Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 01:10:20 +0200 From: Jorn Andersen <jorn.andersen-AT-vip.cybercity.dk> Subject: Re: "Anti-imperialism" Swedish imperialist style At 07:34 14-10-96 -0400, Louis N Proyect wrote: >On Sun, 13 Oct 1996, Doug Henwood wrote: > >> strains. There *is* some human agency involved. And two, Swedish SD began >> not during the Golden Age, but in the depressed 1920s and 1930s, when the >> country was one of the poorer ones in Europe. That points to a broader > >Louis: Actually, a General Strike in 1931 accounts for the birth of SD >governments in Sweden. The film "Adalen '31" depicts these events. For >that matter, the New Deal only came into existence because a section of >the US bourgeoisie was afraid of revolution. The relationship between >social democratic reforms and socialist revolution is actually >dialectically linked, as any non-dogmatic Marxist could tell you in an >instant. Jorn: *Actually* the first Social Democrat as swedish prime minister was in 1920 (Hjalmar Branting). The social democrats had already in participated in a coalition government with Folkpartiet in 1917 (in order to "stabilize the situation" in this year of revolution - with the social democrats in government the left was isolated and strikes faded out). As Germany was to show much more bloodily one year later the social democrats preferred co-operation with the ruling class for advancing workers' struggles. During much of the 20's Sweden was "run" by a Soc-Dem government. But true: >From 1932 this was (almost) uninterrupted up to 1976. But I don't think the Adalen massacre in 1931 was part of a general strike, was it? Please, correct me, if I'm wrong. As for Sweden being "one of the poorer countries", I think, this must be a rather relative statement. At least during the last half of the 30's Sweden experienced a substantial economic boom which was part of the *economonic* background for the welfare state. Jorn -- Jorn Andersen Internationale Socialister Copenhagen, Denmark IS-WWW: http://www2.dk-online.dk/users/is-dk/
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005