PHASE OPENS groups of workers who see it as a natural thing to follow up the struggle for their demands by fighting within the unions. The increased willingness to struggle has thus been expressed inside the bureaucratized unions, resulting in a more favorable relationship of forces. This separation into stages is of course a generalization that gives an "ideal picture", it does not reFlect the struggle in many individual factories. Nevertheless, this interpretation does represent a reality that corresponds to the economic and political background in the country. It also makes it possible to draw some tactical conclusions from the changed situation. The 1969-70 strike wave The strike wave that began at the end of 1969 opened the most important period of struggle in Sweden since the 1945 metalworkers strike. Both the employers and the union bureaucrats were taken completely by surprise by the strike wave, which thus forced them to their knees. In many strikes the employers gave in immediately and granted the workers' demands. At first, the trade-union ombudsman was altogether inactive, not knowing what to do. Almost all the striking workers organized their strikes outside the union bodies. In a situation in which the unions were unable to offer any leadership whatever, the workers created their own leadership by electing strike committees in almost every strike. The winter 1969-70 strike in the state-owned mining company (LKAB) in the northern part of the country provides a good example of the strength to be found in selforganization through strike committees and general assemblies. The strike began in the Svappavaara mine and later spread to Kiruna and Malmberget, about 190 miles away. At first, separate sets of demands were adopted at each workplace, but because of the similar working conditions throughout the company, the workers readily came to adopt a common
set of demands. Local strike committees were elected initially, but after just a few days the three local committees fused into a common body for all the 5,000 miners. The united committee negotiated with the employers and called general assemblies before each important step in the fight. Without this organization the strike would likely have ended in a Fiasco within a week. Without the common strike committee serving as a link among the three mines, if would have been easy for the union bureaucrats to have taken over the strike, urged a return to work, and started secret negotiations with the employers. The demands would have been compromised and the collective strength of the workers dissipated. The 1971-73 downturn Official statistics indicate that 137 strikes occurred during 1970; more than 23,000 workers walked off the job and 155,200 work days were lost. But in 1971 the number of strikes declined, and during 1972 only 7,340 workers went out, with only 9,100 work days lost. The downturn in the struggle was a result largely of conjunctural causes, but it gave the employers and the union bureaucrats the breathing space they needed to shape up their apparatuses, which had become senile during two decades of class peace. The employers developed new antistrike tactics during that time, and they continue to use them today. The leadership of the SAF, the employers' association, now demands absolute loyalty to a hard line from all its members. Negotiations are allowed only with the unions, not with strike committees. The SAF sends specially trained "strike experts" to companies hit by strikes. The local employers are assisted financially by the SAF, but only if they categorically follow the SAF line. Furthermore, the SAF blacklists militant workers and attempts to bring as many workers as possible to trial before the Labor Court. The most militant workers are fired. Threats of mass firings and transfer of production to other countries have also been used. Internal SAF circulars, recently published by revolufionary newspapers, prove the existence of this centralized counteroffensive, which the RMF (Revolutiondre Marxisters Förbund — League of Revolutionary Marxists, Swedish section of the Fourth International) has been exposing for two years. The central trade-union bureaucracy has also been sharpening up its apparatus. Ombudsmen have been trained and trade-union branches have been reactivated. The Landsorganisation (LO - Nafional Trade-Union Confederation), like the SAF, has refused to view strike committees as the direct expression of the workers' interests and has refused to recognize their right to conduct negotiations. The LO bureaucrats have ignored, if not actually encouraged, the blacklisting, firing, and prosecution before the Labor Court of militant workers. When the local trade union is unable or unwilling to try to break a strike, the LO sends one of its own "strike experts" to halt the militant actions going on outside the unions. The combined activity of the employers and the bureaucrats allowed the capitalists to strengthen their positions against the workers during 1971-72. The badly defeated strikes at the Arendal shipyard in Gothenburg and at Saab (in the auto industry) were results of this new situation. The low level of strike activity during 1972 and 1973 is therefore to be explained not only by the economic conjuncture (there was a recession during these years), but also by the well-organized counterattack against the workers. This counterattack succeeded because the most militant workers lacked both experience in struggle and effective leadership. An example of this process is provided by the strike that broke out in 1972 at Urshults Traprodukter AB, a small wood products company in the south of Sweden. Nineteen workers were on strike; their median age was twenty. They demanded a 20 percent increase in the hourly wage and a better bonus agreement; later, they also demanded the dismissa! of the head of the company. After a few days the company responded by hauling the workers before the Labor Court. All the strikers were fired and the plant was moved to another location. The workers suffered during the strike because they were not paid their unemployment benefits. But they refused to accept money collected by political organizafions, because they wanted to avoid having themselves or the strike tagged with a political label, in the small town they were living in. Except for their selection of a spokesman, they were totally unorganized. If the workers had acted differently - electing a strike committee, opening a supply post for the strikers, seeking support from other workers both inside and oulside the company - the strike might well have ended in victory, especially in view of the fact that shortly after the strike they were able to turn the Labor Court case into an indictment against the company, which had been paying wages lower than the national wage agreement. By then, however, it was too late. Two years earlier, such a strike might have resulted in a compromise benefiting the workers. But the employers' study of the 1969-70 strike wave had resulted in their previous attitude of hesitation being replaced by the wellorganized counteroffensive.
