This represents a war by the wealthiest powers against the world’s oppressed nations to keep them from using every means at their disposal to make progress in bringing much of humanity out of darkness.

The labor movement in the United States and other industrialized countries should oppose this imperialist offensive. As an elementary act of solidarity, we should champion the efforts by workers and farmers in the Third World to expand electrification in their countries.

First of all, Washington and its cohorts have no right to insist that they should have nuclear weapons but no one else can be allowed to develop them. This arrogant stance has nothing to do with preventing nuclear war. On the contrary, the biggest threat to humanity is the drive by the U.S. rulers and their imperialist competitors to rely on military might—including the threat of using nuclear weapons, and a “missile shield” to give them first-strike capability—to continue to dominate and exploit the oppressed nations of the world.

Secondly, the imperialist governments dismiss efforts by governments in the Third World to develop nuclear power for meeting energy needs. Washington even has the gall to “advise” Iran that it doesn’t need to develop nuclear energy and instead should rely on its oil and natural gas reserves!

Iran faces rapidly increasing energy needs. Since the 1979 popular revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed shah, the country’s population has more than doubled from 32 million to 70 million, while its oil production is only 70 percent of the pre-1979 level. Iran’s electrical power generation has not kept up with growing energy needs, especially in the countryside. Iranian officials explain that they are developing their nuclear program to meet these expanding energy needs. Relying only on fossils fuels—instead of diversifying its energy sources—would condemn Iran to become an importer of crude oil in coming decades, and to suffer the environmental consequences of pollution from burning such fuels. The imperialist powers seek to prevent Iran from developing nuclear reactors that produce enriched uranium—but that element is essential for the development of nuclear energy, not just for weapons.

Iran is just one example of the reality facing the overwhelming majority of humanity. Today, 2 billion people—one-third of the world’s population—have no access to modern energy. They must rely on candles or kerosene lamps for lighting, and on wood, dung, thatch, and straw for fuel. In semicolonial countries there is a big disparity in conditions between city and countryside. In Ghana, for example, barely 4 percent of the rural population has access to electricity. In Pakistan the figure is 40 percent. Even in Brazil, one of the most industrialized semicolonial nations, nearly 40 percent of rural areas are not electrified. The only parts of the world that come close to universal electrification are the imperialist countries, as well as the workers states in Russia and Eastern Europe. In Cuba, because workers and farmers have taken political power and carried out a socialist revolution, 95 percent of the country is electrified.

Coal and oil are the most widely used energy sources in the world. But these fuels take a huge toll on public health and the environment, and are not the solution to meeting humanity’s longer-term energy needs. Nor are solar power or wind power.

In contrast to the industrialized powers of the imperialist world, the more than 75 percent of humanity who live in the semicolonial countries have little or no access to nuclear power, which produces the greatest amount of energy with the least use of resources and the smallest output of atmospheric pollution. In the semicolonial world in particular, harnessing nuclear power could make all the difference in the ability to extend electrification to the entire population.

Electrification is an elementary precondition for modern industry and cultural life. It is part of narrowing the gap between the conditions of working people in city and countryside. It is necessary to raise the level of culture in the rural areas, especially, and to overcome, even in the most remote areas of any land, backwardness, ignorance, poverty, and disease. Championing the fight for electrification poses the need to forge an alliance of workers and farmers in a common struggle to take political power out of the hands of the capitalist exploiters and begin transforming society in the interests of the vast majority.
 
 
Related article:
Imperialists threaten Iran over effort to develop nuclear power  
 
 
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