Reviews and Views
Volume One
Nasser Paydar
On September 27 and 28 of this year (1995), a group of activists from the Swedish labour movement, consisting of the group called “Offensiv” (Offensive) and a number of other Swedish left-wing groups, held a founding congress to form a new political party. They called their newly established organization the “Socialist Justice Party.” The new party has not published any concrete and comprehensive statement about its specific ideological points of view and perceptions and has not proposed and approved any clear and eloquent political program at its founding congress. A short 12-point platform is the only document that has been approved by the participants in the congress as the main dough for the coalition or the general outlines of the manifesto declaring its existence. The content of these materials reflects, with very few changes, the same points and formulations that have been propagated in the Offensiv newspaper for the past few years. We will first quote the Persian translation of these materials and demands here, and then, taking into account the content of these points and what we know of the ideological foundations, political views, and general positions of the spectrum of forces constituting the party, we will proceed to a brief analysis of the views and policy of the new party in relation to the labour movement.
Political goals and demands of the Socialist Justice Party
1- Stop the privatization policy, prevent the reduction of social facilities or welfare, effectively and powerfully equip educational, health, medical and social services facilities
2- Increase child allowance from 640 to 900 crowns per month. Unemployment insurance, childcare insurance and sick leave insurance from 80% to 90%
3- Work planning for all, reduce daily working hours to 6 hours without reducing wages, set the minimum monthly wage at 13,000 crowns. Defending the right to permanent employment of employees and the so-called right to work law, preventing the conclusion of a new contract on daily working hours
4- Prohibiting the payment of large salaries to company managers and cancelling the oppressive contracts known as “parachute contracts” (commitment to pay compensation of several million to general managers if the company does not need them), exposing fraud and theft, the presence of workers’ representatives in the commune, provincial council and parliament with their monthly workers’ salaries
5- Democratic and militant reconstruction of labour unions, severing their dependence on the government and the Social Democratic Party
6- Opposition to the privatization of pension insurance and prevention of reduction of pension rights
7- Joint struggle of Swedes and immigrants for work and justice, their united fight against discrimination and racism, renewal of the right to asylum and strengthening of international solidarity
8- Attention to the situation of young people, prevention of reduction of educational facilities in schools, guarantee of desirable work or education for young people and payment of wages for their education days
9- Fight against the lack of rights for women, prevention of restriction of the public sector with the aim of preventing unemployment of women, equal rights for equal work for female and male employees. Full authority of women over their lives and bodies
10- Protection of the environment. Full veto right and supervision of labour organizations, groups active in environmental affairs and residents of each region in relation to all projects that threaten the health of the environment.
11- Dismantling the EU, the EMU, the dictatorship of the market, the struggle to create a socialist Europe within a socialist world.
12- In order to secure jobs, administer justice and improve the environment, banks and large companies should be publicly owned and controlled by workers, and society should be governed on the basis of democratic planning of the economy and public needs.
These are the content of all the demands that the Swedish Socialist Justice Party has declared its existence with the aim of fighting for their realization.
As far as we know, the tendencies and groups that make up the party, or at least the Offensive movement, have previously fought and worked in this direction. There is no doubt about the importance of the struggle for these demands, and the practical and political efforts made so far by the members or supporters of the new party to mobilize workers against some of the injustices are also commendable. We will talk a little more about this later and at the end of this article, but for now we will stop at examining the positions and views of the Socialist Justice Party. Let us see, firstly, what is the state of the Swedish labour movement? What are its current bottlenecks and dead ends, and what program, what type of organization, what policies, or what forms of political struggle does it need to overcome this situation? Secondly. What is the relationship between the necessary preconditions for leading the daily and future struggles of the working class on the one hand and what the Socialist Justice Party has put on its agenda?! Thirdly. And finally, what role can the new party play in relation to the Swedish labour movement by adopting these positions and meeting these demands and expectations, and what will be its political future?
