Fight Back! interviews Erik Anderson, a member of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Sweden and an elected city council member in his hometown of Gislaved.

Fight Back!: Some progressive people in the U.S. believe that Sweden is a socialist country. What are the facts about this?

Erik Anderson: I understand that progressive people see Sweden as a “socialist” country, but the fact is that Sweden is a capitalistic country where three families in Sweden own more than 4 million Swedes and over 90% of industrial production is owned by private interests. Sweden is a member of and supports the European Union.

But we must go back little in history. After World War II, when the Soviet Union crushed Nazi Germany, and a socialist camp was formed as result, the wealthy classes in western Europe, including in Sweden, entered an era of a kind of “social compromise” and couldn’t rule through open violence against the masses.

When social democrats proposed, due to strength of the then communist party together with existence of socialist camp, to introduce reforms that benefitted workers, and the open reactionaries attacked them for this – the social democrats answered that they must do the reforms “or else workers will go to communists.” The social democrats wanted save capitalism by being reformists due to world situation after the second World War.

Fight Back!: Could you please describe the conditions faced by Swedish workers and what the role of the social democratic party is?

Anderson: The class gap between workers and the rich strata was, up until the 1980s, somewhat lowered, but afterwards, with stagnation of working-class struggles, the demise of socialist camp, and other retrogressive trends, the gap between [the] rich and workers has widened.

Those “counter-reforms” have affected the unemployed, the retired people, workers and the education system. It’s a negative social process that must be overcome. There are very few strikes and working-class struggles.

When there was a lot of independent wildcat-strikes in the 1970s, social democracy had two tactics; the first was to help capitalists to fight those struggles and blacklist militant workers, but at the same time, they introduced some progressive labor laws to stem the militancy among workers. Those laws are today under attack from all reactionary corners. For example, the laws that say that those who have been at a worksite the longest time should be the last to leave their jobs if a company reduces the labor force. That law protects oppositional workers, but if that law changes, the employer can pick out those workers that are more militant in industrial and union matters and leave those workers who are quiet on the worksite.

They are preparing a law that will forbid strikes for collective tariff agreements, even if a union has more members on work site than other established unions. In all this has social democracy played a role of servants for the capitalistic class. In this period of reaction, a part of working class joined and started voting as anti-immigrant party Sweden Democrats, who on social matters are a reactionary party.

Fight Back!: What are Swedish communists fighting for?

Anderson: So, we are fighting for unity of working class against all attempts to divide the class, and our members on worksites take initiatives in and outside unions to encourage workers to fight against the system but also take part in making daily demands.

The proposals from social democracy in collusion with employers’ union to change labor market laws and attempts to forbid strikes must be rejected. In September, over 2000 workers and civil servants demonstrated outside the office of Trade Union Central in the capital Stockholm, and demanded that the proposals against the right to strike must be revoked, under the name “strike back.” Our party members participated and held speeches together with other progressive people.

We also fight for that Sweden leaving the European Union and will boycott the elections to EU parliament next year.

Sweden is in name a “neutral country,” outside NATO, but this is only a formality. In reality Sweden and the Swedish weapon industry are totally linked with American imperialism and its criminal wars. Sweden participated in the war against Libya, Sweden has troops in Afghanistan under NATO command, and Sweden supports the Ukrainian pro-fascist rulers with big sums. The Leftwing Party and the Greens are in full collusion with Swedish imperialism and support all NATO’s wars, despite some vague criticism of Israel.

The leader of Leftwing Party, Jonas Sjöstedt, says in the media that he prefers the USA before Venezuela, which the Latino community in Sweden reacted against.

In some towns, the Communist Party is forbidden from renting public municipal meetings rooms for study circles, meetings and social gatherings, with the excuse that our party is “extremist.” We have gone to court about this.

In Borås town (population 110 000) in western Sweden, all parties in the local parliament, with the so called “Leftwing Party” in the lead, took a decision a year ago to forbid the Communist Party from using municipal meeting halls. But we complained to administrative court and Communist Party won the case. The court decided to revoke the undemocratic ruling of the town. The Leftwing Party – which in former days was the Communist Party of Sweden – is now so reactionary that they join all other parties, including pro-fascists, to forbid the Communist Party to hire public meeting halls.

But we are satisfied with the court ruling that says that it is against the founding laws of Sweden to forbid the Communist Party.

#Sweden #Europe #PeoplesStruggles #Socialism #CommunistPartyInSweden

To the misfortune of the EU elite the British people voted for a withdrawal from the European Union.

