Polarization in Sweden

...The popularity of Asa-Nisse Marxism also may be peaking, judging from a Dagens Nyheter editorial dismissing the agrarian romanticism as a "fad...

...During the previous boom, Finance Minister Strang had simply jammed the brakes too hard, tightening credit to the point where a number of small companies were forced into bankruptcy...

...But the bright promises of new social programs were quickly turned sour by domestic dissension, just as the shimmering hopes of the New Frontier were spoiled by Vietnam and ghetto riots...

...The resulting hodgepodge has been dubbed "Asa-Nissee Marxism," after the simple-minded peasant in a Swedish comedy series from the 1950s...

...Palme has publicly admitted that there are problems in his tax plan and has made its revision a priority matter...

...An eight-part television series last fall, From Socialism to Increased Equality, presented the history of the party as seen by Maoist eyes...

...Basically, its theme is that the party conspired with big business to centralize the nation's industry into a few units sizable enough to compete profitably in world markets...

...In foreign affairs, he associated himself with a more active and controversial world role for Sweden, participating in anti-Vietnam demonstrations and expressing deeply felt if often vague solidarity with the peoples of the Third World...

...Given a generally favorable economic picture, the transitional difficulties of implementing the in-creased-equality program might have been overcome with less friction...

...The entire campaign has nevertheless taken its toll, playing on sentiments that were accentuated as the rise in living standards tapered off, and persisting at a high decibel level...

...Just as in America, too, the situation was exaggerated out of all proportion by an intellectual elite whose harping jeremiads decreed a mood of total gloom in the country...

...This anxiety has been fed as well by a number of highly publicized failures among members of the Statsforetag AB, a holding corporation formed in 1969 to coordinate various state-controlled firms...

...Although the government tried to put the blame on the various communes, the opposition pointed out that Parliament had shifted a larger share of day care and hospital expenses to the localities, forcing them to raise taxes...

...in 1970 Volvo workers wildcatted for one day, winning their demands...

...Trying to avoid a showdown with their own left wing, the Social Democrats have argued that Sweden cannot join the European Economic Community (EEC) without violating its neutrality...

...The second prong was Finance Minister Gunnar Strang's tax reform package, which went into effect at the beginning of 1971...

...The dilemma this posed for the Social Democrats was whether to present themselves as the party that had brought about all these good things, or as one devoted to eradicating still-existing injustices and evils...

...This meant, in turn, that better-paid workers would have to content themselves with smaller raises...

...Actually, the recession was in large part home-manufactured...

...now unemployment approached 3 per cent...

...They are learning that Swedish equality and social policy cannot push too far ahead of other industrialized countries without running the risk of losing crucial export markets or inducing wealthier citizens to emigrate...

...society appearing both inside and outside Social Democratic ranks...

...CHALLENGE TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Polarization in Sweden by steven kelman Stockholm An American living in Sweden today experiences an eerie feeling of deja vu, one that was only heightened by last month's UN Conference on the Human Environment here...

...Since roughly 70 per cent of its foreign trade is conducted with members of a soon-to-be expanded EEC including England, Denmark and Norway, the government hoped to work out a free-trade agreement with the Community...

...There is a longing here for the beloved countryside—partly out of a traditional obsession with nature and partly in reaction to the extremely rapid urbanization since World War II—even though this runs counter to the much stronger desire for a higher standard of living that can only be achieved through greater industrialization...

...For 40 years, the Social Democrats had been identified with full employment and active labor market policies...

...Yet once let out of the bottle, the genie could not be corked up...

...In calling for major tax cuts that would aid the upper middle class far more than the average worker, the Moderates not only failed to come up with any money-saving proposals but actually recommended considerable increases in the outlays for defense and police...

...the Liberals are wavering, and the Centrists support the government's position...

...And '68 proved a halcyon year for the Social Democrats: Riding high on new promises and challenges, they swept to one of their biggest electoral victories ever, capturing an absolute majority of the vote-an unusual achievement in a country with five major political parties...