The Swedish working class is not separated by any Chinese wall from other sections of the world working class. Reformism and illusions about bourgeois reforms, distrust of social revolution and lack of socialist horizon, weakness of political insight and low level of class consciousness or all the fundamental deficits and deficiencies that dominate the international labour movement, also affect the Swedish working class with all their intensity and depth. However, in analysing the historical, social and political backgrounds and factors of the lack of horizon that dominates the world labour movement, it is certainly not possible to ignore some of the specific characteristics or factors that constitute them in relation to the different sections of this movement. The working class of Iran, Sweden, France, England, etc., have much in common in their weakness of communist insight or their illusion of reformism, but the way in which this desire for reform matured, developed, and became consistent in the labour movement of all these countries did not necessarily originate from the same process. The historical, economic, or political factors that have driven the proletariat of Iran, Latin America, present-day Russia, or South Korea, and the like, into the abyss of illusions and the lack of a horizon, have similarities and differences with the contexts and factors that have afflicted the labour movement of Northern and Western Europe with the same fate. Differences that understanding them is important for the communist tendency of the working class and for getting the labour movement out of its current miserable situation.
As far as the Swedish working class is concerned, firstly. Reformism, distrust of social revolution and communism or the lack of a socialist horizon among the workers are very deep-rooted problems. Secondly. This distrust and lack of a horizon or reliance on reform is not the product of the failure of past revolutions within this society, political disillusionment resulting from the futility of its previous struggles, the suppression and disintegration of the Swedish labour movement, or the dominance of remnants of old religious and medieval culture, ideas and beliefs in this society. The Swedish working class, unlike some other sections of the international working class, has not been directly involved in any revolutionary movement against capitalist political regimes or even, before that, against feudal relations. The Swedish proletariat, as far as the history of political struggles within this society is concerned, has neither experienced the “Paris Commune”, nor has it survived the victory and defeat of the October Revolution, nor has it struggled with the rabid and naked dictatorships of capital. The achievements of the Swedish labour movement are sometimes much greater than what the working class of other societies has achieved through its struggles, but the Swedish workers have fought much less than the workers of the majority of other societies. The history of the Swedish labour movement is even more deeply intertwined than that of Western Europe with the history of “social democracy,” syndicalism, and parliamentarism. The Swedish working class has long since become acquainted with social democracy as the main vessel for its struggle with the bourgeoisie!!! It has challenged capitalism within the framework of social democratic horizons and expectations. It has stood up to the aggression of capitalism with the logic and crutch of social democracy. It has supported the bourgeoisie with the warnings, counsels, and cautions of social democracy and has refused to engage in any serious struggle against capitalism or to disrupt the political order of capital. Behind the high and thick fence of social democracy, the Swedish proletariat has found no opening for even a distant look at communism or at the bright horizon of socialism. What factors such as naked dictatorship, religion, liberalism or nationalism have brought upon the working class of Asian, African and Latin American countries, Social Democracy has brought upon the workers of Sweden the same. The working class of no country is more averse to revolution and to the radical and revolutionary movement than Sweden. If the proletariat of other societies has welcomed the revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie but has not gone beyond the limits of reformism in the process of action, the Swedish working class has always pursued reform in everything and its pursuit as an alternative to the revolutionary movement. Social Democracy has convinced the Swedish working class to accept the sanctity of the capitalist order and the necessity of its perpetuation. Through a comprehensive and organized education, it has taught the proletariat that the life and well-being of the workers depend on the ever-increasing profitability of capital.!!! It has instilled in the workers that the greater the profit of social capital, the greater the welfare of the workers!!! The greater the competitiveness of Swedish capital in the international market, the more prosperous the lives of the workers!!! The more solid the capitalist production and political order, the greater the security, comfort and welfare opportunities of the workers!!! Social Democracy has been less successful in deluding the working class into capitalism to such an extent.
Why? The answer requires further discussion that is beyond the scope of this article. Very briefly, it can be said that the Swedish labour movement has been a relatively special cluster and exploiter of the labour movement of other countries. The Swedish bourgeoisie, considering some factors, including its weak position in front of the Soviet camp on the one hand and the rich interests of Swedish capital in the world market and the exploitation of the Swedish proletariat on the other, has preferred to give some economic and political privileges to the working class over the rise of the class scale here. The balance of class forces between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in Swedish society absolutely cannot and should not be analysed in itself, or within the geographical limits of this country, but should be considered as a continuous and organic part of the global and international struggle between labour and capital. This rule naturally applies to the labour movement of any society, but the scope of this continuity can vary under the influence of certain factors. In the case of the Swedish labour movement, first. This continuity occupies an important place, and secondly, its effects have everywhere been misused by social democracy and used in favour of strengthening and developing union reformism or consolidating the intellectual foundations of the social-reformist tendency of the working class. In this regard, we will only mention a very brief explanation.
