Why is Anders Borg the "Chief Financial adviser in Sweden" or whatever?

[Rafiq]

Does anyone know of a criticism of his shit?

Preferably from those of you who are living in Sweden.

[aty]

He is the finance minister. He is a neo-liberal scumbag, here he says that he wants to abolish the parliament and democracy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g51NFNlJQI

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

What exactly would you like to have criticisms of?

That comment about abolishing democracy and parliament is quite old, and he was basically an anarcho-capitalist then (typical Lund graduates). His current policies are somewhat more pragmatic, though obviously, at core, they are the same liberal rubbish.

But that aside - he is not a major theoretician. He is not a thinker. His policies are vague and generally consist only of 1. saying he's against things that popular opinion dislikes, i.e. bank bonuses, and then 2. doing nothing whatsoever. Somehow people still fall for this simple trick.

I'm not sure what you are looking for in terms of criticism. Unemployment is high, the economy sluggish; and mind you that the only reason that Sweden is somewhat better off economically is that it entered the depression in a fairly good state because of an advantageous international demand for Swedish exports. The Moderates (changed name from the Right Party in 1967) recently launched a very costly reform that aimed to decrease the tax on restaurant services and rambled about it giving new jobs (at first Borg and Renfail proclaimed 20,000 new jobs, then 6,000, then 3,000... eventually zero) and making fast food cheaper - prices rose in major cities and there were no new jobs to speak off. The cost was at least 500 million euros.

The government constantly plays the game of saying things they do not mean, they have taken this tactic to a whole new level, and the propaganda ministry under Schlingmann seems, from public perception, to do a very good job at making people forget about the abuses of power that take place; they even call themselves the "new labour party", as a part of their superficial references to old social-democratic rule which they try to present themselves as the logical and modern continuation of. To decrease unionisation the membership charges for the unions unemployment support scheme was increased, forcing out many, decreasing unionisation rates by more than 10%. They have repeated cut things, and then "increased the spending" on this that they cut only months before, and ended up with a net decrease, yet somehow they have been able to present it still as an increase, and media voluntarily censors itself; and media was instrumental in replacing the leader of the traitorous social-democrats with an even more business friendly one (the hideous disgusting monster of an organisation, the former Swedish Employers Organisation, now "Svenskt Näringsliv", said that they had no problems with him - and when they like you, you're sure as hell doing a million things wrong).

Sweden sucks. I'd like to get the fuck out of here - but where do you go when the entire world is all the same? Nowhere to run, nowhere to escape the clutches of the monolithic capitalism.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

The 'funny' part is this. A neo-liberal (as a memeber of Moderaterna) minister that during the crises acted like a social-liberal (as a soc-democrat) wuold had. That makes the media to draw the conclusion of... that Moderaterna is good! :blink: When we all know that if they had made all theire tax cuts, for the richest, in the middle of the crises they would basicly destroyed the country.

Thanks to this idea of the right behaving left, i think, is what made them win theire second election in a row.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Anders Borg sounds like a sweetheart compared to our American reactionaries; Mitt the Plutocrat, Hateful Newt, and Rick Savonarola. More broadly, as bad as things are under the Swedish mixture of social democracy and neo-liberalism, consider what things are like in the United Snakes, the home of savage capitalism, where fifty million people lack health insurance and the homeless population is probably close to a million.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

The 'funny' part is this. A neo-liberal (as a memeber of Moderaterna) minister that during the crises acted like a social-liberal (as a soc-democrat) wuold had. That makes the media to draw the conclusion of... that Moderaterna is good! :blink: When we all know that if they had made all theire tax cuts, for the richest, in the middle of the crises they would basicly destroyed the country.

Thanks to this idea of the right behaving left, i think, is what made them win theire second election in a row.

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. Their policy was simply pragmatic, and not very effective. Mind you, they did not launch any real attempts to mitigate unemployment and the economic turmoil. I do not think that they can be considered to be following even a repulsive Keynesian-method, like that favoured by the social-democrats of old. They did push through their tax cuts anyway, too, only on the last did they back down, and this was because there was a majority opposition in parliament. Taxes cut on home-reconstruction, encouragement of "home cleaning help," (i.e. the Maid Scheme). They even gave their tax cuts absurd orwellian names. Jobbskatteavdraget. The Working Tax Deduction. Guess who benefit? Not your average working class person, that's for sure.

The won the elections because their media strategy and propaganda is well-executed, they have managed to popularise themselves as the voice of Sweden, and their faux-left rhetoric - of course not meant in the traditional leftist sense - might succeed to persuade a few. Their strategy is also helped further by the incompetence of the Social democrats, who, regardless of their name, are also right-wing and liberal nutters all the same.


