Trouble in the ranks
* Denmark The membership of the ruling Social Democratic Party is increasingly unhappy with the right-wing leadership. But does the anti-capitalist left represent a viable alternative? By Jörgen Abro-Bähr In the autumn of 1996 the Danish Social Democratic Party celebrated its 125th annithe neo-liberal dance of death
The party has been in government more or less continuously since 1945 (not so unusual in this part of Europe). Successive social democratic coalition governments with one or more of the small bourgeois parties, reflected the "success" of the party's reformist, class-collaboration line.
The current crisis has changed all that. Denmark's bourgeois parties have adopted policies inspired by Margaret Thatcher, Britain's former Prime Minister. Denmark's conservatives argue that direct confrontation with the organised (unionised) working class is necessary, in order to establish a new formula for the distribution of wealth in society, liberalise the labour market, cut back on social welfare, and increase legal restrictions on trade union organising.
The role of reversing the past conquests of the workers' movement fell to Poul Schlüter's conservative government, which took power in 1982. With the abolition of the automatic increase in cost of living allowances, cuts in unemployment benefit and cuts in social welfare, they won the first battles in this class-confrontation.
A 1984 conflict over the union membership agreement of Copenhagen bus drivers targeted another important bourgeois concem: the unity of the trade union movement.
The Schlüter government's role as "crisis-solver" for the bourgeoisie was hampered by increasing working-class resistance, climaxing in the massive national strikes during Easter 1985, with hundreds of thousands of workers on strike, or demonstrating against the government's intervention into the bargaining process on the labour market.
The social democrats were temporarily side-tracked by these developments. They wanted to re-convince the bourgeoisie of the advantages of class collaboration, on a new basis. But they could not do so until the tide of class struggle had declined, and until the Communist Party was no longer in a position to challenge the Social Democratic leadership of the labour movement. With the quiet decline in the class struggle after the Easter strikes and the collapse of the Communist 10 International Viewpoint
Party the threat of a radical alternative *disappeared in about 1990. Bourgeois reforms
Reformist policies of class co-operation in Denmark have only been possible because of the real advantages and reforms which democratic policy has been replacement of real reforms with "reforms" which in reality provide advantages for capital.
The Social Democrats' original project of economic democracy had, for all its limits, a certain sparkle of hostility to capital, of real reform. But the result was the introduction in 1991 of retirement pension reforms which meant adjustment to the less progressive measures common in the rest of the European union, and increased inequalities among the working-class population.
This pension legislation has been followed by more openly pro-bourgeois reforms of the labour market, and attacks on the unemployment benefit system.
The sorry state of the Danish workers movement has another cause: the project of European union. Ever since 1972, the northern European countries have been characterised by a distinct division within the labour movement concerning attitudes to European integration. The top of the movement has been strongly in favour, the rank and file strongly opposed.
As the current project of European Union took form, the leaders of the social democratic movement and the trade unions have increasingly committed themselves to an agenda which is effectively defined by the European bourgeoisie. Their last bastion of resistance was the introduction of the single market. When they failed to prevent Danish approval of that project, they surrendered to all the rest. In the new reformist logic, the Maastricht Treaty represented progress, compared to the non-regulated single (common) market.
On 2 June 1992 the Danish electorate rejected the Maastricht Treaty in a referendum. This reflected the continued division of the labour movement - leaders campaigning for a "Yes" vote, the rank and file campaigning for a "No" vote. This division was not healed when, after a massive, manipulative media campaign, a second referendum in 1993 narrowly approved the Maastricht Treaty. Division among the social democrats
There are two competing lines within the social democratic part of the workers movement. This tension was demonstrated in 1992, when Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (now Prime Minister) replaced Svend Auken as party leader, after mobilising the right of the рапу.