SWEDEN 1974: beginning of a new stage The strike activity of this past spring has no parallel in the period since the second world war. In spite of the lack of unified leadership, there have been more than 200 strikes in four or five months. At the same time, there has been a clear increase in other types of actions at hundreds of workplaces. These developments justify our separating out a third stage of struggle by Sweden's working class in recent times. The defeats of 1971-73 were not decisive in any sense and were not viewed as such by the workers themselves. Although some leaders of the past struggles became demoralized by the limited results obtained, the first strike wave inspired a new generation of worker militants. The factors promoting a broader radicalization of the industrial and transport workers remained in force: the relatively worsened competitive position of Swedish capitalism, the decreased room for reforms, the increased exploitation of the workers. Thus, it could be predicted beforehand that a change in the conjunctural situation would produce a change in the readiness for struggle among the blue-collar and white-collar workers, as well as among students. This is exactly what happened when the Swedish economy moved into a real boom at the end of 1973. The workers! response was not immediate. During the autumn of 1973 strikes were small and isolated. But under the pressure of the boom and the publicafion of the enormous rise in company profits, indignation increased among the workers. The fear of the effects of the "oil crisis" faded, to be replaced by growing irritation about the false propaganda of the capitalists. Finally, the LO accepted a very bad central wage agreement, and the workers' earlier passivity gave way to intense activity. The central wage negotiations are followed by local negotiations in which provisions of the national agreement are concretized for each plant. At that point, many workers felt the time had come "to make their voices heard. The most important feature of the growing working-class struggle in the present phase is not so much the increased number of strikes or even the reversal of the trend of defeat, but rather the changes in the organization of the strikes and the role played by the local trade-unions. In many cases, instead of electing a strike committee in an early stage of the struggle, the workers have demanded that the local union initiate negotiations around demands decided on at trade-union meetings and that the union leaders give regular reports at union meetings on the progress of the negotiations. Many of the strikes started when negotiations were blocked by the employers or when union bureaucrats were un28 able or unwilling to put force behind the demands. The strikes have therefore been rather short a few hours or days), intended as means of exerting pressure to demonstrate the unity behind the demands. Instead of an unambiguous process in which militant workers totally outflank the union at an early stage of the strike through independent organizations, we can now see the outlines of a new dialectic between the different Forms of struggle. It is only natural that many of the newly radicalizing workers in Sweden are turning to the unions, the only permanent working-closs organizations, in spite of their deep criticisms about the way the unions function and about the union leadership. No matter how bureaucratized they are, the unions offer a first line of defense against the employers' attacks and also provide a forum for discussion. Nevertheless, it is important not to draw overly sweeping conclusions from the character of the spring strikes. The spring strike wave occurred during a negotiating period, which always lends special attention to the trade unions. This partly explains why the spring actions took the form of special strikes aimed at putting pressure on the wage negotiators. Further, an additional series of factors was at work: * Many workers have pragmatically drawn conclusions from the defeats during the 1971-73 period; they realize that strike committees in themselves are insufficient, because they do not offer a permanent means of organizing and preparing the class. They sprout up during the struggles and gather the masses of workers around them, but they disappear after the fight. The unions, on the other hand, remain. *Many local union leaders acted differently from the top LO leaders by trying to offer a real leadership for the struggles. *Although a broadened radicalization has taken hold in Sweden during the past few years, it is still very limited, not only in comparison to the rodicalization in Italy, France, and Britain, but even in comparison to that in Denmark. The number of workers who have drawn political conclusions from the experiences of the past several years is very small, virtually restricted to the members of some far-left organizations. Because of the only sporadic implantation of the far left in the factories, in most cases there has not been a conscious group of workers able to intervene in the struggle and develop the fight for wage demands into a more extended fight or develop higher forms and organization of struggle. *The wage question was seen as the most burning issue because of the stagnation (and in some cases, decrease) of wages during the past few years.
