Class struggle and storytelling

I read last night an interview with Alan Moore, an anarchist who has written some of the best comics of the recent past, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell. He discussed a little bit about the importance of story telling for radical movements, a theme which has come up here before, in my discussion of Kämpa Tillsammans’ use of the ‘workplace story’ as an organising tool.

I wrote:

“While traditional workers’ inquiries tend to be quite formal, often involving questionnaires and formal interviews, the members of Kämpa Tillsammans  chose instead to document their own (often humorous) work experiences, draw lessons from them and publish them on the internet. They deliberately chose the medium of story-telling because they wanted workers to engage with the stories in a way that is not possible with formal surveys. Kim Muller of Kämpa Tillsammans explains that they wanted to change the popular idea of what it was to be a worker; workers do not communicate with each other via “written pamphlets or leaflets but by talking and storytelling”, thus stories provide a far better way to develop a new workers discourse than dry analysis and documentation.”

Alan Moore had a similar point to make, although unsurprisingly, he made it far better:

“I think that if you actually examine the relationship between real life and fiction, you’ll find that we most often predicate our real lives upon fictions that we have applied from somewhere… Inevitably, we are to some extent creating a fiction every second of our lives, the fiction of who we are, the fiction of what our lives are about, the meanings that we give to things. So to some degree, stories are at the absolute center of human existence”

(in Mythmakers and Lawbreakers - anarchist writers on fiction, published by AK Press)

In my piece, I was counterposing the practice of workplace storytelling with that of the more formal workers’ inquiries, promoted by the Italian autonomia tendency. Many of the Italian autonomia writers were academics, and thus a rigorously formal inquiry into the ‘objective facts’ of workplace organisation and working class struggle in the big industrial plants  was a natural enough path to take, (This approach was mirrored more recently in Kolinko’s ‘Hotlines‘ inquiry into class composition in call centres). Kämpa Tillsammans’ approach was more subjective, they wanted something which was fun for workers to read and talk about. Workers swap stories and jokes all the time in the break room and on the shop floor, who would pass on an academic text or a piece of sociology?

Thus stories could be a much more useful organising tool – as well as passing on experiences and ideas, they carry implicit moral overtones, heroes and villains, which in turn justify militant practices and rebellion. Looking at stories in this way, as intrinsically related to our experience of daily life, has much in common with the trend in sociology towards ‘social constructionism‘, which places focus on the ways that social reality is created by groups and individuals. It’s no secret that bosses and companies do all they can to create a narrative of work that promotes responsibility and hard work. This typically takes the form of lectures and videos about ‘company values’, underscored by pathetic staff perks and bonus schemes. The success or failure of this attempt will have a big effect on the workplace collective, will workers identify their interests with the company and follow their narrative, or will they develop their own of subversion and rebellion?

New SAC statement of principles – updated

Updated – Spotted a bit of inside info on libcom.org

“Mattias Pettersson is the new editor of Arbetaren. He hasn’t started yet but I think it will totally change the way the paper works!

ATM: Half the paper consists of articles about climate change, The rest of the paper consists of equal parts of queer/gay/gender articles, Palestine/Israel/Hezbollah, theater/performance art and workplace/union/struggle articles. The paper often reports in a negative way about SAC workplace struggle and SAC internal affairs. Lot of reporters have been able to use it as a tool to launch their own projects and books for their careers to take off with negative effects on the paper and movement as a whole.

Future: The paper is going to focus more and more on workplace struggle and union reporting. It is also going to involve activists more and get a network of activists involved in creating articles and ideas for the paper. The idea is that we members of SAC locals should be able to spread the paper on our workplaces or even sell them in public without feeling ashamed about the material. No one I know actively sells the paper to people since they are not satisfied with the content and the crowd it is targeting (the red-wine and beret left).”

