Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 20:59:35 +0100
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: M-I: Re: M-G: Sweden--Moral and political dilemma!


Bob,

Your problem with the work practice thing is not straightforward.

While Dave and your ex-wife have valid points about this system of free
labour as a subsidy to the local authorities and business there are a
number of other aspects to it.

The most important question regarding whether you're scabbing or not seems
to me to be whether there's a concrete struggle under way.

You were very scathing about the political impact of individual heroism
when it came to the Turkish/Kurdish hunger strikers. And their struggle was
in full public view and made a big impact on people throughout the world.

Since there's no picket line drawn up against these work practice positions
in Sweden, either official or unofficial, and since no-one will see your
stand against it if you don't turn it into some kind of demonstration, I
think the practical impact of your stand in terms of heightening class
awareness among teachers will be very limited.

Also you would be strangling your own limited supply of money for your
agitation on the Net and elsewhere.

I would tend to advise you to go ahead and use the concrete contact you
would have with kids and teachers to spread information and a correct line
on the important environmental issues you name.

In particular I would try and get teachers to realize what a mistake it is
on their part *not* to have a picket line or a rank-and-file movement
against this work practice parasitism. When their awareness reaches the
level of a demand for action, then it will be time to talk about
barricades. For the time being, use every chance you get to try and bring
about this demand.

As for teachers in Sweden, they're waking up very slowly to the fact that
they've been trapped, skinned and put in a pot to cook. The wages you cite
for your ex-wife are higher than the norm by far. Teachers in junior
schools, particularly young, recently trained ones, get very poor pay
considering the length of their education and the huge study loans they
have to pay back. The aim of the government attacks on teachers (involving
tremendous reductions in conditions and relative salaries, and a transfer
of responsibility for Swedish education from central government to the
(broke) local authorities) has been to smash the teachers as a powerful
social and political base supporting the public sector and the old
Social-Democrat speech-day ideals of equal opportunity. This has been
achieved, but only at the cost of turning teachers against the politicians
wielding the knife, and before long, against the system (though we're not
there yet). International experience (let's take Argentina as an example)
shows how even a privileged profession in a prosperous country can in a few
decades be turned into a major source of revolutionary militancy by the
ravages of right-wing bourgeois and fascist policy serving the interests of
capital and imperialism.


Remember the example of Engels running that cotton mill to keep the party
funded and Marx alive to work on Capital and carry out his other political
commitments.


Cheers,

Hugh

PS You might be able to convince me I'm wrong on this, but I'll need to see
more concrete arguments than have been put forward so far!




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