Transformations and Crises: The Left and the Nation in Denmark and Sweden, 1956-1980 9781845458614

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Transformations and Crises

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Protest, Culture and Society General editors: Kathrin Fahlenbrach, University of Halle Wittenberg, Germany. Martin Klimke, German Historical Institute, Washington, DC / Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA), University of Heidelberg. Joachim Scharloth, Department of German, University of Zurich, Switzerland. Protest movements have been recognized as significant contributors to processes of political participation and transformations of culture and value systems, as well as to the development of both a national and transnational civil society. This series brings together the various innovative approaches to phenomena of social change, protest and dissent which have emerged in recent years, from an interdisciplinary perspective. It contextualizes social protest and cultures of dissent in larger political processes and socio-cultural transformations by examining the influence of historical trajectories and the response of various segments of society, political and legal institutions on a national and international level. In doing so, the series offers a more comprehensive and multi-dimensional view of historical and cultural change in the twentieth and twenty-first century. Volume 1 Voices of the Valley, Voices of the Straits: How Protest Creates Communities Donatella della Porta and Gianni Piazza

Volume 2 Transformations and Crises: The Left and the Nation in Denmark and Sweden, 1956–1980 Thomas Ekman Jørgensen

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Transformations and Crises The Left and the Nation in Denmark and Sweden, 1956–1980

Thomas Ekman Jørgensen

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

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First published in 2008 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2008 Thomas Ekman Jørgensen All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jørgensen, Thomas Ekman. Transformation and crises: the Left and the nation in Denmark and Sweden, 1956–1980 / Thomas Ekman Jørgensen. p. cm. – (Protest, culture & society; v. 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-84545-366-4 1. New Left-Denmark-History-20th century. 2. New Left-Sweden-History-20th century. I. Title. HN547.J67 2008 320.530948509045-dc22 2008026629 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN 978-1-84545-366-4 hardback

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Contents List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations

ix x xi xii

Introduction Comparison, Time and Narration – Methodological Remarks What is the Left? Going beyond Ideology The Concept of Nation Literature and Sources

1 3 7 10 15

Chapter 1. Communist Concepts in Crisis The Communist Party – Leader of the People, Protector of the Country The DKP – For the National Independence of the Danish People The SKP – Completing Swedish Democracy 1956 and Beyond – Towards an Unclear Future The Twentieth Congress of the CPSU The Invasion of Hungary More than One Communism – the International Perspective

21 23 23 26 32 32 36 39

Chapter 2. Adaptation and Innovation Renewal of Communism SF and the Danish New Left The Open Marriage of Swedish Communism Reinventing Internationalism Third World Solidarity and Virtual Internationalism Europe and Norden – the Regional Identity Welfare, Culture and Class – the Domestic Aspect The Pros and Cons of Welfare Culture, Modernity, Alienation Class and People

45 47 47 49 51 53 61 71 72 74 77

Chapter 3. Contesting Pragmatism The Late 1960s and the Radical Youth The Global Contestation. Vietnam, America and the World Revolution Vietnam in Denmark: from Moral Indignation to Revolutionary Consciousness

85 85 87 87

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Vietnam in Sweden: the Leninist Renaissance America and Anti-Americanism Party Splits Return of Europe New European Threats, Fascism and Imperialism 1968! Capitalism at Home – the End of Exceptionalism Welfare or Capitalism The Fascist Threat Nordic Colonialism

91 97 101 103 104 105 111 112 115 119

Chapter 4. Turning Inwards The Transformation of Capitalism and the Establishment of Estrangement Splits on Common Ground, the ‘Groupuscules’ Phenomenon Popular Movements Revisited Return of the Working Class Popular Culture Revival of Nationalism Revivalism and Conservatism The End is Near! Countries in Crisis

125 125 127 131 132 138 145 151 152

Chapter 5: The End of the Road The End of Leftist Hegemony The End of Progression The Radical Trap The Left on the Defensive

163 163 165 171 175

Chapter 6: Summary, Conclusions and Outlook Summary: Transformations and Crises Concepts and Crises Outlook – the left in the 1980s Militancy and Pragmatism – the Danish left Alternative Roads, Beyond Left and Right in Sweden

181 181 185 188 189 193

Bibliography Index

199 213

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List of Illustrations 1.1 The net of monopoly capitalism (from C.-H. Hermansson, Monopol och storfinans) 2.1 The South as a victim, p. (from Zenit no. 3 1961, p. 9) 2.2 ‘The keys to paradise’, p. (from SF 19/10 1962, p. 1) 3.1 Anti-Americanism I 3.2 Anti-Americanism II 4.1 Swedish miner (From S. Lidman, 1968. Gruva) 4.2 ‘Ta hva der er dit’ (LP cover, Røde Mor) 4.3 ‘Danmark – et billeddigt I’ (Røde Mor) 4.4 Thorfinn (from C. Deuleran, 2005. Thorfinn)

29 57 63 100 100 133 136 143 144

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Preface At the European Social Forum in Florence 2002, the symbols of the left are on display everywhere: the Hammer and sickle, Che Guevara, guerrillas with Kalashnikovs, Cuban flags and British Trotskyites chanting ‘one solution, revolution’. I feel as if I have been catapulted back in time, to the 1960s and 1970s when the left was in the ascendant: a time which, for about two years, I have tried to define as history, a phenomenon of the past. Now it imposes itself as something very present. The idea for this book was formulated in 1999. At that point, the radical left belonged to history. Small groups were visible, particularly in my Copenhagen neighbourhood, but they were hardly anything more than just another youth subculture. The left belonged mainly to historical debates, not to the political agenda. Then came Florence, in the ‘Red Tuscany’; five years later, Gothenburg; Genoa; 11 September; the ’War on Terror’; the Afghanistan War; and the War in Iraq, the result of which still seems open-ended. Suddenly the language of the radical left reappeared as a political force. The old images of American imperialism, the North-South conflict, and the latent oppression of the capitalist system have got a face and they have to be taken seriously. This book will end with the collapse of the left. It is written almost as a tragedy where the left is doomed to defeat, fighting against the tide of the times. Nevertheless, the brief period during which it was written has proved that the language of the left was strong, that it managed to be saved from the dustbin of history to reappear 20 years later in a new political environment. I cannot deny that the interpretations of the left have regained their plausibility, and that they can mobilise considerable political power. Any teleological aspects of this book have been proven wrong: the left did not collapse irreparably to be assigned the role of a historical relic. There is no philosophy of history that can identify what definitely belongs to the past and what are the directions of the future. For this reason, the following must be read as a chapter in history, not the beginning and the end, but one beginning and one end. Florence, February 2004

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Acknowledgements The four years, in which the dissertation on which this book is based has been written, were a time of many changes, many new experiences, friends and acquaintances that have all contributed to my work in one way or another. There are too many to write in a simple list of acknowledgments; many will remain unmentioned, but certainly not forgotten. Among those who have contributed directly through ideas and comments are first and foremost my supervisor, Professor Bo Stråth, who – more than a mere supervisor – also was an academic role-model, and my second supervisor, Professor Kim Salomon, whose questions always challenged my research in a constructive way. At the European University Institute, I have had additional help and inspiration from Professor Luisa Passerini and Professor Arfon Rees, many thanks! Also thanks to all the others who generously let me use their own research or contributed with advice and ideas: Martin Wiklund, James Kaye, Agneta Edman, Konstantinos Kornetis, Knud Holt Nielsen, Detlef Siegfried, Flemming Mikkelsen and everyone who participated in the working group on 1968. Special thanks to Maud Bracke, without whom this work would look much different. During my research missions in Denmark and Sweden, the collections of Arbejderbevægelsens Bibliotek og Arkiv (ABA) in Copenhagen and Arbetarrörelsens Bibliotek och Arkiv (ARAB) in Stockholm have provided an excellent access, advice and service that made the research possible. Of all the staff, I have to mention and thank Eva Nancke, who always made me feel at home as soon as I set my foot in ABA. But there are also those who have contributed through their friendship and support: First of all my family whom I cannot thank enough. Then the friends at the institute who made it all such a pleasurable experience, thanks to Bernhard, Carina, Eirinn, Elke, Fetzer, Janus, Martin Dehli, Oscar, Pasi, Pernille, Rengenier and Rüdiger – to mention far too few. Thanks to my fellow researcher representatives, Gunvor and Volker. Thanks to everyone I biked with, everyone I played cards with and everyone I lived with. The band The Frenzy requires special mention for making me do something completely different: Hagen, Mal, Markus, Punky, Jari, Schneider and Carlos, thank you for the music! Outside the institute, the Tuscans Nicoletta and Giada must be thanked for introducing me to the true Tuscany – mille grazie ragazze! And outside Italy, thanks to all the people who managed to stay in touch: Jonas, Kalle, Karsten, Kride, Kristin, Leif, Mikkel, Nicolaj, Niller, Steen, Steven, Stine and Tatjana. Finally, thanks to Alessandra who taught me so much and from whom I still have so much to learn!

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List of Abbreviations ABA ARAB CCP CND CPSU CUF DFFG DKP DKU EEC ETA FNL GDR KFML KFML(r) LO LOE NATO OOA PCF PCI PFLP RAF SAC SAF SAP SDS SF SKP VPK VS VUF

Arbejderbevægelsens Bibliotek og Arkiv Arbetarrörelsens Bibliotek och Arkiv Chinese Communist Party Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Communist Party of the Soviet Union Centerpartiets Ungdomsförbund De förenade FNL-grupperna Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti Danmarks Kommunistiske Ungdom European Economic Community Euskadi Ta Askatasuna Front National de Libération German Democratic Republic Kommunistiska Förbundet Marxist-Leninisterna Kommunistiska Förbundet Marxist-Leninisterna (revolutionärerna) Landsorganisationen Landsorganisationen af Elever North Atlantic Treaty Organization Organisationen til Oplysning om Atomkraft Parti communiste français Partito communista italiano Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Rote Armee Fraktion Svenska Arbetares Centralorganisation Svenska Arbetsgivareföreningen Socialdemokratiska Arbetarpartiet Students for a Democratic Society Socialistisk Folkeparti Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti (Sweden’s Communist Party, from 1973 used by the Maoist KFML) Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna (before 1967 SKP) Venstresocialisterne Vänsterpartiets ungdomsförbund

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Introduction

The nation and the political left had a precarious relationship in the twentieth century. Socialists have often been torn between an internationalist heritage and their individual national political cultures and loyalties. The left has ultimately worked for global change, but found itself on political scenes determined by the nation state, and all shades of leftism have in one way or another related themselves to the all-pervading political power of the nation. In the interwar period, socialist and social democratic parties adapted to the national political scenes by entering governments in individual countries and left their working-class-based ideology to embrace ‘the people’ instead. The communist parties on the other hand, were ideologically and strategically bound to the Soviet Union, which often gave them the reputation of being a fifth column working against their own nation. With the rise of the New Left in the late 1950s and early 1960s a third position was created, a position that only slowly developed its own ideology with yet another concept of nation. The relationship between the left and the concept of nation is not only politically ambiguous, it is also a complex one from the perspective of the historian: Although the nation played a significant role for the left in the twentieth century, it would be too simple just to look for leftist nationalism, since the concept of nation touches on a much wider range of subjects than this political programme. Also, an investigation into conceptual definitions of the nation in the 1960s and 1970s, for example as a political or ethnic community, would be very limited since these discussions were mostly not on the agenda. As discussed below, the nation was the implicit scene of political action, not a concept to be defined. The questions of this investigation are directed at the way in which the left conceptualised this scene. As a first step, this will be a descriptive venture: what were seen as the most important features of the nation, when and in what way did this concept of the nation change over time? The most important question, however, is to ask when and how a concept becomes challenged so that it must change. Who has the power over interpretation, and what is the relationship between the concept and its context? The particular history written here will thus be a history of the language of the left. This is not to be confused with a history of the ideas or the ideology of the left as represented by its foremost theoreticians. In fact, the protagonists of that history will play only a supporting role in the following. Readers expecting to be enlightened about Marxist theory or similar schools of thought will be

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disappointed. Instead, the spotlight will be on the dispersed everyday discussions on the left: journal features, letters to the editor and party publications that are often contradictory and hardly ever present comprehensive theories. Rather than in the classics of socialism, it was here that the concepts of the left were formed, in a network of propositions, proclamations and rhetorical attacks and counter attacks. It was within the constant discussions among the left that concepts won or lost their position as political pointers. In asking these questions, the book takes its point of departure in the tradition of conceptual history. In this tradition, concepts are far from stable entities, indeed, the very definition of a concept in the tradition of conceptual history is its vague or abstract reference as opposed to the concrete reference of words. Words refer to some concrete entity connected to the immediate situation. For example, the ‘party’ understood as the concrete body of members and institutions – as in the sentence ‘we shall discuss this in the party’ – is a word use of ‘party.’ The concept of ‘party’, however, is more of an ideal type, as for example ‘the revolutionary party’ of the Leninist tradition (‘mobilising the working class is the primary goal of the revolutionary party’). This does not point to the concrete party at hand, but to the concept of a revolutionary party as the catalyst of social change. Hence, concepts are characterised by their ideological potential; they describe ideals or models, construct images of the self and the other and set the horizon for possible, or indeed necessary, change.1 As such, concepts are always in a state of tension: tension between those who attach different content and agendas to the concepts and attempt to eliminate alternative interpretations, and tension between the image of reality contained in the concept and concrete experiences. The impossibility of duplicating experience in language and, vice versa, the impossibility of experiencing without conceiving this experience through language create a constant imbalance. To understand the world, we have to use the medium of language to conceptualise experiences, however, language will always be a simplification, or an interpretation, of the concrete reference.2 Moreover, the conditions interpreted through concepts change, overtaking them and requiring new interpretations. It is this constant dynamic between different interpretations of the concepts and between the concept and its reference that is at the centre of this book. For the left these tensions might even be particularly pronounced. The Enlightenment heritage of the left, with its belief in the ability to describe the world rationally and change it accordingly, as well as the Marxist-Leninist belief in a politics based on an accurate understanding of the laws of society can be seen as attempts to overcome this tension between concepts and their reference: Attempts that often resulted in battles over correct interpretations and frantic searches for comprehensive models to describe reality perfectly and unambiguously. Often, once such a model had been established, things changed to shatter the foundations of the carefully established concepts.

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Introduction | 3

The concept of crisis is of particular interest in this context. Following Reinhart Koselleck, crisis occurs at the moment where the existing order is challenged in a way that requires a resolution of the conflicting interpretations. The crisis is the point of decision, where the old interpretations are no longer valid and new constellations appear.3 The history to be told here takes its beginning and end at two such instances, the crisis of communism in the late 1950s and the crisis of the New Left in the late 1970s. Before embarking on this, some methodological remarks and definitions are necessary.

Comparison, Time and Narration – Methodological Remarks Within the last ten years, there has been a growing literature on comparison in history.4 These considerations confirm the necessity for being explicit about the methods and objectives of a comparative study such as this. The aim of the comparison here is first and foremost a heuristic and a descriptive one.5 The Danish and Swedish left are compared in order to discover new angles and perspectives that would have been less obvious without the comparison. For example the influence of puritanism on the Swedish left stands out as a much more present feature in comparison with its complete lack in Denmark, or there is the relative lack of a Danish blue-collar tradition, which becomes obvious when compared with Sweden. The comparison also helps as a reminder of the political, economic and geographical differences between the two countries, the different geostrategic situation in the cold war, the large difference in geographical size, the different economic structure and the different political situation, especially with regard to the social democratic parties. The analytical potential of the comparison, by contrast, has consciously been given low priority in this study. This function of comparative studies can be seen as a parallel to a scientist’s laboratory, where hypotheses can be tested to find causal connections. Apart from the mechanistic view of history implied in this method, it is also problematic in the sense that it requires two completely separated cases. The Danish and Swedish left, however, were often inspired by each other so that developments in the two countries were often interconnected. Thus, the comparison will not be a systematic account of two parallel histories, but rather an integrated description of two milieux. Sometimes, similar developments will be described as one, and sometimes the similarities and differences will be pointed out in separate chapters. The countries will also receive different attention, depending on the subject. The New Left, for instance, presented a much more radical break with the communist tradition in Denmark than in Sweden and will be weighted accordingly. Likewise, the revival of popular traditions was stronger and more developed in Sweden than in

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Denmark. The main development is the same in the two countries, but this journey took different roads to reach the same destination. It is in the comparison of these different roads that new perspectives and questions can be found. Hence, the present comparison is different from the comparative perspective of historical sociology, since it does not attempt to construct causal models, but instead looks for similarities and differences to put the two different cases into perspective, to question the familiar and seemingly obvious in the mirror of the other. The two cases of Denmark and Sweden are interesting as they are ‘most similar cases’ on one level, but vastly different on other levels. If one looks at Fernand Braudel’s famous three levels of long, medium and short durées,6 these differences and similarities become clear. In the long durée of the geographical level, the countries are not only different in size but also in climate and dispersion of the population. In contrast to the cultivated and densely populated Danish landscape, Sweden’s population is centred around dispersed administrative and industrial centres, separated by vast forests. Hence, the notions of centre and periphery play an important role in Sweden. On the medium-term level of political culture, both countries were dominated (although Sweden to a larger extent) by strong states and powerful social democracies that set the agenda for the welfare state. On the short term, the dayto-day level of the history of the left is the very topic of this investigation; hence it will be discussed thoroughly in the conclusion. Historical and literary writing are often similar enterprises. As Hayden White proposed in his classic book on the subject, Metahistory, historians do not simply give an account of the past; they actively construct it in the act of writing. The very style of history writing prefigures the way in which the findings are presented and what conclusions are drawn from them. The emplotment (as Hayden White terms it) of the historian’s findings, the sequence in which he puts them together in writing, is intimately connected to the explanations and interpretations provided. Hence, the chronology of the work, as well as its progress as a history: its beginning, build-up, dramatic climax and end, are all connected to the particular interpretation and explanation that the historian wants to express.7 If one takes this insight to heart, it is also necessary to be explicit about the choice of emplotment and the reasons for presenting the history in one specific way. In the present work, the choice originally stood between a thematic representation of different interpretations of the nation – one chapter on the nation in the global perspective, one about images of the Dane and the Swede etc. – and a chronological one. For a merely descriptive enterprise, the first would have been an obvious choice, as it gives the reader a good overview of the material. However, as the research in the source material progressed, it became clear that these themes often replaced each other chronologically so that one perspective of the nation at times became overshadowed by new events and other

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Introduction | 5

themes. Moreover, the thematic ordering often has a too descriptive character of mapping the concept in all its aspects; it gives the reader an illusion of an encyclopedic enterprise, that this mapping is a comprehensive one. The chronological ordering, conversely, requires a much stricter argumentation in order to describe the interrelationship between concepts, as well as how and why new conceptualisations replaced old ones. This requires the historian to come to more explicit conclusions in an explanatory rather than in a descriptive way. For these reasons, the chronological ordering with a beginning, middle and end was chosen at an early point. The narration presented here is placed between two crises, the crisis of communism and the crisis of the New Left. From 1956, the world communist movement was in a profound crisis. The concepts inherited from the Comintern period were being challenged by Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The emergence of the New Left was a direct answer to this challenge, which sought to give new and more adequate content to the language of the left. During the 1960s, this process of renovation produced a dynamic and pragmatic approach to the political language, far removed from the dogmatism of communism. Throughout the 1960s, the concepts of the left were continuously being contested and changed in relation to different political constellations on the left and events in the world. Hence, a complex mixture developed with shifting emphases on themes like Third World solidarity, anticonsumerism, Nordism or workerism. These themes appeared in relation to the concept of nation in questions about the national and the international, the status of the nation and the possibilities for change (see below about the nation). In the 1970s, the dynamic stopped and gave way to a period of ideological continuity, which at the end of the decade met a crisis much like the one of communism. Different themes dominated in different periods; now and again they changed profoundly, or they continued to exist, appearing at odd intervals in journal features or slogans. This poses a challenge to the chronological ordering of the material. Just as concepts are an interpretation of reality, the history of concepts is an interpretation and simplification of the concepts themselves. The historian cannot present an unambiguous image of the use of the concepts. In the sources, they are rarely defined explicitly and always used in a particular context. Hence, even as interpretations, they are never clear. Also, once a particular definition of a concept has been established, old uses of the concept may reappear in other contexts. For example, the Swedish left portrayed the Third World – particularly Vietnam – as a victorious revolutionary force. However, one can also find articles in Sweden that describe the Vietnamese people as helpless victims of a superior and pitiless American military force. The images of the Vietnam war were contestable, like all concepts, and hence impossible to grasp unambiguously. Here it is up to the discretion of the historian to decide how many of these articles it takes to present a challenge to the established concept. However, this

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cannot be done arbitrarily either. A merely quantitative approach is meaningless. What should the threshold be, a fixed number of articles, a percentage of yearly articles written on Vietnam? Some writers had much more authority than others, and some books or articles had an impact that cannot be measured quantitatively. The historian can alternatively see how long a concept lasts in the sources, how many refer to or use the concept, but there is no fixed methodological point from where it is possible to unambiguously discard a concept as unimportant or outdated. However, by ordering the material chronologically, this is exactly what the historian must do: to say, ‘now, something different happened.’ This is a necessary simplification to make a readable narrative, something different might indeed have happened, but something also remained the same. Time is not a road going from one place to another in two dimensions, but consists of many layers, like a geological formation where old layers are still present in the rock.8 Writing, however, is linear – or, to use a metaphor from electronics, sequentially connected. Even a thematically ordered text cannot mirror the simultaneousness of the layers of time. It has to divide them, extract the elements that are important for the argument and put them in a sequence, one after the other. Hence, the sequence chosen by the author is a result of a specific point of view, a certain interest. This necessity of reducing simultaneousness into sequences brings the writing of history one step away from mirroring the material. However, the historian cannot put his findings into a pure sequence. The findings need to be ordered with a minimum of coherence so that the interpretation of one concept of, for instance, the working class is not followed unmediated by the interpretation of a concept of the Nordic countries. This would be more like writing an annal of events rather than a history.9 In sum, chronological history writing is also thematic. The interpretation of the historian is thus a double simplification, one of presenting many-layered time as a two-dimensional sequence, and one of constructing the elements of this sequence as independent themes. In this, there are no simple answers to questions about continuity or change; both exist side by side, or layer by layer, and are thus subject to a simplifying interpretation rather than categorical answers. This double simplification should be obvious in the individual chapters; though the chapters and sections are put into a relatively chronological order, there is also a thematic element. Rather, the different themes surrounding the concept of nation have been placed in chronologically ordered main chapters, which are then split up into thematic sub-themes. This, as well as the comparative ‘jumps’ from Denmark to Sweden, breaks the flow of the narration, as if separated by successive ‘meanwhiles.’ The progress of the narration will happen in several parallel subplots, as the development of the concept of nation is followed in different countries, among different political groups and according to different themes. At the end, however, this network of narrations is put into a master narrative of crisis, innovation, stagnation and new crisis.