Too much SAC stuff in the last while… Hope to get some reports from Vår Makt up soon though, and an interview with a Piratbyrån member is in the works. Anyway, here is the newly updated SAC statement of principles. According to one SAC member:

“The old statement of principles was bloated and patched up from the half-reformism of the 60s through radicalization of the 70s to the peace/enviromental movement of the 80s to the introduction of feminism in 90s etc… it really served no practical purpose in the state it was in. The new one is politically sound, can be used as a basis for developing practical decisions and you can use it for handing potential joiners as well… never really worked as any of those in a long time.“

New SAC Statement of Principles 2009

1. THE WORKERS OF THE WORLD are exploited in the capitalist profit-driven system of production. Under capitalism, the means of production have been monopolized by a few. They have therefore the social power to acquire all the wealth created. At the same time we, the overwhelming majority, are forced to work without power over the business, and for a wage which does not correspond to the value of what we produce. Where capitalism is allowed free range, violence and destruction are following in its wake, as well as a ruthless exploitation of natural resources that threatens the human environment and living conditions worldwide. From these circumstances arises the class struggle, in which the workers can only rely on their own actions.

2. SYNDICALISM is not primarily an ideology but a tradition of struggle among workers. We are driven by our desire for freedom and socialism. We nourish a dream that one day we will put an end to wage slavery. By building up industrial workers’ organizations, with the workplace as a starting point, we can mitigate the effects of capital’s exploitation and the state’s coercion, in order to finally overcome this inhumane economic and political system which gives all the good things in life to the exploiters.

3. DESPITE THAT THE WORKING CLASS today, as well as in history, is layered and fragmented in many ways, for example by industry, trade, legal status, gender, ethnicity, age, and employment status, SAC thinks that all workers have basic common interests. Therefore, the SAC consists of Local Union Confederation (LS) that organize all workers regardless of trade. As all workers have common interests, an organization that brings together all workers are needed. Through our organization we combat divisions within the working class and increase our collective power. If we are to hold together as workers, this requires us to act in solidarity. SAC understands solidarity as a common struggle for common interests.

4. THE EXPLOITATION OF THE WORKING CLASS takes different forms depending on where in the social hierarchy the work or workers are located. Heavily exploited groups of workers are employed to lower the standards of more established workers’ groups and migrants and the unemployed are used to press down wages. Women’s work is often valued less than men’s. This affects the workers’ mutual relationships in the workplace and creates tensions within the working class. The interests of heavily exploited group must be given decisive impact in the fight. No form of discrimination or subordination can be tolerated. SAC is a feminist and anti-racist organization.

5. IN SAC, WE BELIEVE unreservedly in the working class’, that is, our own, strength and skills. We do not need the blessing of power to give legitimacy to our fight or justify our existence. We know that neither libertarian socialism nor organization will be possible if we do not believe in our own ability. SAC believes that the workers must organize themselves free from any outside interests, like those expressed by the state and employers. SAC is an anti-authoritarian organization and sees direct action as the means to change society and our living and working conditions.

6. OUR POWER IS BASED on the way we organize ourselves. For a union to achieve maximum impact, it must be free from any interests outside of their members. In order to achieve maximum impact, the union must be organized in a federalist manner, which means self-determination in own affairs and cooperation on common issues. Centralism, bureaucracy, and other authoritarian forms of organization weakens unions. Our inner strength is derived from the principle that those affected by a decision should also be those who have taken it, and that all elected representatives are directly recallable. To avoid division in the workplace, and between trades, a powerful union must be organized industrially. Unions organized by trade are an anachronism. A powerful union must further more have the will to fight. A powerful trade union must also have the ambition to win their battles.

7. IN THE PRODUCTION OF GOODS and services, the workers have the power needed to change society. The social power of the working class is latent in the production process. Therefore the workplace is our premier venue for organizing. The labor market which provides the framework for the workplace struggle, must also be an arena of battle.

8. WE WORKERS HAVE NO FATHERLAND, our living conditions are intertwined with our sisters and brothers throughout the world. Global solidarity is a prerequisite for the liberation of the working class. SAC is opposed to all violence used by governmental and supranational institutions, as well as paramilitary groups, in order to maintain capital’s world order. SAC believes that workers always have the right to defend themselves against such violence.

9. SAC’S GOAL IS libertarian socialism: a society that is no longer divided into ruling and dominated classes; a society that no longer consists of exploiters and exploited; a society free from state coercion. In libertarian socialism, production is governed by society’s needs, which gives work meaning. The workers control the organizing of production, which gives the work content.

10. WE HAVE A BIG TASK ahead of us. But we know we can organize and win victories. We are fighting on our own merits, we struggle where we live our lives, so simple and so obvious it that. Only thus can we develop the self-responsibility that is the foundation of free socialism.

