League, the former Finnish Communist Party, on the extent of the crisis and how it might be resolved. The Left League won 11% of the votes at the last Finnish elections and has
19 of the 200 seats in parliament.
ALREADY reeling from the economic effects of the collapse of the Soviet
Union, Finland has also been hard hit turbulence. In response, the Finnish government is proposing a swingeing
The proposals centre around the privatization of everything except rescue services like the ambulance and fire services. Education will now be free up until the age of 15 only, unemployment benefits will be cut drastically and the conditions for claiming them tightened, subsidies to companies and farms will be practically abolished, all tax benefits for single parents and families with children will disappear and the pension age will be raised and pensions cut in value.
Peter Lindgren spoke to two leading members of the Left
League, the former Finnish Communist Party, on the extent of the crisis and how it might be resolved. The Left League won 11% of the votes at the last Finnish elections and has
19 of the 200 seats in parliament.
people under 25 is unemployed. They are not in retraining or any public programme. Today one business is declared bankrupt every hour in Finland. • In its crisis programme the Left League talks of "exceptional measures for an exceptional time". But how do you plan to control the flow of currency out of the country, for example?
Well, is it really possible to carry out a national policy? The government must enjoy the confidence of the market, not the parliament. With the chiefs of the financial departments of the big companies and the currency traders at the front row — also on the international level — the market is protecting itself against devaluation. In my opinion it is not possible to go back to regulating the flows of currencies. • Could you not propose the cutting of the working week in order to share out the available jobs?
The government wants to prolong the working hours! We propose the opposite. But during the election campaign this demand does not play any big role. • Last year 40,000 trade unionists demonstrated in Helsinki against the policies of the government (see IV 215, November 28, 1991). But now everything is silent.
Yes, people are passive instead of wanting to fight. Many blame themselves for the unemployment and miseгу. • What will happen to Finland during the 1990s?
There will probably be growing polarization. The right want to tear down the welfare state and install a two tier society. We in the Left League want to defend the welfare state but also promote more decentralized structures. Finland is now becoming more integrated with
Europe on all levels. I foresee a closer cooperation between the Scandinavian and Baltic countries as one road forward. *
ESKO Säppänen is a Left League MP and one of the nine members of the political board of the Finnish Central
Bank.
Finland experiencing such a deep crisis? During the period of the so-called casino economy Finland borrowed a lot of money abroad. This gave us the biggest problem. The money was invested in golf courses, supermarket palaces, and unproductive projects
SWEDEN / FINLAND which cannot pay back the debt. Today we have to pay interest on these loans. One third of the state budget consists of payments on the debt and 40% of the GNP goes to repaying it - and this figure is rapidly increasing. • How can the crisis be resolved?
We must adopt the Keynesian approach of the 1930s. Our economy does not function. Thus we must stimulate it and it is the state which must provide the motor force. State investments to build apartments, railroads, windpower stations and so on, in order to get the economy to function. • But who will pay for this?
Now, after the devaluation we can take the money from the export industry. They don't need more money. Taxing the higher income strata, the rich, is another way. The government have given them all kinds of gifts in the form of reductions of taxes on interest, incomes from rents, shares and other income from ownership of capital. We say tax the rich. They can pay. • In the statement made by your party after its August conference you demanded state control over the banks.
Personally I don't know if I want to go that far. But I think there is a need for state influence in the boards of the banks. They received 44 billion FMK in support and even after this they are almost bankrupt. So far only one bank has been taken over by the state. • But how should market forces be controlled?
We cannot control them! No country can do this, neither Sweden, Britain or
Finland. The market forces are not elected, they are uncontrollable. It is only in a closed national economy that this would be possible. And we will be forced to this if the catastrophe develops.
The market is running around like a fox in a henhouse. Today we cannot shoot the fox, but we must subject it to some rules. At the same time we must protect social welfare, which the bourgeois parties don't want to do.
• So you mean the alternative is between the Soviet economy of, say, 1985 or that of Finland in 1992?
No. But the mistake with "real socialism" was that it lacked a role for the market. The market is an economic, not a capitalist notion. The "blind forces" of the market are a catastrophe today, but the market must still have a certain role to play.
• So; capitalism?
No, it is not the answer. And today we have in fact a mixed economy because we have social welfare. I want a social market state, market forces and social security. Other alternatives are not credible. It will take two generations before we can talk about socialism again. *
THE Swedish Trotskyist organization, the Socialist Party
(Swedish section of the Fourth International) is distributing 25,000 copies of a leaflet putting forward its reponse to the Swedish financial crisis in the runup to the October 6 anti-austerity demonstration.
AMONG the proposals put forward are:
A special tax on the billions piled up during the '80s and which are now used to speculate against the krona.
• Abolish the business secrets of the banks, real estate and finance companies. Let the representatives of the bank employees scrutinize the transactions that have been made.
• No more privatization and cuts in state tax income "because we must adapt to the European common market" . Our prosperity should not be sacrificed to please the will of top EC politicians and big business.
The currency crisis shows that the people of Europe must build their own cross border cooperation against big finance.
• Society should take over the Swedish private banks and turn them into local savings banks, which serve the municipalities, their inhabitants and small business without the profit motive and under democratic control.
• Introduce immediately the six hour working day with eight hours payment. It is insanity to have people paid for doing nothing while others have to work overtime.
• Instead of giving further gifts to the rich, state subsidies to welfare at regional and local level must be restored to their level before the speculative merry-go-round started turning.
• Without inflated monopoly prices and with banks under social ownership rents and interest rates can be made more reasonable. *
October 12, 1992 •