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Introduction | 7

With all these limits to the possibilities of making history out of the past, one could ask if it is not a completely arbitrary enterprise, if anything goes. To counter this in a crude way, one could point to the difference between historical writing and fiction: that the historian cannot freely invent. The historian has to qualify his or her narrative by referring to the sources in a way that lets others test the validity of the propositions. But as history is an act of interpretation, there are no clear-cut standards of critique and, as a consequence, no final point of historical discussion. History remains an act of communication about the past. The question is thus not to present the final argument, but to make a plausible interpretation of the past. To do this, the historian must first make it clear from which point of departure the interpretation is made, define his main tools and concepts, and then, while presenting the interpretation, make the necessary references to the sources to enable others to challenge the particular history that is told. Moreover, it is necessary that the historian clarifies to himor herself what the implications of the chosen tools are, in order to impose a measure of self-criticism, which makes a dialogue with alternative views possible. If these openings for critique are not made, research becomes either naively realist, by believing it can mirror reality, or a circular argument, where the answers are already given.10 The history at hand presents an interpretation of the concept of nation on the left from a specific point of view. The explanations in the following are not exhaustive nor do they refer to a notion of monocausality, but they are derived from asking certain questions of certain sources in a specific period of time. In the conclusion, once the reader is familiar with the present argument in detail, alternative interpretations using other chronologies and concepts will be discussed in order to see the span and the limits to the interpretations of this past, and put the present work into perspective. The rest of this introduction will define the tools of research in more detail and deepen the questions of the investigation.

What is the Left? Going beyond Ideology There exists a quite extensive literature on the topic of the division between left and right in politics. Some authors want to keep the division, as they see it as an essential, bipolar structure of politics; others see it as a historically constructed and constantly changing concept. Tempting as it might be to enter this theoretical discussion, I choose to see it from the point of view of the pragmatic historian, looking for a concept that is open to new questions and new knowledge. Still, some kind of definition is needed. From the beginning, I have to discard an institutional definition, defining the left as a limited number of groups or parties. My first point of departure was ‘groups left of social democracy.’ While this is a perfectly usable, common-sense definition, it is nevertheless too broad and imprecise as an analytical tool. First,

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non-organised individuals increasingly influenced the leftist scene during the 1960s, and these would be excluded from an institutional framework. Secondly, some important – mainly Swedish – leftist intellectuals were actually members of the social democratic party while working in the context of the New Left. Thirdly, the definition would presuppose a clear, two-dimensional space, where groups could be ordered neatly from right to left, to make it clear what is actually left or right of social democracy. When social democratic parties do not play any major role in this project, it is not because of a belief that they are not on the left, but because they worked in another context from that of most of the agents described here, their focus was on the parliamentary scene and on government – an arena from which most of whom I define as the left were excluded. One possibility would be to look at the ideological definitions of ‘left’: what is at the core of leftist ideology? One of the most well-written attempts to answer this is Norberto Bobbio’s book Left and Right. The Significance of a Political Distinction. After an interesting discussion of left and right as a spatial metaphor with many positions between the two poles, Bobbio arrives at the rather essentialist conclusion that ‘left’ can be reduced to a leading principle of equality: the leftist position will always be the more egalitarian one.11 A similar attempt to reduce the concept of ‘left’ to an ideological core has been made by Steven Lukes in the article ‘Qu’est-ce que la gauche?’12 Less convincingly and considerably more vaguely than Bobbio, he ends up with a definition of ‘left’ as a principle of ‘rectification’, a never-ending fight against exploitation and oppression.13 Both authors are politically on the left wing themselves, which to a large degree influences their conclusions. Unfortunately – and partly for this reason – none of them would be very useful as a tool to separate left from right. Most obviously, Lukes’ definition is problematic. Who would not try to correct wrongs and fight oppression? And who is to decide what for example oppression is? Did Margaret Thatcher’s fight against the oppression of the individual by the welfare state make her a champion of the left? Definitions such as this one clearly come from a rhetoric figure on the left, which defines itself in ethical terms where ‘left’ is good and ‘right’ is evil.14 Norberto Bobbio is far more convincingly: egalitarianism is a large element in left-wing ideology. But on the other hand, one cannot help posing oneself the question: can the whole political culture, red banners with hammer and sickle and singing the ‘Internationale’, be reduced to an idea of egalitarianism? The argument of the book itself is, for example, often built up dialectically, a clear inheritance from Bobbio’s Marxist origins. But what is the link between egalitarianism and dialectics? And, if one thinks further, how does it fit with the elitist elements in Lenin’s idea about the party leading the masses? The answer must be that reducing ‘left’ to some core idea is not going to get you very far.15 Another way to look at left and Right as a political division, is to go back to its historical roots in the French revolution, where ‘left’ was associated with change and ‘Right’ with conservatism in the original meaning of the word. Jean

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A. Laponce argues in his book Left and Right. The Topography of Political Perceptions that this practical division reflecting the agenda of the French revolution has developed into a myth ‘of a cosmic conflict between two abstract forces – one called left, the other called right.’16 The original purpose of the division has vanished so that the two concepts have freed themselves from any reference to particular ideological points of view. The historical point of departure leads to the conclusion that the concept ‘left’ is a construction continuously being reconstructed. It seems that instead of looking for a clear and stable definition of ‘the left’, one should take a look at the people that define and redefine what it means to be on the left. Before reaching his essentialist conclusion, Bobbio writes extensively about left and right as spatial metaphors indicating proximity and distance. It is a key to finding possible allies in the political game, a space in which to place yourself in relation to others – friends, allies or enemies.17 A definition stressing space and relativity leads to another theory, namely, that of Pierre Bourdieu and his concept of social space or field, as ‘a set of distinct and coexisting positions which are exterior to one another and which are defined in relation to one another through their mutual exteriority and their relations of proximity.’18 This way of looking at the left as a space structured by related positions seems to me the most open and comprehensive point of departure. Instead of struggling with more or less abstract ethical or philosophical measures, it suggests a much more pragmatic approach: to look at the network of people recognising themselves and others to be ‘on the left.’ They take different positions, some more powerful than others, but always defined in relation to other positions in the same space. This also allows the use of the theoretical apparatus of Bourdieu to pose questions about the distribution of power and resources (capital) in the field, and how this capital is used in the struggle for more power and resources.19 I shall not make explicit use of Bourdieu’s concepts; rather I intend to use the theory as a way of thinking that avoids reconstructing the left in purely ideological terms. Concretely, the relations in the field can be followed in the source material by looking at who write in the journals and periodicals, whose books are being reviewed and who participate in debates, who are recognised as partners in discussions and who are solely objects of criticism. By asking these questions, it is not too difficult to construct a well-defined and delimited concept of the left. By defining the left as a political and social field, it becomes similar to any other political milieu. It has no particular ethic or historical mission as in the ideological definitions, but becomes normalised, ‘demystified’, as a political milieu no different from other ones. The left did not have an ideology in a different sense from other political groups, it was a field of competing positions, competing interpretations and competing concepts.

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The Concept of Nation The concept of nation is one of the most discussed topics of the history discipline. The history of its construction, its political potency since the eighteenth century and its continuous potential for conflict has made it a favourite topic for research. When looking at Denmark and Sweden in the 1960s and 1970s, however, none of these three perspectives were very present. The nation-building process in the nineteenth century had resulted in a remarkable consensus about the nation as the natural stage for political action. It was not contested by ethnic conflict or serious border disputes, or by the displacements of people following the war. Explicit nationalism was hence only rarely mobilised in the political language; the nation went without saying. As described below, the left used nationalist arguments at specific points, but the actual political results of this mobilisation were poor in the self-secure and uncontested nation states of Denmark and Sweden. However, the concept of nation is broader than struggles over its definition or political mobilisation on a nationalist programme. As John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith notices, the nation implicitly or explicitly reaches into a great number of other fields; it has a ‘kaleidoscopic’ form that ‘spills over into any number of cognate subjects.’20 In the following, I shall search for a point of departure in some of the main works on nations and nationalism to see which elements they emphasise in their analysis of the nation. It must be noted, however, that – and this is crucial – I do not focus on nationalism, but on the concept of ‘nation’, which is quite a different thing. Nationalism, to use Ernest Gellner’s simple definition, is ‘primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent.’21 Nationalism is thus a certain political use of the concept of nation. The concept itself, though, is prior to and independent from this particular use. When it comes to the nation itself, finding clear and useful definitions is virtually impossible, as Eric Hobsbawm writes: ‘there is no way of telling the observer how to distinguish a nation from other entities a priori, as we can tell him or her how to recognize a bird or to distinguish it from a mouse or a lizard. Nation-watching would be simple if it could be like bird-watching.’22 As a consensus has developed around this view23 – as well as for the above-mentioned reasons – I shall do no further attempt to define ‘the nation’ as such, but choose a more pragmatic approach by looking at the historical roots of the modern concept of nation and by applying some methodological tools. Most serious work on the nation stresses its constructed character; it is a phenomenon that prior to the French and industrial revolutions existed at best in protoforms in connection with a certain political unit or as a concept with a different meaning from that it received after the rise of political nationalism. Two standard works on the subject; Eric Hobsbawm’s Nations and Nationalism

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since 1780 and Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism, both underline the connection between the growth of a modern, centralised, industrial state and the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century. Nationalism and the modern concept of nation were products of a historical development from an agrarian society with little contact between the state apparatus and its subjects to a society with strong state control, central education and the necessity of linguistic and cultural homogeneity. For Gellner, the development of nationalism is unequivocally dependent on the transition to industrialism, and thus seems to become a stable element once this transition has occurred. It seems implicit in his book that once a homogeneous culture has been spread through standardised, widespread education, nationalism is stabilised in the form it took during the transition period. Hobsbawm, while basically inspired by Gellner and sharing the same assumptions, has a more dynamic view, which sees nationalism develop in certain phases during the nineteenth century and reaching its ‘apogee’ between the world wars. In the second half of the twentieth century, nationalism, according to Hobsbawm, ‘is simply no longer the historical force it was in the era between the French Revolution and the end of imperialist colonialism after the Second World War.’24 He discards the Third World liberation movements as not nationalists but ‘nation-builders’ (a rather subtle difference) and the seeming upsurge of nationalism after the break up of the Soviet empire as ‘unfinished business of 1918–21.’25 This chronological framing of nationalism is to some extent defendable when the subject is nationalism as a well-defined political programme. It is problematic, however, if one seeks to analyse the concept of nation in situations where the nationalist programme has not yet been made explicit, or – in the case of this project – where the nationalist programme has been victorious and is no longer on the agenda. The specific cases of Denmark and Sweden in the second half of the twentieth century are those of societies where the standardised education, language and centralised government were already established within a national framework, but – as we shall see – this in no way meant that the national question in its broadest terms was dormant. On the contrary, even on the supposedly internationalist left, it kept on being a concept used in a number of different contexts and with a considerable potential of political mobilisation. However, it was not necessarily connected to the explicit nationalist agenda, with which it is most commonly connected in the research on the nation. An alternative to the historical, structural connection between ‘nation’, nationalism and modernity and its relation to the nineteenth century could be a more open conceptual analysis that goes beyond the specific political context and scans the multitude of synchronic and diachronic changes of the concept itself. This also avoids the difficult question of an a priori definition of the elusive concept and turns its elusiveness into good use by taking the point of departure in the many, changing definitions instead of searching for one, stable

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model. Such a starting point would follow the methods of conceptual history and begin with the signifier ‘nation’ itself to follow the ways it is used and its relations to other concepts. Rolf Reichardt has proposed the idea of constructing a ‘conceptual field’ around the concept of interest. This is quite simply a framework in which to place different words in relation to the concept: which words are used to define what the concept is and what it is not, to describe its properties, and to show how these properties have manifested themselves historically.26 The ‘flat’ character of the field metaphor is very attractive, especially as an alternative to the word ‘discourse’, which as a spatial metaphor has two levels: one at the surface, where you find the concrete phenomenon and one underlying structure, which generates the surface according to some rules or guiding principles. The structuralist heritage of the concept of discourse implies the risk of constructing coherent structures of meaning, the deep connectedness of language, to a common system. Discourse analysis hence tends to make synchronic ‘cuts’ through language to construct or even claim to discover a united system as an underlying frame of rules generating statements:27 in a the words of Michel Foucault, ‘the mute ground upon which it is possible for entities to be juxtaposed.’28 The findings are connected to a hidden order that makes them sensible. By doing this, the concept of discourse has large elements of immobility where time seems suspended in the synchronous ‘cut’ of discourse analysis.29 Koselleck presents a more dynamic point of departure where the ‘diachronic principle’ is at the core of the analysis; the ambition is not so much the reconstruction of a semantic field but to show the change over time of the relation between the concept and its reference: ‘The naive circular relation between word and fact and back is broken. There is a field of tension between those two, which is soon dissolved, soon resurfaces, soon seems insoluble. Change of a word’s significance, material change, altering contexts and the necessity of new definitions correspond in ever changing ways with each other.’30 The aim is thus to watch for changes in the semantics of the concept and how it relates to social, cultural and political change, or the other way around: how and why a concept keeps its content despite of changes. In this way, conceptual history is also a heuristic method to open new questions about social and political phenomena. It points to social change that is put into language by changing old or inventing new concepts, and it points to the political struggles about the definition of the concepts to fit a certain ideology or agenda.31 To return to the conceptual field, Rolf Reichardt developed a scheme of definitions, antonyms, properties of the concept and examples of its historical manifestations.32 Roughly following this scheme, but making it more concrete, I have isolated three questions that have been important for the left’s concept of nation in order to outline a heuristic tool for the investigation:

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1. Following Koselleck, a common feature of all interpretations of the nation has been the inside/outside relation of the nation (innenaußen-Relation),33 or the relationship between one’s own nation and other nations, who are ‘we’ and who are the ‘others.’ This, as Koselleck also notes, is often articulated in ‘asymmetrical counter concepts.’ The definition of one’s own nation often implies a distancing, a non-recognition, of the other. The virtues of the nation are emphasised by establishing unfavourable images of other nations. As we shall see, the Europe of the EEC and particularly the United States are thus established as ‘others’, different from Denmark and Sweden. In a wider perspective, this attribution of a particular virtue to one’s own nation is often connected to the mission of the nation in the world, to fight the foreign evils or to embark on missions civilisatrices abroad.34 For the left, however, the construction of counter images was accompanied by an accentuation of the nation as part of a bigger entity, internationalism. Here the relationship between inside and outside was established by incorporating the nation in an international agenda, as a component of a larger community with a role to play in accord with the other. Here, the counter concepts are no longer asymmetrical, as they imply recognition of the other; each nation has different roles to fulfil for the greater good. The ideal of proletarian internationalism of the world communist movement was a prototype for this type of definition of the nation, an idea of disciplined solidarity and cooperation to work for a global mission. 2. The second main element that Koselleck outlines for the concept of nation is the above/below relation (oben-unten-Relation). This points to the internal stratification of the nation as rulers and ruled. Here, the nation – or the people – either refers to those with the privilege of rulership (the citizen or the Greek demos) or those who are ruled over (the subject or the Roman plebs).35 It has both connotations of privilege and deprivation, the people are those with the natural right to rule, or the mass whose role it is to obey and follow. For the left, this gets particular connotations through the Marxist concept of class. Capitalist society is an upside-down mirror of the ideals of rulership: the proletariat that produces value is the real people in the sense of those with the right to rule, but have been deprived of this by the minority of parasitic capitalists who rule society. The proletariat is hence the ‘people’ in the sense of subjects, but should be the ‘people’ in the sense of citizens. The revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat are the installation of the just order, where those who produce value rule over the bourgeoisie. The

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Marxist interpretation also entails an economic component through the fusion of ownership and rulership. It is not the citizens who rule through political rights, but the capitalists who rule through their ownership of the means of production. This brings in a specific tension for the left in relation to the state and to political agency: who are the rulers and the ruled, what is the relation between political and economic power, who is the backbone of the nation, who count as legitimate rulers? This opens the way for questions about the relationship between social class and the people and their relationship to the state. 3. Apart from these two sets of questions identified by Koselleck, the relation of the left to the nation requires a consideration of historical time and agency. As the left defined itself as the carrier of progress, it had to imply a philosophy of history, which designated a goal to progress towards. The nation was put into a historical context of past and present, which pointed to a specific future. This entailed historical examples of the definitions of the nation as for example repressive, democratic or independent, but it first and foremost gave meaning to present events as part of the destiny of the nation. The idea of progress involved an agent of change. Sunil Khilnani argues that the question of legitimate agency has always been a key issue on the left: who is the legitimate agent of historical change, the nation, the people, the working class or the masses? With whom should the left ally itself, and which group did the left represent?36 Hence, the inclusion of a legitimate agent of change was necessary for the left to place the nation in a historical development between past and present. The investigation of the concept of nation below will thus focus on the propositions related to these three fields: what are the arguments for putting forward a proposition, how and why do these propositions change? Also, how do some questions gain more relevance than others, and why do some answers become plausible or implausible over time? These networks of propositions, of questions and answers form the concept of nation. One keyword is contextualisation on both the political and the social level. What particular circumstances made it opportune (or even necessary) to launch or reinterpret a concept? Political competition, the need to associate/dissociate oneself from allies and opponents, is one possibility; another one is events or changes that request reinterpretation or give an opportunity to launch new agendas, or – indeed – developments that question concepts that once were valid. In sum the relation between context and concept, transformations and crises.

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Literature and Sources The study of the left in the post-war period, particularly in Scandinavia, is a fairly new field. The two main focuses of the history writing have been the communist parties and the events of 1968. For the communist movement, the main works concentrate on Southern Europe, especially the large communist parties of Italy and France.37 Many of the basic questions for this research have only relatively recently been answerable, as the necessary archival material was not available before 1991 (one example is the mapping of Soviet funding to other communist parties38). The Nordic communist parties, however, have been quite unevenly investigated. For the DKP the main works are Morten Thing’s Kommunismens kultur and Kurt Jacobsen’s biography of party leader Aksel Larsen,39 which cover the period until around 1960. Jacobsen’s book is especially rich in its detail and thorough use of the archives of the DKP. Steen Bille Larsen has written about the DKP between 1945 and 1975, but in a somewhat shorter form than the two other works.40 The SKP (after 1967 VPK), on the other hand, has received considerable attention, probably because of its transformation into a reformed communist party in the 1960s. The main work is Jörgen Hermansson’s Kommunism på svenska, which seeks to describe the SKP/VPK’s ideological development from 1943 until the time of its publication in 1984. While emphasising the ideological development, it also provides a good overview of the general history of the SKP/VPK,41 while other works focus almost exclusively on the ideology of the party.42 The history of the New Left is a less developed field of research than the history of communism. Only within the last ten to fifteen years has the research liberated itself from the hegemony of the participants’ self-reflection. This has especially been the case for the research into the events of 1968, where the literature, particularly in Germany, has grown considerably in the last years.43 Whereas the earlier literature built largely on memory or oral history,44 it is now possible to make a more detailed picture founded on archival research. Moreover, most of this research goes beyond 1968 and deals with the 1960s or 1970s and the New Left, making it possible to obtain an overview over the history of the European New Left. A few but thorough books use a longer chronology to tell a more general history of the left.45 Other works again take the opposite perspective and deal with the 1960s and 1970s, incorporating the left in the history of social and cultural change in those decades, adding more detail to the picture of the left in the period.46 The literature on the New Left in Denmark and Sweden consists for a large part of studies of particular movements and parties. Apart from the communist parties, the Danish New Left parties of SF and VS have been the subject of fairly detailed studies. SF is described in Jens Kragh’s books Opbrud på venstrefløjen on the foundation of the party and Mellem socialismens velsignelser og praktikable fremskridt on the party’s policies in the 1960s.47 The first years of VS have been

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described by Per A. Madsen and Jens O. Madsen’s Fra sandkasse til kadreparti? 48 The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Vietnam Movement have been described in Kampagnen mod Atomvåben og Vietnambevægelsen 1960–1972 by Johannes Nordentoft and Søren Hein Rasmussen.49 The latter author has continued the research in the political movements in the book Sære alliancer.50 The student movement has been investigated be Steven L.B. Jensen and myself in the book 1968 – og det der fulgte.51 Lately, the small violent group known as Blekingegadebanden has been thoroughly described by the journalist Peter Øvig Knudsen in Blekingegadebanden.52 While these works provide valuable references to the history of the left in Denmark, there is no single academic work spanning the whole left through the 1960s and 1970s. Until now, this has predominantly been the domain of a very lively debate in the newspapers.53 In Sweden, there are more works with a broader scope, although the movements still play a major role. The Maoist Vietnam Movement has been studied in Kim Salomon’s Rebeller i takt med tiden, which generated some debate,54 Sven-Olof Josefsson has studied the student movement and the events of 1968 in Året var 1968,55 while the New Left within the communist party has been dealt with in the literature on the SKP/VPK described above. In terms of comprehensive studies, Kjell Östberg has described the years around 1968 in 1968 när allting var i rörelse, which, however, does not provide great detail.56 Thomas Etzemüller has written an insightful comparative study of 1968 in Sweden and Germany, which deserves mentioning.57 Lastly, Martin Wiklund has written an impressive dissertation about ‘critical narratives about modern Sweden’ covering the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s – which unfortunately was only published during the finishing stages of the present work.58 Hence there exist a number of studies that give quite a detailed description of single movements, but relatively little in terms of comprehensive histories with a longer chronology. One aim of the present work is to provide an interpretation of such a history seen through the concept of nation. The source material on the left in Denmark and Sweden is quite rich in terms of both size and accessibility. The organisations themselves were very productive publishers, especially the non-communist left, which usually had little of the self-censorship of democratic centralism. Indeed, publishing was the immediate raison d’être for many of the groups, who were in reality politically ambitious editing boards of leftist magazines and journals. For this reason, the organisation and its journal often had the same name. In the following, the organisation will appear in normal typography and its journal in italics: Clarté is thus the journal of Clarté. The publications are the main source for the investigation: journal articles, pamphlets and books. The communist daily newspapers have not been used for practical reasons. While they present a vast amount material, they were edited by the same people that wrote in the theoretical journals (Tiden, Vår Tid and Socialistisk Debatt) and reflected the same views. Only when the newspapers

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contained material unavailable in the theoretical journals have they been consulted, particularly the running debates of the early 1960s in SKP’s Ny Dag. The paper, at that time a weekly, has been used in the period 1970–1974 when the VPK did not issue its theoretical journal Socialistisk Debatt and its affiliated organ Tidsignal had closed. For the Maoist KFML/SKP, the choice has been the other way around: to use the weekly Gnistan instead of the theoretical Marxistiskt Forum, which featured the same limited number of writers. Unpublished material has been used only sparsely. The archives of the parties and groups are available and present an interesting material for the internal history of the left, but for the present problem, they do not yield much more information than is already available in the printed material, and hence no systematic research has been done. However, the archives have been consulted for certain questions about the relations of power within the groups (where this information has not been available in the literature), particularly at times of conflict, when the published debates seemed to reveal only the tip of the iceberg.59 Some of the archives of the journals have been consulted for practical information such as the number of subscribers and copies printed. The discussions within the editing boards, however, often echoed what was printed in the published debate and have not been followed systematically. Finally a word on the organisations investigated. The comparative perspective has posed limitations on the details of the investigation in terms of describing all the organisational facets of the left. Until around 1970, the number of organisations remains fairly small and manageable. After this, however, the number of groups and factions rises beyond the feasible, and the differences between the groups become ever more subtle. I have decided to have a reasonably high threshold as to what groups to investigate. Following the definition of the left above as a general rule, only those groups that have a position significant enough to be referred to by other groups have been included. Groups with a mainly local appeal or groups too small to be noticed by the main organisations have been excluded. As such the KFML(r) in Sweden, albeit very close to the threshold, has not been included, nor have the Trotskyist groups or the Danish Maoists.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

R. Koselleck. 1972. ‘Einleitung’, in O. Brunner et al. (eds), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 1, Stuttgart: Klett Verlag. R. Koselleck. 1999. ‘Begriffsgeschichte und Geschichtsbegriffe’, in K. Acham (ed), Geschichte der österreichischen Humanwissenschaften, 1, Wien: Passagen Verlag. For a longer consideration of the concept of crisis see the conclusions. This has particularly been the case in Germany with works such as H.-G. Haupt and J. Kocka (ed.). 1996. Geschichte und Vergleich, Frankfurt am Main: Campus, H. Kaelble. 1999. Der historische Vergleich, Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.