SAC and the Swedish welfare state – quote from Black Flame

Black Flame, the excellent new book by Michael Schmidt and Lucien Van Der Walt has a very good summary of the changes that led to the SAC’s exit from the IWA in 1956 (pps. 222-223). They introduce the comments as part of a section on how syndicalist movements have adapted to reforms and compromise. The authors seem to side with the SAC’s decision to distribute state welfare funds, and in this point I’m pretty strongly in agreement with them. From my side, it would seem very unpragmatic to refuse to distribute welfare out of adherence to syndicalist purism, and thus fail to provide members with the funds they need to survive unemployment. In my opinion, this approach to politics will soon end in irrelevance. What are your thoughts? Can anyone think of any modern correlates of the discussion?

“State welfare systems, which developed rapidly from the 1930s onward, also pose difficulties. Syndicalism stresses the importance of winning reforms, and much of the expansion of welfare is attributable, at least in part, to working-class struggles. Syndicalism also sees improvements in the material conditions of the working class in positive terms, and there is no doubt that state welfare systems have been critical, especially in the West, in improving the quality of popular life. Yet such welfare also serves to promote particular family structures (as, for example, when the state makes child support grants available to married women through their husbands) and foster a profound loyalty to the state asa the benevolent representative of the public.

A case in point of some of the difficulties is presented by the Swedish SAC’s situation; it was one of the only IWA affiliates still functioning as a union after 1945, in large part because Sweden had been relatively unaffected by the rise of dictatorships, fascism, and war elsewhere (although key members were interned during the war along with other “subversive elements”). By this time, the Swedish state was developing into a model of social democracy, introducing an extensive and expansive welfare system as well as a complicated system of collective bargaining. One aspect of this system (partly a concession to the Labour Organisation union federation, or LO, that was allied with the ruling Social Democratic Labour Party) was that the unions played a role in the administration of welfare, including the distribution of unemployment benefits.

Grappling with this issue, the SAC revised its programme in 1954 and decided to start distributing state unemployment funds to its members. This was condemned by the IWA, and the SAC left in 1956, with many feeling that the union could not compete with the dominant Labour Organisation unless it also participated in the distribution of unemployment monies. At the same time, while the SAC grew quickly, it also grew markedly moderate. Key SAC and SUF, notable the veteran activist Helmet Rudiger (1903-1966), headed a “new orientation” current that was not very different from that of mainstream social democracy; it included proposals for participation in municipal elections, stressed that the main struggle was against totalitarian systems, whether of the Left or Right, and is best considered in this period as a form of libertarian reformism, not anarchism or syndicalism.

From the 1970s onward, the SAC swung to the Left and syndicalism – yet maintains participation in the unemployment benefits system to this day. The existence of state welfare was not something that even large syndicalist unions, however purist, could not and cannot ignore. A whole range of issues arise here. Could a genuinely syndicalist union participate in a state welfare system? Could it even intervene in policy debates in order to change that system? Or were such forms of participation altogether incompatible with syndicalism? Finally, should state welfare be supported in the first place?”

Two videos about current squatting wave in Sweden

Here are two short videos about the squatting movement in Sweden. The current squatting movement is very young, it was very active earlier this year, went on a bit of a hiatus and is now back in full force. In contrast to the Swedish squatting movement of about ten years ago which was criticised for being too violent,  activists tend to have a nuanced approach to militancy, being confrontational without very violent. Somewhere between pacifist civil disobedience, and full out autonome madness.

We don’t get anything by asking nicely!

Sweden ends here!

Wikipedia on Economic Crash of the 1990s

From Wikipedia

“Sweden has had a unique economic model in the post-World War II era, characterized by close cooperation between the government, labour unions and corporations. The Swedish economy has extensive and universal social benefits funded by high taxes, close to 50% of GDP.^[4] In the 1980s, a real estate and financial bubble formed, driven by a rapid increase in lending. A restructuring of the tax system, in order to emphasize low inflation combined with an international economic slowdown in the early 1990s, caused the bubble to burst. Between 1990 and 1993 GDP went down by 5% and unemployment skyrocketed, causing the worst economic crisis in Sweden since the 1930s. In 1992 there was a run on the currency, the central bank briefly jacking up interest to 500% in an unsuccessful effort to defend the currency’s fixed exchange rate.^[5] Total employment fell by almost 10% during the crisis.