The year after the victory of the October Revolution in Russia, the Swedish bourgeoisie made a definite retreat from syndicalist reformism. Universal suffrage and parliamentary democracy were the products of this retreat. The Swedish proletariat owed the achievement of this simple and elementary demand more than anything else to the October Revolution and the great workers’ movement in the Soviet Union. Since then, the Swedish bourgeoisie has repeatedly made retreats from the workers’ movement. The acceptance of partial economic rights or political and civil liberties such as the proletariat of France, Germany or England had imposed on the bourgeoisie through their extensive and powerful struggles in the past. In most of these cases, the Swedish workers’ movement owed its victory over the bourgeoisie to certain political grounds and conditions which the storm of workers’ struggles in other countries had bestowed upon it. In all of these cases, or rather throughout this long historical process, Swedish Social Democracy has played the role of a vulture-like broker. It can be formulated in this way. On the one hand, the labour movement of Russia and Europe has opened expectations or demands and horizons before the Swedish working class, and on the other hand, it has frightened the bourgeoisie of this country about the danger of the development of the revolution and the rise of the labour movement in Sweden. In the meantime, Social Democracy has stood as an opportunist and scavenger, mediating. It has made the Swedish bourgeoisie look at the power of the struggle of the world proletariat and has advised it of the expediency of retreating from reform in favour of the working class. At the same time, it has convinced the Swedish proletariat of its readiness for reforms, a sense of common interests with the bourgeoisie, and confidence in the immortality and sanctity of capitalism. Social Democracy has also waged the most hostile and spiteful propaganda against communism and worker socialism among the workers. No religious, liberal, nationalist or fascist movement anywhere else in the world has succeeded as much as Social Democracy has in sowing and cultivating the seeds of hatred for communism in the thinking and understanding of the Swedish working class. The Social Democratic Party and the leaders of the Swedish Workers’ Union (LO) have pursued precisely the same policies that the American ruling party has been promoting and striving to achieve throughout the “Cold War”. In pursuing this goal, the Swedish Social Democracy has profited more than anything else from the consequences of the defeat of the October Revolution in Soviet society and the domination of Russian socialism in the camp or Maoism in other places, and has tried with unparalleled demagoguery to attribute all the sufferings and hardships of soviet camp or Pro China capitalism to communism, thereby instilling in the workers a fear of true workers’ socialism and the communism of the abolition of wage labour. The direct result of all these interactions in the history of the Swedish labour movement has been the widespread belief of the working class in social democracy, the increasing influence of reformism and syndicalism among the workers, and the transformation of these two into the only means of confrontation between the working class and the Swedish bourgeoisie. As a result of this process, the Swedish worker has come to believe that, firstly, within the framework of certain economic and social contracts, he can coexist with the bourgeoisie. Secondly, social democracy is an effective force for implementing this contract in his favour. In other words, accepting the supremacy of capital and loyalty to the basis of capitalist relations with a social democratic perspective has become the current of thought and social practice of the Swedish worker. The Social Democratic Party and the Swedish Workers’ Union have convinced the labour movement to accept such a situation over many years. The Swedish bourgeoisie, thanks to the anti-labour brokerage and reformism of social democracy, has always imposed the economic and political order of capital on the workers much more easily than the bourgeoisie of some other countries and has been more carefree than them in dealing with the problems arising from economic crises. At all critical moments, it has been Social Democracy that has saved capitalism from the onslaught of the working class. The wisdom and efficiency of Social Democracy in convincing the Swedish proletariat to bear the burden of the economic crises of capitalism are not sufficient for the parties of the Right. The Swedish bourgeoisie owes much more to the Social Democratic Party and the syndicalist tendency within the working class than to the parties of the Right in furthering the process of self-expansion of social capital in this country and the achievement of huge profits by the large industrial and financial monopolies.
In order to submit the Swedish proletariat to the slavery of capitalism, Social Democracy has not contented itself with merely subordinating this class to the scaffolding of syndicalism and union struggles but has adapted and reproduced the entire organization of work and existing civilization to the necessity of this subordination. It has created such a situation and conditions that no form of social protest of the working class is directed towards attacks against capital and capitalist relations. Solving every problem within the framework of the survival of capitalism and the rule of capital has been the basis of all the policies, programs, institution-building and civil formations of Social Democracy for the working class. With a simple review of these indications regarding the situation of the Swedish labour movement, we can conclude that the fundamental impasse besetting this movement is the illusion of Social Democracy, the belief in the common interests with the bourgeoisie, and the fall into the abyss of reformism. The calamities that have been inflicted upon him most by Social Democracy and have overwhelmed his class strength.
