Sweden's Socialists on the Defensive

...The parliamentary race had aroused a record-high interest outside the country, he suggested, because conservative and reactionary forces abroad had heard rumors that the 41-year rule of Sweden's Social Democracy was finally about to be ended...

...Others paint things black we build further," rang the Social Democrats' most effective slogan, responding to critics on both the Right and the Left...

...So it is not surprising that the slowdown in economic growth touched off widespread expressions of unhappiness with Sweden's rapid pace of social change...

...Sweden's current Constitution provides that tie votes in Parliament be resolved by the drawing of lots...

...Two other possibilities loom: the calling of new elections next surr-mer, or the forming of a Social Democratic alliance with the Liberal party...

...As for the opposition, it is likely to split up again after failing in what had seemed to be the most promising opportunity vet to break the Social Democrats' hold on the government...

...And, in a nationwide television interview, he asserted, "A great power is waiting to see the election results before sending an ambassador...

...In view of this deadlock, the Social Democrats will probably avoid advancing controversial schemes that would be resisted by all three opposition parties...

...In any event, Sweden faces the kind of political instability it has long been accustomed to reading about elsewhere...

...As a result, the party shifted its focus to conditions in the workplace, an issue affecting both poor and affluent workers...

...Indeed, industrialists and the opposition parties contend that this is responsible for a lack of will to invest and that the government would be better advised to provide general incentives to attract more capital...

...Since it is not the custom here for the opposition to automatically vote against all government proposals, the government should be able to continue functioning...

...In a preelection poll by Swedish television, only 3 per cent of the respondents ranked "work environment" as their number one concern, as against 41 per cent for unemployment, 20 per cent for crime, and 17 per cent for taxes...

...At the 1971 Congress of Sweden's powerful Confederation of Labor, Social Democrats presented reports on industrial democracy and the work environment...

...Each bloc now has 175 seats in the 350-member Parliament...

...On the defensive after a difficult three-year term [see Kelman's "Polarization in Sweden," NL, July...

...They do not have packs on their backs and bank accounts waiting for them in Switzerland...

...Social Democratic bills are frequently supported by the Centrists and the Liberals, though rarely by the Moderates...

...The official outcome so close that it hinged on recounts in some districts as well as the tallying of 15,000 mailed-in ballots was a tie between the Social Democrats and their Communist supporters, who captured 19 seats, and the opposition coalition consisting of the Center, Moderate (conservative) and Liberal parties...

...ELECTION STAND-OFF PUTS Sweden's Socialists on the Defensive by steven kelman Stockholm Campaigning in the suburbs of the capital shortly before last month's standoff elections, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme repeatedly called attention to the large group of foreign correspondents accompanying him...

...Marginal taxes are so high that they now consume the larger part of any increase in GNP, leaving little for private consumption...

...The Social Democrats were therefore forced to run on their record over the last three years, a not very pleasant prospect...

...Traditionally, this money has been passively put into housing construction and municipal bonds, but a new law permits it to be invested as risk capital in industry too...

...This very characteristic makes the Liberals, who still control 34 seats, a potential coalition partner...

...In theory, by purchasing new stock issues from companies that wish to expand, the pension fund could help fuel the future growth of Swedish industry...

...The government is aware that the cost of such measures, added to the high contributions corporations must make to the national pension fund and other social schemes, will have a further depressing effect on profits...

...Swedish industry already runs at a rate of return on capital investment considerably below the norm for the Common Market countries, not to mention the United States...

...The Social Democratic position has been to try to induce managers to operate and invest within a framework of lower profits...

...Under Palme, "Increased Equality" became the new slogan, replacing "Work, Security, Development," and a number of programs were introduced to help the worst-off...

...In fact, that was their problem: They failed to offer a convincing alternative to voters who were dissatisfied with the program of the incumbent government...

...Gosta Bohman says," began Palme's reply to the dynamic leader of the Conservative party, "that if we win the election, people will get depressed and leave the country...

...And since tax revenues are spent mainly on services rather than goods, they contribute little to home-market industrial demand...

...In his speeches, Palme regularly cited a Washington Post article showing that Sweden now enjoys the highest per capita income in the world, since the currency revaluations have moved it ahead of the U.S...

...When Palme tried to talk about the new society, the electorate persisted in thinking about unemployment, crime and taxes...