A real estate boom ended in a bust. The government took over nearly a quarter of banking assets at a cost of about 4% of the nations GDP. This was known colloquially, as the “Stockholm Solution.” The United States Federal Reserve remarked in 2007, that “In the early 1970s, Sweden had one of the highest income levels in Europe; today, its lead has all but disappeared….So, even well-managed financial crises don’t really have a happy ending.”^[6]

The welfare system that had been growing rapidly since the 1970s couldn’t be sustained with a falling GDP, lower employment and larger welfare payments. In 1994 the government budget deficit exceeded 15% of GDP. The response of the government was to cut spending and institute a multitude of reforms to improve Sweden’s competitiveness. When the international economic outlook improved combined with a rapid growth in the IT sector, which Sweden was able to capitalize from, the country was able to emerge from the crisis.^[7][8]

The crisis of the 1990s was by some viewed as the end of the much buzzed welfare model called “Svenska modellen”, literally The Swedish Model, as it proved that governmental spending at the levels previouly experienced in Sweden was not long term sustainable.^[9]Much of the Swedish Model’s acclaimed advantages actually had to be viewed as a result of the post WWII special situation, which left Sweden untouched when competitors’ economies was in pieces.^[10]

However, the reforms enacted during the 1990s seem to have created a model in which extensive welfare benefits can be maintained in a global economy.^[4]“

Internet Usage in Sweden around 2000

I think it was Altemark who remarked to me previously that he expected that one of the reasons that initiatives such as Piratbyrån and the Pirate Bay developed in Sweden before anywhere else was the high rate of internet access in Sweden at an early point, propelled in large by the Swedish government’s turn to investment in the emerging IT industry after the crash in the mid 90s.

Anyway, I was happy to find a quote which supports this in the Economist, Apr 27th 2000  (Nordic Netheads) stating:

“WHO says entrepreneurs always go where the taxes are low? Sweden, where income taxes are among the heaviest in Europe, has become the continent’s hottest market for Internet start-ups, by some measures hotter than America. Over half of all Swedes are wired up to the Internet, compared with only one in five Germans. Stockholm, the capital, has 900 Internet companies, one for every 850 residents, and more than any other European city.“

The article goes on to blather about the innovative anti-establishment spirit of these Internet start-ups,  and I’m forced to wonder how many of them survived the collapse of the IT bubble a year later?

This graph shows the effects of the IT bubble’s collapse in terms of very low growth in GDP after 2000.

Real GDP growth in Sweden, 1996-2006

Graph from the Economist on Sweden’s economic crisis in the mid 90s

Video of SAC speaker in Amsterdam

This is a video from a conference earlier this year in Amsterdam organised by Anarchist Group Amsterdam. The conference was called ‘Modern Syndicalism’ and had speakers from different anarcho-syndicalist groups as well as the Irish platformists WSM. Anyway, the SAC speaker gives an overview of the SAC, including some history, info about present activities (including the Registry Method) and discusses the ‘new direction’ within the SAC. The SAC speaker starts at about 4 minutes in.

Interview with Planka.nu

The following is an interview with Planka.nu, it was carried out a while ago, but hasn’t been published before. I will use Planka and Piratbyraan as examples of how the Swedish movement has developed forms of struggle and organisation outside of the workplace. I was interested to learn that Planka are involved in parliamentary lobbying in tandem with direct action, not what I would have expected.

When and why did you form?

What is the name of your group?

Planka.nu

When and why did you form?

We formed in the autumn of 2001 as a response to the ever-rising ticket prices in the public transport system in Stockholm. It was also a result of the discussions connected to the summit protests, an attempt to bring global issuses down to a local level.

What do you see as the main achievements of your group? (i.e.magazines published, strikes involved in etc)

Our biggest achievement is that of opening up a new area of conflict. By organizing fare-dodgers (commuters who don’t pay for themselves in the public transport) we’ve taken class-struggle and the fight for commons into the public transport. Since our start we’ve organized several thousands of commuters in a fare-strike and we feel that by doing so we’ve not only put the question of tax-financed, fare-free public transport on the agenda but also politicised an activity that, before us, was only looked at as a security problem.