The coming pattern of struggle The coming wage negotiations between the SAF and the LO will open at a very favorable moment for the workers. The economic conjuncture in Sweden is out of phase with the international conjuncture; in spite of the recession in the United States and Britain and the signs of a downturn in West Germany, Swedish capitalism is still moving rather swiftly. This situation, which will probably change if the international recession continues throughout 1975, can be explained by the following factors: *Increased internal consumer demand, which has been promoted by govemment measures during the past six months and has counteracted the lagging growth of exports. *Lower rate of inflation than in many other imperialist countries. *High specialization of the Swedish export industry and an unusual coincidence of delivery dates, which is now being used as an important competitive weapon. *Rapidly expanding trode with Norway, which is experiencing an extreme economic boom because of the exploitation of North Sea oil deposits. *Possession of some row materials that are scarce in the rest of the world. *An exceptionally good harvest this year. The boom has created favorable conditions for working-class struggle, which has also been stimulated by the increased will to struggle generated by the spring strike wave. Concrete results were won in the spring strikes. The wage drift - that is, the increase in wages in local areas above the levels called for in the central wage agreement - was as high as 6-7 percent in some branches of industry. This meant that the on trage industrial worker's real wages were comparable to those of 1971 (which means higher than 1972-73) in spite of the extremely bad central agreement. The big companies are now publishing profit increases that range from 100 to 600 percent. This can only bolster the militancy of the workers. One sign of this has been the continuation of strikes during this past autumn. Another is the mood at the trade-union meetings that are being held to prepare the coming central wage negotiations. These meetings have been the stormiest in years. It is the last stage of negotiation, local negotiation, that offers the broadest possibilities for successful agitation. There are much greater possibilities of smashing the plans of the LO bureaucrats on the local level than in the central negofiations, which are held in secret. These local negotiations should begin around February or March 1975. There are many indications that the workers will make use of these possibilities just as fully as they did last spring.
In addition, it is likely that in the next round there will be struggles around issues that go beyond those centered on wages. Given the increased activity among the whole society - which is shown by the radicalization of important layers of youth and white-collar workers and the strengthened self-confidence of the workers — we are seeing a stimulation of struggles that begin from isolated questions but grow over into broader issues with a political character. This process is helped along by the fact that in a certain sense the trade unions are more politicized in Sweden than they are in most other imperialist countries. LO participates with great authority in all the national polifical debates. In fact, this participation has been institutionalized so that LO is a part of many of the organs of the state apparatus. This has some restrictive effects on the lower levels of the trade-union hierarchy, which are not so directly the agent of the bourgeoisie within the workers movement. The system of far-reaching laws binding the hands of the working class (laws supported actively by LO) gives local union bureaucrats only a small margin of Flexibility. The highly bureaucratic centralization and the wall of undemocratic statutes that has been created by the Social Democratic bureaucracy deprives the local bureaucracy of any independence in regard to methods of fighting and general militancy. This means that the local bureaucrats lack the maneuvering room that some of them want and try to obtain as a means of better controlling and channeling the sharpening struggle. The extreme bureaucratization of the unions and the lack of workers democracy are directly related to the workers' tendency to create organs of struggle outside the unions in the early phases of their battles. We believe that this tendency will be strengthened in Sweden in the future. What must be done The shift in the pattern of working-class struggle -from the organization of strike committees to the raising of demands inside the unions - has been seen by the anti-union tendencies in the revolutionary left as a decline in class consciousness. We believe this to be a grave mistake. Although self-organization had reached a higher level of development during the first wave of strikes (1969), account must be taken of the limited number of workers that participated in these struggles. The current tendency of larger number of workers to act permanently within the unions is allowing for more successful oppositional work against the bureaucracy inside the unions. This must be utilized by raising a political alternative to the class-collaborationist line upheld by the bureaucracy, and not by advocating all sorts of sectarian solutions, whether those of the "workers committees" called for by the centrists (which are
