These days, the market of electoral scenarios is hot in the highest peaks of democracy and social democracy in the world and remarkable for those who are lovesick and crazy about democracy that more than 20% of the country’s population, most of the disaffected and disobedient working masses, who have tied all their hopes to get rid of the existing situation to the rule of an officially racist and fascist party.!! A party that, based on rumors and evidence, its policy makers and members do not hesitate to give the official Nazi salute and pay respect to “Hitler”. The Swedish Statistics Center, which is the most reliable internal statistics institution, has announced in a report that 31% of the total members of the Swedish National Union of Workers (LO) vote for the Social Democratic Party and 41% for the “Sweden Democrats” party. Leif Temstelt, a longtime Social Democratic politician who recently resigned from his party and joined the racist-fascist Sweden Democrats (SD) says that “ Currently, the Swedish Workers’ Party is the same Democrats, in the past, the social democracy represented the working masses and weak people, but today it is the Swedish Democrats who protect the interests of the country’s working class.” !! Until just 12 years ago, few workers in Sweden could have imagined that one day they would vote on what they call a “ballot”!! write the name of “Sweden Democrats”, and hatred, blame and disgust is the only feeling or reaction that it gave to this congregation. The aforementioned party entered the bourgeois parliament for the first time in 2010 and began to flaunt. But in which process ? Based on which long historical events ? From which background, the working masses in Sweden got ready to welcome fascism ? Why did it get caught in such a situation ? The answer is quite important, it is a learning chapter from the history of human life. Here, it’s not the place to explain it, but even a few sentences in this regard, for the working masses who seek awareness, is a help to analyze the root of miseries. The Swedish labor movement does not have a brilliant history. The workers of this region (Sweden), despite the long past of capitalist development, enduring the severe pressure of exploitation and all the miseries resulting from wage slavery, entered the class campaign much later than the fellow masses of the French, English, Austrian, Dutch, and Italian. In 1848, when French workers, holding the “Communist Manifesto” in their hands, stormed parliament and set a two-hour deadline for the unconditional surrender of the bourgeoisie to the labor movement, in meanwhile in Sweden it was the discreet whisper of a few workers in a secret circle that meant ” there is no shame in being a socialist.” !! The main problem was not the delay, but a bigger and more terrible disaster. Until the working class of Sweden wanted to start protesting, its entire platforms and tribunes, viewpoint and intellectual architecture of consciousness, everything was at the disposal of the Liberal Bourgeoisie and Social Democracy, and for many years, it considered following one of these two, and until finally it started looking for the second one. Analyzing the other side of the story is also important. Sweden’s social democracy was the most auspicious and efficient among its international counterparts, and only riding on the labor movement caught in illusion, and that’s why it pushed forward with success. But to satisfy the bourgeoisie by convincing the bourgeoisie to accept the cost of the burial of the anti-capitalist campaign of the working class, it had amazing miraculous power. Of course, the latter (social democracy) did not need many miracles at all. Because the rich share of Swedish capital in the exploitation of the international working class left the hands of the Swedish bourgeoisie free to pay the costs. All of this went hand in hand and created an ascension platform for the Swedish Social Democratic Party to climb up and start preaching about amicable compromise. It addressed to the bourgeoisie : You want to escape from a danger like the Paris Commune?, if don’t let a deluge like the uprising of June revolution in 1848 drown you, and a storm, such as storm of the Russian revolution do not take you away and “ghost” of communism does not make the system panic, and will not let the International siren shake your existence ?!! The talk of eliminating these dangers was great news for the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie immediately paid the price, and this reception gave the social democracy enough courage to turn to the workers and say : The revolution has no end, there is no need to be against the wage labor system. Turn to parliamentarism, make the Social Democratic Party the leader of the parliament and take the path of legal struggle. Ascending the Social Democratic party to power means your control over the machine of governance, and change the rules in your favor by getting behind the wheel of this machine. Build unions and negotiate with capitalists there, and resolve all disputes by consensus, and with more prosperity, all problems will be solved in this way. Finally, the Swedish labor movement happily agreed, and thus, it buried the anti-capitalist campaign with complete satisfaction in the order of capitalism and in return, it got the license for union and legal struggles. By auctioning the issue of class struggle, the labor movement arranged its daily livelihood to some extent, and in this way, the pressure of poverty and deadly hunger was decreased. It