
to shareholders through dividends (cash to themselves) and share buybacks. This is
blood money- extracted directly from the labor of workers who are then forced to pay for
their own blood to drive to work or to stay out of the cold. It is blood money because
thousands of workers bodies are ruined or destroyed in the coal mines or in the oil
refineries each year. Even in the US, 47 miners were killed last year. We are told that
energy extraction is a dangerous business and people have to die. Not one worker needs
die; not if working people control production on the job and together we decide what
hours we work, what safety precautions to take, or how fast of a pace we go. We are the
only ones that care about our communities and the environmental destruction caused by
industry. We have to use collective union power to fight for our interests on the job
because nobody is going to speak up for us except us. The bosses, executives and owners
can only concern themselves with making a profit. Its not a moral thing; it’s the nature of
the capitalist system: In the cut-throat business world of capitalism, those who blink- at
what they are doing to human beings or to the earth- are the ones who are buried by the
system’s relentless drive towards profit.

Just last week the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 2,500
scientists, reported that global warming is “unequivocal” and they assert with near
certainly -more than a 90% chance- that greenhouse gasses, principally carbon dioxide
which is produced primarily from burning fossil fuels have been the main causes of
warming since 1950. We are just starting to understand how such climate change may
effect human life. What do the world imperialist rulers propose to do about this? Even
the international meeting on the environment in Kyoto, Japan could only get a drop in the
bucket: promises by some Imperialist countries to pay some money for the semi-colonial
world to clean up polluting for them. And the country with the largest environmental
impact and the biggest world polluter, the US, signed the treaty but refused to ratify it and
is under no obligation even to those small payments.

Capitalists are aware of their degradation of the Earth’s ability to sustain human life, but
they cannot help themselves, nevermind all of humanity. They are driven into
competition among themselves and between nations by the very logic of their system.
All they can offer is finger pointing and the use of violence to control all of the remaining
natural fuel resources on the planet- for them. The only ones who can look after our
interests, humanity’s interests....are working people -in our billions: the international
working class.

–break–

We call for the nationalization of the energy industry. But by this we don’t mean the
capitalist state and its politicians mismanaging and stealing public resources. What we
are talking about is working people learning to organize industry and gaining the
confidence to rule ourselves and all of society.

Here in the United states -the greatest polluter and the heart of imperialist domination of
the people and resources of the semi-colonial world- working people have a special
responsibility to take power out of the hands of the ruling capitalist class who’s privilege
and system they defend even as it threatens to destroy the earth’s capacity to sustain
human life. To replace their power, what we really need here in the United States is a
government of and for us; a workers and farmers government that can join in human
solidarity with the workers of the world in a struggle towards socialism. As one of the
leaders of the Russian Revolution, an example of when working people took power and
used it in the interest of humanity, Vladimir Lenin said, that’s where real politics really
begins: “where millions of men and women are.”

–break–

Environmental destruction, the great inequity of access to civilization and culture, forced
destruction of our bodies for someone else’s profit...sending us out into the cold...these
are world problems that have only world solutions. This is why we say, “Our politics
begin with the world.” The world solution, the only solution, was first discovered over
150 years ago by the scientific socialists led by Karl Marx: the working class must
collectively and rationally take these problems on in the interest of humanity free from
capitalism’s drive for profit. We must help to change the conscious direction of
humanity towards socialism.

The Chicago fire commissioner, Ray Orozco, said to reporters after the death of the six
children on the north side that I mentioned in the beginning of this presentation, “What
do you say? There’s nothing to say. It’s been the worst in a long time. The only thing
you can do is just pray for these poor people.” “There’s nothing to say...” Well,
communists, we do have something to say. Working people are not victims; not simply
the objects, the playthings of the bosses and arrogant imperialist rulers. We are the
subjects, the actors of history. It is up to us, the reasonable, the humane, the toiling part
of society to organize our class so that we may pull ourselves out of the trap of the
capitalist epoch of human history.

As anther fighter who spoke at these public forums -Malcolm X- said, “be part of the
solution.” If you want to be part of the solution, you should find out more about what
young socialists and communists are doing. We don’t have a roadmap, but we have
leaned some lessons from 150 years of struggle. You are welcome to learn from and
become part of this continuity.