File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9709, message 107


Date: Sun, 7 Sep 1997 06:12:45 -0400
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: M-I: Radiotime Sweden


The following is a final draft report for Straight Facts Radio on Sweden 
taped on September 6 1997...

Good Evening.  This is Bob Malecki reporting for Straight Facts
somewhere in northern Scandinavia quite near the Polar Circle!

Sweden!

With the Swedish elections only a year and a half away one would
be surprised when I say that the election movement has already
begun!

What has sparked this early start to the election movement is the
latest polls which continue along the trend of a classical left-right
polarization taking place in this former Swedish "welfare" state of
the social-democratic model.

The latest pre-summer polls give the social-democracy 27% of the
vote, a historic low that NEVER has been seen in the history of
opinion polls in this country!  The right-wing conservative party has
for the first time in history become the largest party in Sweden (with
34%).   And the Euro-Communists who have historically been a 4%
party have a consistent 14 to 15 % of the vote.  It is these three
parties which show the significant swing "left-right" in the thinking
in this country.

With these kinds of interesting opinion polls related to the
dismantling of the welfare state by the Social Democracy with the
good help of its "closet" coalition with the bourgeois Center Party
(a party whose base is in the farmers and large rural areas of this
country) we are already seeing the various actors starting to line
up and kick off the election movement -- although the Social
Democrats like to call their backroom deals with the Center Party
"taking responsibility in a very difficult time" ...

Much of the "left-right" polarization in this country is linked to the
debate of the "new" and "old" Social Democracy -- the first being
the present leadership of the Social Democratic Party, sometimes
known as the "government house right", which has deserted the
workers movement for the middle class and open collaboration with
capitalism in trying to smash the trade union movement,
downsizing the public sector through cuts and privatizing, and
making permanent mass unemployment where nearly a million
Swedes are on the dole..

Naturally they are doing this in the name of saving Sweden from
the horrible excesses made during the "roaring 80s" where the
yuppie economy and banks almost brought the country to
economic collapse.  In fact the policies of the Social Democracy in
power with its "closet coalition" partners not only bailed the yuppies
and banks out at the minimal cost of 95 billion tax bucks but also
loaned a couple of three hundred billion bucks on the International
market.

All of those who were on the verge of economic ruin are today the
most profit-giving and expanding economies in the whole market!
Especially the banks, where just recently one bank which just a few
years ago was on the verge of collapse has now made a cash bid
to buy up the entire state loan institute which historically financed
35% of the entire Swedish home market!

And if these people have gone from economic ruin to swimming in
champagne, thanks to the "new" Social Democracy, then the other
social group who has done all right under this period is the central
social base of the closet bourgeois partners of the social
democracy in power, the farmers represented by the Center Party.

Under the guise of cleaning up the economy, they have attacked
the unions, attacked state subsidies in all areas, made cuts in all
the social sectors, and driven up mass unemployment to an all-time
high.

They have given the green light to a new yuppie conomy based on
expansion to the east into the Baltic states, Poland, and Russia,
not to mention the wholesale sellout of the state-owned natural
resources of the forests and now water which supplies much of the
electricity in this country ... and also not to mention the present
"goldrush" here in the north of Sweden where the government has
been and is selling everything under the feet of people to
international mining companies like the Rio Tinto Zinc (or, RTZ)
who at present is financing a war on Bougainville in New Guinea
with German and South African mercenaries!

And, not least, they been responsible for the growing racism
against foreign nationals who make up about 20% of Sweden's
population.

The growth of the right-wing consevatives must be seen in the fact
that the thankful middle class who has clearly gained in this period
of Social Democratic and Center rule want even more!  And the
message from the conservatives is that the Social Democratic
closet coalition with the Center Party has done hardly enough.
What is needed is more cuts, all across the line, so that those
groups in society who have benefited by dismantling the welfare
state can even get more of the pie -- more privatization and
entrepreneur operations to rip apart the state-run public sector that
was built up over a long period of economic boom after the first and
second world wars!

In regard to this one should mention that there is a strong tendency
in Sweden of small entrepreneurs and companies, mostly Social
Democratic, and farmers.

This has to do with the huge length of this country and also the
powerful position that these companies have (many who deliver
parts to the giants like Volvo and Eriksson) who think that their time
has finally come.

This line is taking over as a driving force from the former
institutions of the welfare state, linked to finding new niches in the
European market or, for example, the big lie coming from the
Swedish Farmers Association about how healthy food from
Scandinavia is in regard to those horrible clone Belgian Blues bulls
down on the continent.

Another side of this coin is the well-educated middle class who in
their own interests are being dragged into the privatization and
franchising of the state and Commune public sector mainly in the
areas of education and child care -- where an explosion of private
free schools and private "cooperatives" daycare centers for children
(meaning a group of parents taking over the operation from the 
state or commune) are their main area of concern.

This kind of activity is also connected to all kinds of maneuvers to
just outright rob the taxpayers not only of the "welfare state"
institutions but their tax money also!  There's been scandal after
scandal after scandal of politicians of every political tendency and
especially Social Democratic affiliation enriching themselves and
their families as the welfare-state ship goes down.

All kinds of extras, from open shop on state and commune credit
cards, to trips to Porr clubs in Brussels, to financing lush dinner
parties and stocking up the bars of politicians in their homes, to
building luxury summer houses for themselves and their relatives
... fat parachute pension agreements where basically a lot of
politicians and former commune and state employed people have
gotten huge sums of pension money guaranteed to themselves
whether they work or not the rest of their lives -- the agreements
usually drawn up and signed by themselves.

This kind of robbery and sabotage of the welfare state in collapse
is very widespread and extends into all areas of the public sector
which in this country was and still is huge.

And above and beyond this we have the major capitalist actors in
Sweden getting their part of the booty.

The latest example is Volvo, one of the biggest producers of cars
in this country.

Many people don't know it, but they are big in defense contracts.
Thus they made a deal with the state and received 500 million
crowns to lay down a factory which is involved in the defense
industry ... moving what's left to another city, dumping hundreds of
workers and their families ... while at the same time fat juicy
contracts are being awarded to other big-timers for cruise missiles
and smart bombs.

Because the military here is undergoing a technical revolution after
the Gulf War slaughter. No more conscript armies for them!  Its
smart bombs and cruise missiles -- that is the future.

However the Social Democrats have not entirely given up
traditional weapons.

Howitzers to India and gunboats to Indonesia are still a proven
item. Not to mention the "Carl Gustav" anti tank gun which appears
just about everywhere a conflict develops in the Third World.  So
all you "Nobel" prize winners don't have to worry yet.

As the Swedish proletariat reels under the attacks from the Social
Democratic Party it has always supported, the need of creating a
Bolshevik Lenininist/Trotskyist alternative here as elsewhere to
struggle for new social revolutions from Portugal to the Urals is the
only alternative.  It is either that or barbarism!

This is Bob Malecki reporting for Straight Facts in Sweden!

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