achieved a little prosperity and ensured its livelihood during unemployment, illness and retirement to some extent, and it enjoyed significant basic facilities in the field of health and medicine, treatment and care for the elderly, children’s education until the age of 16 became compulsory and free, and the cost of kindergartens became more affordable and working conditions a little better than before and more advanced than in many other countries. The Swedish working class by leaving and burying the campaign against wage labor , and agreeing to remain being workers, accepting and seeing capitalism eternal, completely leaving the trench of the class struggle, it caused to receive the mentioned above subsistence, like welfare and social facilities for several years. The Swedish working class, by burying the campaign of anti wage labor and agreeing to always be remaining workers, seeing capitalism eternal, completely leaving the trench of class struggle, and received the above subsistence, welfare and social facilities for several years. In this way, these workers in comparison with the other fellow workers in other countries, were considering themselves as the winner of this campaign.!! In the meantime, what the working masses of Sweden absolutely did not see due to their loss of consciousness, and obeying to the engineering of thoughts by the bourgeoisie. What social democracy did not recognize with its knowledge and consciousness, which arose from the capitalist mode of production too,iIt was that the capitalist mode of production is not able to pay these costs by its existence. Capital is the relation of surplus value production, and unrestrained and excessive accumulation of capital. What the workers produce must become capital and its growing accumulation. Capital, if not do that, slows down from growth, loses the ability to concentrate and accumulate and stops competing, it falls from self-improvement, which is the philosophy of existence of capital, and in this way, it becomes ruined. For all these reasons, it has no choice but to produce for profit and excessive accumulation. But the more fundamental problem of capital is right here, in that the purpose of production is only the accumulation of capital. The result of the work of the producers, not for a better livelihood, welfare and health, housing and treatment, more humane working conditions, less working hours and more modern education, no, none of these, rather, is the explosive and extreme increase of capital and accumulation. Capitalist production is like this in the foundation of its existence, and this foundation is full of contradictions and shaky. The galactic items of capital that workers produce and it accumulates, demands profit, the profit that must be produced by the same workers who created capital. The earthly meaning of the process is that the more the working masses produce capital, the more surplus value must be produced for survival, profitability and continuous self-improvement of capital. Capital uses all the achievements of human knowledge to increase labor productivity, so that the workers can produce more galactic profits and capital with every moment of their work. The process of producing surplus value is constantly accelerating, but the process of capital accumulation is advancing at a faster pace, and the result is clear. The rate of accumulation exceeds the rate of production of surplus value. Surplus values, despite the continuous explosive increase, are not able to provide the profit rate that guarantees the survival of reproduction and the dynamic of capital appreciation, this process is disrupted, and the crisis wraps the essence of the existence of capital. Such is the nature of capital, it is prone to crisis. Crises, in order to postpone, delay, and refine themselves, for each of these need that capital ruthless and brutal attack on livelihood, working conditions, housing, medicine and treatment, education and health, and everything of the working masses. Capital does not carry out this terrible invasion only at the height of the crisis, but always does so, because it always seeks to produce more astronomical profits, make the capital more gigantic and challenge the process of the interest rate drop. Capitalism of this nature, independent of being European and American or Asian and African, is not even able to bear the cost of syndicalist appeasement and social democratic compromises. If the bourgeoisie in a country or several countries accepts such costs, first of all, it sees the danger of the labor movement as urgent and serious, and secondly, it has found its share of the result of the exploitation of the world’s workers sufficient to temporarily bear these costs. The meaning of the last sentence is that the total capital of a country based on the global capitalist division of labor is such that it can compensate for what it lost for improving workers livelihood by intensifying the pressure of exploiting the workers of other countries. Capitalism as a mode of production, as global capital, does not accept the cost of syndicalist and social democratic compromises without the consensus of the above mentioned components. In places where the bourgeoisie is willing to accept the cost under the pressure of a certain danger and also by benefiting from a large share of international surplus values, but as soon as it sees the first signs of crisis, it cancels all expenses and withdrawals and compromises. An incident that happened in Sweden at the end of the eighties of the last century.
