A winter of discontent awaits in Sweden, after a year of price increases, widening economic and social divides, increased poverty and an election that ended in the formation of a blue-brown government, led by the Sweden Democrats.
Intensified racism and baton politics
The new government officially consists of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and the Liberals but is governed in practice by the Sweden Democrats, whose policies permeate the entire 63-page platform for government (the so-called Tidö Agreement). SD is the first “supporting party” in history to have its own secretariat in government buildings which has the function of acting like a “watchdog secretariat” to ensure that SD’s policies are carried out. SD’s Jimmie Åkesson is also part of the government’s “inner cabinet” with the three other party leaders.
The government’s platform oozes reactionary and racist politics, for example:
- An intensification of the harassment of refugees with “internal border controls”.
- The abolition of the permanent residence permits and the ability to revoke existing residence permits
- The establishment of “Transit centres” for asylum seekers outside of Sweden’s borders
- “Flawed moral conduct” as grounds for deportation (the government includes trafficking victims here).
- International aid to be conditional on the recipient country agreeing to take back refugees who are forcibly deported from Sweden.
- Prison places to be rented abroad.
- Stop-and-frisk zones in socially vulnerable working-class areas.
- Restrictions of the right to an interpreter both during the asylum process and in the health and social care sectors.
- Limitations on the right to legal support and representation during the asylum process.
- A worsening of “material conditions” in the reception process for asylum seekers (worse accommodation).
- “Eligibility for welfare” where both asylum seekers and those who have a residence permit but not citizenship are to varying degrees deprived of the right to, for example, parental allowance, child benefit, housing benefits, multiple child benefits, additional costs allowance, care allowance, supplementary financial aid and personal assistance allowance according to the Assistance Allowance Act.
- Stricter requirements for citizenship (and thus the right to welfare).
- A worsening of mother tongue education (which in turn worsens Swedish teaching).
These measures have multiple purposes: to create division and scapegoats, to drastically reduce immigration and increase deportations, and to open the door to further attacks and a deterioration of conditions. It will become more important than ever to have a clear anti-racist profile in all social issues and struggles.
Many of the election promises from the four blue-brown parties have already been betrayed. The promise of protection against high electricity costs from 1 November did not materialise — instead there is now talk of “at the beginning of 2023”. The promised reduction in the price of petrol and diesel of up to SEK 10 per litre has become a temporary tax reduction that lowers the price by a few öre, but at the cost of SEK 6.7 billion to the state treasury.
At the same time, reduced corporate and capital gains taxes have been promised for the richest.
The cost-of-living crisis is gaining momentum
The cost-of-living crisis and new cuts in the municipalities and regions will define the coming year. But for more and more people, the responsibility of the government, the banks and the richest one percent for these tougher times will be become clearer.
During the first six months of the year, 269 children lost their homes when both or one of the children’s parents were evicted. Now the Enforcement Authority (Kronofogden) has reported a drastic increase in the number of evictions in Stockholm, Skåne and Dalarna. The Red Cross and Salvation Army have reported a rapidly growing number of people who cannot afford the most basic food items. In these issues, especially prices and rents, lies the government’s real Achilles heel. Spontaneous protests of different characters are to be expected.
The interest rate hike and record profits
The Central Bank’s increase in the key interest rate was supposed to dampen inflation. However, the rate of inflation has continued to increase and with it, interest rates. The forecasts now point to the mortgage interest rate rising to 5 percent this year, which it can result in variable mortgage costs being over three times higher in 2022. But if the interest rate hikes are a real blow to households, the new multibillion kronor profits give the banks and companies an excuse to raise their prices, inflation will therefore remain high.
The banks’ and industrial companies’ latest quarterly reports show record profits. Overall, total profits have increased this year by 16 percent (November).
The collective agreement movement
Objectively, all the conditions exist for a fight-back movement during the collective bargaining negotiations as well as a new tenants’ fight against major rent increases. But these possibilities are blocked by the crisis of the leadership of the working class, which has never been so removed from the base as it is today.