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5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30.

See: H.-G. Haupt and J. Kocka. 1996. ‘Historischer Vergleich: Methoden, Aufgaben, Probleme. Eine Einleitung’, in H.-G. Haupt and J. Kocka (ed.), Geschichte und Vergleich, Frankfurt am Main: Campus, pp. 12–13. F. Braudel. 1976. La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen, Paris: Colin, pp. 16–17. H. White. 1974. Metahistory: the historical imagination in nineteenth-century Europe, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. R. Koselleck. 2000. Zeitschichten. Studien zur Historik, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 9–12. H. White. 1987. ‘Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’, in H. White, The Content of the Form, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. J. Habermas. 1968. Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 159–68. N. Bobbio. 1996. Left and Right the Significance of a Political Distinction, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 72–86. S. Lukes. 1996. ‘Qu’est-ce que la gauche?’, in M. Lazar (ed.), La Gauche en Europe depuis 1945, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ibid., p. 381. J.-F. Sirinelli. 1993. ‘La morale entre droite et gauche’, Pouvoirs 65. See also the discussion of the book between Bobbio and Perry Anderson in New left Review 231/1998. J.A. Laponce. 1981. Left and Right. The Topography of Political Perceptions, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 208. Bobbio, Left and Right, pp. 57–59. P. Bourdieu. 1994. Raison pratiques. Sur la théorie de l’action pratique, Paris: Seuil, p. 20. Translation taken from the English version, Practical Reason, 1998. P. Bourdieu. 1980. Le sens pratique, Paris: Editions de Minuit and P. Bourdieu. 1979. La distinction: critique sociale du jugement, Paris: Éditions de Minuit. J. Hutchinson and A.D. Smith (eds). 1994. Nationalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 3. E. Gellner. 1983. Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell, p. 1. E.J. Hobsbawm. 1992. Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 5. Apart from Hobsbawm, see Gellner, Nations and nationalism, pp. 5–7 and Hutchinson and Smith, Nationalism, p. 4. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, p. 169. Ibid., pp. 164–165. R. Reichardt. 1985. ‘Einleitung’, in R. Reichart and E. Schmitt (eds), Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich 1680–1820, 1–2, Munich: Oldenbourg. See: M. Foucault. 1969. L'archéologie du savoir, Paris: Gallimard. M. Foucault. 1970. The Order of Things, New York: Vintage Books, p. xvii. Foucault himself considers this problem in Foucault, L'archéologie du savoir, pp. 216–17. For a sympathetic critique of particularly early Foucauldian discourse analysis, see H.L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow. 1982. Michel Foucault beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, London: Harvester Press, pp. 79–100. Koselleck, ‘Einleitung’, p. XXIII [my translation, TEJ].

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31. R. Koselleck. 1979. ‘Begriffsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte’, in R. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 32. Reichardt, ‘Einleitung’, p. 85. 33. R. Koselleck. 1992. ‘Volk, Nation, Nationalismus, Masse’, in O. Brunner et al. (ed.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 7, Stuttgart: Klett Verlag. pp. 145–46. 34. Ibid., p. 146; see also R. Koselleck. 1979. ‘Zur historisch-politischen Semantik asymmetrischer Gegenbegriffe‘, in R. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 35. Koselleck, ‘Volk, Nation, Nationalismus, Masse’, p. 145. 36. S. Khilnani. 1993. Arguing Revolution. The Intellectual Left in Postwar France, New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 7. 37. One important work is M. Lazar. 1992. Maisons rouges. Les partis communistes français et italien de la Libération à nos jours, Paris: Aubier. 38. V. Riva. 1999. Oro da Mosca. I finanziamenti sovietici al PCI dalla Rivoluzione d'ottobre al crollo dell'URSS, Milan: Mondadori; M. Thing (ed.). 2001. Guldet fra Moskva. Finansieringen af de nordiske kommunistpartier 1917–1990, Copenhagen: Forum. 39. M. Thing. 1993. Kommunismens kultur. DKP og de intellektuelle 1918–1960, Copenhagen: Tiderne skifter; K. Jacobsen. 1993. Aksel Larsen. En politisk biografi, Copenhagen: Vindrosen. 40. S.B. Larsen. 1977. Kommunisterne og arbejderklassen. En politisk biografi, Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter. 41. J. Hermansson. 1984. Kommunism på svenska? SKP/VPK:s idéutveckling efter Komintern, Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. 42. H. Holmberg. 1982. Folkmakt, folkfront, folkdemokrati. De svenska kommunisterna och demokratifrågan 1943–1977, Uppsala: Acta universitatis upsaliensis; K. Lindkvist. 1982. Program och parti, Lund: Arkiv för studier i Arbetarrörelsens historia; for an overview of the historiography of Nordic communism, see K. Englund et al. Kommunism – antikommunism. Forskning i Sverige och Norden, Arbetarhistoria 4. 2001. 43. For example I. Gilcher-Holtey. 1995. Die Phantasie an die Macht. Mai 68 in Frankreich, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp; I. Gilcher-Holtey (ed.). 1998. 1968. Vom Ereignis zum Gegenstand der Geschichtswissenschaft, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; W. Kraushaar. 2000. 1968 als Mythos, Chiffre und Zäsur, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition.; J. Kurz. 2001. Die Universität auf der Piazza. Entstehung und Zerfall der Studentenbewegung in Italien 1966–1968, Cologne: SH Verlag. D. Siegfried. 44. As for example R. Fraser (ed.). 1988. 1968: A Student Generation in Revolt, New York: Pantheon Books. 45. D. Sassoon. 1995. One hundred years of socialism: the West European Left in the Twentieth Century, London: Tauris, G. Eley. 2002. Forging Democracy. The History of the Left in Europe 1850–2000, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 46. A. Marwick. 1998. The Sixties. Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c.1958–c.1974, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, A. Schildt et al. (eds). 2000. Dynamische Zeiten. Die 60er Jahre in den beiden deutschen Gesellschaften, Hamburg: Christians Verlag, D. Siegfried. 2006. Time is on my Side. Konsum und Politik un der westdeutschen Jugendkultur der 60er Jahre, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag.

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47. J. Kragh. 1976. Opbrud på venstrefløjen 1956–1960, Copenhagen: SF-Forlag, J. Kragh. 1995. Mellem socialismens velsignelser og praktikable fremskridt: SF 1960–68, Odense: Odensen Universitetsforlag. 48. P.A. Madsen and J.O. Madsen. 1980. Fra sandkasse til kadreparti?, Copenhagen: VS forlaget. 49. J. Nordentoft and S.H. Rasmussen. 1991. Kampagnen mod Atomvåben og Vietnambevægelsen 1960–1972, Odense: Odensen Universitetsforlag. 50. S.H. Rasmussen. 1997. Sære alliancer. Politiske bevægelser i efterkrigstidens Danmark, Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag. 51. S.L.B. Jensen and T.E. Jørgensen. 2008. 1968 – og det der fulgte, Copenhagen: Gyldendal,. 52. P.Ø. Knudsen 2007, Blekingegadebanden 1–2, Copenhagen: Gyldendal. 53. See: J.P. Liljegren. 2002. ‘Weekendavisen og opgøret med venstrefløjen’, Odense: unpublished MA Thesis. This debate also to a large extend sets the tone of M.B. Andersen and N. Olsen. 2004. 1968 – dengang og nu, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum. 54. K. Salomon. 1996. Rebeller i takt med tiden. FNL-rörelsen och 60–talets politiska ritualer, Stockholm: Rabén Prisma, U. Lundberg and K. Åmark. 1997. ‘En vänster i takt med tiden? 60–talets politiska kultur i 90–talets självförståelse’, Häften för kritiska studier 2/1997, T.E. Førland. 1997. ‘Ungdomsoprøret: dongeri eller Wertewandel’, Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift 1/1997, K. Salomon. 1997. ‘FNL-rörelsen och samtidshistoriens problem’, Häften för kritiska studier 3/1997, E. Tängerstad. 1997. ‘FNL-grupperna, tidsandan och ‘the linguistic turn’, Häften för kritiska studier 4/1997. 55. S.-O. Josefsson. 1996. Året var 1968, Gothenburg: Historiska institutionen i Göteborg. 56. K. Östberg. 2002. 1968 när allting var i rörelse, Stockholm: Prisma. 57. T. Etzemüller. 2005. 1968. Ein Riss in der Geschichte? Constance: UVK. 58. M. Wiklund. 2006. I det modernas landskap. Historisk orientering och kritiska berättelser om det moderna Sverige, Eslöv: Symposion. 59. Some of these findings about the conflicts in the communist parties have been published separately in T.E. Jørgensen. 2002. ‘Split or Reform? The Danish and Swedish CP’s facing the post-Stalin era’, in M. Bracke and T.E. Jørgensen, West European Communism after Stalinism, Fiesole: EUI Working Paper, HEC 2002/4.

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Chapter 1

Communist Concepts in Crisis After the Russian Revolution, the left has been split between a social democratic and a communist movement. The first moved from political persecution to power and influence in national politics in Europe from the 1930s onwards. At least in Scandinavia, the second one remained on the edge of the political system, shunned by others for its commitment to violent revolution, its totalitarian traits and its dependence on the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, it is this marginal position, always in opposition to the system and aligned with the perceived forces of progress, that would be the continuous attraction of communism. While social democrats became integrated into the liberal democratic state apparatus, the left – or those who connected ‘left’ to a commitment to radical change – were drawn towards communism and the communist tradition. For this reason, our story begins here, in the communist universe. It is from this world that the New Left emerges. Its language and its world view were the offspring of later analyses, and its mythology remained vivid and a reference point to almost every leftist group. Even when communism and the Soviet Union were in low esteem, the traditions and concepts remained a strong element for all of the left. For this reason, we must begin with the critical point where the monolith of communism was shaken to leave room for a diversity of more or less independent movements shaping the image of the left. This chapter describes the universe from which the later movements came into being. It deals roughly with the period from 1956 to 1960, when the communist parties where still the dominating force left of social democracy, before the rise of the New Left. It will give a short overview of the main features and differences concerning the concept of nation in the Danish and Swedish communist parties respectively, particularly the view of the party’s role in relation to the nation, and show how these concepts entered a period of crisis. After de-Stalinisation and the invasion of Hungary, the Soviet Union had lost its credibility as the guarantor of peace and progress on the global level. On the national level, the connection to the Eastern bloc became a liability that hampered the political power of the communist parties. The internal discussions in the Danish and the Swedish parties came to turn on the question about national support and international solidarity. The political space of the communists, however, was overall not of great importance in either Denmark or Sweden; both parties were very small and had little or no impact on political life. After a short period of limited success after

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the war, their electoral results had sunk to about 4–5 per cent in the 1950s – with large regional differences. In the workers’ movement and in parliament, they were isolated by the overwhelmingly large social democratic parties, and could only make their voice heard on a few occasions or in isolated communist pockets in the labour unions, typically shipyard workers, dockers, typographers and sailors in Denmark and miners and shipyard workers in Sweden. Nor did they generally have much influence through other kinds of front organisations; the peace movement was the most serious attempt, but it had a very limited success. While politically the two parties were in a similar situation, the different geographical and economic structures of the two countries led to a rather dissimilar internal structure of the parties. First of all, there is the difference in size; Denmark is a small country where you can travel any distance within its borders in less than a day, while Sweden – by European standards – is huge, in terms of area the third biggest European country, but its oblong shape makes distances between north and south extremely long. Also the economic structure differs in the sense that Denmark was industrialised very late with Copenhagen, as the most important industrial city. Sweden had much older and much less centralised industrial centres; above the arctic circle lay the mining districts around Kiruna, further south were the great forests, with a large number of sawmills, and then there were the car and aeroplane factories of Volvo and Saab in and near Gothenburg and, of course, Stockholm. As a consequence of this geographical difference the working-class bases of the two parties were quite different as well. While the DKP could maintain a fairly tight, centralised and unified organisation, the decentralised situation of the Swedish working class resulted in a more diverse party with regional peculiarities among the main party strongholds in Norrbotten, in Gothenburg and in Stockholm. The number of central committee meetings is a telling example of this difference; the DKP met regularly about four times a year, sometimes more, while the SKP had only two yearly meetings giving more time and emphasis to the local and regional level. These were circumstances that should be remembered during the following, though not necessarily as a direct causal factor, but as a contextual one that indirectly shaped the preconditions for the different paths of the two parties. In connection with the two parties’ concepts of the nation, focus will be put on the dilemma between national and international that haunted the communist movement. As Eric Hobsbawm put it, ‘Each communist party was the child of the marriage of two ill-assorted partners, a national left and the October revolution,’1 but as long as internationalism was unquestioned, it prevented a fundamental conflict between the two.2 When proletarian internationalism was questioned after 1956, it opened a Pandora’s box of conflicts that would have to be dealt with by the individual parties. This question about the relation to the world communist movement should turn out to be the beginning of a profound crisis of communism and hence the left, as it had to reconceptualise its worldview,

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the place of the party and the nation in a new global perspective not determined by the Soviet Union as the agent of peace and progress. Before embarking on the events of 1956 and the crisis of communism, it is necessary to sketch out the communist ideas about the nation in the 1950s and their own role in it, ideas that would be increasingly challenged from the last half of the decade.

The Communist Party – Leader of the People, Protector of the Country The communist concept of the nation in Denmark and Sweden respectively was to a large extent shaped by the countries’ geopolitical positions: Denmark strategically situated at the entrance to the Baltic and politically seen as the 3 weakest link in the NATO chain, and Sweden a neutral country with little strategic importance in the cold war. The Soviet agenda in respect of Denmark and the resulting pressure on the DKP were thus much stronger than in the case of the Swedish party. It is important to keep this pressure and the aims of Soviet Realpolitik in mind, as the theoretical foundations of the concept of nation in the 1950s were mostly dependent of the strategies of the Kremlin.

The DKP – For the National Independence of the Danish People The DKP, as an orthodox communist party, got many of its concepts from the bipolar worldview of the Cominform period. This official framework for interpreting international affairs was given by the CPSU official Andrei Zhdanov at the first conference of the Cominform in 1947. According to this view of the global situation, the world was split between the ‘imperialist and anti-democratic camp’ and the ‘anti-imperialist and democratic camp.’ The first camp was led by the USA, which walking in Hitler’s footsteps tried to dominate the world and reduce all other states to satellites to be exploited by American capital. Against this threat, the task of the Soviet Union was to lead the democratic camp in the struggle for peace and ‘assume the leadership of all the forces fighting for the cause of honour and national independence.’4 For the DKP, applying the two-camp theory in Danish circumstances, integration into the Western bloc meant integration into the worldwide system of international monopoly capitalism. Political decision making was secretly controlled by big companies in the USA and West Germany and was made to suit their interests. The secret agenda was to buy Danish companies and integrate them into the existing monopolies; Denmark would cease to be an economically independent country. Apart from that, trading only with the West would be disastrous in the end. According to the DKP, even through the historic boom of the 1960s, capitalism

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was on verge of a major crisis; signs were showing that the house of cards could fall any day. Denmark could avoid being dragged down by this coming downfall of the West by turning its attention to the crisis-free Eastern economies. The continuous growth in the Eastern bloc would secure ever more profitable and stable trading partners for Denmark; these were Denmark’s natural partners and allies. Taking the USA’s side in the cold war, meant an ‘artificial freezing’ of the trade with the neighbours south and east of the Baltic Sea.5 Even worse, capitalism would inevitably lead to war. Due to the falling rates of profit (taken for granted in orthodox DKP Marxism), monopolies needed war to boost demand. This was why there was a cold war in the first place; US monopolies needed an aggressive policy to keep up demand, and they would eventually need a full-scale war to compensate for the ever-falling rates of profit. Membership of NATO would drag Denmark into this inferno, while neutrality would keep the country safe from invasion. The crisis-free economy did not need wars to increase profit, since stable growth was secured by rational planning. The threat towards Denmark did not come from the East; it came from the West. Denmark was seen as misplaced on the East–West axis. It was not an aggressive country, nor was it the home of big monopolies. Traitorous politicians had misled the people and brought it into the bad company of an alliance where it did not belong: The communists show that Denmark supports the case of peace and of its own sovereignty by securing its position as a neutral state … This is why the task just now is to unite those who are determined to fight the battle for the working class and the people in the communist party, whose strength is decisive for whether the popular movements will attain their goals or not.6 Note how the right position for Denmark is the neutral one, not in the Soviet camp. This corresponded with the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, which did not aim at socialist revolutions in Western Europe; its strategy towards the Nordic countries was to make them a neutral, demilitarised and nuclear-free zone. The DKP image of Denmark as misplaced and in bad company in the imperialist camp reflected the Soviet concerns for its northern flank. Here geography plays an indirect but significant role in the formation of the concept. This was before the introduction of intercontinental missiles and before the Third World War became synonymous with the end of the world. The clash between the super powers was rather envisaged as a repetition of the Second World War with more powerful weapons. Strategies for this war did not yet include launching missiles at Los Angeles from Siberia; instead forces had to be moved to positions within range of the enemy. The Soviet Union had to move its Baltic fleet through the Danish belts, while NATO’s strategy was to retreat

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from Germany to Jutland, move east and land on the coast of the GDR and Poland, cutting off the Warsaw Pact armies west of the River Elbe. Denmark was thus not insignificant in the plans for an eventual war. For this reason foreign policy issues dominated the agenda of the DKP in the 1950s. The influence of Denmark’s strategic importance becomes even more obvious when one compares the 1950s and the 1960s: After Sputnik and the introduction of nuclear-armed submarines and intercontinental missiles in the beginning of the 1960s the Soviet interest in Nordic neutrality cooled down – also because it was clear that Denmark would not leave NATO – and so did the rhetoric of the DKP. From a top priority in the 1950s, leaving NATO went down to number ten out of thirteen ‘suggestions for a new policy’ in 1964 and attention turned to domestic issues.7 A striking feature of the DKP attacks on NATO is the role played by Germany. Even if West Germany was one of the main bogeymen of Soviet propaganda, DKP emphasised the German menace to the extreme. Using the official journal of the world communist movement, World Marxist Review, as a measure of Soviet propaganda, West Germany plays a major role around 1959–1961, after which the number of articles declines.8 The same trend can be followed in Tiden, but on a higher level. Germany was mentioned several times in each issue, either in individual articles devoted to ‘the German problem’, in notes about international developments or in the reccurring catalogues of problems of the Danish nation, and how DKP’s policies would solve them. Everywhere, Germans were ready to reoccupy Denmark, either militarily through NATO – ‘the shameful alliance between our country and its tormentors’9 – or economically through the EEC – ‘the little Neuropa.’10 It overshadowed USA as the main threat to world peace. Even when it came to NATO, Germany was the main threat and America only its distant ally. The phenomenon can to some degree be explained by the experiences of the German occupation during the Second World War. As in other occupied countries, communists played a main role in the resistance movement after 1941. Though the parliament remained in function until 1943, DKP was banned after the German attack on the Soviet Union, and most of its leaders were arrested. The event became a cornerstone of communist identity; DKP had been banned by a functioning parliament against the constitution, and the party had alone represented the true Danish spirit against the Germans and their collaborators.11 Most of the leadership in the 1950s and 1960s had been in the resistance and many had been in German concentration camps. Party leader Aksel Larsen had already been arrested in 1941 and had spent the rest of the war in German prisons and camps, and his successor, Knud Jespersen, had been captured and tortured by the Gestapo in 1945. There were thus strong personal reasons to fear and hate the Germans. As a result of the general anti-German traditions in Denmark, these sentiments were in no way limited to communists or veteran

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resistance fighters; the image of the aggressive, militarist, authoritarian ‘Prussian’ was shared by wide segments of the population. The Soviet image of the aggressive Germany easily fitted both the personal experiences of the DKP members and general anti-German sentiments. According to the official party strategy, it could also be used to convince the rest of the population that NATO and the EEC were parts of a German conspiracy to conquer Europe: ‘cooperation with Germany is the weakest link in the government’s NATO policy.’12 Though the image did not change during the 1960s, it lost importance after the scene of competition between the superpowers moved from Europe and Germany to the Third World. By the middle of the 1960s, at the same time as the NATO question was downplayed, Germany ceased to be a main topic in both Tiden and World Marxist Review. The issue of protecting Denmark’s independence was closely linked to the worldwide conflict between the forces of war and peace. After all, the threats to Denmark were the threats to all peace-loving peoples on the earth and the fight against them was a global one: ‘We – the Communist Party of Denmark – have the responsibility for a certain section of the front in this global battle: Denmark. It is here we must fight and work … for the national and cultural freedom of the Danish people.’13 Danish independence and security were connected to the struggle of the world communist movement against imperialism and war. The DKP represented the link between these two struggles, a battalion in the army of good, fighting alone but allied with the victorious army of world communism. Herein lay the formula for balancing the national with the international. Generally, the self-image of the DKP was one of the protector of a nation threatened by American monopoly capitalism and German militarism alike. The party used strong images of aggressive foreign nations to rhetorically place itself in the position of the only true representative of the nation’s interest, of its independence and survival. Foreign relations and events were the main perspective in which the concept of nation was being constructed, and the horizon of the Danish communists was a global – or at least a European – one. The DKP was a national party because it fought for Danish independence, an independence from foreign monopolies and warmongers to the west and with close relations to the camp of peace and friendship to the east.

