ECM 2012, Contribution of the Communist Party of Sweden [En.]

Greetings comrades of all countries!

First of all on behalf of the Communist Party of Sweden (SKP) I wish to thank the Greek Communist Party for the invitation and for organizing this important meeting. Furthermore I wish to express our deep solidarity with your heroic struggle as well with the struggle of all our fellow comrades and parties present and non-present here today!

For a long time Sweden has stood as one of the primary examples of the so called Scandinavian model, the model of peaceful coexistence and cooperation between the capitalist and the working class. A truce withheld by the so called welfare state which by social security institutions and progressive taxation sought to even out or compensate for the unequal distribution of wealth caused by the class based society. Based on a high level of organization among the workers and a strong Social Democratic Party this model has been celebrated and pictured as a form of compromise between unchecked capitalism and the real socialism of the former eastern bloc and the Soviet Union. Today it should be perfectly clear to all how treacherous this so called alternative model is and always have been and its historical function as safeguarding the private monopoly of the means of production against democratic control until the working class organizations has become sufficiently undermined, weakened and desillusionized. It was never a compromise, never an alternative, just a prolonged period of capitalistic exploitation saved and paid for by the working people. By letting go of the revolutionary vision and programme the working class organizations under the stern leadership of the Social Democratic Party gradually transformed into an organizational weapon aimed not at the capitalist exploiters but at the workers themselves, whose class interest was replaced by the monopolistic bourgeoisie´s – a process which became more or less complete with the membership in the European Union, initiated by the Social Democratic government in 1991. By willingly restricting the national sovereignty and democratic control and imposing the budgetary and political straightjacket of the EU we now find ourselves in an ever escalating and seemingly uncontestable spiral of privatizations and cut-downs demanded by the monopolistic financial capital safeguarded by the great imperialistic European Union – who’s dictates all parties in parliament, regardless of colour, full heartedly accepts. Our democracy has now become a game of “god cop –bad cop” between the parties holding government and the opposition; a game with the aim and purpose of giving the people an illusion of choice as the agenda of the monopolistic capital is being imposed and our involvement in imperialist aggressions and collaboration with NATO increases and deepens.

In light of this the Communist Party of Sweden sees as one of its primary obligations to tirelessly propagate against a continued membership in the European Union and for cutting all ties with NATO; to educate the people on the true nature of this imperialistic union and to remind the working class of its historical imperative: to take control over the means of production and replacing the horribly dysfunctional, destructive and exploitive capitalist mode of production with a socialistic one. A struggle which by absolute necessity must be oriented and guided by Marxism-Leninism with the socialist mode of production as concrete alternative and solution to the deep contradictions and problems inherited in capitalism – an aim functioning both as the common reason and model for the immediate problems facing the working class in all its diverse and specific situations.

Without theory we fight blindly, we are divided and conquered.

Furthermore it is of outmost importance to contradict and fight every form of nostalgic view of the so called welfare state and the good old days of the Scandinavian model – it should be viewed and condemned as the illusory solution to the class struggle that it always was. It should be condemned as a retreat from the absolutely necessary aim and goal of the working class for the sake of petty crumbles from the tables of the bourgeoisie; as the road leading to the current situation of unemployment, insecurity and impoverishment and the ever increasing segregation and segmentation of society.

The road of capitalism is the road of imperialistic military aggressions and competition; of growth of the repressive state apparatuses defeating more and more of the basic human rights in a gradual development and realization of the fascistic tendency of monopoly capitalism.

It should be clear - and it is our most pressing obligation to make it clear - that a future worthy of its name can only be realized as socialism – the road to communism!