LO’s Executive Council put forward a wage increase demand of a paltry 4.4 percent and a kronor figure of SEK 1,192 for those earning less than SEK 27,100 per month. This means that no compensation is being demanded for price increases and this would mean further reductions in real wages. The demands are the lowest of any trade union movement in Europe.
The demands of the LO leaders basically mean that they believe that the members — those who create the profits — should pay for the crisis caused by the capitalists on the other side of the negotiating table.
The union leaders’ refusal to take up the fight for real wages in the negotiations also plays into the hands of the blue-brown coalition and will be used by employers to further press down conditions unless the betrayal on real wages is followed by a growing resistance from below.
In addition to the crucial question of the level of wage increases, there are also other crucial questions. One such is the influence over how wages are to be determined. To an increasing extent, it is the employer who, through various methods, decides which individual should have which salary. Through this, the employers have been given the best method to break the solidarity of workers and the conditions for engaging in a common wage struggle, since workers are pitted against workers through competition with each other.
Work environment issues that deal mainly with day-to-day stress and the risk of both injuries and even death, are areas where the workers have lost ground through the lack of struggle. The number of deaths caused by workplaces accidents was 44 last year, a sharp increase from the year before and on a par with previous years. At the same time, the retirement age is increasing without working life getting any easier.
Perspectives for workplace and union struggle
In recent years, struggle in the workplaces has first and foremost been about the working environment, and which has mostly been organised outside union structures, although it is often local elected officials or shop stewards who have taken the initiative to grassroots struggle.
Examples of this are the fight against health schemes in elderly care, Stockholm’s healthcare uprising, the Teachers’ Uprising and others. The struggle organised by, for example, the dock workers is the exception. It is likely that in the coming year the wage struggle will take on a greater importance compared to before, with calls from individual unions or union branches as we have already seen with the miners in IF Metall.
At the same time, however, the blocking of the union leadership is still an obstacle. Most likely, also in the next year, various grassroots networks will play an important role, especially in the case of possible future cuts within the municipalities and regions.
Protests in recent years have mainly taken place in female-dominated professions against the pressured work environment in the public sector, which we will see more of next year. Even now, some resistance is beginning to form among teachers and healthcare workers against reporting undocumented people, which is part of the Tidö agreement.
Devastating climate backlash
The SD-led government has taken its place among the worst of the climate change-denying governments. The government closed the Ministry of the Environment and moved environmental issues to the Ministry of Enterprise.
Instead of investments in climate change, the budget contains a temporary reduction in the tax on petrol and diesel, which will cost the treasury 6.8 billion kronor. And from the already neglected finances for railway maintenance, money is being diverted to maintain roads.
The government’s climate and environmental policy is about defending the short-term profit interests of large companies at all costs.
At the same time, the government is beating its own drum with fantasy figures such as 400 billion in “credit guarantees” for new nuclear power plants. Here, too, there is talk of a “shorter application times for permits and fast-tracking” — particularly worrying when it comes to private and profit-making nuclear power.
The new government’s attacks on the environment and climate as well as conservation may lead to protests and new forms of resistance.
Municipal and regional government in a divided country
The political crisis is particularly visible at the municipal and regional level. Two months after the election, 25 of Sweden’s 290 municipalities were still without an executive board. Out of the other 265, a full 103 are minority executives. Ten out of 21 regional executives are also minority committees.
In the government’s new budget, an extra contribution of six billion kroner is allocated in general state grants to municipalities and regions. This must be seen in the light of the fact that the Municipal Workers’ Union (Kommunal) reckoned that SEK 30 billion was needed. In other words, the budget means cuts in municipalities and regions already next year.