The SKP – Completing Swedish Democracy In contrast to the Danish circumstances, it was difficult for the SKP to mobilise campaigns on foreign policy issues. During the 1950s, the country increasingly identified itself as a neutral state outside the logic of the cold war.14 In this sense, it fulfilled the political wishes of the Soviet Union, which aimed at a neutral, reliable northern flank in Europe.15 Although the communists followed the Soviet line and included the peace issue, Nordic neutrality and critique of NATO in the beginning in its official declarations, the application of these

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international issues to the reality of Swedish politics was rather weak: Neutrality should be officially made permanent, as in Switzerland or Austria, relations with the Soviet Union should be made closer, and Sweden should recognise the GDR. Of these concrete demands, only the last one was really different from the official policy of the Swedish government. Hence, the SKP had few possibilities of articulating a policy in opposition to the government. Questions of world politics did not heighten the party’s profile, and the party members themselves did not seem too enthusiastic about them either. They were issues connected to the problems of international proletarianism and had to be mentioned. However, they rarely formed the bulk of SKP rhetoric; as an example, no independent publication on these topics came out from the communist publishing company Arbetarkultur in those years. This was even quite a productive period for SKP publications. The party had – in contrast to the DKP – a considerable number of able writers, which it used to publish books and educational material on issues that it found relevant. The leadership would commission a certain topic from an ideologically trustworthy person, and afterwards publish the work as the basis of the official party line. For this reason, there existed quite an extensive body of theory produced by the party’s own members and directly related to the Swedish circumstances. One of the books from the Arbetarkultur used in the education of the party cadres through the 1950s was Fritjof Lager’s Arbetarklassen och nationen (The Working Class and the Nation) from 1955. Here, the party explained its view on its own role in relation to the nation, the people and the working class. The main aim was to explain how the working class was, ‘the defender of the nation against the dissolving and traitorous plots of big finance and the bourgeoisie. The working class is the carrier of a true patriotism, which means a love for its own mother country, its own people, its own literature and the best traditions of the nation.’16 The working class in this sense was to a high degree a construction of communist language, an ideal about the worker, as he would be, did he realise his true interest. Undeceived by the propaganda of revisionists or bourgeois ideology, he was the potential communist that lies at the bottom of the heart of all workers. The worker and the peasant were bound to the land by their place in society; the worker was in direct contact with the production, while the peasant had his hands in the ground and this bond made him a true patriot. This in contrast to the bourgeois class: ‘The heart of the capitalist does not beat for his own country. The heart of the capitalist beats for his property, wherever it might be. The bigger his property is in one country, the more he is interested in its affairs, economy and politics. The capitalist is un-national, he is a cosmopolite.’17 In this way the worker came to stand for non-materialist, spiritual values such as solidarity, commitment and patriotism, he was associated with noble feelings of love towards the fatherland and compassion with the struggling working class all over the world. The bourgeois class then became the opposite of this noble image; it was characterised by its greedy materialism,

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committed to no one, a ‘cosmopolitan’ without a country and without any concern except that for his fortune. On the international level, this hero-villain opposition was repeated in the relationship between nations. They were like people; some were righteous, others were bandits, depending on the class that ruled them. The Soviet Union, ruled by the working class, could not be aggressive and imperialist, while the United States, ruled by the bourgeois class, could not be anything else but a greedy empire: ‘The Soviet Union is, as a consequence of being a socialist state, against imperialist warpolicies and against resolving controversies between states through military attacks in order to suppress other peoples and states.’18 It is, however, important to notice the practical tasks suggested in the book: the SKP must reveal the true workings of bourgeois power in Sweden; it must discover the threats of the spider webs of monopoly capitalism in order to make clear and public their undemocratic power and anti-national character.19 Fighting American imperialism was not forgotten, but – as shown above – remained largely symbolic, as its immediate application for Swedish politics was less obvious. Following this line, the biggest theoretical ‘concession’ was the task of reconstructing the hidden web that bound together Swedish capitalism under the control of a few mighty families. The main force in this investigation, C.-H. Hermansson, who would later emerge as the leading reformer of Swedish communism, wrote two rather impressive volumes on the subject: one, Koncentration och storföretag (Concentration and Big Industry), in 1959 about the spidery web of ‘the big families’ in Sweden, and in 1962 Monopol och storfinans (Monopoly and Big Finance) about the penetration of foreign capital into Sweden. This became his favourite topic, and as the editor of Vår Tid until 1957 and the party daily Ny Dag from 1959 to 1964 his fascination with the theme influenced the SKP writings heavily. The books and the multitude of articles about monopoly capitalism showed a picture of Sweden as a ‘dictatorship of capitalism’,20 where a small oligarchy of wealthy financiers controlled the economy outside democratic control. Almost every issue of Vår Tid would have an illustration showing the big banks in the centre of a net of industries like a spider in the middle of its web (Fig. 1.1). The image of the predator in the middle of its web, living on the prey caught in the outer threats, would also apply to the SKP view on the centre and periphery of the Swedish nation. The late 1950s were a time when mobility was discussed widely in social democratic circles; industry should be concentrated in the areas where it was already expanding, while inhabitants of the unprofitable periphery should move closer to the centre in order to guarantee the economic basis of social security. This produced a tension between the need for security (in the broader sense – the Swedish trygghet) and a mobility that meant uprooting local communities.21 In this conflict, SKP stood up for the threatened periphery. Concentration of industry in the centre was clearly an example of how monopoly capital grew at the cost of local communities and of the workers in

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Figure 1.1 The net of monopoly capital

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the peripheral districts. Especially around 1960, focus was directed at the hardships of single regions being exploited by the central big capital. The northernmost region, Norrbotten, held a special place in the SKP view on Sweden. First of all, communism ran strongly in the mining communities of the far north, both in 1958 and in 1960 SKP was the second biggest party in the region. Secondly, as a consequence of this, the northern – conservative and Soviet-oriented – members played a significant role in the party leadership. The party organ of the north, Norrskensflamman, had been a key part of the 1929 reconstruction of the SKP, a reconstruction done by the same men that now led the party.22 The party leader until 1964, Hilding Hagberg, was himself an old miner and had begun his party career in the local politics of the northern mining districts. The SKP could thus mobilise support on the emotional consequences of modernisation in peripheral areas, what Stefano Bartolini with reference to Finland calls ‘backwoods communism’,23 and that in an area to which many highranking members were emotionally attached. For this reason, Norrbotten became the ideal type for the deprived regions whose proud inhabitants struggled against discrimination from the politicians and capitalists in Stockholm. It was a place – almost a topos of communist language – that was present in communist demands for government support for local communities, in the interest in forestry and mining or simply mentioned as an illustrative example in any context. In this perspective – a Sweden ruled by a centralised oligarchy – the SKP picture of its nation was a much more grim one than that of DKP: where the ‘good country’ Denmark would be much better off left alone, freed from the grip of German and American imperialism, Sweden was a country infected by the disease of monopoly capitalism. On the surface of the system seemed democratic, but underneath this democratic glazing, capitalists secretly pulled the strings of the economy and thereby held the real power. It was a country where the sound people of the land were being deprived of their rights and their homes – all for the profit of the rich few. However, there was another side to Sweden: the strong democratic traditions of the people, which had been proved by the long struggle for democracy. Indeed, this was one of the core ideas in the SKP vision of ‘the Swedish road to socialism’: ‘The Swedish parliament is a historic result of the struggle of the people for freedom and self-determination.’24 The Swedish working class and the popular movements (folkrörelser) had struggled for hundreds of years against despotic monarchs and oppressive capitalists, and they had achieved both – albeit an incomplete – democracy and better living conditions. The completion of this struggle was within reach. Under the leadership of the communist party, big finance would finally be crushed and democracy would include all of society, the political as well as the economic sphere. The condition of Swedish democracy itself was not completely clear, though. As quoted above, it could be described as a ‘dictatorship of capitalism’ when the focus was on monopoly capitalism alone, or the unfinished democracy

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when the aim was to connect the SKP to the great popular traditions. This connection also served the purpose of proving the national commitment of the party; it would not aim at a revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat like the Soviet party, it would follow the ‘national road’ and simply continue the work that the social democrats had left unfinished. The means should be the same as had been used throughout history by Swedish workers, only the aim must be more ambitious: The state can to a large extent be compared to a big capitalist concern. Even though the capitalist company has unlimited power over its affairs, the workers can, through a united struggle, force through some, and sometimes not insignificant, concessions … The working class must conquer the state in alliance with peasants and white collar workers in order to walk the road to socialism.25 Thus the October Revolution was – though a huge and glorious step for all mankind – not the model for a Swedish transition to democracy, nor was the Soviet one-party state. Of course the Soviet system was indeed a model of true democracy, more democratic than Sweden, and much more democratic than the semi-authoritarian regimes on the continent. After all, the dictatorship of the proletariat represented the true will of the people, unhampered by the propaganda of the bourgeois class.26 However, it was stressed several times that the transition to socialism did not as such exclude the existence of more than one party, and that the transition to socialism should happen in harmony with the ‘democratic traditions of our country.’27 As Jörgen Hermansson puts it: ‘The Soviet Union was the great, leading example, which on the part of Sweden should not be followed.’28 One might ask why this independent line did not provoke any serious clashes either within the party or with the CPSU. One answer to this lies in the fine subtleties of communist language, the ability to walk the tightrope between an independent line and still being committed to international proletarianism. One strategy, which is clear in the SKP texts, is the ritual praise of the Soviet Union; praise without concrete consequences and followed by a carefully put distancing determined by the special Swedish conditions. Another element is the reference to the people’s democracies of Eastern Europe, which had more parties and formally practised a form of parliamentarism. Thus the SKP could on the one hand assure that they posed no threat to the democracy in Sweden, while on the other hand keeping in line with the international movement. For example, the transition to socialism in Czechoslovakia had, at least officially, been peaceful and could be used as a model for Sweden,29 a line that was perfectly legitimate within the international movement. Czechoslovakia demonstrated that socialism could be reached without bloodshed and the creation of a one-party system, proving that the transition to socialism in Sweden under the leadership of SKP

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could take a form suitable for Swedish circumstances and Swedish democratic traditions. Of course, the obvious dictatorial character of regimes like that of Czechoslovakia left such strategies pathetically unsuccessful among the electorate, but internally they worked very well to keep the difficult balance between national independence and international solidarity. All in all, the SKP image of the nation was characterised by the internal antagonism between the sound, patriotic and democratic working class on the one hand and the greedy, ‘cosmopolitan’ and undemocratic monopoly capitalists on the other. The country was split between the two forces, and the communist party was the organisation with the right analysis and strategy to lead the forces of good in the battle against evil. This internal view had to be balanced against the commitment to proletarian internationalism and the Soviet Union, a commitment that was undoubtedly deeply felt by the party members, but which was rather difficult to apply directly to concrete policies and therefore often had little consequence apart from more or less empty phrases.

1956 and Beyond – Towards an Unclear Future The year 1956 was when international events set off the crisis of communism. Dependent as the communist parties were on the Soviet Union, they were extremely sensitive to developments on the global scene, where the Soviet Union had emerged as one of the two decisive players after the war. The beginning of de-Stalinisation in the Eastern bloc, the invasion of Hungary and the Suez crisis thus had an important and direct impact on these movements. The reactions of Danish and Swedish communists to the new priorities in respect of the national roads and international solidarity were quite different. Nevertheless, they demonstrated that the crisis of the communist concepts set off by the events of 1956 could not be ignored in the long run. On both the national and the international levels, the communist parties were faced with new developments and new choices.

The Twentieth Congress of the CPSU The Twentieth congress of the CPSU shook the ground under international communism. Unsuspicious delegates from all over the world travelled to Moscow to make the traditional congratulations on the victories of socialism and to hear the latest guidelines from the ‘most experienced and successful communist party in the world.’ The new Soviet leader emerging from the power struggles after Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev, would send them home bewildered and confused. Officially, he launched – or reintroduced – two strategies that would have a deep impact on western communism: ‘National roads to socialism’ and ‘peaceful

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coexistence.’ The ‘national roads to socialism’ meant that other communist parties should not necessarily take the Soviet Union as the only example of how to build a socialist society. They should be aware of the specific national conditions under which they were working and form their own strategy according to this. Violent revolution for instance needed not be the only way to change a capitalist system. ‘Peaceful coexistence’ meant that the Soviet Union would not try to win the cold war by force, and that a ‘hot’ war between the two camps was no longer considered inevitable. The communist side would necessarily win in the long run because of its better and more efficient system. These concepts and strategies were not completely new, but they were important signals that Stalin’s line of confrontation was being replaced by a softer approach. For the western communists, peaceful coexistence meant that a communist takeover in the West was given a very low priority by the Kremlin. The focus shifted southwards to the newly independent states, particularly in Asia, and Western Europe was left to attend to its own petty businesses. This could hardly have been a surprise for the Western parties, though. Since the de facto partition of the world at the end of the war, Stalin had been anything but helpful towards the European communist parties outside the Soviet sphere of influence. Except the PCI and the PCF, they had been neither consulted nor invited to partake in the new international communist institution, the Cominform, and there had been no support for more communist takeovers in Europe – as had been clear from the time of the Greek civil war. Rather the foreign policy of the Soviet Union had been to preserve the arrangements that had been established with the western powers after the war.30 However, the communist leaders were to be much more profoundly shocked by the all-overshadowing – unofficial – event of the congress: the famous secret speech ‘On the Cult of Personality.’ In this speech, Khrushchev denounced Stalin by describing the terror of the 1930s as criminal acts, he criticised Stalin’s leadership during the war in strong terms and also condemned the new repression of the 1940s and 1950s. Even though the speech was held secretly at the congress, the manuscript leaked out, and its content was soon known all over the world. It left its communist readers in shock. Only the oldest generation could remember the communist world before Stalin. Since 1929, he had been hailed as an infallible genius, the incarnation of socialist progress and the man behind the great victory over fascism. Now the leader in the fatherland of socialism portrayed him as – among other things – ‘capricious, irritable and brutal’, described the purges of the 1930s in phrases like ‘criminal violation of revolutionary legality’ and even questioned Stalin’s part in the victory in Second World War. Many communists were left in disbelief or disillusion. The strategic shifts from confrontation to peaceful coexistence and national roads to socialism hardly posed any ideological problems in themselves; after all the Stalin years had brought much more profound strategic shifts, and the Western parties had adapted ideologically to all of them. But, when put in the

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context of the denunciation of the very icon of international communism, the consequences were incalculable. What measures should the individual party take and what were the limits of their actions within the movements? Where was a new balance between the national road and international solidarity to be found? These were the questions that had been latent in the communist movement from the very beginning, and they would get ever more relevant in the years to come. Although the congress brought ideological change, it did not fundamentally alter the system of control of the CPSU over its Western satellite parties. After a brief period of relative independence between the dissolution of the Comintern and the establishment of the, Cominform, the communist movement was still tied to institutions controlled from Moscow. Although the days of direct – and sometimes physical – use of force of the Comintern era were over, the new system still served to keep the national branches of the international movement in line. After the war, the Cominform had been established as an institution to keep formal contacts between the Soviet Union and the communist parties of Eastern Europe, Italy and France; the smaller Western parties were not included in the formal framework. However, this formalised forum was short-lived and soon to be replaced by an informal network of international, but Soviet-controlled, organisations coordinated through the International Department of the CPSU. In Scandinavia, the World Peace Council was an important example of such an organisation. The International Department also handled the contacts with, or rather the control of, other communist parties.31 Means of control were ideological ‘guidance’ through the journal World Marxist Review (in Denmark Verden Rundt and in Sweden Internationell Revy), control through direct transfers of money to the individual parties,32 numerous consultations in Moscow, and last but certainly not least through the loyalty towards the Soviet Union by the party members themselves. This loyalty was a key part of communist identity and was deeply rooted in individual party members, only comparable perhaps with religious beliefs and loyalties as to the Pope or the Dalai Lama.33 Questioning Soviet policies was to question the whole value system on which the communists had built their lives; it would mean to withdrawing from and betraying the international brotherhood of the forces of good. In the DKP, Stalinism had reigned since the end of the war. The party leader, Aksel Larsen, had abandoned his flirtation with Trotskyism and the left opposition of his youth after Stalin’s Red Army had freed him from a German concentration camp. Other top posts in the party were held by another generation, who had only known the Stalinist version of international communism and were completely dependent on the line laid down by the CPSU. This generation gap and the resulting ideological gap between Aksel Larsen and large parts of the party leadership led to a crucial split within the party. The Danish delegation at the twentieth party congress consisted of the two party members that would later personify the two wings of the party: Aksel Larsen the ‘Larsen wing’, and Ib Nørlund ‘the hard core.’ They tellingly interpreted the

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congress in ways as different as if they had been at two different congresses. Even before Khrushchev’s speech was known, Larsen had understood the more or less explicit critiques of Stalin in various speeches and took this criticism very seriously. Ib Nørlund, however, focused only on the progress and victories of the Soviet state and party – nuclear driven icebreakers and automatic chemical plants. These two views were reflected in the party itself, where some members thought it imperative to discuss the consequences of the secret speech, while others were more than willing to ignore the questions it raised. Aksel Larsen was prepared to reform the DKP thoroughly, make it less centralist and less dependent on the Soviet Union, and he was not afraid to say this in very direct ways. Other members of the leadership found his attacks provocative and ‘exaggerated’ and were certainly not ready to draw such wide-ranging conclusions. The internal disagreements could not be bridged, and, as a result of this, no clear line was presented to the public. At the same time, the party was deeply engaged in the biggest strike since the war and could not muster resources for any larger debate on such important issues as those raised by the twentieth congress. Only at the end of April did the party daily Land og Folk print a short ‘Declaration from the Central Committee on the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU’; the secret speech itself was printed only at the beginning of June and then with the comments that it was in ‘the American version’ and did not contain any ‘news of importance.’ A month later, the CPSU printed its official version of the consequences and conclusions of ‘the cult of personality’, which condemned Stalin’s role, but also stressed that this was not a result of the otherwise sound Soviet system. This document was used to find again a common ground for all of the party leadership, at least on the surface. Officially, the party could speak with one voice, but internally the conflict was far too serious to be kept down.34 In Sweden the historical context was different. Since the country had been neutral during the war, the SKP had been comparatively free from persecution and not busy fighting a German occupation. The party therefore had the time to react ideologically to the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943 and try to discuss a programme of its own. The new concept of a national road to socialism had been anticipated already in the first post-Comintern programme and the socalled ‘New Course’ from 1944.35 It followed a general liberal attitude towards national variations of socialism, which was expressed by both the CPSU and the East European parties in the 1940s.36 The SKP had integrated the particularistic ideas of this programme into the Cominform system of ideological control, and they could easily be refitted to the new signals from the twentieth party congress. As the party’s theoretical journal Vår Tid explicitly underlined shortly after the congress, the party programme from 1953, tellingly titled Sweden’s Road to Socialism, had already set the balance between the national and the international agendas in a way compatible with the concepts launched by Khrushchev.37 In the programme, the Soviet Union was clearly defined as the leading force in the

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international struggle against imperialist aggression,38 and as such also the defender of national independence against American monopoly capital. On the national level, though, ‘the transition to socialism must happen under the conditions and in ways that are determined by each country’s historical development and situation.’39 For Sweden, this meant that the transition should happen as a continuation of the historical struggle for freedom that had brought parliamentary rule, which had to be expanded and completed by removing the influences of monopoly capital and building a government of the people led by the communist party. In other words it was not the way of the Russian revolution, but something very close to the East European People’s Democracies. In relation to the critique of Stalin, SKP soon reached agreement on a policy that focused solely on the Stalin cult itself and added that the party itself had already learned from the CPSU and happily solved the problem. Internally, only the later party leader C.-H. Hermansson raised his voice in favour of a more independent line, but this did not alter the official party line.40 The fierce disagreements in Denmark were not to be found within the Swedish party; the debate about the cult of personality – in the words of Jörgen Hermansson – ‘was led to a positive conclusion even before it had begun.’41 Nevertheless, the crisis would catch up with the SKP, as it became ever clearer that the Soviet Union could no longer unambiguously be seen as the global guarantor of peace and progress.

