Organize or lose

By Anna Herdy, from Flamman 5/2018 (February 1, 2018)

The deep rift between the leadership of the Social Democratic Party and left socialists of various red hues has seldom been seen so clearly as when the party presented its election plan, and the think tank Katalys presented its major project on class. Editor-in-chief Anna Herdy predicts a bright future for the broader left – in the workers’ movement 2.0.

It’s almost a little ironic. Two important institutions in the workers’ movement wrote two different stories within a day of each other. On the one hand, the trade-union think tank Katalys launched the important project Klass i Sverige (Class in Sweden) which, under the leadership of sociology professor Göran Therborn, is an attempt to chisel out a new class analysis, and through the initiative of Daniel Suhonen, head of Katalys, to put issues of class on the political agenda. On the other, Social Democratic Party Secretary-General Lena Rådström Baastad and election manager John Zanchi presented what would be the Social Democrats’ election plan – one that has completely abandoned the wage earners’ perspective and the social portion of its own movement.

Katalys and the Social Democratic leadership are thus reading reality in two completely different ways, laying bare the now enormous rift between a socialist left and the leadership of the Social Democratic Party. This election year, the think tank will above all try to highlight class conflicts on the Swedish labor market, talk about the living conditions of the working class as a consequence of the constantly increasing clefts, and look for (and, it is hoped, find) the issues that will mobilize the working class to vote for equality and justice in the election this fall. The Social Democratic leadership, on the other hand, that they are “confident in the idea that we are in a position where we can continue to govern after the election” (Expressen, January 30, 2018). Quite clearly. The plan is to win 700,000 “changeable votes” over to “their” side of the bloc border – 300,000 of them from the far-right Sweden Democrats (SvenskaDagbladet, January 30, 2018).

They will do this primarily by talking about what their party’s own surveys show voters are most interested in right now: namely, crime but also “jobs”, healthcare, integration, troubles in the suburbs and gang criminality. That is, more of the same fluffy signal words about order in State finances, “better” welfare, “faster” integration and “everyone who can work, will.” These are not insignificant questions – but the party has already shown that they do not intend to fill them with any content worthy of a workers’ party.

The criticism was not long in coming. Tobias Baudin, President of Kommunal (the Swedish Municipal Workers’ Union), said that the Social Democrats had forgotten welfare workers; Daniel Suhonen, head of the think tank Katalys, said the election plan was a “plan for losers.”

The fact that this conflict exists inside the Social Democratic Party is a positive development for the party leadership. When internal conflicts can be shown openly (regardless of whether they concern nuclear agreements, the right to strike, or the election plan) it strengthens the image of a broad social-democratic party where it appears that debate is lively and everyone has a place – or that the left of the party is being kept in check, depending on who you ask. But this liveliness of debate is only a mirage. What used to be the political subject of social democracy – the working class – is now gone and has not appeared in communications or the creation of public opinion in many years. The Party leadership has abandoned its inheritance and its most loyal electoral base, which is why the LO (Swedish Trade Union Confederation) collective is losing votes to the Sweden Democrats. Katalys, which describes the problems of social democracy clearly in its latest report, wants to mould public opinion in relation to the Social Democratic Party, but there is a drawback: the Social Democratic Party doesn’t want to listen. Instead, they show – with all the clarity that could be desired – that there is an imaginary middle they now believe remains.

In an interview in this week’s number of Flamman, sociology professor Göran Therborn presents the interesting idea of an extraparliamentary left movement that places demands on the Social Democratic Party, the Left Party, and the Green Party, and how he hopes the Klass i Sverige project can contribute to that. It is an uplifting thought, because what’s needed is not just mobilizing the working class to the polls, but a working class organizing itself in a movement that is able to change the premises of the political debate – and above all, political reality. The Social Democratic Party has left its core voters without a social context, and are no longer interested in organizing the working class within itself. To be honest, the Left party is not (yet) terribly good at that. Even if the membership is the largest since the 1980s, the party does not yet constitute a first choice for the working class. Instead of talking generally about crime, unemployment and integration, the left socialist alternative must recognize and meet the class conflicts on every given occasion. It must see people who are afraid that their children will become gang members, improve security on the labor market, and reckon with a pension system that mires people in poverty.

Don’t get me wrong: the point is not to say “working class” as many times as possible. The point is to build something for the working class to believe in. To make the conditions of the working class the center of political debate.