We’ve also been active in the new climate movement fighting against the plans for new highways around Stockholm – and trying to put the whole transport sector in Stockholm in a broader perspective of class and struggles around commons. By doing so we also hope to plant some of our ideas in the newborn climate movement, so as to push them as far away from green capitalism as possible.

Can you please give an account of your current activities and strategy?

We’re working really hard to broaden our activites. To combine more classic political work such as releasing reports, lobbying and working towards politicians, as well as keeping up our fare strike. In other words, to combine the best of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary work. Currently we’re working hard to put a climate smart and economically just transition of the transport sector in Stockholm on the agenda.

One of our recent actions was a response to when the politicians planned to spend NN millions on new high-tech barriers, claiming that it would stop fare-dodging. We made a short film from Lyon, where the new barriers was already installed, and showed how easy they were to dodge by. This got a big response in media and among the opposition. We are also working on a new report a the moment, named “At every cost?”, where we summarize the economic costs of NOT introducing tax-financed public transports.

We have also just released the website freepublictransports.com which was the main outcome of our participation in the european social forum in Malmö in 2008. The aim of the website is to be a meeting point for the global free public transport movement, a place to get in contact with other groups, learn from each other and co-operate in our struggle.

On the 7th of March 2009 we will take our first steps in co-ordinating actions around the globe as freepublictransports.com is hosting the free public transport day, a day that was first celebrated by Planka.nu in Stockholm on the 1st of March 2008.

For what reasons have you chosen these activities and strategy?

We feel that our double roles – the (professional) lobbyists and the extra-parliamentary leftists – is a good way to move forward. Because people have a problem to put a label on us they also have a harder time to resist our demands. Our controversial methods are a really good way of getting attention for the demands we present, which are very much possible to introduce in the current political system. But would still lead to concrete improvements in both the class and climate struggle.

What direction you would like your group to go in future?

We think we are going in the right direction, but one thing we’d like to put more effort behind is to spread our experiences and try to inspire and help with the start-up of similiar activities in other cities. Something that we hope we will accomplish with the freepublictransports.com project.Planka.nu

When and why did you form?

We formed in the autumn of 2001 as a response to the ever-rising ticket prices in the public transport system in Stockholm. It was also a result of the discussions connected to the summit protests, an attempt to bring global issuses down to a local level.

What do you see as the main achievements of your group? (i.e.magazines published, strikes involved in etc)

Our biggest achievement is that of opening up a new area of conflict. By organizing fare-dodgers (commuters who don’t pay for themselves in the public transport) we’ve taken class-struggle and the fight for commons into the public transport. Since our start we’ve organized several thousands of commuters in a fare-strike and we feel that by doing so we’ve not only put the question of tax-financed, fare-free public transport on the agenda but also politicised an activity that, before us, was only looked at as a security problem.

We’ve also been active in the new climate movement fighting against the plans for new highways around Stockholm – and trying to put the whole transport sector in Stockholm in a broader perspective of class and struggles around commons. By doing so we also hope to plant some of our ideas in the newborn climate movement, so as to push them as far away from green capitalism as possible.

Can you please give an account of your current activities and strategy?

We’re working really hard to broaden our activites. To combine more classic political work such as releasing reports, lobbying and working towards politicians, as well as keeping up our fare strike. In other words, to combine the best of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary work. Currently we’re working hard to put a climate smart and economically just transition of the transport sector in Stockholm on the agenda.

One of our recent actions was a response to when the politicians planned to spend NN millions on new high-tech barriers, claiming that it would stop fare-dodging. We made a short film from Lyon, where the new barriers was already installed, and showed how easy they were to dodge by. This got a big response in media and among the opposition. We are also working on a new report a the moment, named “At every cost?”, where we summarize the economic costs of NOT introducing tax-financed public transports.

We have also just released the website freepublictransports.com which was the main outcome of our participation in the european social forum in Malmö in 2008. The aim of the website is to be a meeting point for the global free public transport movement, a place to get in contact with other groups, learn from each other and co-operate in our struggle.

On the 7th of March 2009 we will take our first steps in co-ordinating actions around the globe as freepublictransports.com is hosting the free public transport day, a day that was first celebrated by Planka.nu in Stockholm on the 1st of March 2008.