The election reflected a divided country where the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Greens fared significantly better in the big cities than in the rest of the country. Dismantling of the public sector together with the general development of capitalism where all services and capital are concentrated has meant that the feeling of abandonment and hopelessness is greater in smaller towns, something that the right has exploited in its reactionary campaigns.
In municipalities such as Stockholm, Uppsala, Gothenburg and Luleå — but also smaller towns — where the Left Party participates in local government and will more than likely participate in introducing austerity policies, there is a basis for layers to be radicalised to the left.
The crisis in the public sector
In the blue-brown government’s new budget, the regions are one of the big losers.
“It is clear that everyone must contribute to the crisis, but we think that municipalities and regions must take a large part of the brunt. The regions will be forced to save on healthcare” according to Peter Danielsson (Moderates), the chairperson of SKR — the representative organisation for Sweden’s municipalities and regions. The healthcare sector in the regions is already jumping between various levels of emergency and crisis.
The Health and Social Care Inspectorate’s (IVO) assessment of the healthcare sector in May this year was that: “All regions state that they lack personnel at the moment and for the majority of regions, the situation will not improve in the coming years. Staff shortages in themselves lead to a lack of available beds. Many regions state that beds may be available, but that there is a lack of trained employees who can staff the care places.”
Healthcare protests have taken place in the past decade both in vulnerable municipalities — Sollefteå, Karlskoga, Kalix and others — as well as being initiated by healthcare workers. In the winter of 2021–2022, the midwives’ protests in Stockholm received widespread coverage, with both mass resignations and a demonstration. Working conditions, schedules and the lack of staff are at least as much in focus as wages. Resignations, which are the result of frustration and lame unions, may lead to temporary improvements in conditions due to the demand for staff. With new major cuts and protests coming, there will be a need for a coordinated collective struggle to improve healthcare, working conditions and wages.
Alongside health and social care, education is one of the areas that has been affected most by privatisation. The free school chaos, where schools compete for students and thus “school money”, which becomes profits for the shareholders, has left the schools in crisis with artificially inflated grades, cheating with registered teaching hours and a lack of qualified teachers. The teachers’ unions warned in September of this year that 200 schools could be closed due to a lack of qualified teachers, a threat that is especially great in sparsely populated areas, where schools have already been closed. As the editorial of the TCO newspaper, Arbetsvärlden, describes it: “It is of course great that the government invests 685 million in schoolbooks, but the question is what good are the books without teachers in the classrooms?”
The pandemic taught the whole of society a lesson in how “essential” workers are — and especially healthcare workers. This has given an impetus to increased class consciousness and self-confidence among these female-dominated professional groups, even if in Sweden, unlike in many other countries, it has not yet been expressed in the emergence of large movements. Even here, however, it is clear that it is women in health and social care who are at the forefront of the still limited workplace protests that exist, and that women workers will be a decisive group in future struggles.
Women’s fight against the backlash?
The radicalisation of women as workers is of course connected to the combined pressure of a gender power order that has become increasingly brutal in recent years. Five years after #metoo, a reactionary anti-feminist backlash dominates. Since then, ten women who spoke publicly about abuse they were subjected to by men have been sentenced for defamation, eight for “gross defamation” — most recently in October, the Swedish Court of Appeal (Svea Hovrätt) upheld the defamation verdict against Cissi Wallin.
The sexist backlash is about silencing, subduing, and dividing, something that was made clear by the massive misogynistic witch hunt against actor, Amber Heard, earlier this year — a campaign that had a huge, negative influence on young people. In Sweden, the media has recently drawn attention to the lucrative online trade in young women’s private pictures and the associated slut-shaming and victim-blaming.
At the same time as the backlash affects consciousness, with reinforced sexism, chauvinism and confusion, there is a burgeoning feminist resistance, even if it is on a low level.
The women’s uprising in Iran, and the abortion rights struggle in the US earlier this year, have influenced and inspired mainly young women, who often also see the connections between women’s oppression, racism, LGBTQ+-phobia, climate denial and a generally dysfunctional society.