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SWEDEN nothing but organizations of sympathizers of the centrist groups) or the "secret all-Swedish strike committees" once advocated by the Mao-Stalinists. The revolutionary left must struggle for a class-struggle program within the unions. Each union must be transformed into a battleground against class collaboration. The trade-union meeting at Volvo on April 2, 1974, provided a hint of what is possible. We therefore see a fourfold fask in the coming period of wage negotiations: *The bureaucracy's narrowness and inability to fight for the interests of the workers must be met with mass agitation in favor of unifying class demands: equal wage increases for all (in kronor, not by percentage); equal pay for equal work; automatic wage readjustments according to the rate of inflation as measured by on index put out by the unions themselves; a minimum wage; a shorter workweek with no cut in pay. In addition, demands must be raised around the character of the wage negotiations: against the bureaucratic centralization of the negotiations; for workers democracy in the unions; against all forms of state intervention or incomes policy; for a one-year agreement; no secret negofiations, for the right of union members to vote on the wage agreement. These demands are in the interest of the entire working class. They offer a general, national approach to the bourgeoisie and are a direct answer to the sellout organized by the reformists. They must be applied in the light of tactical considerations depending on the local circum*Revolutionary Marxists have a special responsibility to present in their propaganda a global perspective of class struggle in order to stimulate a politicizafion of the struggle and to actualize the problems of workers control at each moment in the struggle. The goal is to prepare the workers for a situation in which the struggle can be developed toward contesting the power of the bourgeoisie not only in each factory but also in society as a whole. *We must also try to counteract a sectoral division of the struggles of different layers. We must stimulate solidarity work and consciously connect the struggle of other layers with that of the working class; at the same time, we must foster the understanding among the workers of their need for allies in the fight against capitalist exploitation. 30
*The relationship between the bureaucracy and groups of workers willing to struggle is taking on a very complex pattern that demands a flexible factical attitude from the revolutionary Marxists. The anti-union tendencies among the revolutionary left were stimulated by the 1969-70 strike wave, with its highly developed forms of self-organization and the extreme hostility of the workers to the trade unions. None of the left organizations, including the RMF, was unaffected by these widespread feelings. On the part of the RMF this was not expressed in an anti-union policy, but it did result in our engaging in overly general and phraseological polemics with these tendencies and in a certain theoretical confusion and inability to formulate a clear program for intervention in the unions. This makes it all the more necessary to eliminate this weakness. What, then, is our attitude toward self-organization? Each step forward within the unions toward o line of class struggle makes it easier to activate the workers. There is no Chinese wall between daily work in the unions and creation of a strike committee during an open fight against the employers, and there is not necessarily any contradiction between the union and a strike committee. On the contrary, there is a definite relation between the self-organization of the workers and the union bureaucracy. between the bureaucrats and the collective activity of the workers in general. An increase of activity within the unions - larger attendance af meetings, the right to vote on wage agreements, an end to secret negotiations, and so on - increases the strength of the workers and of the union itself; at the same time, the bureaucracy is weakened. Such a development would also stimulate the emergence of bodies of self-organization during the struggles; general assemblies would be held regularly during the strikes and an elected strike leadership would be under the control of the collective of workers, which could recall any members of the strike leadership at will. Those who misjudge the class character of the trade unions, who see the bureaucracy as identical to the union itself, and who try to develop tactics in line with this view will more and more be bypassed by the activity of the workers themselves. The class struggle has already proven the hollowness of such ideas.El