For what reasons have you chosen these activities and strategy?

We feel that our double roles – the (professional) lobbyists and the extra-parliamentary leftists – is a good way to move forward. Because people have a problem to put a label on us they also have a harder time to resist our demands. Our controversial methods are a really good way of getting attention for the demands we present, which are very much possible to introduce in the current political system. But would still lead to concrete improvements in both the class and climate struggle.

What direction you would like your group to go in future?

We think we are going in the right direction, but one thing we’d like to put more effort behind is to spread our experiences and try to inspire and help with the start-up of similiar activities in other cities. Something that we hope we will accomplish with the freepublictransports.com project.

Feminism is part of the class struggle

This is another article published in the ESF reader 2008, this time by Stockholm based feminist group ‘Kvinnopolitiskt Forum’ (Forum for Women’s Politics). Kvinnopolitiskt Forum grew out of the Stockholm autonomist environment, after they decided that a separatist space for the discussion of feminist and socialist theory was necessary. Since then they have been active in developing a gendered analysis of work and class struggle within the movement and in the public debate. More on KPF coming soon…

In this article we seek to summarize the situation of women in Sweden. We offer an analysis of why we haven’t progressed farther and why we need to keep up the struggle. Many examples used are specific to Sweden, yet typical of the ongoing love affair between capitalism and patriarchy, in Europe as well as globally.

Every day we read in the newspapers about new proposals hatched up by Sweden’s neo-liberal government. One day brings cut downs in social funds. Another day it is tax deductions for domestic services, making it cheaper for the well-off to employ a maid or a nanny (this is known as pigavdrag – “maid deductions”), or a new child care allowance for people who stay home and take care of their children (vårdnadsbidrag – care support). We know that these schemes, that seem to bring us back to the 1950s, are bad and that we need to stop them, but often we fail to discern how each proposal paves the way for further proposals to be implemented.

Lacking such an analysis, we risk once again ending up viewing issues as separated from each other. A feminist and/or leftist movement with no insight into the way issues are interrelated is doomed to fail.

Groups pitted against each other

Conservatives and liberals know this, and they are clever enough to divide us, playing one group against the other. As a result, we witness how senior citizens are led to believe that their well-being depends on closing the country’s borders, or how federations within the trade unions compete to get the biggest piece of the little cake. Government officials talk with a straight face about “normal people” profiting from reduced social funds. “Normal people” are apparently understood to be young, healthy, employed people who don’t need any help from the social system.

The trade unions refuse to help undocumented immigrants, out of fear of wage-dumping. An historical precedent for this is the male trade unionists who, based on the same fear, opposed the employment of women. The idea of struggling for an equal pay for men and women never entered the heads of these men. After all, it was quite convenient if the wife had all day to clean, wash, and cook. Unpaid household work was, and still remains, the historical plight of women.

A new market is created in the households

Socio-geographical mobility is severely restrained by a privatized, deregulated real estate market, and certain living areas come to be consolidated as low-income areas. On the opposite side of town we find the gated ghettos of the rich, where poor people come every day to work as maids. This is made possible on a bigger scale than before by the recent tax deductions (pigavdrag), a way to use tax money to feed capitalism’s need to create new markets, this time in the domestic sphere. Thus, class and ethnicity conflicts enter the households of the wealthy, and sweep gender conflicts under the rug. One woman replaces another, the man is exonerated from responsibility, and the conflict of the sexes remains unresolved. Meanwhile, the maid still has to clean her own house when she gets home since she can’t afford to hire someone else, but the government is obviously not concerned about her predicament.

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“It doesn’t matter if a man, woman, or undocumented immigrant does the work as long as someone is exploited.”

———————————————

How to produce new and cheaper workers

After the pigavdrag was introduced in July 2007, a meeting was held between government representatives and staffing company managers. The staffing companies complained about the troubles they had in finding people for the maid jobs. One of the solutions presented was to shorten the free language courses for immigrants, since “anyway, the best place to learn Swedish is at work”.

This suggestion hasn’t been implemented yet, but is frequently discussed. This is a very clear example of how the neo-liberals in government fuse together several types of oppression to maintain control. Capitalism, to stay vital, must depend on a reserve of unemployed labour and a divided working class. A desperate worker is always preferable, which means women and immigrants are consistently targeted.

