Democrats regain office after 6 years
The two main workers parties gained an absolute majority in the Swedish general elections on September 19, as had been forecast in many opinion polls.
Olof Palme, the leader of the Social Democrats, will return to head the government after six years in opposition. SAP, the Social Democratic Party, is now bigger than the three bourgeois parties together - having gained an additional 2.7 per cent of the vote and 12 new seats.
The Vansterpartiet Kommunisterna (VPK), the Swedish Communist Party, won 5.6 per cent of the vote, taking it well over the 4 percent threshold for parliamentary representation, and giving it 20 seats. This result was better than the opinion polls forecast right up to the end.
This seems largely due to an important last-minute increase in 'tactical' votes by left social democrats to ensure representa26 tion for the CP, and to put a little more left presure on the incoming social-democratic government. Olof Palme himself more or less called for this tactical voting when, during the latter part of the campaign, he said that it was better to have a Communist Party in parliament, than to have it concentrating on extra-parliament-
The rightist Moderata Samlingspartiet has become the biggest of the bourgeois parties. Its vote increased by over 3 per cent to 23.6 percent, taking its seats from 73 to 86. The centre party declined by a further 2.6 per cent to 15.5. per cent. For the liberals it was a catastrophic result, down 4.7 per cent to only 5.9 per the governmental shift was unavoidable. The new government will be
The political polarisation indicated by these results reflects a campaign which was one of sharp debates by the Social on the one hand, with the VPK as a sort of loyal slightly more radical left wing, and the three bourgeois parties, clinging together to try and stop
"socialist transformation' of a Sweden and gain ground in relation to each other, on the other.
The two 'middle' parties as they are generally known were heavily squeezed in this process. The rightist party - which walked out of the three-party coalition demagogically protesting against an agreement on a new tax system between the Social Democrats, the centre party and the liberals - seemed for the majority of the
Socialist Campaign
The Socialistiska Partiet (Socialist
Party, Swedish section of the Fourth parliamentary candidates throughout the country, and stood in several local and regional elections - two hundred candidates
Full results have not yet been announced, but some local reports indicate a doubling in the votes received compared to previous elections - 1200 in both Gothenberg and Stockholm for example
The extensive campaigning work brought the party new prominence and many new contacts within the working class, however under the present conditions the vote could only be limited. The votes won represent a real mark of political confidence in the programme of the party as there is such strong pressure
The Socialistiska Partiet campaign centred on what programme for the
Swedish workers movement to fight unemployment and the increased imperialist wardrive. It was launched through a big propaganda effort, including the distribution of
200,000 copies of its special electoral electorate to be the most consisten and most anti-socialist of the bourgeois parties. It gained at the expense of the other two from a dynamic and rhetorical election campaign. In their comments on the results the centre party and the liberals complained bitterly of the lack of real "three-party loyalty' on the part of the 'moderates.
But the sharpness in the debate had very little to do with any fundamental political differences between the two blocks.
The Social Democrats gained more from their criticism of the horrors of six years of bourgeois rule than from any clear alternative proposals of their own.
However it seems clear that what will is a social-democratic variant of austerity, better marketed but not very different from the policies of the bourgeois government.
Olof Palme, interviewed just after the election, made it clear that the governfor the next three years will be reformists who do not make any reforms. Even the few electoral promises made by the Social Democrats will be adapted to 'crude reality'. The reintroduction of previous levels of sick pay, pensions, and unemployment benefit will be paid for by an increase in indirect taxes.
Given how limited the fundamental political differences were, the heat of the election debate was artificial.
This was proved the very day after the election when a couple of well known capitalists who had been engaged in sharp polemics with the Social Democrats came forward explaining that 'naturally' they would co-operate as much as they could with the new government, and 'of course they were going to take the hand Olof Palme had immediately held out to them.
explained that the wage earners funds' for industrial investments, far from being an immediate threat of impending socialisation, would be and negotiation between the employers and the govern-
What is at stake here is the effort to build a new version of the shattered "Swedish model'; to forge a new variant of class-collaboration in the context of the outcome of the elections. However, the Social Democrats return to government in a different situation from that which they experienced up to 1976. The economic crisis is hitting traditional Swedish industries harder and harder. For the bourgeoisie the Swedes continue to "live above their means, that is the workers will not give up what they have won over decades just like that. For both the new government and the workers movement new political problems will arise. Many traditional concepts and customs will be put into question. In this situation the possibilities of putting forward a socialist alternative will be increased.
PETER GRAHAMS
EMORIAL LIBRARY