Any trend that wants to save the Swedish labour movement from this abyss must first of all moves under the banner of anti-wage labour socialism. It must open up a completely new horizon, fundamentally different from all the current false prospects before the Swedish proletariat. No significant changes can be made in the labour movement by modernizing Social Democracy or criticizing the right-wingers of the 1990s. This is also the fundamental Achilles’ heel of the “Socialist Justice Party”. The 12-article platform of the founding congress of the party does not contain anything new for the Swedish proletariat. Articles 1, 2, 4, and then 6 to 10 of this resolution are simply and exclusively a kind of confrontation with the attacks of recent years by the bourgeoisie and the usual right-wingers of Social Democracy. The third paragraph is dedicated to a six-hour workday and setting a minimum wage commensurate with the basic needs of the population, the fifth paragraph is dedicated to the democratization of unions, and the twelfth paragraph is dedicated to the necessity of labour control over banks and large industrial enterprises with the aim of providing work, implementing justice, and improving the environment. The eleventh paragraph talks about opposing the European Union project, the European Monetary Union, and the fight against the dictatorship of the market. Finally, the construction of a democratic and socialist Europe in the world of socialism is mentioned as an alternative to such a union. Regarding the Justice Party’s version of socialism, no clear explanation has been given in the party’s documents, neither after its formation nor before, but unfortunately everything indicates that the socialism claimed by the party’s founders is, in general, a kind of democratic state capitalism!! The political background of the party’s formed tendencies is not accompanied by any clear socialist criticism of the Soviet camp or other forms of bourgeois socialism. Badmouthing Stalin and democratic criticism of the former camp are the only things that weigh down the burden of their border and demarcation with Russian socialism. The traces of the Justice Party’s bourgeois version of socialism can be clearly seen in its 12-point platform. The fight against the dictatorship of the market, workers’ control over banks and large industries with the aim of improving working conditions and improving the environment are formulated in a way synonymous with socialism!!! A topic that has been formulated and propagated in exactly the same way by the Offensive movement in the past.
Thus, the Socialist Justice Party fundamentally lacks a clear workers’ and Marxist version of socialism. The party is unable to break out of the iron fence of reformism and in all its demands it does not pursue anything other than limited reforms in favour of the working class. The Socialist Justice Party, like all the “left” currents! Or in fact, the leftist currents existing at the international level, has not taken into account one point at all. That without opening a clear socialist horizon and the abolition of wage labour in front of the labour movement, it is not possible to impose even the reformist demands of this movement on the bourgeoisie. The problem of the Swedish working class was not and is not the absolute lack of the 12-point platform of the Justice Party. The Swedish proletariat needs an organization that, firstly, moves under the banner of socialism abolishing wage labour, not democratic state capitalism, and secondly. This socialism should be presented to him not in the form of school formulations and as an idea for the future, but as a type of civilization and social life for today itself and as a practical and urgent way out of the sufferings and hardships of the capitalist system. Thirdly, no matter how much the Soviet and national container of this struggle may be, an organization that is not like this, a party organization and a silent organization headed by the workers, which determines the manipulation and adjustment of exploitation or the hardships of the capitalist system as its entire top and bottom expectations, will absolutely not be able to politically mobilize the proletariat in the arena of class struggle against capital. The Swedish working class has a ready and ready container for presenting its reformist demands. A container that has been the bedrock of its existence for more than half a century and from within it has achieved some reforms. It is an ignorant notion to think that only by criticizing the right-wing policies of the Social Democratic Party of the 1990s can workers be turned away from the party and taken to another path. This can only be done by a true communist tendency and the abolition of wage labour.
