RIGHT now in Scotland, the filthy rich executives of vulturous energy companies are contemplating their fate. Sooner or later, they will be made to pay for waging a cost-of-living war against the working class. 

The guilty profiteers are abundant in wealth, but time is one precious commodity they are running out of. 

Last Friday the Scottish Greens, junior partners in government, came out in favour of nationalising the Big Six energy monopolies and slashing bills. 

Now the First Minister has acknowledged that nationalisation is an option on the table, despite breaking her earlier promise to establish a not-for-profit, state-run energy company for Scotland by 2021. What prompted this shift in tone?

On the ground, working-class people have been on the march, while high in their ivory tower executives in the Scottish Power boardroom have insulated themselves, defended by a police force deployed to protect private property from the public that built it. 

They will soon see the error of their ways because the walls are closing in. The more these price-gouging criminals try to remain anonymous, the closer we will get to them.

The successful Power to the People demo in Glasgow earlier this month took the campaign’s message, “Freeze prices not people,” right to the front door of Scottish Power. 

Days earlier, the Young Communist League had breached beyond the front door, blockaded the entrance, and directed a concrete demand to CEO Keith Anderson: a return to October 2021 energy rates paid for by a freezing or reduction in board member and shareholder profits. 

In a bizarre response to being personally outed as public enemy number one, Anderson had the audacity to claim in the mainstream media last week that “people’s concern about how they’re going to make ends meet when the price cap goes up at the start of October is palpable, and turning to genuine fear.” 

Let’s make it clear. Rich cowards like Anderson do not speak for our class. It is their concern that has “turned to genuine fear” — because the people are fighting back. 

This is why he is begging the government and financial institutions to set up a deficit fund to protect his wealth and power by subsidising further price hikes, shackling the public to 15 years of debt. 

This reveals just how out of touch with reality the ruling class really are. It is the rich who created this crisis, and it is the rich who will pay for it. 

We refuse to be collateral damage in their war for profit, we refuse to be victims in the latest phase of social murder known as the cost-of-living crisis. No longer will they make a killing extorting us. 

The capitalist class and the governments who serve it — in Westminster and in Holyrood — will continue to hide behind feigned “crisis talks” and “emergency summits” in a desperate attempt to buy time and delay the inevitable. 

Business as usual for state-monopoly capitalism then. It is the extra-parliamentary action that tells the real developing news story. 

If the Power to the People campaign is to live up to its name, the logic must be extended to its fullest conclusion. Nothing less than a tectonic shift in the balance of wealth and power in this country from the richest to the poorest is required. 

Mere protest is a luxury at this point and a price freeze is not nearly enough for young working families like my own living on the lowest incomes. 

As it stands, those with hungry children are facing an existential threat. The reality is that October 1 is the date of destitution.

The great energy rip-off and this wider economic nightmare can and will only end with revolutionary change. Workplace and community struggles must now proceed in unison and cultivate an organisational depth ready for mass action. 

This summer of solidarity is only the beginning. If the politicians don’t boot the profiteers out, the public will boot the politicians out.

Our message to the SNP government must be loud and clear: make good on your promise to set up a national energy company, with prices as close to cost as possible. 

Clear the path for democratic public ownership and control now, or the working class will take matters into its own hands.