Contribution of the Communist Party of Sweden

Historical conclusions from the tactics of the anti-fascist fronts. The contemporary struggle of communists against fascism. Contribution of the Communist Party of Sweden

Dear comrades,

It is telling that during the past month we have had reports of two violent fascist attacks in Sweden. In one attack a bourgeois left anti-fascist conference was invaded by masked attackers spraying red paint on the participants and physically attacking them, resulting in multiple participants requiring hospital care. In the other attack a group of nazis from the so-called Nordic Resistance Movement attacked a camp in Stockholm where EU migrants live, destroying shelters and personal possessions of people who are forced to live under abysmal conditions on the very edge of society.

This happens under the shadow of a deteriorating economic climate for the working people. Social and health services are hit with cutbacks, and the state increasingly focuses on repressive measures, so as to be prepared to meet popular disgruntlement. Along with nationalist right-wing stances on immigrants and refugees getting accepted by a wider swath of the bourgeois political landscape, including the social democrats, the fascists’ confidence grows, ever ready to augment the state’s repressive organs.!

 

The Tactic of the Fronts and the SKP

The endorsement of the tactic of popular fronts against fascism, by the 7th Congress of the Comintern in 1935, amounted to a reappraisal of reformism and the earlier offensive position against the reformist parties was replaced with a striving for unity with them. The Communist Party of Sweden, the SKP, like many other communist

parties at the time, adopted tactics directed towards establishing political unity with the Social Democrats and other “progressive” forces.

Furthermore the SKP also sought to build a united workers’ party, a tendency that can at least be traced back to the aforementioned 7th Congress of the Comintern, and was seen as a logical development of the united front, which in turn would strengthen the front. As laid out by the 7th Congress, there were terms and preconditions applied to achieving said unity, placing extensive demands on social democracy, making the SKP’s task in achieving the goal of a unified party extremely difficult. In attempting to achieve this goal the conditions set out by Comintern were significantly diluted by the SKP over time, with new party and action programs being adopted. In the words of Georgi Dimitrov unity was ”not a reconciliation with Social- Democratic ideology and practice”, yet the policy set the stage for a more conciliatory attitude towards social democracy.

Following the dissolution of Comintern, the communists started to seek out their own paths forward. The path of the SKP, in its pursuit of unity with the social democrats, saw the party abandon, in the party “principles” which replaced its party program, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the revolution and the struggle for Soviet- Sweden. This furthermore opened the door for the acceptance of the idea of a peaceful transition to socialism.

The most concrete attempt to realize the united front policy in Sweden can be found in the solidarity movement for Spain during the civil war in the country. Apart from over 500 Swedes volunteering to fight against fascism in Spain, the work carried out at home was of a large scale in relation to the size of Sweden’s population. The Swedish Help Committee for Spain (SHfS) was formed by the anarcho-syndicalist SAC, the Socialist Party, the SKP and the Social Democrats, with representation primarily from the latter’s left wing. The SHfS effectively raised funds for humanitarian action in Spain, as only the anarcho-syndicalists and the communists consistently advocated for sending weapons to Spain.!

Despite being numerically smaller than the Social Democrats it was the communists who shouldered the greatest load of the solidarity work. As the end of the war in Spain drew nearer, and it became clear that fascism would triumph, the Social

Democrats succeeded in ousting the communists, and through that effectively gutted the SHfS. Through their solidarity work for Spain the communist had managed to increase their influence amongst workers, leading to some successes in parliamentary elections as well within the unions. These successes, however, were also a result of the communists toning down their own policies to enable the cooperation within the front, much like already has been detailed above. This also meant that the workers they were able to establish contact with during this work never supported the communists fully.

The conclusion to be drawn from this experience is that united front is not a method for revolutionary organisation. Despite gaining much support through this work with the fronts, this support was not genuine due to the concessions the communists were forced to make to be able to participate, and with the hardening political climate of World War II this support evaporated.

To sum up the effects of the changes that the communist party in Sweden went through, in the period discussed above, the ideology of the party was fundamentally changed, and this laid the basis for the degradation of that party to where the majority of it became what is today the Left Party, the left wing of capital, while a minority emerged as the current communist party, the SKP.

 

Fascism, Reformism and Capitalism

Under bourgeois democracy capitalism finds its main social base in the reformist movement, which irrespective of individual desires within the movement pacify the working people and keep them securely within the framework of capitalism. In this way capitalism in its democratic guise is guaranteed a social base, in the form of the support of the working people, through reformism. As long as reformism can guarantee this support for capitalism, fascist dictatorship and the openly violent repression stays off the agenda. Only when this support starts to crumble and risks collapsing does fascism become an actual alternative for capital.!

When reformism can no longer in a satisfying manner guarantee capitalism a social base, the capital must instead seek support elsewhere. If the conditions still

allow for it, this change will take place through the processes of bourgeois democracy, but if this isn’t possible bourgeois democracy takes its leave and is replaced by open capitalist dictatorship. The fascist movement, which cannot guarantee capitalism the passivity of the working people, instead finds its base in the petit bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat. They guarantee the continuing intensification of exploitation, and where reformism guaranteed social peace through pretty promises, fascism does so through naked class-based violence.!

Reformism and fascism are therefore two sides of the same coin. At different stages, and in different situations, they both work to guarantee social peace and therefore also the continuing increase of exploitation and the continuing existence of capitalism.

 

In Conclusion

As fascism is intrinsic to capitalism, the struggle against fascism cannot be separated from the struggle against capitalism. A sickness cannot be cured by merely attacking its symptoms, but only through attacking its root causes.

The experience of the tactic of the united and popular fronts, and its heritage, shows that the fundamental line of conflict must always be the one between labor and capital.