...Corporate hatred for Palme personally-based at least partly on the feeling that as a Socialist from an upper-class family, he is a "class traitor"-is so extreme that in a recent survey by the business weekly Veckans Afiarer, Communist party leader Carl-Henrik Hermansson had the confidence of more businessmen than did the Prime Minister...

...a few years earlier, and in 1972 Sweden is going through the same doubt and despair that marked America in the late '60s...

...The opposition's arguments were somewhat overblown, and its reasonable points could have been reconciled by a confident government able to make adjustments...

...The biggest gainer has been the vague, diffuse Center party, a former peasant faction that has become a force in the cities by appealing to all sorts of ill-defined discontents for which it rarely offers any solutions...

...Only the conservative Moderate party favors entering the market...

...As the public generally has been moving to the Right, Sweden's intellectual community has been moving in the opposite direction...

...When he presented this year's budget, Strang frankly said there was no money for any new reforms, and there may not be for some time to come...

...Yet the specific issues on which discontent has focused are singularly Swedish, as is the complete lack of political violence...

...A speaker on a daily radio youth program called Tvars, popularly known as Radio KFML (for Communist Federation Marxist-Leninist), has gone so far as to assert that the Social Democratic policy is worse than laissez-faire because it has actually served to stimulate the growth of these profit-hungry industrial giants...

...The government and its close allies in the Swedish Confederation of Labor formulated a two-pronged attack for equalizing income...

...After the show was aired, it was discovered that the union leader in question had been a teetotaler, and his widow sued for libel...

...This measure was supposed to decrease taxes dramatically for those with low incomes, while raising considerably the marginal taxes (levied on wage increases or other new earnings) for the middle and upper brackets...

...Even Palme had difficulty maintaining his customary ebullience, and reports from factories indicated that morale was sinking among party activists...

...Desparate to find some popular strain they could latch on to, the intellectuals have dressed up a nostalgic conservatism in revolutionary rhetoric...

...While most of the companies that went under had been on the verge of bankruptcy when they were nationalized, their collapse demonstrated that government enterprise was not the panacea for job security that some Cabinet ministers had made it out to be...

...Its representative is the fatherlike Finance Minister Strang, an old peasant boy himself, whose favorite proverb in times of trouble is: Var plaga har ett skri for sig, men halsa tiger still...

...Meanwhile, the opposition's performance has not been inspirational...

...The consequences are said to be the depopulation of the countryside and the tvangs-forflyttning (forced migration) of the populace into urban jungles and concrete high-rise apartments...

...The opposition has always complained about high taxes, but never before has it found such broad support...

...Without stretching the parallel too far, similarities can also be seen between the roles of President Kennedy and Prime Minister Olof Palme, who took office in 1969 but had already been the ruling Social Democrats' actual leader for a few years...

...Since prosperity here is highly dependent on world trade, the government protested that it was not at fault, placing responsibility for the economic decline on the international recession...

...Perhaps most important of all, government planners appear to be paying greater attention to the problems of "socialism in one country...

...The national myth became one of folkhemmet ("the people's home")-of secure and tiny Sweden looking with a mixture of pity and alarm at the troubled world beyond, its tradition of strict neutrality protecting its shores...

...In a display of the mathematical precision for which Swedes are famous, opposition spokesmen and newspaper reporters further calculated that-when the effects of inflation, decreases in means-tested allowances for such things as rent and day care fees, etc., were all taken into account-it was impossible for the average citizen to improve his standard of living even if he received a 10 per cent annual wage hike...

...and in 1971 railroad signalmen walked off the job...

...Any attempt to change a nation's income distribution is bound to provoke at least temporary resistance from those hurt by the move...

...most of the expected revenues are committed to large wage increases for low-level workers in the public sector...

...The latest surveys place the Center's strength at about 25 per cent...