The Invasion of Hungary Shortly after the twentieth party congress, in the late autumn of 1956, the new ideas of independency were put to the test – and failed. The Stalinist regime in Hungary was toppled by a popular revolt, but was soon put back in power by a Soviet invasion. This raised an outcry in most of the world, which was not softened by the Stalin-style trials and later execution of the reformist leader Imre Nagy on the grounds of ’Titoism.’ If the secret speech had raised doubts about their loyalty to Stalin among many communists, now was the time to reconsider their loyalty towards the Soviet Union. In Denmark, the invasion of Hungary unleashed again the conflict between those still faithful towards the Soviet Union and those who had lost that faith after the secret speech. The conflict struck right at the core of the eternal dilemma between the national and the international that had haunted the communist movement from its beginning. The fight between the hard-core leadership and the reformist minority resurfaced in the wake of the events. First, the party supported the uprising in the independent spirit of the twentieth congress and criticised the Soviet invasion – the first explicit criticism of the Soviet Union in the party’s history. After consultation with the CPSU, the party switched to support of the invasion, which now was presented as a necessary measure to prevent the Western aggressors from ‘creating a new Korea in the heart of Europe.’ Here the Suez

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crisis, which took place at the same time, played an important role as an example of Western aggression being the main threat to world peace. When the Soviet Union itself justified the invasion by stressing the risk of a fascist takeover, this became the main official explanation of the DKP as well. Not only did this unconvincing and seemingly unconditional support for the Soviet Union create an atmosphere of hate-filled anti-communism in the rest of the population, but also the party itself was being torn apart over the issue. On the one hand the hardliners in the central committee led by the ideologists Ib Nørlund and Gelius Lund saw the events in Hungary as a test of solidarity with ‘the socialist principle and proletarian internationalism’; in this they stuck to the position of the Soviet Union as the agent of peace. On the other hand, the reformers, mainly party intellectuals, openly urged the leadership to condemn the invasion. In the middle of this stood Aksel Larsen, torn between his wish to take an independent stand and his dislike for ‘factional action.’ His close friend, the well-respected professor, resistance leader and intellectual Mogens Fog, privately proposed solving the problem by giving up the Bolshevist, Soviet-dependent DKP and forming a ‘broad, national, socialist party’.42 The thought was not unpleasant to Larsen, but he doubted whether he had the mental and physical strength to embark on such a venture; after all, he was fifty-nine years old and marked by his years in German prisons and concentration camps. However, the split between hardliners and reformers continued to grow, and the party leader was drawn ever more towards the reform wing, in opposition to the majority of the central committee. Again, the tension between the national and international ties was at the centre of the argument: how could the DKP prove its national loyalty while it was obliged to follow every ideological twist and turn of the CPSU, which did not even bother to explain its reasons except in empty phrases? Also, the lack of a concrete domestic line was a main point of the reform wing, as Kai Molkte, a leading reformist, put it: ‘the working class has a right to know concretely where we are going, what we want by a socialist society. Here, we must give a clear answer.’43 The endless praise of the Soviet initiatives for world peace and the admiration of the Eastern bloc had lost their credibility with the revolts of 1956; the reformers realised this and wanted to develop a concrete and independent policy for the Danish working class. In the autumn of 1958, the schism had developed into an open fight between the two groups, and when Moscow gave the green light in the form of an article in Pravda, which stamped Larsen as ‘leader of the right wing’, ‘rightwing opportunist’, and the final excommunication ‘revisionist’ and ‘pseudocommunist’, the hard-core majority let the axe fall. Aksel Larsen was suspended from his duties in parliament and from his post as party chairman and then finally, in November, excluded from the party. The founding of a new party, which before had seemed an insurmountable task, now became reality, and on 22 November 1958 the SF, Socialistisk Folkeparti (Socialist People’s Party), was founded by the defeated DKP reformers.44

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At the elections in 1960, the conflict between reformers and the hard core came to the test. The result was disastrous for the DKP: while SF got 6.1 per cent of the votes and eleven seats, the DKP was obliterated; with only 1.1 per cent it had to leave parliament. It seemed that the language of orthodox communism had lost all its political power; it could not attract the voters with references to the peaceful Soviet Union or use the Eastern bloc as model societies. The concepts of communism had to be reinvented; this will be the topic of the next chapter. In contrast to the Danish split, the SKP managed to keep the troops together seemingly easily, which in comparison with Denmark makes the 1950s seem a dull decade. As with the secret speech, the invasion of Hungary did not set off ‘dangerous’ discussions. Although a few party members thought this the right time to use the new independence and criticise the Soviet Union, the party leadership was unwilling to take such a step and labelled such ideas as opportunism and revisionism.45 The Suez crisis also helped to contain the criticism: by an extraordinary piece of luck, the elections of 1956 fell just after Suez and just before Hungary so that the party did not immediately face an outraged electorate; it even got a slight increase of votes. Also the image of the aggressive Western powers that had been amplified by the attack on Egypt could be used to justify the events in Hungary: while the Soviet suppression of the ‘Horthy fascists’ was done according to the Warsaw Pact, the British-French action was a direct attack on an independent state. The Soviet Union had acted for the cause of world peace; the Western powers had begun a war.46 Indeed – according to the SKP – the events once again demonstrated the communist commitment to national independence: had the Hungarian fascists succeeded, American and West German agents would soon have made the country dependent on the Western powers; in fact, the Soviet troops had defended Hungarian independence.47 The relative ease with which the SKP avoided discussing the events of 1956, at least internally, was to a large degree due to the provincialism of the party outlined above. The party did not put the same weight on international events as did the DKP; it was more concerned with domestic issues such as the fight against the monopolies and for the northern periphery; proletarian internationalism worked on a separate level from everyday politics.48 However, the crisis of communism could not be put off for ever: as votes for the SKP continued to decrease, the Swedish communists also had to consider why their concepts and ideas had ever less attraction. The crisis of 1956 caught up with the SKP with the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. At the elections the following year the party went from 4.5 per cent to 3.8 per cent of the votes. Though this was in itself not a spectacular defeat, it seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back; it unleashed a long debate in Ny Dag, where the party leadership was criticised in – for a communist party – extremely harsh terms. Tension reached its peak in late 1963, shortly before the nineteenth party congress. In Ny Dag the leadership was being

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held personally responsible for the bad election. Why did they stick to politics that obviously did not attract the Swedish electorate? Why did SKP have to support all decisions of the Soviet Union? Why could the party not criticise the Berlin Wall or the invasion of Hungary? The general argument was that the Swedish worker would not trust a party that was bound to the policies of a foreign country and certainly not to one that denied its citizens the basic rights to which the Swedes had become accustomed. Also, the communist concepts of a starving working class, increasingly exploited and impoverished by greedy capitalists, no longer fitted the social reality of the 1960s: ‘Swedes today have both bread and peace and often a little more than just that. The Swedish worker right now believes he can afford to wait and see when he suspects that certain human rights and freedoms would be neglected in a socialist Sweden.’49 The leadership was clearly in retreat: responses rarely amounted to more than clichés about the unity of the working class but without making suggestions as to how this unity should be reached. The electoral defeat had obviously led to a power vacuum, where no one seemed to have the sufficient strength to force the party into a united course. Instead, different factions began to appear, each with its own agenda, but none of them strong enough to control the others. The situation was somewhat similar to that of the DKP between 1956 and 1958, but instead of exclusion and divorce, the SKP was characterised internally by a remarkable tolerance towards ‘factional action.’50 By ignoring or playing down the internal differences, the party avoided the split that had cost the DKP so dearly. Paradoxically it can be said that the left in Sweden made room for pluralism by remaining unified in one party, while the Danish split made less space for factions. As described in the next chapter, the SKP in the 1960s became a sort of ‘open marriage’ between different groups, each with their solution to the crisis.

More than One Communism – the International Perspective Internationally, the twentieth party congress and the invasion of Hungary had severe long-term consequences. The year 1956 marks a watershed in the history of communism, after which the Soviet hegemony over the international movement deteriorated, and the de facto communist monopoly of the political space left of social democracy was broken. The founding of SF in Denmark was one of the first clean breaks with the Comintern tradition, as was the birth of the New Left as a consequence of the mass exodus of intellectuals from the British communist party after the invasion of Hungary.51 But the path out from Moscow’s shadow was longer for most other parts of the movement, and the traditions of the Comintern would follow even those who had broken with the CPSU. The seeds of a more diverse left had been sown, but it was not yet possible to predict the harvest. One of the parties to embrace the term ‘national roads’ was the PCI. The Italian leader, Palmiro Togliatti, launched the concept of ‘polycentrism’ as a new

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strategy for communism, a growing autonomy within the movement to the point where there would no longer be only one guide for international communism. He did not basically question the solidarity within the movement, but he took de-Stalinisation a step further by suggesting that Stalinism might not be the fault of Stalin as an individual, but a consequence of the Soviet system as such.52 The Italian position was thus by far the most independent one among the western parties. Maybe because of its size and prestige within the movement, it could go further than most Western communists were prepared to at the time. For the same reasons, however, the Italian development was followed carefully all over Europe as a possible position within the movement. The CCP chose quite an opposite reaction to the twentieth party congress. Instead of deepening the critique of Stalinism, as Togliatti did, the Chinese were worried about Khrushchev selling out to the capitalists. Especially the concept of peaceful coexistence became an issue of disagreement between China and the Soviet Union. Mao would not abandon war as a possible strategy for the world revolution, and he would both rhetorically and in practice continue a rather aggressive line through the late 1950s. Also ideologically, the CCP would continue an orthodox line and take the position of the keeper of the revolutionary traditions from Stalin’s Comintern. In this way, Maoism demonstrated its independence of the USSR by not following Khrushchev’s policies of de-Stalinisation.53 In the 1950s, there was not yet talk of a ‘SinoSoviet split’, but the foundations were laid down for serious disagreement within the communist world. The communist world thus began to lose its unified image. New issues had to be discussed and possibilities considered. As new ideological centres emerged, it was no longer self-evident to follow the directions from Moscow. The communist world, and consequently the left, had gained a hitherto unseen level of diversity. The Danish and Swedish cases present two different possibilities for using this new political space for manoeuvres. Neither of them were carefully planned strategies; they were rather reactions and attempts at adaptation to changes in the international movement. In these circumstances, the DKP failed to reach an agreement on how to react to the opening of a national road to socialism. The hard core still built its policies firmly on the lines laid out by the CPSU and accepted no deviations. They faced the emerging alternatives presented by the PCI or the CCP with an unbending belief in the infallibility of the Soviet Union. The reformers, on the other hand, wanted to explore the new possibilities and thus had to part and embark on their own road, leading away from the world of international proletarianism and into the uncharted territory of independent socialism. This meant a complete restructuring of the relation between national and international, which will be dealt with in the next chapter. The SKP had a tradition of limited independence, which they could use in the new situation. Like the PCI, and partly with Togliatti as a model,54 the Swedish

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leadership managed to uphold a balance between national and international elements, which were at least viable within the party itself. It was a party in the communist movement, it was loyal to the Soviet Union and to MarxismLeninism, but it had to take the specific Swedish circumstances into consideration and form its policies according to these. However, the balance could not be upheld as the crisis of communism deepened, and the SKP also had to reconsider their concepts and find a way to reinvent the language of communism. The aftermath of 1956 has been estimated quite differently in the literature, depending on the political situation at different times. Two distinct and opposite estimations have been made with reference to the ‘Eurocommunism’ of the 1970s and the fall of the Soviet empire in the 1990s respectively. In the perspective of Eurocommunism, 1956 stands out as the beginning of a development away from Stalinism and towards a stronger and more modern communism. This line especially focuses on the Italian development and the independent line of the PCI as a positive example for other communist parties, but also with some confidence in the potential of Soviet communism – after all, the Soviet Union was a superpower and a real competitor with the capitalist world.55 Even up until 1989, when the weaknesses of the Soviet Union were more obvious, it was not clear whether a diversified communism should be seen as a sign of weakness or of strength: ‘some aspects of Eurocommunism have damaged the monolithic image of the Communist movement. However, since monolithicism has often been related to Stalinism, this may not have been a bad thing.’56 In the post-communist world of the 1990s, this interpretation had lost its validity. Now, the developments from 1956 were put into the great narrative of ‘The decline and fall of the Soviet Empire’ as ‘cracks at the base of the Stalinist monolith.’57 According to this view, the loss of control over the communist movement and the appearance of an independent, revolutionary left led directly to the defeat of communism. François Furet even chose to end his grand essay on communism in twentieth century in the 1950s, since the rest of communist history was nothing but a ‘funeral parade’ of the movement.58 Both views are – inevitably – highly influenced by their own time. In the 1970s, the Soviet superpower and the international communist movement were factors to be reckoned with in any foreseeable future. The emergence of Eurocommunism held the hopes of a softening of the division between East and West and a possibility for dialogue between the ideologies. Without the constant suspicion of running Moscow’s errands, communist parties could even have better possibilities of domestic influence. In the 1990s, communism had been completely defeated and the question was not to make guesses about its future, but to try to explain its fall. The task for the historians seemed to be finding the factors that led to such a spectacular and utter defeat. Interpretations hence tended (and still tend) to look at the ideological and strategic faults of communism and to see its history as an inevitable decline.

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In the late 1950s, however, none of these scenarios were yet thinkable. The space left open by the ideological loosening of the Soviet grip was still vague and unstructured. One could not have imagined Eurocommunism by the end of the 1950s, much less the fall of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union and the communist movement were therefore always taken for granted when discussing the political situation for the foreseeable future. It is important to keep this condition of the presence of an international communist movement in mind as we in the next chapter move away from the world of communism to encounter the new and independent left.

Notes 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

E.J. Hobsbawm. 1973. Revolutionaries; contemporary essays, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, p. 3. Ibid., p. 5. About the Soviet view on Denmark as NATO’s weak link see B. Jensen. 1999. Bjørnen og haren, Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, pp. 471–73, the strategic aspect is dealt with in detail in C.-A. Gemzell. 1996. ‘Warsawapakten, DDR og Danmark. Kampen for en maritim operationsplan’, Historisk Tidsskrift 1996/1. G. Procacci (ed.). 1994. The Cominform. Minutes of the Three Conferences, Milan: Fondazione Giangicomo Feltrinelli, pp. 217–51. Tiden, no. 2, 1958, p. 50. Tiden, no. 3, 1956, p. 137. Tiden, no. 5, 1964, p. 170. For a more detailed description of the Soviet view on Denmark’s strategic position, see Dansk Institut for Internationale Studier. 2005. Danmark under den kolde krig. Den sikkerhedspolitiske situation 1945–1991. Vol. II, Copenhagen: Dansk Institut for Internationale Studier, pp. 717–26. In 1959, four articles dealt with West Germany, in 1960 and 1961 three each year, in 1962 and 1963 none.. Tiden, no. 5, 1956, p. 366. Tiden, no. 2, 1957, p. 70. One fine example of this myth is the prominent communist author and painter Hans Scherfig’s novel Frydenholm from 1962. Tiden, no. 6, 1957, p. 254. Tiden, no. 7–8, 1958, p. 318. B. Stråth. 1992. Folkhemmet mot Europa. Ett historiskt perspektiv på 90–talet, Stockholm: Tiden, pp. 198–205. A. Westoby. 1981. Communism since World War II, Brighton: The Harvester Press, p. 66. F. Lager. 1955. Arbetarklassen och nationen, Stockholm: Arbetarkultur, p. 18. Ibid., p. 81. Ibid., pp. 130–31. Ibid., p. 61. Vår Tid, no. 7, 1956, p. 253. B. Stråth. 1998. Mellan två fonder. LO och den svenska modellen, Stockholm: Atlas, pp. 69–94.

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22. The party had split in 1929 between those loyal to the Comintern and a more independent group the Kilbom communists, it was the Comintern-wing that now led the party. 23. S. Bartolini. 2000. The Political Mobilization of the European left, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 506. 24. Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti. 1953. Sveriges väg till socialismen, Stockholm: Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti, p. 17. 25. Vår Tid, no. 1, 1959, p. 19. 26. Vår Tid, no. 10, 1957, pp. 385–88. 27. Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti. 1961. Programförkläring, Stockholm: Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti, p. 14. 28. Hermansson, Kommunism på svenska?, p. 205. 29. Holmberg, Folkmakt, folkfront, folkdemokrati, p. 90. 30. Westoby, Communism since World War II, pp. 63–65. In a more polemic form, F. Claudin. 1975. The Communist Movement from Comintern to Cominform, Harmondsworth: Penguin, p. 597. 31. A. Westoby. 1989. The Evolution of Communism, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 137–38. 32. Riva, Oro da Mosca. 33. See M. Lazar. 1994. ‘Communisme et religion’, in S. Courtois et al. (eds), Rigueur et passion, Paris: L’age d’homme. 34. For details, see Jacobsen, Aksel Larsen, pp. 429–457. 35. Hermansson, Kommunism på svenska?, pp. 52–58. 36. Z.K. Brzezinski. 1967. The Soviet Bloc. Unity and Conflict, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 26–27. 37. Vår Tid 3/1956, pp. 96–98. 38. Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti, Sveriges väg till socialismen, p. 11. 39. Ibid., p. 17. 40. Hermansson, Kommunism på svenska?, pp. 156–7. 41. Ibid., p. 159. 42. Quoted in Jacobsen, Aksel Larsen, p. 469. 43. J. Kragh (ed.). 1977. Folkesocialisme. Udvalgte taler og artikler 1958–60 af Aksel Larsen, Mogens Fog, Kai Moltke, Gert Petersen, m fl, Copenhagen: SF Forlag, p. 47. 44. The whole series of events and inner party intrigue is described in detail in Jacobsen, Aksel Larsen, pp. 458–548 and in Jørgensen, ‘Split or Reform?’, pp. 47–58. 45. Hermansson, Kommunism på svenska?, p. 158. 46. Vår Tid 9–10/1956, pp. 324–5. 47. Vår Tid, 1/1957, p. 10. 48. Jørgensen, ‘Split or Reform?’, p. 60. 49. Ny Dag 15/10, 1963, p. 2+5. 50. Jørgensen, ‘Split or Reform?’, pp. 61–63. 51. A. Heller and F. Fehér. 1990. From Yalta to Glasnost. The Dismantling of Stalin’s Empire, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 56–60, D. Childs. 2000. The Two Red Flags. European Social Democracy and Soviet Communism since 1945, London: Blackwell, pp. 53–55. 52. P. Togliatti. 1984. ‘L’intervista a “Nouvi argomenti”’, in P. Togliatti, Opere, VI, Rome: Editori Riuniti; and the so-called ‘testament of Togliatti’ from 1964: P.

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53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Togliatti. 1974. ‘Promemoria sulle questioni del movimento operaio internazionale a delle sua unita’, in P. Togliatti, Opere scelte, Rome: Editori Riuniti, pp. 1170–1181. M.A. Kuo. 2001. Contending with Contradictions. China's Policy toward Soviet Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Sino-Soviet Split, 1953–60, Lanham: Lexington Books, pp. 69–143; and M. Light. 1988. The Soviet Theory of International Relations, Brighton: Weatsheaf Books, pp. 47–53. Hermansson, Kommunism på svenska?, pp. 156–57. M.A. Kaplan. 1978. ‘What Is Communism?’, in M.A. Kaplan (ed.), The Many Faces of Communism, New York: The Free Press. Ibid., p. 149. G. Stern. 1990. The Rise and Decline of International Communism, Aldershot: Elgar, p. 156. F. Furet. 1995. Le passé d'une illusion: Essai sur l'idée communiste au XXe siecle, Paris: Calmann-Levy, p. 555.

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Chapter 2

Adaptation and Innovation

The crisis of communism at around 1960 was a watershed in the history of the left. Within the world communist movement, the Sino-Soviet split and attempts to form a specific Western European communist identity undermined the previous monolithic image of communism. At the same time, decolonisation and the rise of the non-aligned movement provided new perspectives that replaced the bipolarity of the cold war. In Western Europe and the USA, New Left groups began to emerge in the wake of the invasion of Hungary and the twentieth congress of the CPSU or in connection with the civil rights and peace movements. For the most part, these groups came out of the communist movement, either as splinter parties, like the Danish SF, or as internal reform attempts, like the Swedish communists, or they came out of intellectual milieux connected with the communist movement as more or less devoted ‘fellowtravellers.’ As communism had had a monopoly over the political space left of the social democrats, the new players in this space had to relate to the communist universe and its concepts in one way or another. The concept of internationalism was an important issue. After 1956, the legitimacy of Soviet-centred proletarian internationalism had suffered severe blows; the New Left had abandoned it completely, but still clung to some image of international solidarity. The communist parties – most notably the PCI – who longed for more independence, sought to redefine the structures of the world communist movement, while the Chinese party was increasingly in direct opposition to Moscow. No one wanted to limit themselves to the confines of national policies, and yet ‘internationalism’ had lost its meaning and had to be reinvented. Similarly, the changes within the capitalist societies had to be dealt with. The image of the oppressed, poor working classes corresponded less and less with the reality of the 1960s. Not only did the workers receive significantly higher wages – completely counter to the Marxist law of growing absolute poverty – but their numbers were also diminishing in relation to the white-collar jobs in services and in the public sector. Where poverty and workers’ rights had been a viable agenda in the preceding decades, the rising ‘affluent society – at it was called by John K. Galbraith1 – required new concepts. On the left itself, the most notable new landmark was the emergence of the New Left. In most Western countries, leftist intellectuals formed circles and journals, where they tried to give alternatives to the failed project of Soviet communism. Most

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notably in Great Britain around the journal New Left Review, but also in France, Scandinavia and the USA, a new space for leftist thought began to open. These spaces were filled in different ways. In Great Britain the scene was dominated by loosely organised academic intellectuals, who sought to reform Marxism. In France the political wing of the New Left gathered around the independent socialist party, the Parti Socialiste Unifié, while the intellectuals sought to reinvent the avant-garde in groups like the Situationist International, the Argument and Socialisme ou Barbarie. In the USA, the civil rights movement formed the basis of a New Left, which, however, was quite different from its European counterparts in the lack of Marxist ideology and in the central issue of racial equality. In the literature, this has been dealt with primarily from the ideological point of view: what were the ideas and theories that were discussed in the New Left circles, which theoretical alternatives were proposed?2 Much of this literature sees a direct causal connection between ideology to practice, or simply ignores the latter and deals exclusively with the first. Though this can be a constructive approach when dealing with some key intellectuals, such as E.P. Thompson or Louis Althusser, it cannot sufficiently grasp the bulk of New Left activities and interpretations, which took place in movements where only a small minority had ever read the classics of Marxism and whose concerns were of a much lower level of intellectual sophistication. The world view of the marchers in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and civil rights activists was shaped more by contemporary events and politics than by the rediscovery of Marxist thinkers. This is the hypothesis underlying this chapter. In other words, the war in Congo and the development of the welfare state were more important than Marx’s Paris Manuscripts or the works of Gramsci. By following the slow emergence and dynamics of the New Left, this will hopefully become obvious. The changes on the European left, however, hit Denmark and Sweden at different times and in different ways. As described above, the SKP had succeeded in letting neither the twentieth congress of the CPSU nor the invasion of Hungary disrupt party unity. The crisis hit later in Sweden, and the party handled the debates with much more tolerance than in Denmark. In this way, the communist party maintained organisational unity by allowing ideological diversity. Also, it retained the hegemonic position in the political space left of the social democrats. Hence, it was not forced to completely rethink its ideological foundations, as were the Danish ex-communists in SF. Since the Danes were forced into a completely new position, they had to rethink their political language in a much more drastic way and on more levels than their Swedish counterparts. However, and this will be the main point of the chapter, both were forced – and mostly willing – to adapt their concept of the nation to both the domestic and international changes of the decade. In relation to the three main problems concerning the concept of nation, the following will deal with, in the first part (after the political context), the position

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of the nation in the world: how was the relationship between national and international interpreted after the erosion of the communist concept of internationalism? In the second part, the focus will be on the internal aspect, the question of political goals and political agency in the perspective of the expanding welfare state and the growing affluence. Both parts will include discussions about the future of the nation and the agent of change. The profound social changes of the 1960s sharpened the awareness of modernisation as an ambiguous process and required new concepts to replace those of communism.