Anders Borg sounds like a sweetheart compared to our American reactionaries; Mitt the Plutocrat, Hateful Newt, and Rick Savonarola. More broadly, as bad as things are under the Swedish mixture of social democracy and neo-liberalism, consider what things are like in the United Snakes, the home of savage capitalism, where fifty million people lack health insurance and the homeless population is probably close to a million.

United Snakes, be careful, you'll start sounding like a Maoist.

But really, the difference is basically one of political climate. They represent the same thing. Health care has been worsening consistently for countless years, and costs going up (visits are generally charged, dentist visits are not covered whatever, medicines max-charges are going up, preventing some people to get their medication, benefits cuts). The Moderates actually had none other than Karl Rove (more like, Röv :cool:) visit them one summer, and apparently he's been supporting them with media strategies. Homelessness has been on the rise, up by significant numbers, accelerating rapidly under the current conservative nutter government, the school system is totally messed up since the 1993 School voucher reform and has been further abuse since (I'd say it's probably worse than the U.S.). Most major hospitals have already been privatised.

There's even creationist and religious nutters in the government who have been working hard to make sure that the forced sterilisation of people undergoing sex-change be kept, though these are insignificant compared to the Republican reptoids, but still enough to prevent this change from going through.

[GoddessCleoLover]

I had not realized the degree and extent of privatization that has occurred and is occurring in Sweden. Very sorry to hear that, in particular the privatization of hospitals. Do you mean that Swedish hospitals are now private for-profit entities? When I use a term like "United Snakes" I am referring to the government, not the people, but forty years ago before I grew up and learned more I was a bit of a Maoist, so perhaps I temporarily regressed to the 70s for just a moment.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I had not realized the degree and extent of privatization that has occurred and is occurring in Sweden. Very sorry to hear that, in particular the privatization of hospitals. Do you mean that Swedish hospitals are now private for-profit entities?

They are for-profit entities. In Stockholm, which is the most right-wing bastion, it could be argued, all the major hospitals (Södersjukhuset, St. Görans Sjukhus) except Karolinska Institute have been privatised (Timbro, the extremist near-anarcho-capitalist Ayn-Rand loving think thank funded by Svenskt Näringsliv/Swedish Employers Organisation, in conjunction with Cato Institute, wrote some essays on this matter, where they praised the increase in patient flow, disregarding that this was because they accepted wider types of cases than prior). The school system is today privatised to a very large degree- they even have an Orwellian name for it. "Free Schools", they are called. They operate for-profit, too, and many are owned by venture capitalist groups. 1993 Sweden introduced a voucher system, and eventually this was encouraged by various schemes, and many counties and councils basically gave away entire schools, clinics and so on to private operators for nothing but the cost of the inventories (not even building costs).

The system also affected negatively those operations that were not privatised in the case of the schools. The decision to relegate the educational responsibilities from the central governments ministry of education to the city councils had already affected standards in areas and led to a growing discrepancy in quality, and when those were then required to compete with private schools for the vouchers... the vouchers are handed out arbitrarily, a fixed sum per student, which is of great disadvantage to students with higher need of support, though some attempts were made to mitigate this for special needs students (but only those with clinical disabilities). There's competition between schools which essentially entails telling the students they'll get all sorts of nice candies if they join a particular school (a laptop, colour crayons for the kindergarten, etc) and massive advertisement campaigns. A large amount of the budgets now have to be spent on this. Many schools have closed, and the distribution of schools in cities has become concentrated in various (general wealthy areas), as the localised student assignment was done away with.

Sweden is actually one of the most privatised states in Europe, with the most liberalised and deregulated economy. Sweden was, for example, a very early champion of the separation between infrastructure and operations of the railways to open up to competition and the corporatisation of the national railways, this taking place in 1988. The currency exchange and financial markets were deregulated in the so called November-revolution or November-coup of 1985, when the then finance minister of the social democrats and his banking bed-fellows orchestrated a secret policy change, which led to the debt and banking crisis of 1990-1995 (which was similar to what happened in the U.S. by 2008). The 1985 coup and the collapse of the attempts to instate a cut-down version of the originally proposed Employee Funds (a social democratic attempt to essentially assure a growing domination of public ownership and worker influence in industry; obviously, the business groups, with the Employers Organisation at the forefront, were all up in arms and as angry as they can be, and would never have tolerated it to live more than a few years; what little was done on them was scrapped by the early 90's) at about the same time marks the final capitulation of Swedish social democracy to liberal capitalism.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Thank you. I have learned a great deal from you and the other intelligent international posters at RevLeft.

[svenne]

Heh. There's actually a pretty cute quotation about the Employee Funds, and why they should be used (made in the 1970s):

"We want to deprive the capital owners their power, which they exercise in the power of their ownership. All experience shows that influence and control isn't enough. Ownership plays an essential role. I want to refer to Marx and Wigforss [early swedish social democrat in the socialist sense, even seems to have had a pretty positive view of the Soviet Union...]: we can't change society from the ground without also changing the ownership."

