Information about Socialistiska Partiet (The Socialist Party) and the Swedish society
See this video that discribes the fundaments of why we are anticapitalists: Anticapitalists
The Socialist Party is a revolutionary party with its roots in the youth rebellion during the late 1960’s. But at the same time, we represent a socialist tradition which ranges as far back as to the second half of the 19th century.
Together with parties and groups from about 50 different countries, we form the Fourth International, a global organization dedicated to the long-term goal of replacing capitalism with socialism. This fourth international was formed 1938 as a counterreaction to Stalin and the development in the USSR. The new international believed in a free and democratic socialist society where the citizens themselves were in charge of their future. This belief was in opposition to the ruling Stalinist doctrine, where the almighty Communist Party was placed in charge of all aspects of social life.
Today, a new generation is getting in touch with our organization. Currently, the Socialist Party consists of a few hundred active members nationwide and we are established in about 15 Swedish cities.
The need for a revolutionary workers party in a somehow wealthy country such as Sweden might not seem obvious. But the national perspective upon which such a rejection of the necessity of revolution relies is in fact misleading. Sweden has ever since the end of World War II helped to form an imperialist formation under the rule of the world’s unchallenged capitalist leader – USA. This global capitalist formation has ensured the further and deepened exploitation of the so called “third world”, an ongoing operation from which Swedish multi-national enterprises and, ultimately, wide segments of the Swedish people has benefited. This especially goes for the bureaucrats who are ruling the trade-unions and the two big parliamentary left-wing parties Socialdemokraterna (Social Democrats) and Vänsterpartiet (Left Party). Our ambition is to build a non-bureaucratic worker’s party with democratic decision-making. This, we believe, will prevent the party from becoming alienated from the working class.
Efforts to unite the European states politically through the EU offer no solutions to the problems mentioned above. There are only minor contradictions between EU and USA; the common interest in upholding the global capitalist system is clearly overshadowing eventual disagreements between the two imperialist powers. Furthermore, EU is not in any way more “progressive” than USA. The European Union has since day one been a project of the European ruling class intended to strengthen the exploitation of the European and the global working class. This is why we in Socialist Party together with our sisterparties in other European countries form a united front against the EU.
Sweden’s place in the modern world system has of course come to affect the relationship between the classes here in Sweden. After the 30-year period of serious, life-threatening crisis for global capitalism (1914-1945), the Swedish ruling class saw it self necessitated to compromise with the Swedish working class in order to save the capitalist mode of production from going under. This was part of an international development visible in all industrialized countries. Its result was the Welfare-State, a political invention designed to assure worker class support for the capitalist state by granting the working population social benefits such as universal suffrage, 8-hour working day and five weeks paid vacation. But we must not forget that the intensified exploitation of the third world was what made the western welfare-state possible. While we saw a period of unprecedented wealth here in Sweden, our governments and upper classes did nothing to stop genocidal imperialist wars launched by its allies and protectors.
The relatively high living-standard which capitalism has been able to offer the Swedish people is the main reason why all seven parties in the Swedish parliament can be described as pro-capitalist. Currently, the right-wing form a government which sees as its main objective to replace the Swedish welfare-system with the neo-liberal institutions currently favored by the global ruling class. The government claims it has to be “internationally competitive” in times of “globalization”. What it forgets to mention is that globalization is a strategy consciously adopted by the global ruling class intentioned to raise the profit-levels by pitting the different national working-classes against each other.
What the government are trying to hide by referring to the need of being internationally competitive is the fact that the global ruling class after the collapse of the USSR is no longer in need of the western-style welfare-state in order to uphold global capitalism. “If we can cut the wages and the social benefits, and thereby raise the profit-level without facing strong opposition, then why not?” This is how the ruling class is currently reasoning, not because it is evil but because the economic laws of capitalism force it to act selfish and greedy. And there’s little a left-party government determined to stay within the frames of capitalism and parliamentary democracy can do about it. This clearly shows how powerless our democratic institutions are when faced with global capital. What it calls for is organized resistance, not only against a specific government or a specific enterprise, but against global capitalism.
In order to defeat globally organized capitalism, it takes a globally organized working class. Only if we coordinate the struggle and stand united against our common oppressor can we be successful. This is the thought behind the Fourth International.
We call for the workers of the world to unite no matter nationality, religion or skin colour.
We call for all workers to actively take part in the class struggle in order to form a better world.
Join the movement!
Socialistiska Partiet i Lund
(The Socialist Party in Lund)
Contact : lund(at)socialistiskapartiet.se
Röda Lund 