Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 08:14:45 +0100 (MET)
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: A social democratic paradise part 2


When the Soviet Union disintegrated because of the bankruptcy and       
historical betrayals of the Stalinists. The Swedes made a sharp turn 
in their long standing policy of neutrality.
												
If the policy of neutrality saved the Swedes from two World wars in 
the beginning of this century. The Swedes thought wisely that 
neutrality would save them during the Cold War if it became a hot 
war. However even before the echoes of the Berlin wall crashing down, 
reunifying Imperialist Germany came to a halt. The Swedes decided to 
join, what they thought to be, the winning side and applied for 
membership in the Common Market. 
											
The big debate was not membership or not, economically the Swedes 
had no choice. The big debate was around neutrality for Sweden in 
the next war. They chose to drop their neutrality as you can well 
see that for the first time in modern history the Swedes are 
intergrated into the NATO forces in former Yugoslavia. However the 
Swedish people really think that they are still neutral. I am afraid 
that they will not wake up till their boys start coming back in 
boxes. Or perhaps a little longer from when inter-imperialist 
rivalry really starts to heat up. Then perhaps the Swedish people 
will wake up and realise that their leaders have changed a course 
of over 200 years without war for them.
												
When the inflationary ballong exploded. The Swedes were forced to 
float the Swedish Crown in order to find its real worth on the 
International market. The Swedish Crown dropped like a bomb to 
historical low levels. Over night the worth of a Swedish Crown 
dropped by half. It was the final nail driven into the sinking 
welfare state. The rats started immediately to desert the sinking 
ship, carrying or stealing everything possible with them before 
it goes down.
											
The sinking of the Swedish welfare state is not like the Titanic 
which hit an iceberg and went down very quickly. The Swedish 
welfare state is sinking far slowly at least at first, but the 
deeper down it goes the quicker it sinks.
											
The rats are taking everything of worth and stuffing it in their 
pockets.         Companies and businesses are systematically 
plundered and the workers thrown out on the streets. 
											
Bureaucrats who sit in high state owned companies and the trade 
unions open their parachute agreements, (agreements giving them 
millions of crowns in pension and early retirement benefits), worked 
out between themselves in the board of directors rooms. State own 
industries sold out to the capitalists both foreign and domestic. 
Thousands of acres of forests sold, cut down, plundered of the 
treasures and then left too rot. 
												
As the  welfare state is plundered, unemployment goes up like a 
skyrocket. Permanent mass unemployment is a fact, the first time 
since the thirties! The whole welfare state straining and busting 
apart under the pressure. So then come the cuts. First in the 
periphery of the social system and reaching    out to wrip its heart 
out. Today we are there, the cuts have come to the very pillars of 
the welfare state. Unemployment insurance, Pensions, Healthcare, 
childcare. The workers, the old people, the young people left 
standing with their pockets empty.
											
The Social Democratic paradise a plundered and empty shell.The 
confusion in the workers movement is total except for those busy 
grabbing everything they can. The Social Democrats have become a 
27% party. Historically a level never reached it its long history 
after coming to power. The party is split between the 
"traditionalists" , those who want to go back to the good old times 
of a welfare state that does not exist any longer and the "new 
thinkers" who engineered, along with its bougeois allies, entering 
the common market, dropping neutrality, and pushing the welfare 
state over the cliff to its slow death.
												
In the workers movement to the left (?) of the Social democracy 

is the  former Euro-Communists, ( they dropped the Communist after 
the fall of the      Soviet Union) who are growing to new historic 
levels of 14% which is really historical. Plus a few left groups 
who still exist on the fringe of the workers movement. 
											
However they are all still tailing or criticising the Social 
Democrats and hardly from the left! In fact they have become 
isolationist, feminists, and environmental activists instead of 
trying to tell the hard truth to the workers about what is happening 
or what the future brings, especially after the fall of  the Soviet 
Union.
												
At best there demands are back to the welfare state, women's 
equality, and a clean world for the kiddies without atomic power. 
They are trying to       pressure the traditionalists in the Social 
Democracy to fight for reforms that will bring back the good old 
times.
											
They are blind about what is going on because they have never 
experienced anything else then the welfare state. They are fighting 
for bringing back a  Social Democratic pipedream, which developed 
here for a short    historical period because of very special 
conditions mentioned above.
										
The left does not even realise what's happening here because in 
this isolated little backwater a really revolutionary leadership 
or tendency in the workers movement never developed. It will take 
bodies coming home in boxes  and empty stomachs, poverty and 
starvation before these healthy Swedes wake up I am afraid.


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


Finally I would like to take up here that everything which lies 
under the feet of the Swedes is being sold out by the state to 
foreign investment. While        the lovely little summer houses once 
owned by Swedes during the good times are quickly being sold to rich 
Europeans especially Germans in the south of Sweden. The biggest 
mining company in the world Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ) is moving in to 
take over the rich mineral desposits in the north of Sweden, 
especially diamonds.
											
Last year, while writing about Vietnam, a friend of mine from 
Australia warned about this company. Specifically, they RTZ, were 
involved in a little dirty war on the island of Bougainville along 
with the Australian government. That this mining company, the largest 
in the world, historically had a lot of blood on its hands.
											