Within a short period of time, one out of every three schools was permanently closed. 20% of teachers were fired, the number of fired nurses exceeded 60 thousand and 30% of hospital beds decreased, and many clinics, hospitals and medical centers were closed and their patients were advised to wait in long queues in other centers. 200 thousand industrial workers lost their jobs and joined the ranks of the unemployed, and half of the care centers for the elderly were closed. The number of students in each classroom increased from 20 to 35, and the Swedish teachers, who did not see themselves able to manage these types of classes, became desperate to continue the work, and in this way, the educational environment witnessed fights between the teacher and student. Schools that had the name of the best schools in Europe witnessed the use of drugs among students. The queues at the hospitals were getting longer every day and the number of patients who were deprived of timely treatment was increasing. The number of dead also increased. Unemployment insurance, which was once 100%, was reduced to 80% and then 65%, and because of this tragedy, the health insurance and all other compensations were affected too. The meaning of employment also underwent a transformation !! ,before, every worker worked and received wages from the employer. With the occurrence of the above slaughter, the great army of the unemployed were given to the capitalists based on the plans, projects and planning of the capital government. With the slaughter of the rate of social welfare, the great army of the unemployed were given to the capitalists based on the plans, projects and planning of the capital state, to produce capital full time in the service of capitalists and deliver profits without receiving any salary. The cost of living for all these so-called “unemployed” workers !! who were producing profit and capital, it was put in charge of other workers. A huge storm swept across Sweden, and the wave of layoffs, closing of schools and hospitals or any other welfare center was shocking, hatred erupted, whispers were shouted and screams of anger spreaded to the streets. The slaughtering storm of possibilities brought a storm of protests everywhere, in all cities and provinces. For the first time, several hundred thousand workers marched from the North Pole to the Baltic Sea and reached the parliament to ask for a miracle from this parliament, but the parliament was the institution of capital power, there, the social democratic, conservative, liberal and moderate parties are working hand in hand to butcher the livelihood of the working masses and by that make it as compromise to challenge the capitalist crisis. Workers took refuge to “own party”!! the Social Democratic one, but social democracy was the capitalist state itself, and it participated in the butchering of the working conditions and livelihood of the workers. After that, they turned to trade unions, but the unions were created to be a burial ground for the anti-capitalist class struggle, and do what social democracy wants. If we can
name the workers’ protest campaigns at that time as the labor movement, that movement found itself oppressed, humiliated and downtrodden from all sides. It wanted to move and get up, but it had no strength, its strength and decisive power could only be manifested in an organized council movement against wage slavery, and since decades ago before that, it had traded that movement with syndicalism at the lowest possible price. Until that movement wanted to rise up, it found itself stuck on the ground and no longer saw a sign of strength in its opposition to capital and capitalism, because the sinister cancer of syndicalism and the plague of social democracy had worn out its movement. That’s why, now the ability of anti-capitalism has been removed from its existence and relying on the power of class struggle has been erased from its memory, and it has been crucified in the legality, order and civility of capitalism. Because the Swedish labor movement has collapsed in the cycle of capital’s value addition and order of capitalism and has become a distorted phenomenon in all respects. After months of struggling, finally, like corpses that have been exhumed by the pressure of an earthquake Confused, it started protesting, and it named it “Dala Movement” ! 500 workers on behalf of tens of thousands of workers set up a congress, but what did they do?! Only the nauseating delusions of social democracy delivered each other. The result of holding the congress was that they turned to the parliament and parliamentarism !! create a new party and enter the parliament !! “ mouse was born from the mountain “ also unintelligent, they searched, but the more they searched, the less they found. No one chopped onions for them, after a year they broke up and disappeared forever. The labor movement was unable to play any real role, everything it did, lacked any class content against wage labor. The movement, that it had learned from social democracy and syndicalism from a long time ago until that day, was now not useful for improving livelihood and working conditions, but had become a calamity. The disaster would be much wider and fiercer when this movement distorted and froze in those teachings, the brainwashing and thought engineering by capital, its consciousness of understanding reality was taken away and had lost the ability to criticize its astray, lost and misguided. One situation had given way to another one, the entire capitalism of several countries in Northern and Western Europe that at one time, out of fear of the Communards bayonet, and the labor movement of the mid-nineteenth century in Europe, the specter of communism and the roaring anti-capitalist cry of the workers of the world on one hand, and