This was pretty much just 40 years ago. Sweden was halfway to state capitalism! As been said before, Sweden is in a lot of ways a lot more right wing in the economics than a lot of other countries. We also have one of europes biggest problems with youth employment.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Shades of Eduard Bernstein and economism. Liquidate the class struggle in return for promises of "ownership". Seems like Swedish workers are seeing the result of that strategy, to wit, a new generation of neo-liberal politicians busily eroding the public sector and undoing the gains of the past.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Liquidate the class struggle in return for promises of "ownership". Seems like Swedish workers are seeing the result of that strategy, to wit, a new generation of neo-liberal politicians busily eroding the public sector and undoing the gains of the past.

Indeed, much of those gains were justified under pretexts of social peace to begin with. The Swedish working class was at the beginning of the 1900's very militant (even bordering on revolution in 1909 until it was sold out by compromising social-democrats), but by the 1970's the opposite was true; by and large the working class had been successfully pacified by the social-democratic measures, which were, as is common with social-democracy, third-way and corporatist. The social policies of the social democrats had by the 1980's therefore outlived their usefulness, and the nagging propaganda campaign waged fiercely by the Employers Organisation from 1973 was beginning to also show results, and this was the beginning of the formation of the paradigm shift that would occur in the mid-late 80's and early 90's, when the idea of full employment became a political third rail for all intents and purposes and instead the idea of maintaining a low inflation was stressed in classic Asstrian fashion (essentially a reversal of the social-democrats keynesian policy which had been in place since the 1940's).

The move to the right has been so sharp that the so called "Left Party", formerly a "communist party" with Soviet sympathies (but abandoned the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat already in 1944 in a shift towards electoralism) is now well to the right of the policies of the social democratic party in the 1960's (it's the place where electoralism always leads you, but nevertheless sad to see).

[svenne]

You're kinda wrong Tayayuki: the swedish working class was pretty militant in the 1970s-1980s, the big dip came with the crisis in the beginning of the 1990 (and before that, from after WWII to 1970). If i'm not entirely incorrect (i don't have the book here), Sweden even had one of the longest lasting waves of wildcat strikes in the world in just that period. And lastly, doesn't people usually put the possibility of a revolution at 1917, rather than at 1909? Biggest strike aside, you're propably the first person i've stumbled upon who says that.

Another bad anecdote... One day i was sitting and reading old newspapers from 1975 at a library, and stumbled upon a little bit where the CUF or LUF (the youth group for our Center Party (today it's the most right wing in the parliment) or the liberal party) said their Stockholm branch, or maybe it was the whole national group, had voted that the struggle between workers and capital was the main conflict in society. Different society, to say the least. If you could transfer todays Left Party and place it in the 70s, you would propably end up with the party being the most right wing. (now, this thread is a place for me about bad anecdotes)

[aty]

Indeed, much of those gains were justified under pretexts of social peace to begin with. The Swedish working class was at the beginning of the 1900's very militant (even bordering on revolution in 1909 until it was sold out by compromising social-democrats), but by the 1970's the opposite was true; by and large the working class had been successfully pacified by the social-democratic measures, which were, as is common with social-democracy, third-way and corporatist.

No I would not say that the swedish working class was pacified by the 1970s, it was not pacified until the 90s crisis. In 1970 a new huge wild cat strike movement began against a first liberal attack against the working class. The working class turned against the socialdemocratic leadership and it was at the state owned mine company LKAB that the whole struggle started, against the socialdemocratic movements leadership. Among the miners in Sweden there have always been a strong class struggle history. This whole strike movement escalated in 1975 with the huge forest industry wild cat strike, and continued into the 80s. This working class front helped the idea of employee funds and the introduction of new workers laws as LAS and MBL.

The swedish working class was not easy to break despite the liberals and the socialdemocrats best efforts. They basically had to adopt the "shock doctrine" in its most classical sense.

And in just the last few weeks I have sensed a huge sudden shift in the public and private debate about these neo-liberal policies. It feels like people are actually starting to wake up because all of the privatizations and deregulations have been disaster. All scientific reports that have been recently published have proven this. The unemployment is much larger today than when the right wing took power in 2006, reducing unemployment was their main goal and what have won them the latest elections.


And I think that you are unfair to the Left Party. They are more radical than what you describe them.

[GoddessCleoLover]

I knew that our situation here in the USA was bad, but it seems like Sweden has really swung to the right in the past twenty years. The information about for-profit hospitals was a real stunner, as I thought that was a point of demarcation between American "savage" capitalism and northern and western Europe's more civilized variant.