My friend told me about Bougainville, a little island in the Pacific 
Ocean, where a war of liberation has been going on since 1988. 
The island belongs to the state of Papua New Guinea and is a part of 
the Salomon islands.
											
During the Second World War the Solomons were occupied by the   
Japanese and after the war became part of the Australian colonial 
sphere. Bougainville is one of the richest areas in the world of 
deposits of gold and copper.
									
The troubles on the island started when the Australian based mining 
company CRA began its operations of exploitation of copper and gold. 
CRA is owned by RTZ which has mining interests all over the world and 
is now trying to get what's lying in the ground here in Sweden.
												
On Bougainville their are about 200,000 people living. There lifestyle 
is fairly simple fish, coconuts, fruits. Lying near the equator a 
warm climate.
											
When the mining company started operations whole villages were moved, 
the rain forest was cut down, wild life died out and poisonous waste 
>from the mining operations pumped out into the rivers and lakes and 
the fish died. The mining company basically destroyed the very basis 
for these island people to survive.
						
So in 1988 a rebellion by the people on the island started. They 
closed the mine and declared that they wanted independence from the 
state of Papua, New guinea (PNG).
											
Closing the mine on Bougainville meant that the mining company had 
lost one of its most precious and profitable jewels. During the 
80ties the mine      was the largest and most profitable company 
in Australia.
									
So the mining company with Australian military advisors, including 
helicopter gunships and big money backed the Papua, New Guinea 
government    in order to get back what it had lost. They have 
even set up a naval blockade around the island to stop the flow 
of supplies and medicine from getting to the island people 
fighting for their independence.
											
Over 10,000 people have died on Bougainville have died since 1988,
five percent of the population. Only a few hundred have died in 
battle. The rest have died because lack of food, medicine, summary 
executions, murder, torture, and just disappearing. Still today as 
I write this the people of Bougainville still control the island 
and the mine has not been reopened. This is not the only blood 
this company has on its hands. The RTZ is also deeply involved in 
the present border conflicts going on between Peru and Equator. 
The prize is the rich minerals resources found in the area that 
they are fighting about.
												
In fact it would not surprise me at all if I were to say that RTZ 
was standing in line during the war in Vietnam to get exploration 
rights if the Americans and their Australian allies had not been 
thrown out of Vietnam when the Vietnamese marched into Saigon in 
1975 and took back its own country from the colonialists, who had 
occupied their country since the second world war.
												
So as the Swedish bourgeoisie and their political spokesman really 
were getting into the plundering of the welfare state they put the 
following announcement out.

Welcome to Sweden
											
See the changes since 1992:

	
NEW MINERAL OPPORTUNITIES                                                    
                                          

NEW MINERAL POLICY                                                           
                                  

NEW MINERAL LEGISLATION                                                      
                                  

FAVOURING PRIVATE                                                            
                  

ENTERPRISING 

	
Join the present "never before seen" claim-staking rush for 
base-metals, gold and diamonds in northern Sweden by the 
International Mining Industry.
											
Don't wait. Free ground, potential for exploration is rapidly 
diminishing.

THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF SWEDEN
will give you information and assistance.


The announce goes on and describes the Geological Survey of Sweden. 
A state run institution which for years collected information on 
minerals and finds, paid for by the welfare state. Now it would be 
used to sell out the whole state mining industry to private 
interests. So the Swedes now have lost their base for their very 
existence to International finance. This is one of the best 
examples of ripping off the Welfare State as the rats leave the 
sinking ship!
												
The vast areas of northern Sweden, owned an run by the Welfare State, 
are being given away, for free! All of this under the guise of that 
we have lived over our resources and have to cut the states expenses. 
And guess who has come to Sweden to get part of the booty. Yes, Rio 
Tinto Zinc, is moving in order to take the very ground that the 
Swedish people though taxes had financed as part of the Welfare State.
											
The Swedish people and especially the working class and poor appear 
to be paralysed. The state which has always taken care of them from 
birth to death is disintegrating before their eyes. Without 
leadership, or rather as the leadership deserts the ship, those 
left are whining about going back to the good       old times at 
best. No one appears to see the truth, or has the guts to tell 
the truth. The Welfare state is dead and it was your own leaders 
that killed it.
										
Perhaps the only good that will come out of all this is that, through 
a         series of splits of the parties presently claiming to 
stand on the side of the working-class, a militant tendency, will 
develop or crystallise, here in Sweden as elsewhere Internationally 
leading to a new leadership which can show the way forward in the 
coming battles. However these groups that exist will have to be 
tested both in theory and practice in the coming battles. No one 
deserves a free ticket after the historic defeats imposed on the 
International workers movement in the last 75 years.
												
In ending, I would like to say that this section of this book on 
Sweden is my gift to the Swedish workers movement. A thank you for 
a place to survive, recuperate after the war in Vietnam. It is a 
gift from my heart and belly button which is my Crystal ball. So 
cheer up, things get worse before they get better...   
	
	
	
	
		 






     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---