File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1996/96-10-19.135, message 6


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/



   

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