Johan Sjölander takes off in the Movement an important and urgent criticism of the Social Democrats. Sjölander puts his finger on a painful truth – that the party has long been accused of drifting to the right. Now the party has actually drifted far too far to the right. But Sjölander's criticism is too mild. The reality is that the Social Democrats, together with
its allies in the trade union movement, have failed to seriously defend the interests of workers. Instead, they have allowed an austerity policy and labor market that wears people out and leaves them insecure when they need security the most.
The Social Democrats are for the right in migration and criminal policy
In addition, the Social Democrats have been in favor flat against Tidölaget's migration and punishment policy, which many people do not want to see implemented. Many Swedes have foreign partners, friends and colleagues, and feel a strong resistance to an "us against them" mentality. People want better integration and reduced crime - but not through repression and harsh punishments, without through welfare and fair work opportunities. Integration and reduced crime are based on everyone being able to get good jobs that match their skills and that welfare is strong enough to include everyone. When Sweden's orphanages were strong, we also saw how integration worked better and how crime, social problems and mental illness were kept at low levels.
Good salary is not enough
To rely on working life alone should ensure welfare and security is an illusion. Those who are healthy and working today often live as if they will remain able-bodied forever, but the reality is different. Many who have toiled in physically demanding jobs – especially on the industrial floor or in healthcare – experience that the body takes a beating long before retirement age, often already in their 40s or 50s. For those without a financial buffer, an unexpected illness, unemployment or a loved one's need for care quickly becomes a financial crisis. We literally eat our own future security as long as we are healthy, and when health then fails we are often left without sufficient support.
The brutality of working life breaks us down
The idea that work makes us free, happy and good is a cynical myth. The hard, pressured working life that union leaders and politicians now accept breaks down both our physical and mental health and wears us out long before retirement. At the same time, it affects us morally - in a society where competition and pressure prevail reduces our capacity for empathy and belonging. Stress, long working hours and fear of losing the job create a climate where we become increasingly individualistic and isolated.
The austerity cuts productivity
The policy of austerity accepted by the Social Democrats' chancellery is not the path to economic sustainability. On the contrary, it leads to a eroded productivity, poorer innovation and reduced competitiveness. When we push back on welfare and reduce social safety nets, we weaken the entire economy. More unemployed, poor pensioners and a lack of support for the sick mean in practice a deindustrialisation, when people's purchasing power drops and thus also demand and investments in productive activities.
The austerity policy wants to increase class gaps
The austerity policy actually has another function: to widening class divides and creating an abundance of cheap labor, instead of strengthening our competitiveness. It gives a small elite greater power, while the majority is forced to accept uncertain conditions and depressed wages. This is a path to economic collapse and social fragmentation.
Let's have budgets for the possible
The alternative is a radical reorientation where we through progressive tax rates and budgets adapted to real economic needs can use our fiat currency to make Sweden a social, refugee-friendly, green and innovative leading country. By investing in people's health, education and safety, we can create long-term conditions for sustainable growth and an equal society. But this threatens the balance of power as it stands today - it would narrow class gaps and reduce the availability of cheap labour, and so today's politicians turn their eyes away from this possibility.
We are therefore faced with an important choice of path. Merely directing mild criticism at the Social Democrats' chancellery right is insufficient - what is needed is a clear and powerful reminder of the movement's fundamental ideals of solidarity, justice and sustainability.
Yes, Oskar, unfortunately what gives development is eroded. Yes and no at the same time😓
Wise words!
"Where wages are high, accordingly we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent and expeditious, than where they are low." Who wrote? Adam Smith, one might imagine. (The Wealth of Nations, 1937 edition, p 81). The Liberals haven't read their Smith!
Incidentally, I have a newly produced text about the Social Democrats http://www.folkrorelser.org/texter/pragmatiska-socialdemokrat.html
One way to regulate the mission of the political leadership to protect the interests of the poor, the workers and the middle class is to give those without power some protected right to appoint and remove the party leadership.
And one way for the rats to protect themselves from the cat is to hang bells on it, says the tale.
I have always regarded the Swedish system as top-heavy. There are too few, too weak and too meager organizations that protect the interests of their members without party political side-eyes. Everyone believes that everything should be resolved at the level of the Riksdag, directly, without anyone needing to interfere, and they have obviously believed that since about 1900.
Sidney Tarrow found, when he studied the upsurge of popular movements in Italy at the end of the 60s and ten years later, that all initiatives were taken at the grassroots level, by those directly affected. If it then had a bearing on some larger problem, it spread, whereby organizations were built for further spread. Then old organizations and political parties got involved so as not to be overlooked.
But if you have to wait for them to take the initiative, you have to wait a long time.
Sweden is, after all, a much more well-functioning welfare society than Italy.
Although we should see where it is going.
However, the point was that superior political bodies take no initiative. Nor should it be done according to the democratic principle that states that politicians should be servants of the public. And certainly not when those who, throughout the so-called Western world, have become something of a separate caste that lives in a privileged way.
Initiative must be taken by the person concerned. When everyone sits and waits for a party leadership or a government to do something, they have to wait a long time.
And then I think that change-prone grassroots can keep the ass of the elected officials warm and have some right to depose the elected officials.
Of course, that's what I think too. But strictly speaking it is not necessary. Throughout the period roughly 1890-1940 (with a slightly slower period 1940-75), society was reformed in the interests of the majority of the population, without that right being inscribed anywhere. But for some reason the politicians still did – by and large – what the majority of the people wanted. Because the majority of the people were organized and could make life miserable for politicians if they did wrong.
We have a tendency to ignore what we can do ourselves, in organized form, and take for granted that it is "politicians" who will do everything. But they are at most one per thousand of all people. The rest also have the power to change, if they start.
I don't think we can have a system without elected politicians, but we should have a system for the grassroots to be able to keep the torch hot in the ass of the elected.
I have not said that you can dispense with parliamentary assemblies, governments, etc. But I said you can't wait for them.
The Swedes were fantastically good at taking initiatives outside of that order between the end of the 1800th century and up until the Second World War, approximately. Then it ended - probably because the leaders of this powerful movement became professional politicians themselves and resorted to every imaginable trick in order not to be outshone by their base.
Humane, perhaps, but completely misdirected, because in doing so they actually became increasingly disempowered and unable to prevent the power shift towards the billionaires that has been going on since about 1980. They should have realized that they themselves were negotiators, and that the negotiator who is held in tight rein by his party achieves better results than the one who is only influenced by his counterpart.
Just
Here I write more about this: https://gemensam.wordpress.com/2017/09/04/har-vi-fatt-det-battre-sen-30-talet/
Ja Oskar du beskriver en politik som avvecklar utveckling och som försvårar möjlighet till mer arbete och att minska arbetslösheten. Klyftorna minskar inte utan ökar. Vi ser en politik som inte längre verkar för det gemensamma bästa för samhället. Målet är omkastat. Samhället och naturen har blivit medlet för att stärka vinster i pengar för oligarkerna.
Just