[aty]

I knew that our situation here in the USA was bad, but it seems like Sweden has really swung to the right in the past twenty years. The information about for-profit hospitals was a real stunner, as I thought that was a point of demarcation between American "savage" capitalism and northern and western Europe's more civilized variant.
What makes it even worse is that when the right wing sold all the hospitals and health centres they sold them for much less than what they were worth.

Filippa Reinfeldt(Fredrik Reinfeldt the prime ministers wife) have been in charge in Stockholm of these sell outs. She have sold some health centres for about 700.000 kronors(120.000 dollars) and 2-4 years later those who bought them have sold them for 25 million kronors(5 million dollars).
And she refuses to give interviews about this, she hides from the press. And it is only small left wing newspapers and the cultural pages in the biggest newspaper that reacts.

There is so much shit going on right now in Swedish politics and it feels like this whole charade and neo-liberal experiment is slowly falling down. Dont even get me started on what have happend with the privatization of the elderly care, people are really pissed of about that, elderly homes being understaffed because capitalists want to make a better profit and the elderly have even died of starvation and dont get diapers changed etc. At the same time capitalists in the US make billions on swedish tax money.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Why aren't the Social Democrats leading a powerful and articulate opposition to this drive to turn Sweden into another neoliberal "project" like the USA or the Thatcherite/Cameronite UK? Have they also sold out to the neoliberals? Seems to me that before Sweden can hope for a workers' revolution that the broad masses of the working population ought to be mobilized against the neoliberals.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

I knew that our situation here in the USA was bad, but it seems like Sweden has really swung to the right in the past twenty years. The information about for-profit hospitals was a real stunner, as I thought that was a point of demarcation between American "savage" capitalism and northern and western Europe's more civilized variant.

Yeah you can say that. The soc-dem's started theire third wave orientation in the late 80s, and in time for the crises in the 90s they tried to handle it with refinancing and clean the economy, aka Cuts, which they never repaired. Combine that with globalization and you got a destruction of our class benefits. And its just getting worst.

[aty]

Why aren't the Social Democrats leading a powerful and articulate opposition to this drive to turn Sweden into another neoliberal "project" like the USA or the Thatcherite/Cameronite UK? Have they also sold out to the neoliberals? Seems to me that before Sweden can hope for a workers' revolution that the broad masses of the working population ought to be mobilized against the neoliberals.
The socialdemocrats is couped by liberals and careerists. Simple as that. But there are some socialist opposition in the party.

What have just happend is that Håkan Juholt was first elected as the leader and he was from the left side. But the liberals in the party worked against him leaking stuff to media and orchestrated a campaign against Håkan Juholt and a month ago he had to resign. It was totally extraordinary, the media went absolutely crazy and now no one can even say what he done wrong because he never did anything wrong. But the media continued and he was forced to resign. I am sure there will be studies and stories about this for years to come.

And now they have union man Stefan Löfven as party leader and he is from the right. And now we have a rightist neo-liberal leadership among the socialdemocrats again. But I would say that the rank and file have become more left against the backdrop of these privatization scandals. But the socialdemocrats is not against the privatizations yet. They have a new congress in 2013 that will be very very interesting. I would say that it is a possibility of a party split because of this question, they have been backstabbing each other for a year now. And the differences is actually huge between the two different fractions.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Look at the bright side, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul are Americans rather than Swedes, so they are our problem not yours. In other words, your reactionaries seem to be garden variety neoliberals, while ours combine neoliberal economic policies with social and foreign policies based upon reactionary nationalism.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

The socialdemocrats is couped by liberals and careerists. Simple as that. But there are some socialist opposition in the party.

What have just happend is that Håkan Juholt was first elected as the leader and he was from the left side. But the liberals in the party worked against him leaking stuff to media and orchestrated a campaign against Håkan Juholt and a month ago he had to resign. It was totally extraordinary, the media went absolutely crazy and now no one can even say what he done wrong because he never did anything wrong. But the media continued and he was forced to resign. I am sure there will be studies and stories about this for years to come.

And now they have union man Stefan Löfven as party leader and he is from the right. And now we have a rightist neo-liberal leadership among the socialdemocrats again. But I would say that the rank and file have become more left against the backdrop of these privatization scandals. But the socialdemocrats is not against the privatizations yet. They have a new congress in 2013 that will be very very interesting. I would say that it is a possibility of a party split because of this question, they have been backstabbing each other for a year now. And the differences is actually huge between the two different fractions.


The drama in the socdem party is just pathetic, and you are perfectly right when you say its hi-jacked by a bunch of liberals and careerists. The whole party feels like an empty shell, for example, in theire last congress they voted against the opportunity of getting profits in the wellfare sector. But they also voted for it to not be impossible :blink: So basicly they are against privatizations and for it in the same time. Neither left or right. And this new guy, Löfvén, was in the news shortly after being elected where he clearly showed that he stands for... nothing. Its like seeing a dying whale.