...For that matter, "work environment," the issue on which Palme would have liked to run the 1973 campaign, also failed to catch on either because most voters do not generally view it as a pressing problem, or because they are not used to thinking in terms of the government being able to do anything about it...

...The cornerstone of this strategy is the S15.9-billion pension fund, which now amounts to about one-third of the nation's available investment capital...

...Led by a handsome ex-farmer named Thorbjorn Fall-din, the Centrists were the big winners in last month's balloting, rising from less than 20 per cent of the vote in 1970 to about 25 per cent...

...For as the '70s began, most Swedish economists were worried about a long-term deficit in the balance of payments, aggravated by Parliament's decision to devote 1 per cent of the GNP to foreign aid by the middle of the decade...

...The influential chairman of the Labor Confederation, Gunnar Nilsson, has come out against the idea, which is sure to put dampers on it for a while, but it could be revived later on...

...This, in turn, pointed up a basic structural weakness hindering Sweden's industrial growth...

...to this end, legislation has been proposed allowing union "safety representatives" at the plant level to intervene and stop production if they feel workers are being required to perform dangerous tasks...

...Yet industry, not services, is the source of increases in productivity and therefore in real resources...

...These, however, proved to have little appeal for the average wage earner, who could not see what increased equality was doing for him...

...Thus was self-congratulatory flagwaving blended with a suspiciousness about the rest of the world, or at least the proximate part of it (North Vietnam and Africa's liberation movements were showered with praise...

...Going into the elections, the Social Democrats appeared to be headed for defeat...

...He's not talking about ordinary people...

...But the flagwaving and the fear of change, perhaps intensified by the death of Sweden's King Gustaf VI Adolf on September 15, helped the party in its final spurt...

...Steven Kelman, a frequent contributor and author of Behind the Berlin Wall and Push Comes to Shove, just returned from a trip to Sweden...

...Though foreign policy was not an important issue in the unusually hard-fought contest, the outside world most definitely was...

...Almost every Palme appearance was punctuated with the line, "People don't recognize themselves in the picture the opposition paints of our society...

...The chief sources of discontent have been the centralization of industry to meet the demands of Sweden's vital export markets, and the concomitant uprooting of large numbers of Swedes from rural towns into urban centers...

...Without significant economic improvement soon, however, neither nationalistic appeals nor opposition ineptitude may be enough to save Olof Palme...

...If the Social Democrats are to prevail, they will have to do a more persuasive job of explaining their program for going beyond the welfare state in the ne*t three years than they did in their last term...

...10, 1972], the Social Democrats decided to run a "we're standing up for Sweden" campaign...

...While that brought a payments surplus, it triggered an unpredictably large economic downturn, producing the worst unemployment figures since World War II...

...They had been down in the polls for almost three years...

...Rather, the difficulty was that their plans, being complicated and hard to explain, did not exactly set the voters on fire...

...They also urged more control for labor over health and safety conditions in industry...

...Besides calling for a new law mandating worker representation on company boards of directors, since passed, these reports sought a union negotiating voice in areas of management prerogative like personnel policy, the organization of work, and hiring and firing...

...The high mention of crime is fascinating in its own right: In Sweden the rate is far below that of the U.S., yet it is still regarded as a major social problem...

...Beginning with the radicalization of their party in the late '60s, the Social Democrats have emphasized the shortcomings still present in Swedish society, particularly the plight of low-paid workers, who, if not poverty-stricken, were nevertheless lagging behind everyone else...

...The Liberals, who were the big losers last month, dropping nearly half of their seats in Parliament, are very similar to the Social Democrats...

...The beneficiary of the new nostalgia for the old way of life has been the Center party (the former Agrarian party), which exudes rural romanticism, traditional virtues, and support for small business and small folks...

...To meet the looming payments crisis, Finance Minister Gun-nar Strang chose a restrictive economic policy at home...

...It was not that the party of social reform had run out of ideas?the Social Democrats know very well what they want to do for an encore to the welfare state...

...Unfortunately for the Social Democrats, their plan is too technical to have much political impact...

...A party newspaper printed letters from Swedish tourists expressing horror that they could not find any unpolluted lakes in Germany to swim in, and that most young people do not finish high school in England...

...As long as the economy was booming, this did not seem to bother people much, but as soon as it faltered, the public began questioning the direction the nation was taking...