Renewal of Communism Within the world communist movement, the early 1960s saw an acceleration of the changes that had been initiated from 1956 onwards. Where the antirevisionist campaign of 1957 had partly succeeded in keeping the movement together after 1956, the centrifugal tendencies continued with ever more speed in the following years. The world communist meeting of 1960 was the last occasion where the Soviet Union could preside over a unified and global movement. After the Sino-Soviet split in 1963 and the emergence of more or less socialist liberation movements and Third World versions of socialism, the CPSU had irrevocably lost its revolutionary monopoly. In the remaining communist movement, the space for alternative visions of communism also widened. Some parties sought their own versions of socialism and developed their own suggestions on how to restructure the international movement. The PCI and the PCF attempted some kind of regional organisation, a distinct West European communism,3 while others such as the Icelandic, Dutch and Swedish parties, moved towards a more nationally independent communism. Also the new parties outside the communist universe had to define what it meant to be neither communist nor social democrat. This was the case with SF.

SF and the Danish New Left When SF was founded in November 1958, it was a party of odd alliances. Contrary to what some authors have written, the excluded members of the DKP were far from bound together by ‘the principles that had become crystallised during the conflict within the DKP.’4 The uniting principles – apart from disagreement with the hard core – had yet to be negotiated. First of all, the arguments put forward by Aksel Larsen during the conflict were mostly negative: They pointed mostly at the strategies that the party should avoid. Secondly, there was little actual ideological coherence in the group that had left the DKP.5 In his own, very early, version of the conflict Den levende vej (The Road of Life) from 1958, Larsen portrayed his own standpoint as the true continuation of the communist ideals by constantly returning to an important speech from 1938. In

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this speech, he had described the communist party as a Danish party and an ‘organic part of the Danish workers’ movement.’6 These ideas proved that today: ‘the fundamental principles for the role of a Danish socialist party, its structure, policies and relations to the rest of the workers’ movement remain unchanged’.7 In other words; it was the conservatives who had betrayed these principles in the DKP, while Larsen represented the true values of Danish communism. The book consists of selected documents by Larsen, written between 1956 and 1958. It does not try to hide Larsen’s support for the invasion of Hungary or his belief in democratic centralism or to describe the conflict as a battle between an ‘old’ and a ‘new’ left, rather it tries to show how the DKP failed to live up to its own principles. This view was undoubtedly shared by most of his allies from the DKP. These were practically minded people with their roots in the communist trade unions. Some of them had not been particularly happy about Larsen’s ideas after 1956, but they still seemed to prefer him to the hard core in the DKP. Their agenda was rather the construction of a more effective DKP than the creation of a New Left platform. The keywords for the exiled communists were pragmatism and realism. The socialist policies had to be carried out in concrete cooperation with the other workers’ parties – first and foremost the social democrats – where the new party should play the role of the catalyst that would work to pull social democracy to the left and unite the workers’ movement against the bourgeois parties.8 Though the socialist perspective was not lost sight of, the immediate strategy was to achieve concrete social improvements through parliament. To do this, the party had to leave DKP’s sectarianism and create a programme that was more than ‘a purely theoretical product, built on formal logic and articulated in stylistically correct terms.’9 No more lofty ideas of grand popular fronts sweeping away capitalism, nor should the defeats at home be explained away by celebrating progress on a global scale. The renewal of communism had to build concretely on the experiences of the Danish workers, not on the victories of the Chinese working class or the progress of the global forces of peace and democracy. In this spirit, SF presented itself as the party of common sense, sund fornuft (common sense) became a recurring phrase in the party weekly SF, as well as in the declaration of principles from 1963. However, the old communists were not the only element in the new party. They were joined by a number of independent, socialist intellectuals, some of whom had been excluded from the DKP because of their criticism of the invasion of Hungary. These ‘homeless socialists’, as they were named in the leftist journal for resistance veterans Frit Danmark,10 had more ideological reasons for joining SF. In the last part of the 1950s, a milieu of leftist intellectuals had evolved on the fringe of the DKP.11 It consisted of – mostly young – party members in favour of reform, DKP sympathisers and intellectuals who worked in the tradition of the cultural radicalism from the 1930s. This tradition built on a

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strong notion of rationality and humanism, which in the interwar period had been articulated in anti-fascist terms against the nostalgic, emotional nationalism of Nazism as well as a critique of the national bourgeoisie and its irrational and hypocritical morality.12 These elements were mobilised in the 1950s against the emerging consumer society and the rigid politics of the cold war. The forum for these groups was mainly the communist-sponsored journal Dialog, whose outlook was mainly aesthetic, but which became increasingly politicised around 1960. Although cultural radicalism had a history of communist sympathies, its members were rarely organised directly in the DKP, nor did they have a strict Marxist mindset. The ideological and theoretical orientation of this group was directed towards a moral socialism, different from both scientific Marxism and conspiratorial Leninism.

The Open Marriage of Swedish Communism The emergence of a New Left in Sweden took forms distinctively different from the developments in Denmark. The SKP and its emphasis on traditional, local and domestic policies completely dominated the left until the beginning of the 1960s. There existed a small syndicalist milieu, which was split between the union-oriented SAC (Svenska Arbetares Centralorganisation) and a younger, intellectual group around the journal Zenit.13 As an independent leftist forum, however, these groups did not have nearly the same impact as their Danish counterparts in Dialog (indeed, when Alvar Alsterdal in 1963 tried to describe the New Left in Europe, he flatly ignored Zenit and claimed that Sweden had no real independent New Left14). The principal work of the Zenit circle, En ny vänster (A New Left), which is often referred to as a major source of New Left thought, seems rather overestimated as a representative example of the Swedish New Left. Although it was certainly noticed and recognised, its actual content did not have any large repercussions on the ideology of the left. Its lengthy chapters on Gramscian thought fitted poorly with both the militant radicalism of the young Maoists and the Vietnam movement and the common-sense image of the SKP reformers.15 There were no direct foreign policy issues comparable with the ones in Denmark. Sweden’s neutrality, for example, prevented a largescale mobilisation on the issue of nuclear weapons. Through the SKP debate from 1962 about renewal of the party, the ideological divides within the party became ever more visible. The literature distinguishes between four different groups, the ‘traditionalists’, the ‘modernists’ (or the New Left), the ‘left-wing opposition’ and the ‘right-wing opposition.’16 The traditionalists – or ‘the men from 1929’ – consisted of the core of the party leadership with its base in the mines of the north; though more practically than ideologically oriented, they stood for the old virtues of the world communist movement. They were loyal to the Soviet Union, thought in categories of class struggle with the working class in a privileged position as the true revolutionary group, and adhered to the Bolshevist party model.

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The modernists were closer to the ideas of the New Left. They wanted to reform the communist party in order to make it a strong, central force on the left. To do this, they were prepared to change the old structures of the party and make space for both organisational and ideological flexibility. First and foremost, they wanted to dissociate the party from its Comintern past and make it a modern and open socialist party – much like the Danish SF, although they also got inspiration from other communist parties, notably the PCI. The left-wing opposition, in contrast, saw themselves as the keepers of the heritage from 1917. They turned against both Khrushchev’s programme of deStalinisation and reform in the Soviet Union, and against the ‘revisionism’ of the New Left. Instead, they associated themselves with China, Maoism and the revolutionary struggle in the Third World. The smallest group was the right-wing opposition, which wanted to abandon any radical programme, break completely with the world communist movement and adopt a line much like the left wing of the social democrats. These groups worked in different circles more or less connected to the SKP itself. While the traditionalists were tightly bound to the unions and the northern regions, with the regional daily Norrskensflamman as their organ, the modernists had contacts with Zenit and leftist social democrats, and from 1965 they had their own journal, Tidsignal, officially independent but funded by the SKP.17 The left-wing opposition had its geographical base in Gothenburg and found support among radical students in Clarté, while the right-wing opposition was mostly an internal group. Thus, in contrast to the Danish left, the Swedish left was much more dispersed. The divisions were also often geographical. As described above, the SKP had several local centres, around Stockholm, Gothenburg and in Norrbotten. The relatively loose control from the centre helped the different groups to work from local bases in these different locations. Towards 1964, the traditionalist top of the party stepped down in favour of a new and younger leadership. The big winner of this change was the modernist wing: C.-H. Hermansson, political scientist from Stockholm, replaced the miner Hilding Hagberg as party chairman. Hermansson began a thorough reform of the party and one by one removed the Bolshevist institutions in favour of a more open structure. His explicit idea was to make SKP a broad leftist party, which embraced the New Left elements among the social democrats and was able to match the electoral victories of the Danish SF. This reform course culminated in 1967 when the party changed its name to VPK (Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna – Communist Left) and adopted a programme without reference to Marxism-Leninism or democratic centralism and with explicit criticism of the Eastern bloc.18 In this process, the different groups played different roles. Internally, the reforms were mostly worked out in cooperation between the modernists and the traditionalists, who represented strong positions in the party leadership. However, due to their composition of aged workers, the traditionalists were hardly active in rearticulating the party profile, after 1964 their main organ was the very local

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Norrskensflamman, which did not include grand ideological discussions, in contrast to the left-wing opposition, whose influence in the party top was extremely limited, but which nevertheless played an influential role in the general debate on the left. The right-wing opposition remained marginal in all respects. Where the Danish New Left had to begin from scratch, the Swedes attempted to reform communism within the existing framework, including several different groups. The renewal of communism in both countries, however different the context, had similarities in the aims of the reforms. Both were characterised by a wish to modernise communism in order to make it correspond to a changing social reality. The will to reform came out of a realisation that the explicatory models of the Comintern years, the threat of fascism, working-class poverty and the Soviet model, had lost the attraction they once had. The alternative not to adapt to the changed situation was all too clear in the Danish elections with the victory of SF and the elimination of the DKP. The downward trend of the SKP share of the vote seemed a warning that the same thing might happen if the party did not reform. The question now was how to reconstruct a political language that pointed away from the language of communism and to find where the nation fitted into this, internationally and domestically.

Reinventing Internationalism Since Marx and Engels’ famous call: ‘Workers of the world, unite!’, the left had been committed to internationalism as one of its main pillars. With the betrayal of this commitment by the European social democrats in 1914, the heritage had only been emphasised by the emerging communist movement, culminating in the institutionalisation of the communist, Third International (the Comintern) in 1919. Since then, the model of communist international cooperation was one of strict hierarchy and adherence to a common political line decided at the top, much like the internal democratic centralist structure of the individual parties themselves.19 In the period where the Soviet Union was the sole socialist country, this international community was the only left-wing alternative to social democracy (if one chooses to ignore marginal groups like syndicalists, anarchists and Trotskyites); it provided a promise of world revolution and a new and better society, exemplified by the Soviet Union as the country of successful five-year plans and, after 1945, victory over fascism. By the 1960s, this international community had become more a liability than an asset to the communist parties. It had become connected to oppression of Eastern Europe and of the Soviet population itself. Within the movement, Khrushchev’s introduction of ‘national roads to socialism’ had opened a space for a reassessment of the meaning of internationalism, as described above. This, together with the global changes and the emergence of the Third World out of the colonial empires, provided both the possibility and the necessity to reinvent internationalism.

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The reinvention, however, happened in quite different contexts in Denmark and Sweden. In Denmark, the founding of a socialist party on the ruins of the DKP split meant the immediate expulsion from the community of the world communist movement. This had been clear already from 1958 with the denunciation of Aksel Larsen and the Danish ‘revisionism’ in Pravda. However, this was far from a happy divorce; the ex-communists’ decade-long marriage with Moscow had been too emotional to leave them cold-hearted. In Den levende vej Aksel Larsen still wrote about internationalism that: ‘The Danish workers’ movement has always professed internationalism, studied the experiences of the workers’ movement in other countries, in this way, our communist party feels that it is bound to the international proletariat.20 This was written after Larsen’s exclusion, but he notably still spoke of communism and internationalism – and indeed the international workers’ movement in the singular form – as if the divorce had not taken place, as if there was still a possibility of reconciliation. This was the general phenomenon in the first years of SF; it was an independent party, but only a small handful of the intellectuals were explicitly critical of the Eastern Bloc. The first draft for a party programme even stated that socialism was a fact in these countries, which was later revised so that socialism in the East was ‘under construction.’21 On the international pages of SF the Soviet Union still played a significant role, especially Khrushchev, whose reform policies were followed with great interest. He was seen as the man capable of dealing with the ‘bad habits’ of Stalinist bureaucracy and a true spokesman of the people. When the Soviet Union reached the moon as the first in the space race, SF tellingly wrote an exalted headline about ‘Khrushchev’s miracles on the moon and on earth’, thus referring to both technological advances and political reform in the Soviet Union.22 There may have been some secret, or even unconscious, hopes within the party that Khrushchev’s reforms would bring the Soviet Union closer to SF and make it possible for the party to re-enter the international communist community. Whether this was the case or not, many of DKP’s Soviet-inspired policies were kept unchanged in SF’s parliamentary work.23 The party would still speak in favour of increased trade with Eastern Europe, against the EEC, and for the Nordic countries as a nuclear-free zone. These were all policies that fitted the national interest of the Soviet Union – most obviously the nuclear-free zone, which did not include the Kola peninsula – but nevertheless remained on SF’s agenda. This, however, did not lead to any reconciliation with the communist world; Aksel Larsen was still branded as ‘the renegade’ and SF as a ‘revisionist deviation.’ The party would have to find a new love to make the wounds of divorce heal. The Swedish reform discussions took place under very different circumstances from those of the Danish ones, even apart from the difference between reforming an existing party and founding a new one. Since the two communist parties had had quite different agendas in the first place, the reforms had different emphases.

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Also, the world – and the world communist movement even more so – had changed dramatically between the late 1950s and the early 1960s. Historically, the agenda of the SKP had been looking inwards on the domestic circumstances and less dominated by foreign events than many of its brother parties. This could be said also of Swedish society in general. Since the loss of Finland to Russia in 1809, Sweden had at best been a peripheral player in international politics. The end of the Swedish Baltic empire resulted in an inward-looking reconstruction of national identity and a retreat from the European scene. Sweden became ethnically homogeneous (with the exception of the small and peripheral Sami population) and the emerging nationalism was focused on the culture of the countryside population and Swedish nature.24 Thus, the political projects of the first half of the twentieth century had also been directed internally more than towards concrete foreign policy goals. The aim, it seemed, for Sweden was to keep a distance from the rest of the continent in order to retain its neutrality and keep its (in the Swedish view) unique welfare system: Folkhemmet (the people’s home).25 This aloofness was connected to an image of Sweden as a ‘moral superpower’,26 whose neutrality gave the country a position as the northern ally of the Third World, uncontaminated by either colonial past or a cold war present.27 These differences between the two political cultures on the left, the international tradition in Denmark and Swedish isolationism, became important for their reception and representation of the nations’ situation in the international perspective.

Third World Solidarity and Virtual Internationalism For the Danish socialists looking for a new international community, delivery came with the accelerated decolonisation around 1960. In 1956, the East–West axis was the main, if not the only, global division. On one side stood the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe, on the other the USA and Western Europe with its colonial empires. In the 1960s this division of the world changed dramatically. Between 1956 and 1964 Great Britain gradually dissolved its African empire, and France granted independence to most of West Africa in 1960, at the same time as Belgium left Congo. India and Indonesia had become independent after the war and the French had been defeated in Indochina in 1954. The South became an independent factor on the global level, and the East–West dichotomy was being challenged by the emerging North–South axis. The year 1960 marked the peak of this development and was celebrated as the ‘dramatic year’ of liberation.28 SF interpreted this as the break-up of the bi-partite world and the coming of a new era, where the oppressed peoples of the South would stand up against the insane logic of the cold war. This corresponded with SF’s own image as a third force, which argued for rationality and progress in the name of humanism against the forces of capitalism, foreign interests and cold war mentality. Here

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was an international community to which the party could attach itself. The image of the newly independent countries was thus strongly coloured by the wish to identify them with SF’s own political goals: there exist more or less socialist elements in the structures of these countries, and the stronger the liberation movements become, the more clearly do these socialist elements appear. Externally, these countries have made ever closer ties as a non-aligned or neutral bloc, a third force, which refuses to submit to either of the blocs of the two giants, but is kept together by a single goal: to strengthen peace and fight imperialism.29 Like the DKP, SF had stressed neutrality as an alternative to NATO membership. But, whereas DKP’s version of neutrality lacked credibility because of the attachment to the Warsaw Pact countries, SF’s self-proclaimed belonging to the newly independent non-aligned nations provided much more integrity to the calls for neutrality and disarmament. Denmark’s place in the world was not with the tainted, immoral super powers, but with the voice of reason coming from the South. This echoed the ‘bad company’ theme of DKP’s anti-NATO campaigns. Irresponsible politicians had placed Denmark on the losing side of world history, and the otherwise innocent nation would have to carry the burden of the atrocities of its allies. Through NATO, Denmark was connected to countries that represented the brutal immorality SF sought to escape. The crimes of the French in Algeria or the Belgians in Congo unjustly tainted Denmark’s image among the southern countries. The injustice, according to SF, was that Denmark itself was a country of high moral standards, whose mentality, culture and traditions were incompatible with the inhuman behaviour of its allies. Denmark had no colonial past, had never begun aggressive wars or sought to rule other peoples, why should it then ally itself with countries with belligerent and oppressive traditions? This was sustained by a widespread belief that the tide of history was turning and that the era of the North was ending: ‘White man‘ must come to terms with playing the role that corresponds with our numbers and culture. We can no longer act as the master race without the risk of being swept away … I would say that we can keep it going for the next 10–15 years without using ’the bomb’, then the coloured peoples will have grown strong enough to decide in world politics.30 The feeling of being at a historical watershed was undoubtedly inherited from communism; indeed one of communism’s main attractions was the promise of an

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imminent change, in which the communists would play the leading role. In relation to the Third World, the left that supported the new protagonists of history in the South could feel that it was a part of the brave new world rising from the ashes of European colonialism. As the people’s democracies in Eastern Europe were no longer valid as the carriers of the future, the South took over the role of the East as the place where the contours of the new world order could be seen. The South was young, sensible and progressive, the North aged, irrational and reactionary. Thus, the future, and the natural place for Denmark, lay with the South. This corresponded with other currents at the time that went against the logic of the bi-partite world. The attraction of the non-aligned South lay in part in the new view on the cold war that developed with the different Campaigns for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) that appeared in most Western European countries around 1960. The main aim of these movements was to provide an alternative to the government information about nuclear war. In the 1950s the effects of nuclear warfare were often played down; practical advice was given how to survive the attack (seek cover under a table, protect skin from heat wave etc.).31 As mentioned above, the Third World War had not yet got its apocalyptic image. It was rather described as a challenge that one could survive by taking the right precautions. The campaigns for nuclear disarmament changed this picture. They informed the public about lasting radiation after the blast and showed pictures from the completely destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of the burned dead bodies and the mutilated survivors. Nuclear war was now seen as an event of biblical proportions, a human-made Armageddon. Joining the club of non-aligned nations also meant stepping out of the madness of the East–West nuclear race. This line of argumentation had a good electoral support from pacifists among the social democrats, communists and the social-liberal Radical Party. The CND and SF version of neutralism and disarmament was thus successfully able to take over the peace rhetoric of the DKP, whose peace organisation Fredens Tilhængere (Supporters of the Peace) was dissolved in 1959.32 SF played a large role in the Danish campaign and vice versa. In many cases people from the campaign were also party members and SF printed the campaign’s material extensively in its weekly newspaper. It has to be stressed, though, that the campaign was not a branch of the party: the two influenced each other equally strongly. SF explicitly connected the ideas of the CND to the New Left and cultural radical concepts of morality and rationality. The defence of the nation had to be a moral one: by disarming and allocating the resources to development aid in the Third World, the country would be known as a model of moral politics. No one would dare to attack a nation with this status. In continuation of DKP’s antiNATO arguments, it was also maintained that NATO membership would drag Denmark into the confrontation between the blocs, while a ‘neutral and disarmed Denmark would no longer be a target.’33 Neutralism and disarmament were thus both solutions from a rational and a moral point of view.

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The shift away from the world communist movement to solidarity with the Third World was more than a change of the perceived agents of revolution; it was also a shift in the content of internationalism as such. The world communist movement had been a very concrete community, historically based on the Comintern. Membership had been attained by signing the ‘Twenty-one Conditions’ drawn up by Lenin in 1919,34 and the community was kept together by consultations, delegations at party congresses and a common party structure. These institutions remained even after the dissolution of established coordinating organs like the Comintern and later the Cominform. It was thus a very real and concrete community, where the individual members often knew each other personally or at the very least were aware of each other’s existence. Hence internationalism in the traditional communist sense meant an obligation to a well-defined larger community. The meaning of Third World internationalism can in contrast best be defined as ‘virtual internationalism.’ While this internationalism retained the function of designating an agent of change in world history, it did not have the institutionalised framework of communist internationalism. It could take over the function as a vessel for the symbolic content of the world communist movement with its promises for a new and better world; however, it did not have any practical obligations attached to it. In this way, it is more akin to what Benedict Anderson has famously called ‘imagined communities’, pointing to communities where the members, although never actually meeting each other, still feel a sense of communion.35 Hence, it was sufficient to make a unilateral declaration of solidarity to define oneself as a part of the coming world revolution. There were no channels of communication or coordination, nor were there any forums in which the members of the community could meet and get acquainted. It is in fact doubtful whether for instance Patrice Lumumba knew of his Nordic allies. This also meant that the image of the objectives for solidarity was largely constructed through indirect channels, the written media, radio or television, and not through direct contacts. Eventually, though not so common in Denmark as in Sweden, travellers would go to the South and come back with accounts of the new societies, but mostly the image was constructed by second-hand knowledge. At no point would the New Left enter a community of the Comintern type; they would continue to unilaterally choose, or construct, their international community. The fragility of this virtual internationalism quickly became exposed by new events. A sense of betrayal disrupted the hopes that the South would bring about a new world order to replace the brutal North. Already during the euphoria of 1960, new forms of ‘Northern’ oppression appeared in Congo and Laos. The intervention by Belgian troops to protect the interest of the mining companies of Katanga and the murder of Patrice Lumumba in February 1961 showed that decolonisation was not over with the granting of formal independence. In Laos, it was not the old colonial power but the USA who supported the ‘Quislings’ to

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prevent a socialist development. Clearly, colonialism was not a closed chapter; Northern capitalism had merely found new ways of oppressing the South. The two views on the Third Word, the promise of the future and the victim of global capitalism, would characterise the interpretations of global events for the decades to come. On the one hand, countries like Cuba or the newly independent Algeria were described in over-optimistic terms; on the other hand, Congo or Angola was an image of raging capitalist brutality against a defenceless victim. In any case, it was the natural, moral obligation of Denmark to show solidarity both with victorious struggles and desperate hopes. Also in Sweden, the rapid decolonisation around 1960 and the following Western interventions had a considerable impact on the world view of the left. Especially the New Left and the Maoists put great weight on solidarity with the Third World, albeit in different ways. The New Left around Zenit and the modernists subscribed – as did a large part of the Swedish public – to an image of the South in the role of victim (fig. 3.1). Prominent writers went to the South to gather material about poverty, race discrimination and the fight for independence.36 The point of departure was a moral one, the travellers wanted the Swedish public to know and condemn the

Figure 2.1 The South as a victim.