[aty]

Exactly like that, they dont know where they stand in any questions any more. The party is so fucking confused it is ridicoulus. Everyone agrees that socialdemocracy have to reduce class differences and make the wealth income gap smaller but at the same time they are not able to make any political decisions that will increase equality.

The political hegemony of liberalism is too strong at the moment so they are only able too look at liberal solutions. It is very fucked up.

I hope the socialdemocratic party die in flames and thunder, they have held back the working class for 40 years now. If there is a split the rank and file will stay with the left side so I really hope there is a big split.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

You're kinda wrong Tayayuki: the swedish working class was pretty militant in the 1970s-1980s, the big dip came with the crisis in the beginning of the 1990 (and before that, from after WWII to 1970). If i'm not entirely incorrect (i don't have the book here), Sweden even had one of the longest lasting waves of wildcat strikes in the world in just that period. And lastly, doesn't people usually put the possibility of a revolution at 1917, rather than at 1909? Biggest strike aside, you're propably the first person i've stumbled upon who says that.

There was of course a lot of lingering militancy, but in terms of it being practical political influence, it was in a steady decline. The 1968-early 70's period saw a resurgence of activity, it is true, but unfortunately the period became characterised by inane struggles (Almstriden anyone?) and the worsening corruption of LO made the unions start to act more and more in ways that sought to domesticate their membership. This would of course not happen overnight, but the strikes and opposition ended up amounting to little despite the hard work.

I don't mean that it would have happened in 1909, but that the split of 1909 was what came to define the traitorous nature of the social-democrats, what had at once been revolutionary and socialist became bourgeois and regressive, and this was a major problem that prevented any revolution from happening in the very turbulent years that followed.


The working class turned against the socialdemocratic leadership and it was at the state owned mine company LKAB that the whole struggle started, against the socialdemocratic movements leadership. Among the miners in Sweden there have always been a strong class struggle history.


They've pretty much succeeded to pacify the miners today with the pay-offs in preparation for the eventual privatisation though, despite all the resistance to the bitter end.


And I think that you are unfair to the Left Party. They are more radical than what you describe them.

How so, really? I mean, Jonas fucking Sjöstedt is the most right-wing leader in the party ever, and he's in a long line of gradually more right-oriented leaders that have characterised the party since its founding. Sure, there might be some socialists here and there in the party's rank and file, but the leadership is decidedly social-democratic and have been for a long while, and it is unlikely to get better. Vägval Vänster anyone? Their great poster-boy is that filth, Stig Henriksson, who has ruled Fagersta forever and boasts for his 53% electoral support, and like any good parasitic electoralist he has no principles whatsoever and has been as responsible for austerity measures as any central government decision, and Sjöstedt was very positively inclined towards this rightist-faction of the party, indeed reversing the previous leaderships reluctance to touch that right-wing scum at all. The moderates and other parties in Fagersta go so far as to say they have no problems with the party's local policies, and if that's the case - you've obviously fucked up badly.

I envision they might very well come to do better in elections. But this will only further spur on their rightward shift, as such is almost always wont to do.


This working class front helped the idea of employee funds and the introduction of new workers laws as LAS and MBL.

True, but it's a sad fact that once Palme was dead, the Employee Funds were too. They lingered, but the only aspect of them that was realised was a watered-down variant that was trying to cause no offence to the Employers Organisation. Of course - even that inoffensive thing did, and they upped the oppositional struggle to dismount everything.

Let us not forget, however, that social-democracy since at least the 1920's is not socialist and does not aim to overthrow capitalism but to humanise and make capitalism work more humane and "better"; ergo we should have no sympathies for either the late 90's variant or, for that matter, for the long-gone corporatist type as common in the 60's. Both are undesirable, anti-communist and in the long run in opposition to proletarian power.


I hope the socialdemocratic party die in flames and thunder, they have held back the working class for 40 years now.

I think they have done that far longer. It's at least 80 years. :(


And this new guy, Löfvén, was in the news shortly after being elected where he clearly showed that he stands for... nothing. Its like seeing a dying whale.

The first decision made was basically to rescind Juholt-era opposition to that European Union agreement on the issue of those loans and budget policies and get in line with the government on the issue, so there clearly are certain forces at work there, and they clearly stand for something. He's loved by Svenskt Näringsliv, so you know he's a criminal. It's quite sickening.

[aty]

They've pretty much succeeded to pacify the miners today with the pay-offs in preparation for the eventual privatisation though, despite all the resistance to the bitter end.
No, I dont think they have done that. The last time they had a wildcat strike was in 2007.