The stock markets of finance capital fell, the Brussels bureaucrats are tearing their hair out over the subjects' disobedience and David Cameron, who made the fateful choice to let the people be heard has now fallen on his own grip and is forced to resign.

Opponents of EU in all countries should rejoice when the ruling classes of the European Union are shaken in its foundations. What will happen in the coming weeks is difficult to predict. How EU elite will deal with the current situation even themselves they do not know.

However, what is clear is that the gap between the elites and the people is enormous, as is the people’s contempt of the elites.

The liberals and the EU elites contempt for the people have an obedient agitator in Swedish Liberal MP Birgitta Ohlsson who believes that David Cameron ”opened Pandora's box when he made the announcement that a referendum would be held”.

Pandora's box contained according to the Greek ancient mythology all the world's woes, accidents, combats and diseases. To let the people be heard is, according to Ohlsson, the same as placing this misery in the world.

The construction of the EU superpower is too important. There are too many major political and economic values (read profits) at stake to take the risk that the people will put a spoke in the wheel. Birgitta Ohlsson is a master of draping her support for big power politics in democratic formalwear – whether it is bombing Iraq or defending the power in Washington or Brussels – but now the Empress is naked with here popular discontent in the open.

Adjacent to Brexit Swedish state television SVT did an opinion poll on the on EU in Sweden. It turned out that more than half of Swedes would vote for a continued EU membership if it were a referendum today and over 30 percent would vote for Svexit.

Swedish state television chose to use these figures to say that there is a strong support for EU among the Swedish people. SVT says that the 52 percent who want to remain in the EU is a ”strong support”, while at the same the tv channel called the British vote, 52 percent for Brexit, for a marginal victory that divide Britain. Media's pro-EU propaganda is indeed deplorable.

The poll should rather be interpreted as the opposite.

The fact that nearly a third of the Swedes would vote for secession from EU if there were a referendum today is a sign of strength. Given the fact that the whole economic, political and media elite is united behind the EU. Given the fact that we are daily fed with biased EU positive propaganda. Given the fact that no parliamentary party is actively pushing the issue of Sweden to leave the EU.

Just over half of the Swedes say they would vote to continue our membership. After over 20 years of membership in EU and with the massive propaganda this is nothing more than a failure for the European elite.

Unfortunately the Left Party and its chairman Jonas Sjöstedt, which previously were a major force in the Swedish opposition against EU, have choosen not to support Svexit. After the victory of Brexit Sjöstedt instead once again demands that the Swedish EU membership should be renegotiated.

Sjöstedt’s betrayal of Svexit weakens the struggle for a Swedish exit of EU and leaves the matter in the hands of extreme right party Sweden Democrates (SD).

All opponents of EU in and around the Left has to raise their voices and protest against the act of Sjöstedt and the Left Party which could become an historic betrayal of the Swedish resistance to EU.

Unlike in many other European countries – not least in Britain – the resistance against EU in Sweden has from the beginning been an issue for the left and has had a clear anti-capitalist profile. Long live Brexit – now comes Svexit. The opposition against EU has continually state that the European Union is an association for the big capital. Because of that the bourgeois nationalist anti-European sentiment has been marginalized.

But when former critics and opponents of EU abandon the fight against the union – and are demanding renegotiation of the Swedish EU membership, which would reaffirm and cement the membership rather than dissolve it – this at the same time means giving the extreme right Sweden Democrats (SD) an opportunity to increase its support.

In the parliament SD is therefore taking over the resistance against EU and they are filling it with its bourgeois nationalist and racist content, something that the media happily are stoking.

This does not mean that the traditional Swedish opposition to EU should step back because of fear of being confused with SD.

On the contrary, we must be even clearer in our anti-capitalist and internationalist opposition to the EU. Our struggle for Sweden to leave the EU is not a battle to return to no past, it is a decisive battle for the future.

The fight for Svexit is obviously a national issue, a struggle for national independence. But this is not the whole truth, and for a revolutionary workers party as the Communist Party this is just one side of things.

The fight for Svexit is not the least a question of class struggle. There is a revolutionary potential in the resistance against EU.

When the ruling class in Europe pawn their honour and glory to a project that every day becomes more evident in its hostility against the people, this is undermining the bourgeoisie's grip over the working class and the majority of the people.

When the establishments description of reality is increasingly at odds with the reality that people face outside the EU sanctioned metropolises, then there are openings for a policy that wants something else.

Long live Brexit – now comes Svexit!

#Sweden #Brexit #CommunistPartySweden #EU #Europe