Women become more dependent

Vårdnadsbidraget delivers the final blow meant to send women back into the household. After the long struggle to free women from their homes, women are now offered 3000 Swedish crowns (ca 320 ) per month to stay at home with their children. This is obviously not an offer aimed at single mothers: it is impossible to survive on this sum in Sweden. Those lucky women who have a real man who brings home a big salary, however, can contentedly stay at home and accept the pocket money. And so women are again made financially dependent on men.

The pigavdrag and the vårdnadsbidrag are both solutions only for the upper classes, who don’t want to pay the real price for a maid or send their children to a kindergarten. They represent the government’s mobilization of several types of oppression, which they have the guts to call a new “gender equality politics”.

Stopped from two directions

All the collective systems that we have today, like public kindergartens and well-functioning women’s shelters and support groups, have one thing in common: they are the result of political struggles. As the present right-wing government smashes all this to pieces in the name of “gender equality,” it simultaneously pushes the everyday problems faced by women back to the personal level. Women’s struggles for collective solutions are not merely a fight against the Right, but have often involved fighting the men of the labour movement. Just as the capitalists have tried to stop any reform that would diminish their power, working-class men have done exactly the same thing when it comes to women’s autonomy.

Even so, women have always supported the struggles of working men, because they rightly regarded these struggles as their own.

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“A feminist and/or leftist movement with no insight into the way issues are interrelated is doomed to fail.”

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Solidarity – but only in one direction

A telling example is the 1899 bookbinder conflict in Stockholm, where women played a leading role. The workers, half of them women, went on strike demanding higher wages. The employer agreed to raise the wages for the women but not for the men. The women wouldn’t accept the bid, but instead continued the strike until the employer caved in and raised the men’s wages as well.

Unfortunately, men didn’t show the same level of perceptiveness when the situation was reversed. In the early 20th century, the Swedish government wanted to prohibit women from working at night. This affected women who worked as bookbinders, seamstresses, and typographers. Women in the Social Democratic party and in the trade unions demanded that the worker’s movement should fight for women’s right to work under the same conditions as men. The men responded by accusing the women of running the conservatives’ errands.

As a result, these jobs, with pay slightly above average, were no longer available to women. The prohibition of female night work did not, of course, include badly paid jobs, which women were still allowed to perform. The law was not repealed until 1962.

Capital is gender neutral?

To understand why working-class men have colluded with capitalism, we must understand the logic of patriarchy. Men gain from the subordination of women, in the first place through the division of labour between men and women, but also in terms of the big share of unsalaried household work carried out by women, and in terms of the sexual subordination that women are subjected to. Despite all this, we claim that men also lose something when they choose to participate in patriarchal society.

The working class can never really move forward if those who find themselves on its lowest rungs are forgotten. Capitalism wants the greatest possible amount of work carried out at the lowest possible cost. This is facilitated by a white, male and Eurocentric labour movement which fails to practice solidarity with, for example, women and undocumented immigrants. Capitalism, in and of itself, is gender-neutral. It doesn’t matter if a man, woman, or undocumented immigrant does the work as long as someone is exploited. However, capitalism makes use of existing structures to legitimize the exploitation, divide the working class, and render certain forms of struggle illegitimate.

The personal is political

One of the main slogans of the women’s movement of the 70s was that “the personal is political.” This parole put many “new” questions on the agenda. The personal experiences of women were lifted to a collective level, which made it possible for these experiences to be articulated into demands. The main point was to make clear that women’s personal subordination had nothing to do with personal failings, but was instead the product of structural inequality. The relationship between men and women wasn’t given by natural laws, but rather created and organized by society. To realize that this relation was not a biological fact was to realize that it was possible to change it.

We mustn’t forget how it is all connected

The autonomous Left in Sweden has, in its eagerness to throw out identity politics and sectarian tendencies, also thrown out a deeper understanding of how things are connected. We have thereby lost the capacity to understand that solidarity is more than an empty word. Solidarity implies supporting groups that you aren’t a part of and fighting for questions that at first glance seem not to concern you, because you understand that doing so accords with your long-term interests. We are never stronger than the weakest link, and if we struggle to advance the positions of the most oppressed, we will all move forward. We can only win if we see how things are connected and work together. Attack is the best defence!