The international wave of women’s struggle together with the increasing whip of counter-revolution have can potentially create the conditions for a stronger feminist radicalisation and for the emergence of struggle even in Sweden, though it is not a given.
Men’s violence against women has escalated in 2022. The figures are still unclear, but already in June it was clear that 13 women had been murdered by men close to them, and six more suspected murders were being investigated. Since then, the figures have increased — in October alone, at least seven women died in what are suspected to be murders committed by men they knew. The difficulty in obtaining current figures on men’s murder of women, and even more so the silence on the issue, is in striking contrast to the hyper-focus on men’s violence against men in the form of shootings that is updated in near real time with maps and graphics.
The 99-point programme that the government launched in 2021 under pressure from the anger over several high-profile murders to “put an end” to men’s violence against women includes some steps forward such as more resources for education, assessing the scale, etc., but it of course makes no attempt to bring the capitalist gender order itself to an end.
Instead, women have become increasingly vulnerable at the same time as the possibilities of receiving protection and help have been eroded — the life-saving activities of the women’s shelters are now replaced by both cutbacks, commercialisation, and institutionalisation. The share of private, for-profit sheltered housing has risen sharply (to 37 percent in 2019), and the new permit requirements [to run shelters] are designed to outsource the “service” to any commercial operator, a blow to the non-profit feminist emergency services and the women who need help. At the same time, Unizon has reported that contact with their emergency services has increased by 50 percent since 2017, while they see that the municipalities are approving fewer and fewer days in sheltered accommodation on average.
The shootings
With 58 fatal shootings this year so far, Sweden has the most fatal shootings per inhabitant in the EU. Fear and insecurity, which look different in different areas, is one of the biggest public health problems in socially vulnerable working-class areas. The fear of being subjected to violence or robbery, of going home late at night or of going shopping in the local centre limits freedom of movement and significantly impairs health. Fear is also an obstacle to organising against cuts, racism or rent increases.
The government’s so-called measures against gang crime — such as stop-and-frisk zones, penalties issues to the whole family and bans on visiting particular areas — is populist sloganeering and state racism and they do nothing to change the basis of insecurity in class society, the divides or the crisis in schools and social services. On the contrary, the government’s bullying of the suburbs and people seeking protection from war and famine directly sabotages any faith in the future in Sweden’s most vulnerable neighbourhoods. It is thus also an indirect support for criminal activities when both the door to a livelihood and a decent welfare system is shut.
In several locations, the shootings have led to demonstrations and demands for safety measures. Self-organisation is crucial for both change, safety, and the feeling of belonging — and the most important defence against the establishment’s racism.
What way forward for anti-racism?
The blue-brown government’s Denmarkisation of asylum and immigration policy, a continuation of the previous Social Democrat government’s restrictions on the right to asylum, must be met with an organised anti-racist movement.
The upsurge of the extreme right with SD’s election victory, Theodor Engström’s murder of Ing-Marie Wieselgren in Visby during Almedal Week, and the escalation of extreme right-wing gun crimes and school attacks in recent years is a serious development.
What is needed is a broader anti-racist movement that can fight and organise against racist passport controls, stop-and-frisk zones and deportations. The hunt for Kurds in cooperation with Turkey’s “counter-terrorism” must be fought. It is clear that there is a will to resist, but the lack of self-confidence, of a new layer of activists, organisation and leadership is holding back struggle and the emergence of a new anti-racist movement.
In addition to the government’s racism and baton policies, the crisis of capitalism today in itself creates the basis for anti-racism: rent increases, food and electricity price increases and cuts affect everyone — regardless of origin or citizenship — and creates a basis for the need for common struggle. And as Marxists, we know that the struggle for common class interests is the strongest glue that can both politically and socially bridge the divisions of racism.