their astonishing share of the surplus values resulting from the exploitation of the international proletariat, which made them willing to take a few small steps back in front of the working class of their country on the other hand, now they could not bear the cost of retreats. Capital and capitalism as a nationwide, global and dominant mode of production in every oasis and village of the world that in meanwhile was struggling with the crashing waves of the crisis, the world was saturated with accumulated capital, and the average labor productivity in the world was rising to higher peaks and the average organic composition of global capital had reached the peak of ascension in an amazing way. The average global value added rate was over 1000% , but it did not reach the average rate of investings and accumulations. New situation had been established, and even the entire capitalism of several Scandinavian and Western European countries had no choice but to launch attack after attack to control the crisis, and close schools and hospitals and turn their places into profitable real estates. The search team sets up to find every care center for the elderly, disabled and injured and evict them all, raise the retirement age and cancel free meals for high school students, dismiss the workers in groups from the work centers and suspending the right to union strike, abolishing union contracts and turn the unemployed into labor without any wages who work for the capitalists. Despite the long list of acts of bourgeois barbarism, for a long time, the working masses, immersed in their illusions, thought that the life of raids were short, but the bourgeoisie, with material violence, made the working masses understand that the ruling was issued by capital, referring to history and the contradictions of its irreconcilable nature. What has started will continue every day more rebellious and stormy than the day before, and this is the need for the survival of capitalism, and the fate of the working humanity convinced to remain like workers and the perpetuation of wage slavery will certainly be like this. The Swedish working class struggled again and resorted to social democracy and unions, but all of them, both social democracy and unions, mocked the workers and both institutions declared that what the working class had previously received was only a thing of the past. A period when the whole of capital felt obliged to pay for the destruction of the class struggle and the burial of the movement against wage labor. Capital has passed that period and the rate of capital accumulation continuously exceeds the rate of surplus values. The world is saturated with capital and needs more
profit, and there is no alternative but butchering and reducing the level of livelihood, housing and environmental costs, health and treatment and education of the working masses of the world, a condition that has become one of the inevitable conditions for the survival of capitalism and an integral part of the process of capital accumulation. Social democracy and right-wing union reformism tried to explain to the workers that a return to the previous period was impossible, and you should get used to hunger and poverty, reduction of medical and treatment facilities too. Both capitalist institutions (unions and social democracy), like the entire capitalist class, were sure that the Swedish worker, like the other European worker , had nothing to say. They knew very well that much worse than any other cancer, they had infected and paralyzed the class movement of workers against wage labor. Social democracy and right-wing reformism knew that they had mutilated and chained the might of spontaneous anti-capitalism of the working class, which is manifested in consciousness and thought and morality, will and decision, solutions and approach of criticism of workers. They were sure that for the time being and for an unknown period of time, the anti-capitalist trend in the labor movement had turned off. Social democracy and right-wing union reformism knew this and therefore did not consider it necessary any cost to turn it off. The Swedish labor movement, which throughout the 20th century, with its syndicalist tendency and social-democratic capitalistic consciousness, took the price of its labor force reproduction from the bourgeoisie. A movement that has lost its radical anti-capitalist tendency, has understood that new conditions have replaced the previous one. Capitalism is invading from all sides, union and social democratic bargaining has been shut down, and the working masses have forgotten protest and strike and are used to every humiliation and every day is worse than the previous one. In such a situation, the monster of fascism attracted everyone’s attention, the fascist propaganda of all right-wing parties, which considered the main cause of the current situation in Sweden as a result of refugees and the presence of workers and toilers from other countries who were forced to take refuge in Sweden because of starvation, war-mongering and torture. !! Fascist and anti-refugee slogans that focus on ridding Sweden of refugees, because it considers refugees to be criminals and the source of corruption !! A fascism that strongly insists that women should only be engaged in raising children at home and the children should be raised and educated at home instead of kindergartens, the reproduction of the labor-force for the process of capital production and accumulation should be provided without any cost for capitalists, it does not tolerate homosexuality, stopping all financial aid to refugees and displaced people, Sweden belongs only to Swedes, and the rest should be thrown out of Sweden, if the democratic charter of patriotism getting implemented, Sweden will return to its glory days. !!!