How so, really? I mean, Jonas fucking Sjöstedt is the most right-wing leader in the party ever, and he's in a long line of gradually more right-oriented leaders that have characterised the party since its founding. Sure, there might be some socialists here and there in the party's rank and file, but the leadership is decidedly social-democratic and have been for a long while, and it is unlikely to get better. Vägval Vänster anyone? Their great poster-boy is that filth, Stig Henriksson, who has ruled Fagersta forever and boasts for his 53% electoral support, and like any good parasitic electoralist he has no principles whatsoever and has been as responsible for austerity measures as any central government decision, and Sjöstedt was very positively inclined towards this rightist-faction of the party, indeed reversing the previous leaderships reluctance to touch that right-wing scum at all. The moderates and other parties in Fagersta go so far as to say they have no problems with the party's local policies, and if that's the case - you've obviously fucked up badly.

I envision they might very well come to do better in elections. But this will only further spur on their rightward shift, as such is almost always wont to do. Jonas Sjöstedt was the most radical of those who ran for office. If you actually have listened to him you know that he have a marxist perspective and the only one who even talked about how we can get more socialism. The ones that are described as more left as Dinamarca dont even know what socialism is and did not even think Marx was important.
Sjöstedt have succeded in portraying himself in the media as more "rightist" but practically he was the most radical choice.

And at the congress the party took an even greater turn to the left. It shows that you have not any idea of where the party is today.



True, but it's a sad fact that once Palme was dead, the Employee Funds were too. They lingered, but the only aspect of them that was realised was a watered-down variant that was trying to cause no offence to the Employers Organisation. Of course - even that inoffensive thing did, and they upped the oppositional struggle to dismount everything.Yes the employee funds was betrayed by the socialdemocratic leadership.


Let us not forget, however, that social-democracy since at least the 1920's is not socialist and does not aim to overthrow capitalism but to humanise and make capitalism work more humane and "better"; ergo we should have no sympathies for either the late 90's variant or, for that matter, for the long-gone corporatist type as common in the 60's. Both are undesirable, anti-communist and in the long run in opposition to proletarian power.
I think they have done that far longer. It's at least 80 years. :(
I would say that the socialdemocracy as such was socialist until the 1980s in Sweden. They did held the working class back and it would have been interesting too see what would have happend in Sweden without the classpeace. With the failure of the employee funds I would say that the socialdemocracy lost all of their socialist aspirations.

[svenne]

There was of course a lot of lingering militancy, but in terms of it being practical political influence, it was in a steady decline. The 1968-early 70's period saw a resurgence of activity, it is true, but unfortunately the period became characterised by inane struggles (Almstriden anyone?) and the worsening corruption of LO made the unions start to act more and more in ways that sought to domesticate their membership. This would of course not happen overnight, but the strikes and opposition ended up amounting to little despite the hard work.

I don't mean that it would have happened in 1909, but that the split of 1909 was what came to define the traitorous nature of the social-democrats, what had at once been revolutionary and socialist became bourgeois and regressive, and this was a major problem that prevented any revolution from happening in the very turbulent years that followed.



I still think you underestimate the swedish working class in the 1970-1980s. The strikes didn't end in the early 1970s, the forestry workers strike played out in the first halft of 1975 (together with a couple of smaller of strikes, both ordinary and wildcat) - and can be seen as one of the last bigger involvements for the SAC, since the syndicalists organized around 25-30 % of the workers on strike.

My guess is that you can see both the employee funds, as well as LAS and MBL as an answer to the militancy of the workers. And the more strange struggles, as Almstriden, propably was disconnected, being fought by radical political groupings, from the wave of strikes.

By the way, i found an abstract about the book on wildcat strikes in Sweden: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5xS7cPG4QOEJ:www.polkagris.nu/wiki/Th%C3%B6rnqvist,_Christer:_Arbetarna_l%C3%A4mnar_f abriken+%22Arbetarna+l%C3%A4mnar+fabriken%22&hl=sv&gl=se&strip=1

There seems to be a problem with polkagris.nu at the moment, but Google Cache should fix it.




How so, really? I mean, Jonas fucking Sjöstedt is the most right-wing leader in the party ever, and he's in a long line of gradually more right-oriented leaders that have characterised the party since its founding. Sure, there might be some socialists here and there in the party's rank and file, but the leadership is decidedly social-democratic and have been for a long while, and it is unlikely to get better. Vägval Vänster anyone? Their great poster-boy is that filth, Stig Henriksson, who has ruled Fagersta forever and boasts for his 53% electoral support, and like any good parasitic electoralist he has no principles whatsoever and has been as responsible for austerity measures as any central government decision, and Sjöstedt was very positively inclined towards this rightist-faction of the party, indeed reversing the previous leaderships reluctance to touch that right-wing scum at all. The moderates and other parties in Fagersta go so far as to say they have no problems with the party's local policies, and if that's the case - you've obviously fucked up badly.