A tendency that opens up a completely new world, fundamentally different and opposed to the capitalist world, to the eyes of the working class, shows the workers a completely new type of civilization and living conditions, and makes a new form of general and soviet organization the vessel for their struggle. These components have long since become the basic preconditions for great and sustained labour uprisings in every corner of the world, including in Sweden. The international left in general, and the Swedish Socialist Justice Party in particular, must accept the fact that even the success of the labour movement in imposing its demands on capital depends on the opening up of such a horizon and such organization. The Justice Party must also accept another very bitter reality. That the Swedish working class, under the pressure of old social democratic, syndicalist, and reformist ideology and beliefs, has fallen into such a situation that it needs a shake-up of class praxis, even more than workers in some other countries, to escape the abyss of reformism. The Swedish working class today, like all other sections of the international working class, needs awareness and a deep intellectual and practical belief in the possibility of urgently establishing a society in which: the relationship of buying and selling labour power is abolished. Work becomes voluntary. All individuals have direct and equal involvement in defining work, determining the type of work, and the manner of distributing the product of labour. The state and any institution above the population is abolished and replaced by a council organization with direct and equal participation of individual citizens. Trade, the market, the “law of value,” and the commodity economy are completely abolished. All living and social facilities are distributed equally among all individual citizens. Private property, classes, all forms of exploitation, oppression, and injustice, and any division of labour based on the law of value or capitalist relations are completely abolished. Humans should be in control of the product of their labour, and production or any kind of human work and activity should be organized in order to meet the needs of livelihood, welfare, education, health, recreation, and the free development of citizens. Any kind of separation between production and planning, policymaking and implementation, intellectual and physical work should be ended. Humans should work while they make policies. They should produce while they plan production. The type of work should not create any advantage or any material or spiritual disadvantage for the rich. The possibilities of achieving any level of knowledge should be made equally available to all citizens. By organizing production based on real needs of livelihood and welfare, the human environment should be cleansed of any kind of pollution and disease-causing factors. Complete equality between men and women should be achieved and any kind of sexual, racial, national, ethnic, etc. discrimination should be ended. All matters of raising and caring for children should be the responsibility of society, and the family based on private property should be replaced by a free, equal relationship filled with deep human interests between the parties.
The Swedish working class must make the establishment of such a society a part of its thought, mind and struggle, and even impress its current and daily demands on the brains of its class enemy based on the certainty of the practical possibility of establishing such a civilization and life. By beating the drum of the six-hour workday or democratizing the unions and establishing workers’ control over a few banks and factories, and the like, no horizon different from the living and present horizon of social democracy opens up before the workers. If the Swedish working class is to think only of life under the roof of capitalism, social democracy has given it the right to live and build it with its ups and downs much more successfully than the Socialist Justice Party.
A lesson for the founders of the Justice Party is the fate of their past and present counterparts in this same society. HÖGLUND and the entire trend of criticism of the Soviet camp in the 1930s, despite all their influence on the Swedish left, were unable to influence the Swedish labour movement due to their lack of a radical socialist critique of the camp, the lack of a clear socialist horizon, and the hanging of the party over the heads of the workers. Since then, numerous currents have split from the Social Democratic Party at different intervals, just like the Socialist Justice Party, with criticism of social democracy, but only to the same extent. None of these have become an effective social force and have not freed the Swedish proletariat from the abyss of reformist illusions and belief in social democracy. The Swedish labour movement is in dire need of an all-round shake-up of reformism and social democracy. For this to happen, a powerful socialist uprising led by the communist approach of abolishing wage labour is necessary. We in no way diminish the importance of the current economic and welfare demands of the labour movement, but these demands can both be a link in the proletariat’s nationwide campaign against the basis of wage labour and can also make any improvement in the lives of workers dependent on the survival of capitalism. Issues such as: equal life and completely equal income for all citizens of society, free housing at no cost with the same standard and completely equal welfare facilities for all citizens, free water, electricity, buses and transportation for all, free education and training up to the end of university for all residents, absolutely free healthcare and medicine and medical check-ups for all, free kindergartens and preschools for all children, and the like are all demands of the first type, but democratizing unions and nationalizing institutions and similar demands have no other meaning than to distance the working masses from the real anti-capitalist struggle. Their difference is that the former lead the workers from today on in a directional struggle towards socialism, a struggle which, if completed with a view to the bright socialist horizon and the organization of an anti-wage labour council, is capable of leading the proletariat to a comprehensive break with the bourgeoisie and of being a vessel for the practice of its socialist socialization in the future. The slogans of the latter, on the contrary, dissolve the labour movement more and more in reformism and the scaffolding of the capitalist order.
Based on what we have said, the Socialist Justice Party is not, in our opinion, an alternative to the Swedish labour movement in the face of social democracy or tendencies such as the “Left Party” and does not offer any different path to the working class, but this party has some differences from the aforementioned tendencies. First of all, the majority of its members and supporters are made up of the poorest workers. The unemployed, single women with children and low incomes, young people belonging to the most deprived strata of the working class, poor pensioners and the like are the main body of this movement. Perhaps for this reason, Offensive has taken some, albeit ineffective, steps in terms of practical presence in protesting against the attacks of capitalism in recent years on the achievements of the Swedish labour movement.
October 1995