Swedish Workers Relearn the Method of the Political Strike
(The following article is from the February 18 issue of Internationalen, the weekly paper of the Socialist Party, Swedish section of the Fourth International. It has been slightly abridged. The translation is by IV.)
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It is no accident that the call for political strikes is arising today in response to the capitalist parties' attacks on the working people. The reformists' parliamentary methods have long been bankrupt.
That is why workers in the shipyards in Skane, in the steelworks in Bergslagen and Norrbotten, and other branches of heavy industry are demanding that the working class take up effective methods to combat the capitalist parties and their policies.
When the Swedish workers movement was young, strikes were its most important weapon. They were necessary for the workers even to win the right to build unions, to defend themselves against attempts to push down wages, and to win more bearable working conditions and a shorter workday.
But also in the struggle for political rights, the strike was an obvious weapon for a fighting labor movement.
In fact, the discussion about how to use the weapon of the general strike to win universal suffrage was one of the most important debates in the workers' movement at the beginning of this century.
In the spring of 1902, the Riksdag was debating the question
In order to press their demand for universal suffrage, the workers carried out a three-day political general strike. It marked a major step forward. Well over a hundred thousand workers throughout the country participated in it. And this was when the LO (the National Labor Confederation) had only 39, 000
The effects of the general strike and the demonstrations that were combined with this were far reaching. The government was forced to resign, and the right's proposal could not be carried through. To continue with the same methods, to escalate the political strikes until the right to vote was won seemed the obvious road to many in the workers' movement. But not to the leadership.
They were frightened by the demonstration of the sort of power the workers had, and they were afraid to let this kind of thing go any further.
How could the leaders be sure that the demonstrations could be limited to the demand for the right to vote? In 1905, when the tactic of the general strike was being discussed most intensely, the Russian workers showed that strikes and demonstrations that had begun for far more modest demands could develop into revolutionary uprisings.
Branting, the most farsighted reformist, opposed political general strikes. His primary objection was that use of such
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INTERNATIONAL forceful means endangered collaboration with the bourgeois liberals in the Riksdag.
And class collaboration in the Riksdag was more important than the strongest class hatred expressed in mass actions in the streets.
Branting's conception and apprehensions quickly spread to the reformist-inclined leaders in the party and the trade-union movement.
So, despite the clear gains achieved by the political general strike of 1902, and despite the fact that the masses in the workers' movement expressed their unequivocal support for continuing to use the general strike tactic in no less than four referendums (that is how democratic they were in those days), the party and union leadership opposed by every means at their disposal any further application of this highly effective method.
When the LO says today that political strikes were an acceptable method at the turn of the century because political democracy had not yet been established, this is also wrong.
The reformist LO leadership turned against political general strikes back in 1902, for he same reason it opposes such methods now--because they endanger class collaboration.
But for fighting workers, the political strike continued to be an important weapon...
And when universal suffrage was finally won at the end of the teens, this was in fact the result of the biggest strike wave our country has ever seen. All the rallies, demonstrations, occupations, and strikes, above all in the spring of 1917, were ultimately aimed against the hunger government of Hammarskjold and to
22 back up the demand for universal suffrage, which more and more came to the fore.
These strikes and demonstra tions were in no way initiated or supported by the Social Democratic leadership in the SAP (Socialist Workers Party) and the LO, quite the contrary. They were spontaneous upsurges led by left socialists and syndicalists. But that did not prevent the first Social Democratic government from getting into power on the back of these upsurges. They had nothing against enjoying the fruits of this political strike.
Today only two political strikes are noted with approval by Social Democratic historians--the 1902 one and the one that the LO called in 1928 in protest against the Collective Bargaining Law and the setting up of labor courts.
But the Social Democrats cannot take any credit for the 1928 strike either.
When the LO first discussed how to resist the proposed law, the leadership strongly opposed the call for "sabotaging the legislation. " No, they passed a resolution against it, that was supposed to be sufficient.
But the outrage against the ruling bourgeois government's bill was enormous in the trade-union movement. The call for a general strike against the anti- union legislation was raised in thousands of rallies and demonstrations across the country.
So, the National Secretariat of the LO and the Social
Democratic party leadership finally found it necessary "to try to provide an outlet for the growing unrest," as it so blithely put it in the LO's official history.
The support for the three-hour general strike was impressive.
Stockholm was as good as shut
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Editorial and distribution : PO Box 50, London N1 2XP down, and 70, 000 workers participated in a giant demonstration. And the LO leadership came under strong criticism for not carrying the struggle further. Why not send the bourgeois government packing? many wondered.
Several motions were presented to the LO congress last year calling for the organization to resort to political general strikes as a means of fighting the bourgeois government's antilabor policies.
In their rejection of these motions, the LO leadership did, however, say that there is no rule that as such bars political general strikes. Demonstrations in the form of short strikes can be considered, but they should be resorted to only in the most extreme crises or when the right to organize is threatened. It is essential, the LO leadership said, to maintain the distinction between demonstration strikes and strikes that are expressly aimed to bring down the government.
But before this declaration was voted by the LO congress, the leadership was obliged to go along with the political strike by the textile workers' union, which had just occurred in conditions that could not be called "the most extreme crisis." And now other LO representatives are saying that the leadership of the organization may very well consider a political strike against cutbacks of social gains.
In fact, by its nature the reformist trade-union bureaucracy will never willingly resort to political strikes. But when the anger and the pressure of the working class on them becomes too great, they can be forced to undertake extensive political protest actions "in an attempt to provide an outlet for growing unrest."