I envision they might very well come to do better in elections. But this will only further spur on their rightward shift, as such is almost always wont to do.

I wouldn't put him either to the right nor the left of the two last leaders. The party's been social democratic, more or less, since the start - so why not hope they're for once gonna be social democratic reformists, rather than calling themselves communist while selling out previously collectively owned property? It's not really anyone whom has any illusions of them being, well, revolutionary at all.

That said, there's a couple of good people both in the party and in the UV.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Jonas Sjöstedt was the most radical of those who ran for office. If you actually have listened to him you know that he have a marxist perspective and the only one who even talked about how we can get more socialism. The ones that are described as more left as Dinamarca dont even know what socialism is and did not even think Marx was important.
Sjöstedt have succeded in portraying himself in the media as more "rightist" but practically he was the most radical choice.

And at the congress the party took an even greater turn to the left. It shows that you have not any idea of where the party is today.


They were all reformists, liberals and socialdemocrats. Even a social-democrat can be acquainted with Marx. Have you read Sjöstedts blog at any point? It's full of liberal social democratic tripe. Sjöstedt doesn't know what socialism is, either. He even took offence against an old piece published by the party in 1979 that proclaimed that Swedish "democracy" was a sham and that "free media" was nonsensical and insisted that he was "modern" and that any such old documents were irrelevant.

He has had close ties to Socialist Party USA's New York Branch during his stay in the United States, which, from what I've heard from members of that party, is the most right-wing of that party, and the dominant social-democratic grouping of it.


I would say that the socialdemocracy as such was socialist until the 1980s in Sweden. They did held the working class back and it would have been interesting too see what would have happend in Sweden without the classpeace. With the failure of the employee funds I would say that the socialdemocracy lost all of their socialist aspirations.

That's ridiculous. Social democracy was not socialist whatever. The war coalition is as good a sign as any that they were establishment and anti-communists. And you cannot be anti-communist and socialist at the same time, unless you, like social-democrats, use "socialism" to mean "social democracy", by whose standards even post-war Britain and DPRK would classify by merits of having free healthcare and other nuggets promoting social peace. Why were they socialists? Even the Employee Funds were not a socialist measure. Though they were, relatively, progressive, capitalism with worker influence and public ownership is still capitalism and not socialist, just like a state-managed capitalism is still a form of capitalism.



No, I dont think they have done that. The last time they had a wildcat strike was in 2007.

They get that bonus scheme for all the profits in the company which is extremely generous nowadays, and they have not been opposing the assignment of one of the Wallenberg criminals to the management by the government as they should.


I still think you underestimate the swedish working class in the 1970-1980s. The strikes didn't end in the early 1970s, the forestry workers strike played out in the first halft of 1975 (together with a couple of smaller of strikes, both ordinary and wildcat) - and can be seen as one of the last bigger involvements for the SAC, since the syndicalists organized around 25-30 % of the workers on strike.

My guess is that you can see both the employee funds, as well as LAS and MBL as an answer to the militancy of the workers. And the more strange struggles, as Almstriden, propably was disconnected, being fought by radical political groupings, from the wave of strikes.


Well, I don't really mean that the number of strikes as such have decreased, but that they seem to become more and more limited in their result. During this period the strikes more and more came to involve limited scopes of maintaining salaries and wages in line with inflation, and political impact of them gradually declined. Perhaps it would be wrong to characterise this necessarily as a decline in militancy itself rather than a shift in the political ramification thereof, which mostly was the result of external political processes seeking exactly to limit and isolate those exercises in power; I think that this might also contribute to the weakening of the movement as a whole and a certain extent of the fracturing that followed once the free-fall of the 90's set in.



wouldn't put him either to the right nor the left of the two last leaders. The party's been social democratic, more or less, since the start - so why not hope they're for once gonna be social democratic reformists, rather than calling themselves communist while selling out previously collectively owned property? It's not really anyone whom has any illusions of them being, well, revolutionary at all.

That said, there's a couple of good people both in the party and in the UV.

aty seems to have illusions of them being revolutionary radicals or socialists and something. Otherwise I agree. UV is noticeably more radical than the mother organisation and so on, but still, it's always a sad thing when some revolutionaries disappear into the irredeemable reformist fortress of a party, probably to have their backs broken at the end by the churning bureaucratic corruption.

[aty]

They were all reformists, liberals and socialdemocrats. Even a social-democrat can be acquainted with Marx. Have you read Sjöstedts blog at any point? It's full of liberal social democratic tripe. Sjöstedt doesn't know what socialism is, either. He even took offence against an old piece published by the party in 1979 that proclaimed that Swedish "democracy" was a sham and that "free media" was nonsensical and insisted that he was "modern" and that any such old documents were irrelevant.
He has had close ties to Socialist Party USA's New York Branch during his stay in the United States, which, from what I've heard from members of that party, is the most right-wing of that party, and the dominant social-democratic grouping of it.
You have to learn to separate parliamentary political rhetoric between the actual political goals that Sjöstedt have. He have talked a lot of times how we can use todays existing common ownership of companies and start building a democratic economy. A socialist parliamentary party can not sit and talk about revolution day in and day out and this is what you ahve to understand. The Left Party shall be used as an instrument to more and more as long as it is possible put the means of productions in the workers common ownership. That is their mission in the parliament, that is socialism.