Racism has for many years been clearly pushed from above, by the political establishment. It has been about both creating division, but also about pushing down a layer of workers who are forced into the very worst conditions. It is important to note that the “sum” of the racism of those who have voted for the right or the Sweden Democrats is less than the racist content of the so-called temporary refugee law or the Tidö agreement. If, for example, the proposal that permanent residence permits should be abolished or that everyone should not have the same right to parental allowance had been allowed to go to a referendum, the majority would probably not have voted in favour.
There is a strong and rich tradition of solidarity, support for democracy, anti-racism and anti-fascism to dust off. Like when the majority of people wanted to accept refugees when they arrived in 2015 — before the shock doctrine hit.
The mass protests against NMR in Kärrtorp in 2013 and Heden/Gothenburg in 2017 belong to our anti-racist tradition, as well as when the Afghan youth sat down in protest in 2017 in a 58-day and night-long sit-in that was met with admiration and support across the country. Black Lives Matter internationally and in Sweden in 2020 created a black pride that still lasts. Or the enormous commitment of private individuals and voluntary organisations in helping refugees in 2015 and after, with a new boost with the Ukraine war this year.
All these acts of solidarity are in the recent past and are completely contrary to the image shown in the media of how people who are fleeing would not be welcome. It partly shows that racism is not deeply rooted, but also shows how the establishment’s spread of false information can affect how everyone is prepared to help those who are worse off.
Which way for the climate movement?
The new government’s total lack of interest in the climate crisis, its major investments in nuclear power and cheaper petrol prices will most certainly lead to a reaction from the climate movement.
The climate movement has been divided into nationwide campaigns such as Återställ Vätmarkena’s [Restore the Wetlands] blockade of motorways, and more local initiatives such as the fight against the mine in Gállok, against Cementa on Gotland and against deforestation including Rädda Hammarbyskogen [Save Hammarby Forest] and the RS-run, Bevara Haninges Skogar, Skärgård och Kulturlandskap [Preserve Haninge’s Forests, Archipelago and Cultural Landscape].
Fridays For Future’s school strikes and demonstrations have been of a disappointing size — slightly larger since the lifting of pandemic restrictions — but never as large as in 2019. On the positive side, they have become more explicitly anti-racist and anti-capitalist in their wording.
There is a risk that the movement will end up on a plateau of repetition unless the reactions to the government’s new budget lead to an explosive and qualitative change.
The Swedish climate movement can take inspiration from the global one, for example, Fridays For Future in Germany which in several places has linked up with the trade union struggle to keep industrial jobs — following the campaigning of ISA members — with the argument that change is necessary but that no one should lose their job in that process.
The results in this year’s school and parliamentary elections show a clear right-wing trend among many young people. First-time voters are the ones most affected by rapid swings and trends in the public debate and by a social climate characterised by a lack of struggle and large mobilisations.
But political consciousness among young people is strongly divided. In Ungdomsbarometern’s survey “Generation Z 2022”, large differences in political interest can be seen between the two genders reported; boys prioritise “fighting crime”, reduced immigration and lower taxes, while girls prioritise gender equality, the environment and climate change as well as healthcare and welfare.
The ground-breaking attacks on immigrants and refugees that the racist government will now try to implement are fuelling racism and division. At the same time, a new consciousness is being born as capitalism exposes itself on a daily basis. In other words, in parallel, there will be fertile ground for a new socialist consciousness to grow. From the conditions in the workplace, in the schools or in the community, a new level of organisation will sprout, as there is simply no other way to tackle the problems other than collectively, similar to the situation in the infancy of the labour movement.
More and more people will seek systemic solutions and internationalism. Even if this process becomes delayed because the subjective forces are so small today, the possibilities are there.
The democratic international socialism that RS and ISA stand for challenges the capitalist mode of production. With socialism’s jointly owned and democratically controlled economy, the foundation will be laid for a world without war, poverty, sexism, racism and nationalism — where all people are given the opportunity to develop to their potential, in a stable climate in harmony with animals and nature.