The Swedish working class, confused by reformism, emptied of any anti-capitalist tendencies, disillusioned with social democracy and rejected from unionism and bargaining solutions, emptied of intelligence, knowledge and dynamic anti-capitalist thought. And in this way, the working masses leaned towards the right-wing fascist and racist parties that claim to solve Sweden’s economic and political problems. !! That’s why they began to react positively to these right-wing parties, and in favor of these right-wing parties, they voted for the Sweden Democrats ( Racist – Fascism ) instead of the Social Democratic Party. According to the resigned social democrat(Leif Timsteldt), if before social democracy was the savior of the oppressed, Sweden´s democrats are their saviors.!!!
At the beginning of the discussion, we said that this is not the place to analyze the process of the fall of the Swedish labor movement to the current situation.
We hope that the above lines were an answer to the need to learn from the fate of the Scandinavian working class, which is the fate of the European and American labor movement and a significant part of the world. This lesson is clear, transparent and without any interpretation. The workers of Western and Northern Europe said goodbye to the class struggle against capitalism in certain historical conditions that were mentioned, and thus they turned towards social democracy and right-wing union reformism and the result is the situation that we see now and it does not need to be described.
Was it destined to happen like this? History is not subject to any destiny, but the history of class struggle. This is the fate of a worker who has turned away from the class struggle. The last question is, what should the working masses of Sweden, Scandinavia and Europe do, at the moment, on the verge of an even greater outbreak of the capitalist crisis, which is becoming more widespread every day? The answer is clearer than ever, and that is that we must return to the front of the fight against wage labor. The conditions are more favorable than ever. Because the wave of dissatisfaction and anger, rage and rebellion of the working masses in all European countries is raging everywhere. Capitalism, which especially during the last four decades, has attacked the working class of the European continent and other parts of the world by cutting the level of livelihood and basic necessities of life, education and treatment and the basic welfare facilities in order to make a compromise for the challenge of the crisis, but now it doesn’t see much to go on. Enough schools and hospitals have been closed, unemployment in high rate has been created in return and made the unemployeds into full-time workers but without any wages for the capitalists, raised the retirement age and unemployment, sickness and disability compensation has been greatly reduced, and the cost of reproducing labor-force has been pushed into the bottom. The bourgeoisie has applied all these barbarities and there is not an attack that it did not organize and carry out. The only arrow left in the quiver of the bourgeoisie is the explosive increase in prices, and with this action, the price of necessary-labor will go down and the increase of surplus-labor will raise the profit of the capitalist more and more. This is the situation, and the workers of Europe must understand this, and if they do, then will feel ashamed of turning to fascism and right-wing parties. Europe must and definitely can witness the raging war of the entire European workers against the entire bourgeoisie and also the entire system of wage slavery. The Swedish worker must extend a hand of unity to the other workers of the European continent and the whole world. It is time to establish a strong council movement, independent of any country affiliation, a nationwide anti-capitalist council movement with the International red flag against wage labour. A movement whose manifesto is the complete dominance of workers over the destiny of their work, production and life. In the first step, the workers demand that food and clothing, housing and medicine and treatment, health and education at all levels, from kindergarten to the last university degrees, water and electricity and home appliances, maintenance of the elderly and disabled, and all the necessities of human life from the constraint of money-commodity trade of capitalism. A movement that calls for the complete dissolution of any type of state and institution which dominates the existence of humans. A movement that is the progressive in playing the role of council, aware and creative, equal and awakened of all members of the working masses in work planning, production and social life. This movement needs to emerge more than ever these days, if it does not emerge, capitalism will destroy the world. A movement that, if it raises its flag in Europe, will become international very quickly. Which worker on earth is not like an exploding bomb from the pressure of exploitation, slavery and the crime of capitalism. The way must be taken, that’s why we, the workers, as the creators of all wealths and powers of this world, show our rightful class-disgust towards all rotten leaders of unions and political parties, those left and right-wing partners of the bourgeoisie who played a role in derailing us from any anti-capitalist battle. The foundation stone of the council anti-capitalist movement must be laid and established. Let´s do so ! Let’s raise a flag that our class war will be the proof of the real war for human liberation.
The activists of the movement to abolish wage labor
August 2022
