PARTIES OFFER NO RELIEF

Just like every other social problem confronting working people—from home foreclosures, to the massive loss of jobs, the growth of social equality and the danger of war—capitalist political parties around the world have no solution for the staggering rise in fuel prices, whether they call themselves, conservative, labor, Green or socialist. Instead, they all agree working people must accept a massive reduction in consumption to pay for the crisis of the world capitalist system.

In the US neither the Republican nor the Democratic candidate for president has anything to offer. John McCain has called for a $300 million reward for the design of an electrical car, the suspension of the 18-cent federal gas tax for the summer months and lifting environmental restrictions on offshore drilling.

McCain’s top advisors, including campaign co-chair Phil Gramm, a former senator from Texas, are responsible for the deregulation of energy trading pushed by Enron that paved the way for the current explosion of speculation.

In an effort to pose as a populist opponent of the oil companies and speculators, Barack Obama has called for energy corporations to pay a windfall profit tax and for the closing of the so-called “Enron Loophole.” This will go nowhere, however, since large sections of Democrats, particularly from oil states, oppose any tax on the energy conglomerates, and Wall Street—which has thrown the bulk of its money behind the Obama campaign—opposes any serious regulation on speculation.

Obama himself has close ties to the bio-fuel industry and counts among his top advisors a former lobbyist from the American Petroleum Institute and ex-officials in the Clinton administration officials who played key roles in deregulating the financial markets. In order to win the approval of his corporate and financial paymasters, Obama has repeatedly insisted he will take no measures that undermine their profit interests. The Democratic candidate’s web site declares, “Barack Obama recognizes that it is critical that oil companies and shareholders have strong incentives to run well managed businesses that invest in efficiency and innovation.”

Far from creating efficiency and innovation, the profit system now threatens tens of millions of people around the globe with hunger and malnutrition and rising costs for fuel. Workers are not responsible for the crisis of the capitalist system and should not pay for it.

Emergency measures must be taken to defend the living standards of working people. These should include the implementation of a sliding scale of wages, which would protect the purchasing power of workers’ wages by automatically raising them to compensate for rising prices.

Decades ago, unions such as the United Auto Workers fought for and attained Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA) or Escalator Clauses that automatically increased wages in accordance with the rise in living expenses. The unions long ago abandoned such demands and today are demanding that workers accept huge pay cuts in order to defend the profitability of the corporations. They insist, along with the capitalist parties, that workers adjust to rising prices by tightening their belts and accepting a permanent reduction in their living standards.

The Socialist Equality Party calls for a sliding scale of wages and other emergency measures to provide relief from crushing fuel costs. They include the launching of investigations into the practices of the energy conglomerates and speculators, along with those the government agencies that have sanctioned the looting of society. The expropriation of the ill-gotten gains of the commodity investors and corporate CEOs and their deposit into a publicly controlled fund to provide relief to the public.

These immediate measures, can be fought for and won only through the emergence of a new mass political movement of the working class in opposition to the profit system.

They are, however, only a first step. What is needed is a fundamental reorganization of the energy industry and the financial system in the US and around the world, which places the needs of society first, not capitalist profit.

In order to break the stranglehold of the energy conglomerates ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, British Petroleum, Shell and the other multinational corporations must be converted into publicly-owned and democratically-controlled utilities, as part of the establishment of planned socialist economy.

The vast energy resources of the Middle East and other oil producing countries—which are now held in the hands of the Saudi royal family and other elites, whose rule are in many cases defended by US force of arms—must be placed under the democratic control of the working people of those countries.

In this way, the exploration, development and use of energy supplies can be guided by a rational international plan that is publicly debated and democratically approved by the working class, based on a fair and equitable distribution to meet the needs of the entire world’s population.

At the same time vast resources must be allocated to develop low-cost, renewable and environmentally safe energy.

The decades-long effort by the energy monopolies, the auto industry and government in the US to prevent the development of reliable public transportation must be answered by pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into urban mass transit and light-rail systems, as well as the development of fuel-efficient vehicles. This is crucial, not just for the US, but India and China, where the rapidly expanding use of fossil-fuel burning vehicles threatens to produce an ecological disaster.

The problems facing humanity are not primarily due to the lack of resources but the irrational character of the capitalist system, which squanders vast amounts of human labor and creative potential in order to enrich an already fabulously wealthy elite. The world’s productive and natural resources must be freed from the constraints of capitalist private ownership and the nation state system and marshaled in a scientifically planned, rational and democratic fashion to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The fight for this requires a struggle against the world’s governments, which represent the corporate and financial elite, not ordinary people. In the US, this means a political break with the Democratic Party and the building of a new political party of the working class based on a socialist and internationalist program.