...The Left has hurt the government on the Common Market issue, too...

...Every pain has its own special cry, but health is as quiet as a mouse...

...At the very least, the current debate over food prices?a combination of high wages and an enormously subsidized agriculture makes them the highest in the world -has revealed the unprofitability of the beautiful but not particularly fertile Swedish countryside...

...His language was soaring, his tone optimistic, despite his preoccupation with the injustices remaining in Swedish society...

...Finally, the recession seems to be relenting: Unemployment is down, largely in response to public works projects and labor market measures initiated last fall...

...Sweden also began facing the same structural problem as the United States: a surplus of college graduates seeking employment in professions with limited openings...

...In the long run this could be catastrophic, leading internationally oriented Swedish corporations like SKF and L. M. Ericsson to invest in their EEC subsidiaries rather than at home...

...Thus the familiar pattern: a shift to the Left among intellectuals, a simultaneous drift to the Right in popular opinion, a weakening of the liberal center, and a questioning of the previously accepted notion that all was for the best...

...As in the United States, Sweden has a silent majority that complains and that has been affected by the political polarization...

...The argument sounded convincing, but exports-the chief item that should have been negatively affected-turned in a star performance last year, rising by nearly 15 per cent and leading to one of Sweden's greatest balance of payments surpluses in recent memory...

...In addition, the reform plan proved a disappointment, as Strang himself eventually had to admit, because the reductions anticipated for two-thirds of the population were more than offset in many cases by increases in local taxes—collected by the central government simultaneously with income taxes...

...Anti-Americanism first expanded into corresponding praise for the Cubas, Chinas and North Vietnams of this world...

...Executives express uncertainty about the government's economic plans, complain about low profit margins, and imply that their will to invest can be restored only by a new government...

...Though the party had received almost 51 per cent of the vote in 1968 and 46 per cent in 1970, various polls show its support down to 38-42 per cent...

...Labor pressed the first one in negotiations with the Confederation of Industries, insisting on especially high wage hikes for the low-paid...

...In fact, Sweden's discord began when a significant segment of the working and white-collar classes discovered that they had landed on the wrong side of "Increased Equality," that is, the side to be equalized down...

...Much of this is simply propaganda, but with unemployment high it worries many voters...

...According to the play, the labor spokesman was so drunk during a wild party accompanying the negotiations that he thought he was signing the restaurant check rather than the agreement...

...Social Democrats consider it an incipient fascist movement, while even the Centrists' close allies, the Liberals, have begun to grumble about the incoherent nature of the party's appeal...

...Many refused to go along: In 1969 the miners went out on a long strike...

...After all, other countries have periodic strikes without widespread prophecies that doomsday has arrived...

...There was an air of "Camelot" and "New Frontier" in Palme's preachments...

...The higher marginal rates had to be extended as far down as the $6,000 annual income level, however, to compensate for the loss in revenue from the reduced taxes on the low-paid...

...Then, as could have been predicted, the same battleax methods of "analysis" were applied by New Left critics to Sweden itself...

...Proportional rather than progressive, the local rates now average over 22 per cent and for the vast majority of citizens they take a larger bite than income taxes...

...As a result, Social Democratic candidates in the recent building trades union elections in Stockholm and Goteberg fared substantially better than they did in 1970...

...Palme, like John Kennedy, chose social action, steering a leftward course...

...On the whole, Swedish public opinion has clearly moved to the Right...

...Then the 1971 central wage settlement brought big increases for low-paid workers that many of the surviving small firms could not afford...

...A shift to the Left on the part of Swedish youth, it was felt, would aid the party vis-a-vis its conservative opposition...

...Under Social Democracy, Sweden grew to be one of the most prosperous nations in the world, envied for its welfare system, full employment, and the highest degree of social equality of perhaps any advanced industrial state...

...It has been particularly successful with the young people who were its main target group...