That's ridiculous. Social democracy was not socialist whatever. The war coalition is as good a sign as any that they were establishment and anti-communists. And you cannot be anti-communist and socialist at the same time, unless you, like social-democrats, use "socialism" to mean "social democracy", by whose standards even post-war Britain and DPRK would classify by merits of having free healthcare and other nuggets promoting social peace. Why were they socialists? Even the Employee Funds were not a socialist measure. Though they were, relatively, progressive, capitalism with worker influence and public ownership is still capitalism and not socialist, just like a state-managed capitalism is still a form of capitalism.
They were socialists as long as they aspired to make the means of production democratically controlled by the workers. They did this until the late 70s. Yes, in our opinion they may have held the working class back, but they were still socialist in every meaning of the word.



They get that bonus scheme for all the profits in the company which is extremely generous nowadays, and they have not been opposing the assignment of one of the Wallenberg criminals to the management by the government as they should. So? They have won victories? What makes you think they have been pacified? What have given you that impression? They had the biggest wildcat strike in Sweden in the last 20 years in 2007 and you call them pacified? Utter bullshit, you dont know anything of their situation.




aty seems to have illusions of them being revolutionary radicals or socialists and something. .
Stop reading in stuff that I have not said, please. I have no illusions about the Left Party but I see them as part of the struggle. It is very annoying debating with people that have to pretend to be so dogamtically radical all the time that they dont even want to listen.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

You have to learn to separate parliamentary political rhetoric between the actual political goals that Sjöstedt have. He have talked a lot of times how we can use todays existing common ownership of companies and start building a democratic economy. A socialist parliamentary party can not sit and talk about revolution day in and day out and this is what you ahve to understand. The Left Party shall be used as an instrument to more and more as long as it is possible put the means of productions in the workers common ownership. That is their mission in the parliament, that is socialism.

They shouldn't participate in the parliament at all or stand in elections whatsoever. You cannot overthrow capitalism by voting. Socialist and parliamentary does not go together.

[svenne]

Takayuki: I guess we're kinda on the same side of the issue, with some minor differences between us. The interesting part is that there was a lot more "revolutionary" (or rather, offensive) spirit when the swedish economy was faring well, rather than being in crisis. That can be a part of the solution as to why the labor militancy suddenly disappeared the second the country went into a crisis. I recommend the book, anyway.
The Left Party, however, is propably gonna keep being a reformist social democratic party. No idea trying to chance it, but rather try to make the best out of the situation. That propably involves not being a member of the party, or UV (if there's a better alternative), but instead... doing something else.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Takayuki: I guess we're kinda on the same side of the issue, with some minor differences between us. The interesting part is that there was a lot more "revolutionary" (or rather, offensive) spirit when the swedish economy was faring well, rather than being in crisis. That can be a part of the solution as to why the labor militancy suddenly disappeared the second the country went into a crisis. I recommend the book, anyway.
.

Is it to get on the internet somewhere? :cool:

[Tavarisch_Mike]

@ Takayuki

Ok my impression of him was more sort of that he wanted to stay at the curretn position, status quo. But from youre info he seems to be even more right-winged that i thought.

[GoddessCleoLover]

There are good tactical reasons for revolutionaries to participate in the electoral process. Both Marx and Lenin favored such tactics. I haven't read Lenin's Left-wing Communism is many years, but found his reasoning on the issue quite persuasive.

[svenne]

Is it to get on the internet somewhere? :cool:

Sadly not (at least if you're as cheap as me :lol:). But it seems it can be found at 30 libraries in Sweden: http://libris.kb.se/bib/7773554

[GoddessCleoLover]

Public libraries are beautiful things. Probably next on the neoliberal privatization list. Opposition to privatization ought to be a major basis for political organization in these non-revolutionary times.

[Fennec]

These neoliberal fanatics proposed raising retirement age to 75. Kid you not.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Public libraries are beautiful things. Probably next on the neoliberal privatization list.

Heh, speaking of which - there has been some libraries in certain counties that have been privatised (the council paying private for-profit entities to operate the libraries). Many other libraries are closed, and bulk purchases are these days not centralised, so costs for acquiring new books and replacing old stock lost or damaged with re-prints have increased and book inventories are rapidly dwindling. One can even see the empty spaces grow in all the library shelves in most cities.