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crimes committed against the black population. This was taken up by the social democrats, who promoted an image of Sweden as a model of the ‘third way’: the moral voice between East and West, North and South.37 The North–South schism became the main framework for interpretation for international affairs, replacing the East–West dichotomy of the Soviet-inspired images of SKP in the 1950s. The global horizon and emphasis on the South implicitly became part of the programme for the reform of communism. Where SKP traditionally had focused on local politics and welfare reform and aimed at completing Swedish democracy, the concerns of the New Left were global. The 1953 programme (Sweden’s Road to Socialism), which still represented the views of the traditionalists, spoke briefly of the victories of the socialist camp as the greatest changes in world history.38 In the 1960s, the anti-colonial struggle became more and more important, until, in 1966: ‘The international solidarity applies first and foremost to the peoples that fight for national independence and social justice.’39 However, this did not mean that the old local questions about Swedish capitalism and democracy disappeared. This tension between local and global was clearly visible among the modernists, who were still concerned with the local concentration of Swedish capital and the questions of local policies, while at the same time worrying about apartheid in South Africa. The ‘middle horizon’ of Europe and Norden played a very small role when placing Sweden internationally; ‘Europe is only a small peninsula in the world ocean.’40 In the mental geography of the Swedish left, the country hovered above and apart from the European continent and was either seen in a local, isolated perspective or as a part of a global struggle between North and South. In the early 1960s, when the modernist New Left was the only competitor to traditionalist communism, Sweden’s role in this struggle was rarely well defined. Sweden was far away from the front line of liberation, but the Swedish socialists had the obligation to support the forces of freedom morally. It was their duty to keep Sweden out of the camps of the oppressors and to be compassionate with the victims. To the Maoists in the left-wing opposition, this was not enough. They explicitly challenged the views of the modernists and introduced a much more radical image of Sweden’s place in the world. The rise of Maoism in Sweden was intimately linked with the emerging split between China and the Soviet Union. Signs of disagreement between the two great communist powers had been visible since the late 1950s. In the years 1963–1964 the disagreements developed into a schism between the two countries. Whereas the Soviet Union practised a policy of détente after the Cuban missile crisis, China still stressed violent confrontation with the West as a strategy for world revolution. In this belligerent spirit, the first Chinese nuclear bomb was tested in October 1964. Mao also refused to follow the ‘revisionist course’ of de-Stalinisation and portrayed the CCP as the true guardian of Leninism and the inheritance of the October Revolution. Despite this aggressive conservatism, the attractions of Maoism were many.

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Alongside the newly independent African countries, China became a favourite destination for those who wanted a glimpse of the promises of the future. It had a large number of the elements that gave the Third World its promising, exciting and exotic impression: it was emerging from a heroic civil war and harvesting the fruits of socialism, an ancient civilisation freed from European oppression and most of all, it was the home of the masses. Just as the proletarian masses in classical Marxism were kept down by the capitalist minority, the countless millions of the Third World had been oppressed by the North. But, just as capitalism in Marx’s theory was digging its own grave by extorting the masses, so would the majority of the Earth’s population rise against the tyranny of the white man. On travelling to China, these endless masses materialised before the eyes of the traveller, expressing – through the interpreter – their fighting spirit and revolutionary zeal. A surprisingly large number of Swedes actually went to China and came back as loyal Maoists, and began to work for a new direction in different organisations on the left. Inspired by Mao’s belligerent eloquence, this new group emerged to propose a language of militant resistance to capitalism. The Maoist left-wing opposition was an odd alliance. It consisted of the old, conservative leaders of the Gothenburg section of the SKP, Nils Holmberg and Knut Senander, who were veterans from the very beginning of the Swedish communist movement, and a group of radical students in Clarté. The veterans were even more conservative than the traditionalists, whom they publicly scorned as opportunistic revisionists. Instead of a non-violent transition on the basis of Swedish traditions and peaceful coexistence between the superpowers, they stood firm on the necessity of armed revolution and the two-camp theory.41 Hence, they took the Chinese side in the Sino-Soviet split, hailing Mao as the true heir of the October Revolution. They were allied with a minority among the communist students, who were also sceptical towards the modernists and inspired by China as the leader of the revolutionary South. The student organisation Clarté had a long history and a great deal of prestige as the forum of leftist students. It had originally been both communist and social democratic (Prime Minister Tage Erlander had been a member in the 1930s), but was now predominantly communist.42 It had it own journal, Clarté, and a large network of small groups and discussion circles all over the country. Between 1964 and 1966, the modernists and the Maoists fought for power in the student organisation. Through a combination of organisational intrigue and ideological debates, the Maoists at the end managed to attain complete control over the organisation.43 This network and the prestige of the organisation could be used again in the Vietnam Movement and the Maoist wing of the SKP, spreading their views even further. What did this mean for the concept of nation? As opposed to the ideas of the early 1960s, the Maoist notion of a North–South divide did not have a third position on the middle. In this perspective, Sweden mostly belonged to the evil,

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imperialist North. Clarté thus painted a grim picture of the Swedish state. The moral superpower became a proto-fascist, neo-colonial power. Corporatism, large public sector and the regulated labour market did not mean welfare for the working class; it was rather sign of the take-over of the state by monopoly capital typical of fascism.44 Globally Sweden was a part of the neocolonial system that exploited the local populations in the Third World, and large Swedish companies took home huge profits from overseas investments. Their interest was to keep the southern regimes stable and non-socialist, like the dictatorships in Brazil and Guatemala. Through them, Sweden became part of a system that oppressed and extorted the masses of the South. The brutal decadence of the North was often opposed to the pure, revolutionary virtues of the South, especially China. This reflected a curious puritanism on the Swedish left that hardly existed in Denmark. As opposed to the Danish left wing where sexual liberation was a big theme and where most meetings included a few rounds of beer, Swedes were stressing the virtue of staying sober and showed a remarkably moralistic attitude in discussions about sex and pornography. Kim Salomon has a discussion about this phenomenon in his book about the Vietnam Movement. He makes an interesting connection between the communist practice of self-criticism (which is strong in Maoism) and the sense of guilt typical of the puritan roots of Swedish Christianity.45 Alcohol consumption was heavily criticised within the movement: ‘We should always stay completely sober … if you support the Vietnamese people, you support them all the time.’46 The attitude towards sexual issues showed the same tendencies: while the Danish New Left periodical Politisk Revy printed hard-core pornography, its Swedish counterpart Tidsignal printed articles about perverse managers who made their secretaries pregnant. The counter image of the materialist North thus became the puritan, revolutionary Third World: We quote these stories about soldiers, who with pure hearts sing revolutionary songs and abstain from infectious luxury. This tells us something about China. But the laugh of the West tells something about us. My Christian revivalist great-grandparents would not have been able to understand why the Swedish readers are expected to laugh. Puritanism is closely related to the traditions of the country and the needs of the city.47 Note, however, how Sweden has a double position on the North–South axis; it is a country of the North, but similar to the South due to its puritan traditions. The image of the good, simple Swedish people of the countryside would later play an important role. This notion of the good Sweden seemed irreconcilable with Sweden as an oppressor and the Swedes as accomplices of colonialism. However, the image of the nation was rarely coherent. In the North–South context, Sweden is on the side of the global villains. When America enters the picture and

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North–South is replaced with Europe–America, the roles are changed: America is the universal oppressor, compared with which Europe, Asia and Africa are alike victims. In the Vietnam-Movement, this became even more emphasised. As Maoism grew in strength and the oppression in the Third World became ever more apparent, the image of Sweden as part of the evil North spread to the New Left and modernists as well. Here, it fitted well with the old communist image of Sweden as a country ruled by monopoly capitalism. In Tidsignal the link between the monopolist structure of Swedish capitalism and the exploitation of the South was very apparent. The spider web of Swedish capital went beyond the country’s borders and profited from the suffering of the Southern proletariat. Although a part of the moral indignation was still retained, it now became mixed with an element of ‘white guilt’ typical for Sweden. The most important reference for both the New Left and the Maoists was Frantz Fanon, whose book Les damnés de la terre (Wretched of the Earth) was translated into Swedish (as the first non-French edition) in 1962. His thoughts had a surprising impact, especially given their radical character. Fanon went completely against the currents of pacifism, interracial reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. Instead, he hailed the violent struggle against the white colonisers as the only viable road to emancipation of the South. This was mixed with strong notions of anti-intellectualism and ideas about a unitary popular party.48 Although these thoughts ran completely counter to the modernist programme of open, pluralist cooperation on the left and the obvious intellectualism of the New Left, Fanon became a universal and uncontroversial reference point in all discussions about the Third World.49 It seemed that despite ideological differences, the South was always right: as C.-H. Hermansson put it in his modernist manifesto Vänsterns väg (Road of the Left): ‘The poor nations have justice on their side, we have injustice.’50 The old interpretations of Sweden as a monopoly capitalist country could easily be transferred to the global scale. Whereas big capital in the 1950s stood as the obstacle for completion of Swedish democracy, it was now seen as the reason why Sweden belonged to the camp of global exploitation.51 Thus the militant radicalism of Fanon and Maoism was reinterpreted by the modernists and adapted to their already existing concept of Sweden in the light of monopoly capitalism.

Europe and Norden – the Regional Identity The regional dimension of the nation was perceived very differently in the two countries. While Sweden had historically been isolationist and peripheral to continental Europe, Denmark had recently been a part of the last great European war and it was bound to its neighbours through dependence on the markets of Great Britain and Germany and through its NATO membership. Hence, the regional horizon played a much larger political role in Denmark than in Sweden. The Danish left was forced to take positions towards a number of

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political questions, while the Swedes could perceive Europe and Norden52 on a more abstract level of identity in the ever prominent North–South perspective. As the high hopes invested in the South began to fade, Europe and Germany came into the focus of the Danish left. Two events in the beginning of the 1960s fuelled the anti-German and, to a lesser extent, anti-European sentiments on the Danish left: first of all, Denmark’s application for EEC membership in 1961 and, secondly, the establishment of a shared German–Danish command in the Baltic Sea. In 1961, Denmark applied for membership of the EEC together with Great Britain and Ireland – primarily for economic reasons; Denmark could not afford to stay outside an economic community that included her two biggest export markets, Great Britain and West Germany. The choice was more or less unanimous on the decision level, but, in the political hinterland, cross-party anti-EEC groups were established. Within the left, anti-Europeanism became a dominant theme. The application called for the big headlines in SF: ‘Our freedom is at stake.’ The government had sold out national independence for the interests of the big farmers; the workers and the smallholders would have to pay the price for playing in what was scornfully called the ‘big European game of pork’,53 themes that would fill the leftist press for more than a year, until de Gaulle’s veto in 1963. Through this debate, a diverse image of Europe appeared. First, it repeated the ‘bad company’ theme from the NATO debate, since the EEC countries were all NATO members, the images of the two were consciously merged. Membership of the EEC would tie Denmark closer to NATO, closer to the colonial oppressors, German militarism and American aggression – quite similar to the general arguments against NATO itself. Secondly, Europe was seen as a threat to Nordic unity. The EEC and the European integration would split the Nordic brothers, who naturally belonged together. ‘Gallo-Germanic’ Europe south of the border was autocratic and oppressive, weighed down by its colonial past and its undemocratic political culture, while Norden was clean. The cultural aspect was heavily emphasised. In contrast to the Swedish image, the Danes only rarely saw their own culture in the light of ‘white guilt.’ There was no sense of shame on behalf of the common European guilt, simply because Denmark was not seen as a part of the culture that had fostered colonialism and the Holocaust. These were the doings of the Europeans south of the border, not of the peace-loving and democratic Nordic culture. Another aspect of the North and South European axis was the strong element of anti-Catholicism. Catholic culture, which dominated the EEC, was essentially different from and inferior to Nordic, Protestant culture. While the Nordic peoples were open, democratic and independent, the Catholic ‘southerners’ were depraved, authoritarian and reactionary (fig. 2.2). In this way, the EEC was seen as a plot of the great Catholic powers to control the rest of Europe. SF and DKP thus liked to use the term ‘the Union of Rome’ instead of ‘the Common Market’ or ‘the Six.’

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Figure 2.2 The headlines reads: ‘The keys to paradise’ – the commentary makes the connection between the conservative EEC and the Catholic Church

As mentioned above, the anti-German rhetoric of DKP was toned down in the 1960s, as it was in Soviet propaganda. For SF, though, the German menace and the memories of the occupation remained as a recurring theme throughout the first half of the decade. The establishment of a Danish–German joint command in the Baltic Sea especially boosted anti-German sentiments. Military cooperation with Germany meant Danish soldiers under German command and, even worse: German troops on Danish soil. Though NATO established the institution, America played a small, background role in the debate, and

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Germany was seen as the main threat, as had been the case in the DKP. Denmark would be forced to support the German war of revenge, or Germany would use NATO as an excuse to reoccupy Denmark to ‘protect’ it from the Soviet Union.54 The arguments against the joint command were often taken from history and reintroduced the classic elements of Danish nationalism. SF, for example reintroduced the theme of Schleswig as a Danish region threatened by an expansionist Germany: Danes went over the border to buy cheap liquor and got contaminated by the consumerist culture of the Federal Republic, and especially German television exerted an ‘indirect, maybe unconscious, influence from Germany, an invisible pressure over the border, which is mirrored in the attitude of the population. We must be careful, because this pressure can be far more dangerous than the gendarmes of Kaiser Wilhelm and the troops of Hitler.’55 Historically, according to SF, the whole of Schleswig was originally a thriving Danish region, which had been neglected and ‘Germanised’ after its incorporation in the German Empire. Now, it was still a weak region, vulnerable to German investments.56 All this echoes the images of Schleswig as the bulwark against German influence that was a key part of the construction of a Danish national identity in the nineteenth century. The focus on German television and border trade shows how the issue is connected to traditional images rather than to the present situation. Both phenomena can be found on the islands south of Funen and Zealand, nevertheless, these historically and mythologically unimportant regions were never mentioned. Typically, the older generation were the ones who expressed the strongest anti-German sentiments. They also had a strongly European outlook, as opposed to the younger, more globally oriented generation. The older generation had lived most of their lives in a Europe that was the centre of the world. They still used terms like ‘great powers’ about France, Great Britain and Germany, even if it seemed ever more anachronistic in a world partitioned by two superpowers. The most obvious example of this inertia is Frit Danmark, where the world views shaped during the war years still lived on: ‘[Frit Danmark] was founded in a time when the freedom of our country was suppressed. In a time, where new “politics of collaboration” can make us dependent on and kept down by foreign, reactionary nations, without any possibility of liberation, our journal has just as big tasks ahead of it as 20 years ago.’57 Here, the otherwise flexible concepts of the New Left retained anachronistic elements. After Dialog stopped in 1961, the main organ of the left remained SF, which was edited by Kai Molkte – exiled communist and former concentration camp inmate. Though the journal reported from all round the world, it continued the European outlook typical of his generation. Until Politisk Revy took over from Dialog (see next chapter), the older members dominated the leftist media. In Sweden, there had never been a large identification with ‘European values’ or a ‘Western identity.’ The social democrats had long succeeded in establishing the concept of neutrality as the hegemonic basis for discussion

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about Swedish foreign policy, a concept with strong connotations of distance from continental Europe and from the West.58 As Europe as the North came to signify the antipode of the new, futureoriented countries of the Third World, it became synonymous with either the old Western civilisation or the capitalist/neocolonial exploitation of the South. In Sweden, EEC was not an instrument of German militarism but a new way for the European powers to keep control over their old colonies: ‘EEC became an instrument to mobilise the combined resources of investment of the six in Europe to exploit the riches of the Sahara and French-speaking Africa and tie these colonial territories tighter to the economy of France and of the EEC.’ In this perspective, Europe merged with America as the symbol of cold capitalism. The ‘Americanised’ EEC exploited the developing countries so that Western capitalism might survive. In this North–South dichotomy, there was little space for the kind of worries that haunted the Danish left. In comparison with the suffering South, Sweden could not be seen as the major victim of continental oppression and German imperialism. Rather, it was among the perpetrators of the global subjugation of the southern countries. Also, the social democrats had yet again appropriated the dangers from the continent. From the 1950s the social democratic concept of neutrality had attained a hegemonic place in Swedish political language. Already in 1961, Prime Minister Tage Erlander explicitly stated that the EEC was incompatible with neutrality and thus put an end to any serious debate about Swedish membership.60 In addition to this, three prominent social democrats published a very polemical antiEuropean book in 1962. The book mirrored the anti-European sentiments in Denmark; it was the Europe of the three Cs – Conservative, Catholic and Capitalist – a threat to Swedish democracy and welfare.61 Hence, the demarcation towards Europe, which became SF’s political hallmark, belonged to the Swedish political mainstream and could not be exploited by the left. Apart from its role as global oppressor, Europe was attributed the image of an old and dying culture. The future lay in the hands of the peoples of the South, especially in the hands of the Asian masses, symbolised through the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Jan Myrdal, an influential Maoist writer, who wrote in most leftist journals at the time, and son of prominent social democrats, is a fine example of the guilt and self-contempt associated with European culture: I have skipped whole series of histories in the chapter. They were about torture, false testimonies, terror, murder and lies. I have kept this history a personal one. This could be a way to escape my guilt to say that we all share it equally. I presuppose, though, that my readers do keep in their minds what has happened in Europe during the last decades… I shall emphasise that it was we European intellectuals who led and carried out these acts on every level… This has been the century of the European intellectual.62

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Notice how Sweden is a part of the guilty Europe, and indeed how the individual Swede (Myrdal) carries the guilt of Europe. It was no longer the capitalist system that was guilty. Now, the guilt was internalised and projected onto the individual. There are parallels with the Chinese Cultural Revolution, where enemies of communism were exposed publicly as evil persons and sent for re-education in order to become good, communist individuals. It also fits with the Protestant heritage mentioned earlier, where the consciousness of one’s own sins is a key element. European culture plays a curious double role in Myrdal’s writings: on the one hand, it is decadent, degenerate and cruel, on the other, it is a refuge from the harsh reality of capitalism. When compared with China, Europe is cruel: ‘Nothing in China is bloody and hateful like a normal Swedish Saturday night on TV, where human worth is measured in consumption and where generals preach passionately for peace… in such a culture, China is abnormal.’63 It is a continent weighed down by its history of atrocities and where capitalism has melted all values into air. It is the home of impotent intellectualism, which transforms the suffering of the Third World into educated lectures about foreign cultures.64 Still, Europe is the birthplace of the intellectual tradition that Myrdal himself has come from: Händel’s music is a part of his ‘spiritual pharmacy’, and he finds inspiration in Goethe and Voltaire.65 The culture symbolised in the European classics is a refuge from uncultured commercialism, which gets even more emphasised in the context of anti-Americanism. When America enters the picture, European culture switches role and becomes a victim of American commercialism. European culture is ‘real’ culture, while America is commercial and ‘without culture.’66 One senses nostalgia for the values of the old, educated European culture in its romanticist or idealistic form, which can be used to criticise the materialism of capitalist society and as a refuge from tasteless commercialism. Of the two elements, guilt and nostalgia, the first remained the strongest throughout the Swedish left. The Swede became identical with Fanon’s colon, the white coloniser. In Les damnés de la terre, the Colon is the main agent of oppression in the colonised world, not only as the concrete torturer in the last part of the book, which deals with French atrocities in Algeria, but he is the one that denies the ‘native’ his culture and his human dignity.67 The guilt and selfloathing of Myrdal’s European intellectual derives from the consciousness of this relation between North and South. The white man is the guilty perpetrator, the sinner, while the black man is the innocent victim. The religious connotations are difficult to escape. Figures and parallels from both the New and Old Testament appear in the conceptual configurations, the black man as the Agnus Dei, which carries the sins of the world on its shoulder and redeems the world, or the North (Europe, Sweden) as a Babylon full of sin. Moreover, there is a peculiar Protestant internalisation of the sin, where the individual northerner, the European intellectual, has to confess and recognise his inescapable sin. Thus, the role of Europe and the North was in part interpreted through the traditions

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of Swedish Protestantism (which Myrdal explicitly refers to), which equalled Europe to Babylon, or Sodom and Gomorrah, the home of the guilty sinners. In relation to the position of the nation in the Nordic perspective, Denmark and Sweden show remarkable differences. Whereas the Danish SF was enthusiastic about everything northern, the Swedes in and outside the SKP were mostly uninterested in Nordic affairs. The conceptual relationships between Denmark, Sweden and Norden are like the European ones in the sense that they also have a long history behind them. However, in contrast to the realpolitik of the European state system, Norden was always an abstract ideal that never took any concrete, tangible form. One could argue that Norden was the third and unsuccessful attempt to unite a nation state out of several dynastic states, the successful ones being Italy and Germany. For that reason Norden as a concept has a certain vague and utopian quality since it has no concrete reference; it is a cultural or linguistic tie, which can be attached to any values or hopes for the future. It is literally utopian in the sense that it is nowhere; it is an event that never happened; a place that is not (yet) there. One of the ideas of Norden is cooperation between the Nordic peoples, which can have any form or content due to the vagueness of the Nordic programme. In both Denmark and Sweden, Nordic sentiments were politically en vogue after the war. For the social democrats Norden served as a symbol of a specific welfare model, different from the European ones, and they connected Norden with their own mission as a third force between capitalism and communism.68 For the Soviet Union, the main interest in the Nordic countries was to keep a quiet northern flank. Ideally, Denmark and Norway should follow the Swedish example and become neutral. More realistically, the Nordic countries should remain a nuclear-free zone. However, the Kremlin was against any formal cooperation between the Nordic countries, and the communist parties had argued vehemently against the plans for a Nordic defence union in the late 1940s. Due to the democratic centralist structure of the world communist movement, there was not much space for regional cooperation between the Nordic parties themselves either. When first SF and later SKP respectively cut or loosened their ties to the Soviet Union, Norden emerged as a much more independent and positive entity. Especially for SF, Norden became the standard alternative to all the wrong paths of Danish foreign politics. Instead of aligning themselves with the West, the Nordic countries should join together as representatives of peace on earth: ‘The Nordic countries are – with their common traditions, common outlook and culture a model of peaceful coexistence. The way of Norden must be the way of peace and that of the maker of peace … the guiding force, which the world needs to find reconciliation and peace.’69 A good example of this is the leaflet Sund Fornuft om dansk udenrigspolitik (Common Sense about Danish Foreign Policy) printed in SF on 20 October 1961, during the debates about EEC and the Danish–German joint command. After three and a half pages of painting the