Auken defended the traditional reformist line. He wanted to defend the existing welfare state by traditional parliamentary means, not understanding that the bourgeoisie is no longer interested by this strategy
Nyrup's campaign represented the "social-liberal" line. The obvious problem with this line is that the increasing acceptance of bourgeois policies leads to an erosion of the parliamentary and social basis of social democracy - the breaking down of the collective-bargaining system in the labour marked and the decline in mass membership of the trade unions.
The elements in this modern socialliberal policy are:
• a minimum social welfare system, to protect the "weakest"
• increased profits by giving contracts to private firms for work that has former been done by the public sector,
• privatisation,
• an ideology which says that one has to contribute in order to receive
• the creation of new segments of the labour market, based on the principles of the law of the jungle. "Renovation" of the labour leadership
European integration, in particular its "social dimension" and the increasing regulation of local conditions by Union-wide directives is unambiguous supported by the "renovation" current in the labour leadership. The flexibilisation and individualisation of the labour market is increasingly accepted by labour leaders, who now have a vision of individual rights, guaranteed by Europe, rather than underpinned by union organising and collective bargaining.
Union leaders now accept that working time must be more flexible, and employers must be able to impose new technologies easily.
The upper layers of the trade union bureaucracy dream of transforming the unions into "equal" partners of co-operation within each branch of the economy.
Their heads are filled with the supposed merits of "improving work", "salary based on results" and so on: concepts which, behind the ideological smoke screen, contribute to a weakening of trade union organising at the workplace level, and a weakening of the unions as such.
In other words, the labour leadership's strategy is loosing its progressive content. It no longer identifies private ownership of the means of production as a problem, and no longer sets as a goal the right of the employees to govern production.
The traditional reformist resistance against this "renovation" project is led by the
Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen isn't smiling SiD - the country's best-organised union, which represents semi-skilled workers in every municipality in Denmark. Given the union's strength within the labour movement, and its organisational importance for the Social Democratic Party, SiD hostility to the "renovation" project is a major obstacle to the social-liberal leadership of the movecentre for an eventual regroupment.
The problem is that the Alliance lacks organising strength, and is too heterogeneous to present an attractive alternative to the larger parties. Also, it is quite possible that, since the new regroupment is starting within the social democratic party, there may not be significant groups of militants who are ready to break with traditional reformism. Don't rule out the possible formation of a new party based on reformist traditions.
The social-liberal "renovation" line dominates the leadership of the social democratic movement in part because of the short term economic upturn, which has led to falling unemployment. This in turn is used to counter any and all left criticism of the course taken in recent years.
The implication, of course, is that a downturn in the economic situation could have a big influence on the legitimacy of the social-liberal line. Although the growth of a
Denmark * real alternative, even within the framework of reformist policies, can only really develop if there is progress in the class-struggle.
The immediate priority is to build strong and well organised left wing currents in the workers' movement. This means defending collective bargaining rights, fighting for the generalisation of job-sharing, a break with the system of industrial relations courts, and resistance to European Union attacks on collective bargaining and social welfare.
To win these goals, revolutionaries should support "united fronts" with the reformist leadership of the labour movement. But they should make sure that it is the left which wins the credit for resistance against cuts and privatisation, and for daring to struggle. * The author is a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SAP), one of the groups which founded the Red-Green Alliance, and Danish section of the Fourth International.
ment.
But the SiD is a colossus with feet of clay. The union's potential as a combat
Time off for domestic violence? organisation is continually restricted by leaders who implicitly accept the pro-bourgeois policy of "managing the crisis" They refuse to recognise the full implications of the transformation of labour relations in Denmark over the years, Drawing the consequences would mean, for a start, breaking with the system of industrial relations courts. Possible breaks
This is a period of great instability in the labour movement. SiD opposition to the Social Democrats' compromise with the conservatives over the 1995 state budget [see IV#284, Jan. 1997] may even result in the development of a new "social democratic labour party". Though the peculiarly Danish Socialist Peoples Party (SF), a relatively large left-reformist, non-Stalinist party to the left of social democracy may pick up most of