Sweden’s social democrats lose
SEPTEMBER’S ELECTIONS marked a historic defeat for
Sweden’s social democrats. The four parties that make up the right-wing
Alliance will now form a government for the first time in twelve years.
Their victory is entirely due to the right-wing policies of the outgoing
government of prime minister Göran Persson, whose unpopularity
symbolises the deepening crisis within the social democratic party. At
35% of the total vote, this was the worst result for the social
democrats since universal suffrage was introduced in 1921.
Of the four Alliance parties, only Fredrik
Reinfeldt’s ‘new’ Moderates can point to any real gains. The Moderates
now have as many seats in parliament as their three partners – the
Liberals, Centre and Christian Democrats – combined. The struggle
against the new government’s attacks on the unemployed, on job
protection and women’s rights must be prepared now.
The elections also delivered a serious warning in
the form of sweeping local gains for the racist Sweden Democrats, which
won seats in almost 80 local councils and three regional parliaments. In
Sweden, elections for all levels of government – national, regional and
local – take place on the same day.
Fighting on a clear socialist programme of
opposition to cuts and privatisation, Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (CWI
Sweden) increased from five to eight city councillors, winning two new
seats in Stockholm (Haninge) as well as consolidating its position in
the northern cities of Umeå and Luleå (where we gained a third seat).
The victory in Haninge is the first ever in the Stockholm region for a
party to the left of the Left Party (ex-Communist Party), which is
nothing but a support party for social-democratic spending cuts. The
gains for the CWI show it would be one-sided to characterise the results
as a swing to the right in Swedish society.
These elections were historic in many respects. In
the midst of an economic boom with 4% annual GDP growth, the social
democrats did not just lose support, they lost office. In the capital,
Stockholm, they lost one in four voters from the 2002 elections. No
other social democratic party leader has had such a poor electoral
showing as Persson. Under his decade-long tenure the party’s share of
the vote has stayed under 40%, historically low for a party that has
ruled Sweden for 65 of the last 74 years, often with an absolute
majority.
In the 2002 elections, the Moderates suffered their
worst defeat since 1917, losing one-third of their support from the
previous (1998) elections. After that, the party underwent an ‘extreme
makeover’ to regain its position as the largest party on the right. In
this election, the Moderates campaigned on the theme, ‘a change of
government but no change of policy’, with Reinfeldt promising to spend
at least as much on education, health and social services as the social
democrats. Within the Alliance, the Moderates positioned themselves to
the left of their allies (a reversal of its traditonal position) and
toned down suggestions of a radical shift in policy. The emphasis was on
the ‘new’ nature of the Moderates: ‘a party for everyone’.
The media has portrayed the Alliance success as
being a result of its policies, especially on jobs. In reality, the
Alliance’s biggest asset was discontent with Persson and the social
democrats. In the 2002 elections, the social democrats held onto office
thanks to international events – the perception of external danger
following 9/11 – but also because of the extreme neo-liberal policies of
the ‘old’ Moderates, not least in Stockholm, which was Moderate-run from
1998-2002. In 2002, therefore, the social democrats gained in the main
cities. This time, the opposite happened. In the greater Stockholm
region, they only got 26.3% of the vote.
In previous elections, the social democrats gained
ground in the final weeks of the campaign as fear of regime change
mobilised even critical voters behind the traditional ruling party. This
time, the Alliance lead widened in the final days. The social democrats
simply lacked credibility after implementing their brutal right-wing
‘systemskifte’ (change of system) during the 1990s, in which the famous
‘Swedish model’ of welfare and full employment was largely dismantled.
Already in his May Day 2006 speech, Persson
signalled that unemployment was not an election issue as far as the
government was concerned. This allowed the Alliance to present itself as
an ‘Alliance for jobs’. In reality, the new government aims to create a
low-wage labour market by attacking the unemployed, making it easier to
sack workers, and forcing more employees onto short-term contracts.
Those workers and unemployed who put their hope in the Alliance to
create jobs will be hugely disappointed.
Unlike in 1976, and especially 1991, the Alliance is
not assuming office at a time of downturn in the economy. But the
current economic conjuncture can turn suddenly. Swedish capitalism’s
extreme dependence on exports means that processes in the world economy
can have an especially big impact on Sweden. The global conjuncture has
probably already peaked and growth will slow next year. Unemployment in
Sweden and internationally will therefore start to rise again, which
will be followed by new attacks on the jobless, on workers’ rights and
public spending.
The general mood can quickly change. None of the
established parties enjoy any stable support and, as the differences
between them shrink, so their support becomes more fleeting. The
roller-coaster swings in support for the Moderates since 1998 are proof
of this. And the political scandals which surfaced in these elections
are a result of this political and ideological convergence. The new
government takes office against the background of a political crisis and
strong anti-establishment mood.
Opinion can soon swing against the new government
and trigger internal splits inside the Alliance, especially if support
for any of its component parts falls close to parliament’s 4% threshold.
Fear of a snap election could be the factor which, in the final
analysis, holds the Alliance together. The lack of any fighting
alternative at national level, as well as a possible continuation of
economic growth for a period, can mean a certain honeymoon period for
Reinfeldt.
What’s needed is a movement in the trade unions,
workplaces, schools and housing estates to organise the discontent and
raise the level of consciousness. Even the backlash against Carl Bildt’s
right-wing government in 1991 needed almost a year to develop before it
laid the ground for the ‘movement for justice’ which characterised
Swedish politics in the period 1992-96.
The new government’s programme is unmistakable:
privatisation of state-owned companies; the sell-off of hospitals by
local authorities; costlier trade union membership and unemployment
insurance; benefit cuts for the long-term unemployed; tax rebates for
household services; big cuts in council childcare budgets which will
result in women being pushed back into the home.
The LO national trade union federation could be
forced into calling protests on the lines of those against Bildt in 1992
and 1993. But for this to happen, major pressure from below is needed.
The crisis inside the social democrats is also a crisis for the LO
leadership, which spent hundreds of millions of their members’ money on
Persson. The social democrats’ position in the workplaces has been
further undermined by the scale of the election defeat, while the
authority of the LO leaders has perhaps never been lower. At a certain
stage, this will open new possibilities for the building of a socialist
opposition inside the unions and growing calls for a break with the
social democrats.
The struggle against the new government can present
opportunities for new broader political initiatives like Rättviselistan
(the Justice List) in 1995, or WASG in Germany. Rättvisepartiet
Socialisterna will use its gains in the council elections to accelerate
this process.
The social democrats will never be able to return to
the special historical role and mass base in Swedish society they
enjoyed in the past. There is no way under a capitalist system in crisis
that the party can repair its shattered ties with the working class and
the workplaces. The social democrats are today a bourgeois party, a
process symbolised by the retiring party leader becoming a landowner.
The Persson decade can, therefore, be described as a watershed in the
history of social democracy.
In all likelihood, the party will be forced to ape
the Moderates and purge its top ranks in favour of a new younger
generation. This does not necessarily mean a change of political
direction, apart from perhaps in rhetoric. The new generation of
social-democratic leaders are careerists who are, if anything, to the
right of Persson. A new period of crisis and struggle is opening, with
big possibilities to win broad support for socialist policies and bolder
more combative methods of struggle.
Per Olsson,
Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (CWI Sweden)
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