...Palme emphasized that the time had Steven Kelman, a frequent contributor to these pages, is at present living in Sweden...

...Stockholm, incidentally, is generally considered by foreigners one of the finest-run metropolises in the world...

...To drive this idea home to the voter, the intellectual community has produced a stream of television specials, children's programs, popular songs, and newspaper articles glorifying the virtues of idyllic country life and damning cities as heartless, cold and antipeople...

...In a recent television interview, Strang confirmed that he has received an unprecedented number of letters and phone calls (the home phone numbers of government leaders are listed in the directory) protesting his tax plan...

...Yet it seems to have an uncanny sense of proportion...

...Jan Mydral, son of Gunnar and Alva, even wrote a book titled in all seriousness The Albanian Challenge...

...For the Social Democrats, whose image has been shaped by the snowballing effect of additional reforms each year?step by step," as Palme loves to say-this sudden moratorium may have profound repercussions...

...Some claimed that a family would lose ground in real income despite a big raise...

...The nonstop campaign has hammered away at the line that big business and the Social Democrats urbanized the nation to create large-scale industries so they could make more profits...

...Big business certainly hopes so, and has launched a massive campaign heralding its "crisis of confidence" in the government...

...Social trends in this country have a habit of closely mirroring those in the U.S...

...And, at least in the case of the miners and Volvo employes, bad working conditions also played an important role...

...The recession broke the government's back...

...In planning his strategy for the '68 campaign, Palme faced a basic contradiction: Though based on social reform, his party had been in power continuously since 1932...

...These two television programs kicked off a remarkably well orchestrated campaign-made possible by the extraordinary Gleichschaltung of Swedish intellectuals-questioning the entire thrust of Social Democratic policy...

...It is easy to overemphasize the importance of these stoppages, as the government's critics on both Left and Right hastened to do...

...A recent poll revealed that 40 per cent of the population approves of EEC membership, against 39 per cent opposed-an even split that is not reflected in partisan politics...

...In 1971, however, the situation was exacerbated by recession and unemployment...

...A significant share of the national budget (the equivalent of the annual revenues produced by the 17 per cent sales tax) goes to supporting small settlements of people living in scattered rural outposts...

...It set out on this course in the mid-'50s, when the government not only encouraged criticism of American policy in Vietnam, but did not raise an eyebrow at the wave of New Left analyses of U.S...

...The Social Democrats (who, as the government, constitute the Establishment) found themselves on the receiving end...

...Asked today about the probable outcome of the next general election in September 1973, few people here are ready to predict a Social Democratic defeat...

...His latest book, Behind the Berlin Wall: An Encounter in East Germany, will be published by Houghton Mifflin this fall...

...Lately, signs have appeared of an incipient swing back to the Social Democrats and away from the polarization of the past two years...

...The most bizarre aspect of all this has been the Swedish New Leftists' total disregard of Karl Marx's words about capitalism rescuing peasants from "the idiocy of rural life...

...At home, the government appointed a commission to investigate the problems of low-income workers, and the party adopted "Increasing Equality" as its slogan for the '70s, replacing the more cautious "Work, Security, Development...

...come to improve working conditions in factories, expand industrial democracy, and relieve the insecurities and fears caused by the rapid pace of technological change...

...But in Brussels it was felt that Stockholm was trying to "pluck the raisins out of the cake," wanting all the advantages and none of the obligations of EEC membership, and it now looks like Sweden will have to settle for less...

...Palme and other members of the government have counterattacked, directing some harsh words at Asa-Nisse Marxism, but their sudden admonitions about saklighet (sticking to the facts) tend to ring hollow in the light of their failure to blow the whistle during the earlier analyses of America, Cuba and China...

...A TV play, Have You Heard What's Happened?, attacked the 1938 Saltsjobaden Agreement between the central industrial and labor federations, which set up the rules for collective bargaining and was immediately branded "class collaboration" by the Communists...