A FRIEND and comrade is dead. A strong link has been broken. For the first time in his life Tom Gustafsson had to give up - a malignant disease finally conquered his strong physique and his big appetite for life. He died just a couple of weeks before we were to celebrate his fortieth birthday. GOTE KILDEN
We cannot deny our feelings of sorrow and of loss. Open wounds always hurt. But still it is not difficult to draw a portrait of Tom. We need only bright colours. He was to live only four decades, but with his intensity and energy he experienced four centuries.
Our movement doesn't glorify its leaders. The worship of icons does not foster emancipated human beings. But we recognize greatness where we
The key to Tom's greatness that he always lived in accordance with his thinking. He didn't "sacrifice himself for the party". His attitude towards politics was scientific, moral and full of joy.
Tom's father, Aake Gustafsson, is
Sweden's leading scientists (moreover, one of those who showed that Stalin's protege, Lysenko, got not only his burning interest in biology, but also a scientific method, a habit of always asking why and always studying everything in detail. Anyone who has gone out for a walk with Tom knows that he never could stroll slowly. Either he was like an express train, hurrying somewhere, or had his hands full of flowers and leaves and gave an inspiring biological
In the mid 1960s, Tom started to study at the university of Lund in the south of Sweden. Here he soon found himself in the middle of the political turmoil and social revolt that shook the university cities all over the world. The Tet-offensive in Vietnam 1968, the May revolt in France and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the same year marked, each in its way a turning point in world political development. In Sweden the idyllic decade was over and the big miners' strike in Lappland in 1969-70 exposed the state of bureaucratism and degeneration within the traditional labour movement.
Tom was raised in a liberal home, and for a few months he tested the Young Liberals. But they could not explain the social and political convulsions that shook up the world. In an epoch when the decay of the market system and the growth of the mass movements for social liberation cannot be concealed, liberalism is a reactionary political force. Tom saw it and rejected it. Very soon he was to join the left-wing student organization, Clarte, and it became his real university in Lund was boiling with ideas and debate. It was a pot where you could find ingredients the sources of the labour movement, and from the largest to the smallest of the gardens of Marxian in 1966-67, Tom started to be active in the soli darity movement for the Vietnamese revolution. That was one of his longest engagements that also became decisive for his own political development.
He soon became one of the leading figures in building the Swedish NLF movement, and therefore his demand for honesty, a scientific method and a clear political program quickly colwith the Maoists who tried to the young solidarity
The first years of struggle against the neutralism of the Swedish Communist Party on the war in Vietnam was now succeeded by a ten-year-long resistance against the miseducation by the Maoists of a whole generation of young activists. In hundreds of articles and speeches Tom underlined, time after time, that the war in Indochina was not only a war for national liberation. It was also a social civil war. And our solidarity was solidarity with revolutionists who were leading the poor masses of Indochina in a socialist revolution. But he also warned against the consequences of the underdevelopment in the region, of the mass destruction, and also against the political shortcomings of the revolutionists themselves. Thereby it was possible to combine the fight for the most broad and whole-hearted solidarity with a critical mind.
To us this insight was invaluable as it was a political vaccine against the bitterness, cynicism and demoralization that were to paralyze tens of thousands of dedicated internationalists when the barbary of Pol Pot became known to the world. In the same way that the Budapest uprising in 1956 crushed the illusions of Stalinism, the tragedy in Cambodia was to extinguish the ideological star of Maoism.
OBITUARY
Tom's political fight during these years meant that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of revolutionists were saved from being drawn down in the black turmoil of defeat.
Tom's work with developing these standpoints was to have great consequences for his whole political life. The years of 1967 to 1971 saw Tom throw himself into what we sometimes used to call 'the battle of history", that is the total showdown with the traditions of Swedish and international reformism and the Stalinist movements. The Russian revolution, the victory of nazism in Germany, the Spanish civil war, the Second World War and the Hungarian uprising were only some of the experiences of the international workers' movement he now studied. The mistakes in Indochina were not unique but universal, they were not exceptions but the rule and the logical consequences of reformism and Stalinism. Tom was always in the front ranks
Tom, like so many others from his generation, was there, at the barricades in Paris and sang "Einheitsfrontlied"
with tens of thousands of internationalists in the mass demonstrations of the German SDS. He was a child of May '68, and like so many others of these children he was raised three, many Vietnams", the watchof Che Guevara, spread like wildfire throughout remember all the countless Vietnam demonstrations when message resounded in the streets. There, always Tom, tall and huge, like a firtree, with his strong voice.
