File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-10-22.195, message 76


Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 14:43:29 +0200 (MET DST)
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: M-I: Cockroach Flash! Hundreds close down parliment!


Monday, October 21, 1996
Ume=E5, Sweden

In a growing atomsphere of rage and militancy the local parliment for one of
the biggest Communes (States) in the north of Sweden, hundreds of
demonstraters took over the parliment house while it was in session today
and closed it down!

As the representatives of the parliment from the Social Democracy to the
right wing bougeois parties in unison condemned this takeover as "anarchy"
and "unacceptable" hundreds of youth and to back them up many women cleaning
workers in a quiet and disiciplined rage with their placards demanding a
stop to the cutbacks in the public sector took over the parliment building
while in session forcing these grey bureaucrats to first whine, then scream
and threaten with the police for disturbing their meeting to make even more
cuts in the public sector!

To no avail the building just kept filling and filling with enraged and
determined demonstraters with one message. That's it ! No More cuts.

The perverbial drop that made the bucket run over after a number of years of
deep cuts into the public sector throwing hundreds and thousands of mainly
women out onto unemployment and social welfare was new plans by the Social
Democrats and their bougeois allies of a new round of cuts. These cuts were
a scheme to privatize the cleaning women's jobs, contracting them out to
small or big private cleaning firms, instead of having these women employed
by the Commune (state) as their employer as has been the norm in the whole
of Sweden.There is a long term tradition that the public sector (childcare,
healthcare and care of the old) be in the hands of the state and commune.
Thus putting the cleaning women into the hands of private companies which
would lessen their job security, pay and benefits was the igniting spark to
today's demonstration and occupation.

This linked to the massive cuts in Daycare cernters for children and
activity centers for the older youth, who are also the biggest sector of the
population worst hit by permanent unemployment, (35 percent of the youth
under 25 years old do not have or never have had a job) was the spark that
led to todays militant demonstration and occupation of the Commune parliment
while in session.

Naturally the above must be seen in the context of the growing desperation
of nearly a quarter of the adult population and a large majority of both
women, foreign nationals and youth have been hit hardest by unemployment and
the general rollback of the public sector. That is a million adults either
out on the dole or job retraining. But also that larger and larger sections
of the grass roots of the Social Democracy no longer believe that this party
who has represented them for years if not decades has deserted them for
their bougeois partners in the Center Party, the political demands of the
middle class, and a ticket into the common market and the monetary union.

This political split by a growing segment of the population from the Social
Democracy linked to the cuts and unemployment which appears to have created
a permanent class of poor people for the first time in Sweden since the
depression. It is not only a split from the Social Democracy but a deep hate
for any of the present political parties that is growing here. Thus the
demonstrations recently both locally and nationally have a very spontaneous
character and are usually started and led by
people with no *real* political experience other then being in a trade
union. Another interesting point is that it is women! who stand at the head
of these iniatives!

Already the politicians are doing a grandstand number about these new and
frightening events for them. First trying with whining, then threats of
police throwing out the demonstrators and in fact a complete attitude of
"how dare you come here and tell us our jobs", in other words out right
contempt for the rightful demands put forth by the demonstators. Finally
they were forced to ajourn the meeting because the demonstraters were
determined to have their voices head.

The left which is represented up here in the North of Sweden by the
Euro-Communists, the militant group and the Usec (fake Trotskyists) and a
growing
group of militant anarchists have in a sense been rather late in hooking up
to this growing radicalization. An unfortunately to not have a program or in
fact a strategy for fighting for the leadership of this growing
discontentment amongst the grass roots of the Social democracy. They are
either tailing this movement or at best putting forth a couple of demands
(mainly economic demands) in an attemp to outbid one another to the crowds.
In fact none of these groups are prepared to tell the truth about the
present crisis and especially its international consequences after the fall
of the Soviet Union.

These left groups are in a spiral of tailing this growing sentiment instead
of using this new radicalization in an attempt to to link these struggles to
what is going on in the rest of Europe and the neccessity of a new Communist
International that is prepared to go all the way. In fact many of these one
time potential revolutionaries are at best playing into the hands of the
traditionalists and the trade union bureaucracy who at best want to go back
to the "good old times" of the heydays of reformist Social Democratic
politics of the post war boom.

Not realizing that what is going on today is a new round of imperialist
rivilry and preparations for the next war which will decide who gets what in
a redivision of the world market. Today the attacks in most countries are
directed at the reforms of the post war boom-tomorrow it will be the war
drum beating of patriotism and new wars of conquests as the various
imperialist powers decide who is going to get what

The only way forward for poor and working class people is already NOW at the
beginning of this new cycle of wars and revolutions in the coming period
will be to forge a new revolutionary Communist International with sections
in every country in the world. Armed with a program of struggle and
International solidarity for poor and working class people the world over is
the only way forward. That only Communists that have a program and the ideas
of this kind of party are the Trotskyists. For all of us know that the
present crisis in the last decades was and is the crisis of leadership!

But the years of relative class peace and domination of the Social
Democratic and Stalinist traitors in the workers movement has led to a
crisis in the Trotskyist movement Internationally. Where many of the groups
and parties who started out on a revolutionary or leftist foundation have
moved far to the right and in fact have either incorporated a lot of Social
democratic or Stalinist political garbage in their politics along the way or
they have liquidated the programatic basis for a real revolutionary
Communist International along the way.

Only by returning to the fundemental documents and tactics of the
Bolsheviks,The documents of the first four congresses of the third
International, the history of the Left Opposition and the founding documents
of the Fourth International can we find a way forward to lead the coming
revolutionary uppsurges that will arise in the future.

Victory to the Youth and cleaning women and their rightful demands.

Lets turn Ume=E5 Commune into the second Paris Commune!

Towards the reforging of a Trotskyist Revolutionary International!

Bob Malecki
Robertsfors, Sweden

-------------------------------------------------------

http://www.kmf.org/malecki/

Read the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara,
Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball!

COCKROACH, a zine for poor and workingclass people
NOW ON LINE
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