The experiences from Saigon, Paris, Prague and the Swedish minefields -together with the balance sheet of the history of Stalinism - converged
Tom in a single conclusion: joining the Fourth International. That also meant a gigantic challenge - to build new mass parties all over the world.
In Sweden this challenge was met Revolutionary Marxists shevik Group. The Bolshevik Group formed by the majority within Clarte in Lund. Tom was one of its
In 1971 the two groups fused into a evolutionary amarxists, Swedish section of the Fourth International. Here, young and inexperienced people, without any historical with an older generation, were to start building something completely new.
Of course, we committed many mistakes. We had learned from history and agreed with the more principled and theoretical heritage of the Fourth
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International. But to translate these experiences to the Sweden of the '70s and '80s was a difficult and lengthy task. It dealt with everything, from setting up small book shops, developing a tactic for work in the unions, and reasonable ways of organizing, building an effective party-apparatus to learning a useful political language. We have still much to do in these fields, but the foundations were laid at the time when we adopted the name of the Socialist Party in 1982.
Tom played one of the main roles in this process. His own decision to work for the Fourth International was conscious, and as the political "botanist" he was, he had tested and rejected all other alternatives, and knew that to meet the challenge demanded an immense patience.
Tom developed a fine political ear that could register the situation in our own organization. He knew when the bow was too bent or too weak. the rare capacity of always being prepared to
He didn't try to win on every debated issue or always have the last word, but in a generous way he was always prepared to work out a temporary compromise or an agree-
We were often comrades quarrelled with Tom because of that sometimes with a little Now, when he is gone, we know that it is this capacity we will miss the most. The anger and holy have to spare for the big principal
During our twenty-year-long his-
Tom was the only one who almost uninterruptedly worked as a he was the prisoner of the apparatus or became dependent on the organiza-
On the contrary, it was because he was absolutely necessary in making possible a viable apparatus. had the confidence and integrity to make us want him in this position of trust. He was a professional revolu-
Atlas Copco [a big Swedish-owned multinational firm.] There he joyfully threw himself into new friendships and trade-union activities. But after a couple of years he was forced to give up this new life, when we convinced him and his companion Birgitta to move to Paris to take on international responsibilities and work. An internationalist first and foremost
Tom's political clearsightedness, his great capacity for work and the confidence his friends and comrades in him led to the fact that he got responsibilities and assignments in all areas of work. He has contributed nearly every issue of the papers and magazines we published through the years. He often acted the secretary of the Verkstallande listen.
He respect his won even among opponents.
Tom Gustafsson - a comrade who will be sorely missed (DR)
during these years was a period at of the party), and was a candidate in carried heavy loads in the
But also he led the "Norrlandssatsningen" [a campaign to root the party in the working class of the northern part of Sweden], and labour ed in the Stockholm branch.
And despite everything, child of May '68 and internationalism was the red thread of his life. passionately engaged as he was twenty years ago on behalf of the Vietnamese revolution he was, until only a couple of weeks ago, engaged in the defence of the revolution in Nicaragua.
For us he was the most important link to the Fourth International. Here in Sweden he always tried to create an understanding for both the everyday problems and its important political Tom was not only a link to the Fourth International. During the last six years he was also a part of its executive leadership, the United Secretariat (USec). During 1981-83 he was also a part of its daily leadership, the Bureau of the USec. There he first of all succeeded in overcoming language and cultural barriers to create a real authority and play a leading role.
In the same way as in Sweden he became an organizational motor, but also played a prominent role in directing the sections of the Fourth International towards a bigger concentration on activities in the trade unions, and in the hard struggle during the most recent years to defend the programmatical continuity of the International, , in defence of Permanent Revolution, the theory which he had used so well to analyse the Vietnamese revolution in his youth.
We are convinced that Tom did not live in vain. A strong link has been broken - but Tom has, by the example of his life, his greatness and his leadership shown us how to forge a new one, how to make the chain strong again. •