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current government policies in grim colours, the last section asks rhetorically for ‘Other Possibilities?’ In respect of foreign trade, what alternatives did a small country like Denmark have to the EEC? The answer was clearly a Nordic customs union; the Nordic countries had the economic capacity to be a considerable player on the global market. Where the supranational character of the EEC was considered as a danger to Danish sovereignty, the question was not even mentioned in relation to a common Nordic economic union. On the contrary, Nordic cooperation would – in contrast to SF’s usual Marxist ideas about incompatible interests – benefit both the people and the businesses of the countries. The argument about security policies went in the same directions; if Denmark joined the EEC and did not leave NATO, she would be under both political and economic pressure from Germany, which ‘after having lost a world war will realise the big goal of the Hitler regime: Pax Germanica.’ The alternative to this nightmare was that Norway and Denmark should leave the economic and military alliance with the West and join the neutral Sweden and Finland.70 Norden became the standard alternative to any question of foreign policy, both economic and military. The vision of the Nordic alternative often had rather utopian connotations. For SF Norden took the place of the Soviet Union as a utopian promise of a better future. Certainly, after the first euphoria of decolonisation had been replaced by worries about war and underdevelopment, and the utopia of the South had diminished, Norden seemed a haven of peace and democracy. Western Europe was the home of Catholicism, militarist Germans and de Gaulle's autocratic France, Eastern Europe was oppressed by Stalinism and the Third World was kept down by the former colonial powers. Only Norden could provide an example of harmony, democracy and stability. The utopian aspect lies in the thought that Norden had a special mission to fulfil by bringing peace to the world, since it already had the goodwill of all other countries: ‘No-one will suspect any of the Nordic countries to have great political, strategic, colonial or in any way aggressive motives. No one will suspect that the Nordic peoples would dream about conquering other nations or countries neither economically nor militarily. Norden will be above any suspicion… We want freedom in the North We want peace on Earth.’71 A united and neutral Norden would be a strong moral example for all other countries; it could spread its democratic traditions to those countries that still fought with an authoritarian tradition, by its example, it would stabilise Europe, it would give security to the eastern neighbours, prevent war in the Baltic, and a united Norden could be a strong help for the developing world, since its assistance would be truly altruistic and not a continuation of colonial

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dominance. In this perspective Norden mirrors the third standpoint of SF and the New Left: neither East nor West, but a new morally superior and historically untainted way to the future just as the South had been around 1960. Hence, Norden took over the role as the agent of change. Where the South had lost the battle for a better world and remained under the northern yoke, Norden – if protected from the superpowers and the dangers from the continent – could show the way for a free, just and peaceful world. The idea of an independent Norden could certainly be seen as an illustration of the moral utopianism that characterised both SF and the New Left: that the world can be changed by giving small, good moral examples;72 moral questions could move the system in the right direction. The New Left intellectuals, in contrast to the pragmatists around Aksel Larsen, adhered to the ideal of ’power asceticism.’ The view was central to the Campaigns for Nuclear Disarmament, whose goal was not to enter the political arena, but, as the Danish leader Carl Scharnberg put it: ‘to stimulate people to take a stand on a question that is still open.’73 This position was clearly inspired by the classic definition of the independent, critical intellectual, who influences society from an outsider position, which in geographical terms got transferred to Norden. The perfect, Nordic society, democratic and peaceful by definition and free of the great game of colonialism and the cold war, could influence the world from its peripheral position, just as the intellectual could in society. The national or Nordic project merged with the intellectual project, as Poul Henningsen, the Nestor of cultural radicalism, said in connection with the EEC application: ‘I think it would be better if we were here as a little, vulnerable, courageous and independent region, which would defend quality against quantity, democracy against industrialism.’74 The qualities and self-image of the individual intellectual confronted with the materialist consumer society were easily translated to the national level, just as the self-image of an anti-militarist, third-way SF was mirrored in the visions of a common Nordic future. Within the Swedish communist party, the Nordic perspective only emerged after the modernists under C.-H. Hermansson had launched their project of reform. Before this, it was absent both within the SKP and on the marginal noncommunist New Left. The modernist reformers had to find a formula to restructure the party’s international relations. Just like SF, they had little desire to break away from the community of international proletarianism (unlike the right-wing opposition), while on the other hand, they wanted to escape the straitjacket of unquestioning loyalty to Moscow. Contrary to the DKP experience in the late 1950s, the space of manoeuvre was considerably larger in the mid-1960s. Not only had Moscow lost its monopoly as the centre of the world revolution after the Sino-Soviet split in 1963–1964, but there were signs of independence within the world communist movement itself. Especially the PCI was trying to create more room within the movement and to present alternatives to the Moscow-centred world

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view of the Comintern and Cominform eras. The Italians stressed the ‘polycentric’ character of internationalism and attempted a policy of allargamento (enlargement), which embraced leftist groups other than just the approved communist parties. A key element in this was to build a separate West European forum for communist parties in order to diminish the dependence on the Soviet Union.75 The modernists supported and copied these policies and even established informal connections with the PCI.76 While this underlined the ‘polycentric’ politics of the SKP by creating alternative channels of information away from the Kremlin, the party also had its policy of allargamento, which aimed at widening the movement to leftist groups other than the communist parties. It was in this perspective that Norden suddenly began to play a role in the party’s world view. In Norway, an SF party had been formed out of the left wing of social democracy in 1961, and, when the SKP followed the New Left course from 1964, the Danish SF quickly made contacts with the other two parties. It seems that good personal relations existed between Aksel Larsen and C.-H. Hermansson.77 Both could use the other as a source of legitimacy by showing that the new political course was a part of a larger, international trend. As the electoral progress of SF was followed by similar progress for the SKP, the mutual references increased to demonstrate the fruitfulness of the reforms. Tidsignal clearly demonstrated enthusiasm for Nordic cooperation. In contrast to the disinterest in Norden in other parts of the Swedish left, Tidsignal became ever more Nordic the more formalised the cooperation between SKP and the SF parties became. It would print lengthy reports of ‘socialist summit meetings’ of Nordic parties and greet any socialist Nordic cooperation with great enthusiasm. In this forum, Hermansson argued for increased Nordic economic cooperation and Nordic neutrality. However, the tone was remarkably more critical than in Denmark; it stressed that the Nordic countries were still capitalist, that Sweden was the one most controlled by big monopolies and a closer united Norden would not necessarily be in the interest of the ‘vast majority of the people.’ Rather, closer cooperation should be used as a platform to unite the workers' movements in the struggle against monopoly capitalism.78 However, this enthusiasm did not mean leaving proletarian internationalism behind. The SKP wanted to stay in the world communist movement, but it would not take any directive as to whom to invite to congresses or which policies to adopt. This policy was quite consistent after the modernists took over in 1964: the party would not receive any funds from Moscow or sign any common document that would limit the party’s independence. Both the PCI and the Romanian communist party adopted similar policies as an attempt to reform the world communist movement from within. In this perspective, the new line of the SKP was hardly a ‘nationalisation’ of the party’s ideology. The party still explicitly belonged to the world communist movement, albeit to the more independent, reformist part. It would

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continue to send delegations to Eastern Europe and received other communist parties in Stockholm. The compromise proved quite effective, since it considered the loyalties of the traditionalists and the independence of the modernists alike, and was not (yet) a big issue of contention. The right-wing opposition found it too uncritical towards the Soviet Union as did the left-wing opposition, albeit for very different reasons. But in the party leadership, these were marginal voices.79 Hence, it was not necessary to reinvent internationalism from scratch – as with the excommunicated SF – but it was necessary to find a new role for the Swedish member of the international communist family. It was therefore only natural that the ideas of allargamento were put into practice by establishing bonds with SF, while still keeping formal contacts with the DKP. Nordic socialism was not an alternative to internationalism, but a pragmatic cooperation with like-minded parties in the spirit of allargamento. From February 1965, initiated by a public meeting in Copenhagen to discuss the question ‘Is There a Nordic Road to Socialism’, the links between SF and the SKP became ever more formalised. It was followed by several other formal and informal meetings between the SKP and the Danish and Norwegian SF. Almost in the style of the world communist movement, delegations – ‘Friends and Brothers in Arms’ – went to party congresses to congratulate the brother party on its successes. The cooperation showed that, even if the parry leaders agreed on many issues, they still carried the domestic political agenda with them: the Danes would discuss alternatives to the EEC, while the Swedes emphasised development of the far north. The approaches mirrored the differences between the two communist parties, where the DKP had a strong international emphasis against the USA and Germany, while the SKP was focused on domestic issues and national capitalism.

Welfare, Culture and Class – the Domestic Aspect The social and economic changes of the 1960s are in Scandinavia closely connected to the building of the welfare state. Moreover, the decade saw an accelerated process of modernisation in the form of rationalisation, urbanisation and commodification. Especially Denmark underwent a rapid transformation from an agricultural society to an economy dominated by the tertiary sector. While Sweden had a larger industrial heritage, the welfare state project here aimed at changing Sweden into a state at the forefront of modernity.81 This was accompanied by an unprecedented growth, which both raised the income of the employees and allowed the welfare state to expand its services in the form of increased security for the citizens. Whereas the communist parties had always, following Marx, connected the process of modernisation with proletarianisation and insecurity, the

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developments of the 1960s seemed to prove classical Marxism wrong. The workers were not impoverished, but on the contrary experienced an increasing standard of living. The average wage earner was now able to consume goods and enjoy a lifestyle that before had been limited to a small segment of the population. This challenge to the language inherited from communism demanded conceptual innovation. How could the relation between ‘above’ and ‘below’, and between people and class be conceptualised in this situation?

The Pros and Cons of Welfare For the left, as for any other political group, the concept of nation in Denmark and Sweden was intricately connected to the modernist project of the welfare state. When defining the national interest and the future of the country, the project was a hegemonic point of reference. Whether the issue was transition to socialism, creating a social and cultural party profile or defining the role of the intellectual in society, it was impossible to avoid the issues of the welfare state. The SF leadership took a pragmatic approach to the welfare state. There were only marginal discussions about whether the welfare state project meant sacrificing the long-term goal of a transition to socialism for small improvements here and now.82 In general, SF embraced the welfare state as a possibility for realistic improvements for the common man. Supporting reformist day-to-day policies was a way of shedding the sectarian communist image. In contrast to the DKP, SF would work in a pragmatic, realistic and constructive manner. Tellingly, the first party programme from 1960 ended with a paragraph entitled ‘These Policies are Possible.’83 There was a clear effort to shed the communist code language and keep an everyday, common-sense tone. Compared with the communist programme issued for the 1960 elections, SF’s was easily accessible, short and concrete in its demands. The DKP programme was clearly influenced by the theoretical obsession of the hard core. The reader had to go through twenty pages describing internationalism, democratic centralism and the workings of monopoly capitalism before a short list of concrete demands.84 On most issues, however, the two party programmes were strikingly alike. But where DKP systematically had been isolated by the social democrats and their proposals had been automatically rejected by parliament,85 the SF leadership hoped that shedding the communist fifth-column image would make it easier to push the welfare state project and the social democratic party itself in a more radical direction.86 Also, the welfare state could be seen as a special Nordic feature: the Nordic states were already a step closer to socialism than other countries. Connecting to the image of Norden as a model for the rest of the world, the Nordic welfare states built by a strong workers’ movement could facilitate the peaceful transition to socialism.87 The young New Left intellectuals were far more critical of the welfare state than the DKP generation. They were very sceptical about politics and culture in

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the ‘affluent society.’ In the cultural-radical tradition, consumerist society represented a new form of exploitation, where the growth in income was matched by new demands for consumption, artificially created by the advertising industry and ‘pop’ culture.88 As Poul Henningsen put it in a speech to communist students in 1957: ‘Cynically speaking, no damage is done to industry by reducing working hours and increasing wages, if only industry controls what the worker buys for his money. It can only gain this by controlling the entertainment and through that creating a mass man, who at all costs wants to buy the products that industry wants to sell.’89 Welfare society in the consumerist form was not a break with the repressive elements of capitalism, nor did it improve the lives of the individual citizen. On the contrary, in a society still governed by the need for profit, man was forced into a life of continuous search for new status symbols, always with a sense of dissatisfaction with his own life induced by advertisements creating ever more needs to be fulfilled. This horror vision of modern society was still in the making in Denmark, but could be seen in its full monstrosity in the USA. Typically, examples of this kind would be taken from works by American intellectuals like C. Wright Mills, who described America as an oligarchic society led by an unholy alliance of military, political and economic interests, and whose structures were beginning to resemble totalitarian mass society.90 By referring to these examples, America was described as the image of Denmark’s own future. In Sweden, much of the SKP debate on the welfare state followed the pattern from the 1950s. The mission of the communist party was to complete the welfare project that the social democrats had left unfinished. Monopoly capitalism had to be broken in order to attain the final goal of true democratic welfare for all Swedes. This continuity was possible due to the social democratic welfare programme of the early 1960s. At its 1961 congress, the national trade union federation, LO, articulated a policy of ‘solidary wages’, which meant that wages should be paid according to a national standard and not in proportion to the productivity of individual industries. Low-productivity industries would be forced to close down or move to more productive areas, thus fitting the wage policy of the trade unions to the economic policies of the social democratic government: safety and equality through flexibility and productivity.91 Here, the SKP stood as the representative of the losers of the solidary wage policy. It represented the shipbuilders in Gothenburg, whose wages were kept down by adhering to the national standard,92 but, more importantly, it was the traditional spokesman of the northern regions, where flexibility meant willingness to abandon the villages of the periphery and move southwards to more productive areas. Though the SKP was fully in line with the government when it came to policies of equality and state control, it refused flexibility as a means to attain this. Sweden was governed by monopoly capital with interests antagonistic to those of the people. Thus, the communists argued against centralisation and concentration of capital and for nationalisation and active

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structural policies in order to further industrialise the periphery. In this way, the SKP supported strong, centralised state control in order to break the influence of monopoly capital. There was a strong conviction that central, rational planning would be both fairer and more effective, as opposed to the irrational and unjust capitalist system. It was a typical communist refusal of the reformist class compromise, where the products of capitalism should be distributed through a strong state. For the SKP, the very logic of capitalist production was at the bottom of all of Sweden’s problems, and should be abolished all together – although always through ‘peaceful means according to the democratic Swedish traditions.’ Hence, the domestic political language of the SKP did not become obsolete with the changes of the 1960s, on the contrary, welfare state policies accentuated the tension between north and south, on which the party mobilised a large part of its support. Apart from the flexibility question, the domestic policies of the SKP mostly aimed at going one better than the social democrats: more and better housing, better wages and more equality. On these themes, the party echoed the main political concepts of the time; there was little innovation or opposition to the ideals of the welfare state as such, only opposition to the unbroken influence of monopoly capitalism. C.-H. Hermansson’s reforms changed little in this perspective – after all, he had been the ideological architect of the antimonopoly policies of the SKP. While the reforms reshaped the international perspective and the internal procedures of the party, the welfare policies remained largely intact throughout the decade. It has to be noted that the segment of cultural-radical intellectuals, whose Danish counterparts articulated much of the critique of the welfare state on the other side of the Sound, were integrated into Swedish social democracy, and hence had much less of an oppositional position to the welfare project. Indeed, some of the most prominent, like Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, had been among the architects of the people’s home, and did not voice a radical critique of the Swedish model. This type of critique came mainly from the margins of the leftwing opposition, which retained the ideal of uncompromising class struggle and scorned the welfare state for its cooperation with the ruling class.

Culture, Modernity, Alienation With the modernisation process of the 1960s, of which the welfare state project was only one element, appeared an increased debate on culture on the left. Both Denmark and Sweden were subject to larger, international changes in consumption, including consumption of culture; the ‘Cultural Revolution’ of the 1960s stirred old conceptualisations of high and low, national and foreign culture. Culture also came to play a part in the building of the welfare state. The Danish social democrats emphasised culture as a part of the welfare programme by establishing a ministry for cultural affairs in 1961, enlarging the possibilities for support for individual artists and creating better possibilities for the public

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to have access to culture.93 This was much less pronounced in Sweden, where the cultural aspects of the welfare project became politicised only in the 1970s.94 In both countries, however, the European phenomena of mass culture and commercial use of the arts (pop music, film etc.) provoked leftist intellectuals. Instead of the communist concept of liberation from economic oppression, the left began to focus on spiritual oppression as well. It was clear that the communist image of capitalism as the cause of mass poverty no longer corresponded to the situation of the increasingly affluent workers. Now, the leftist intellectuals began to criticise capitalism and affluence for its spiritual emptiness; instead of creating material poverty, capitalism created cultural and spiritual poverty through the commodification of culture. The reactions to the commodification of culture were alike in the two countries, although the debate was situated differently on the Danish and Swedish left respectively. In Denmark, the cultural radicals had more or less monopolised the culture debate. They could reach back to the traditions of the 1930s, where culture had been defined as a major battleground against fascism and against the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality. ‘Culture is a weapon’ (kultur er et våben) and ‘culture struggle’ (kulturkamp) were the main slogans of that time. Now, the same themes were taken up again under the headline ‘the culture debate’ (kulturdebatten). One specific aim of this criticism was the commodification of culture that followed the rising material comfort of the 1960s. Commercial culture, referred to as ‘pop’, was not emancipating or thought-provoking; on the contrary it reduced people to a state of stupidity, even further removed from realising their place and potential in society. Pop was alienating while true culture was enlightening. An important form was the political revue, a genre that Poul Henningsen had mastered from the interwar period. Now a new generation took it up in a number of plays and revues that sought to expose the falseness of pop and how the capitalists in cooperation with the entertainment industry controlled the system. These plays were quite well received and staged at big theatres, Teenagerlove by Ernst Bruun Olsen even at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. Here, the unholy alliance between the capitalist class and the entertainment industry was revealed, as the entertainer Billy explains as he allies himself with capital: The angry common man is a naughty boy who needs something to occupy himself! And we must see to it that he occupies himself with something unimportant! Otherwise the common man will be a dangerous man! This is why we have to rationalise stupidity!95

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Behind the cultural-radical project lay a notion that real culture had to be brought ‘down’ to the people. It presented quite an explicit elitism, in the sense that the providers of culture knew what real culture was and had the obligation to ‘enlighten’ the masses and deliver them from their own bad taste. People in general were notoriously conservative and had to be led by the intellectuals, who could show them alternatives to the shallow offers of popular or commercial culture.96 Thus, the intellectuals defined themselves as separate from the people. They were not at the core of the nation, but above and in front of it, the avantgarde who lead the nation forward to true progress. They represented universal moral values and a rational way of thinking that gave them a special position in society, as the ones who could educate the masses. Some of the reasons for the cultural misery of consumer society lay within capitalism itself. As long as the capitalist system prevailed, the common man would be unable to recognise his true interest and potential. The whole system had to be exchanged with a socialism that ‘makes man capable of controlling the material foundation of his life, that would no longer need to be dependent on irresponsible and anonymous forces, those of production and market. A society where production is not for profit, where people cooperate to cover their social and human needs, to create equal conditions and thus laying the foundations for cultural progress.’97 For the younger generation of the New Left, this was often connected to a Marxist language of alienation. The writings of the young Marx had only recently been translated, and leftist intellectuals in both Denmark and Sweden took to heart the less economic, more humanist thoughts in the pre-Kapital critique of capitalism. Here, Marx and Engels particularly focused on the division of labour and its existential consequences in terms of alienation. Man is constrained by forces obscure to himself to stay in one function within capitalist production, alienated from the rest of society and left without any connection between his own existence and the system at large.98 As it was formulated in SF’s programme of principles in 1963; ‘When Man only knows about and performs one limited part of the complete process of production, he becomes a tool and is cut off from developing his personality through work. It becomes meaningless, only a means to earn money.’99 The vision of socialism of the early 1960s was connected to a belief in rationality; by abolishing the implicit irrationality of capitalism and bourgeois society, emancipation was possible. Control and rationality – as opposed to capitalist alienation – were the key words, concepts that would free man from artificial needs and create true happiness. Culture was a rational means to attain this end, just as technology, science and medicine were means to liberate man.100 There was a tension in this critique between the commitment to progress and the uneasiness with which the concrete changes were received. The Danish cultural radicals were quite explicit about this. Dystopian images of capitalist culture were mixed with a passionate commitment to progress, although in a

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very specific form. To the cultural radicals, the idea of time seems extremely twodimensional, divided between progress and reaction. Time was thus linked to politics in the sense that future (or even present) was synonymous with modernity as defined by the cultural radicals: abolition of traditions, functionality, rationality and abandonment of bourgeois ‘hypocritical morals.’ The consumer society and pop culture did not live up to these ideals; they were signs of an irrational society where profit mattered more than the freedom and happiness of the people. Hence, this version of modernity was false, reactionary and out of place in true modern society; it was ‘falsely contemporary.’101 So the intellectuals were often fighting against the concrete present, or the ‘oldfashioned future’, for their own, abstract vision of modernity. In this way, the cultural radicals were more often than not sceptical about new cultural developments, to the point of implicit de facto conservatism and explicit elitism. The large, even hegemonic, role of the cultural radicals in Denmark gave the debate a more prominent role than in Sweden, where the field was dominated by the much more socially oriented SKP. The critique of commodified mass culture was most prominent in the marginal, New Left Zenit and in the communist student organisation Clarté, while the SKP itself concentrated on structural questions of the welfare state. Clarté explicitly saw itself as the Swedish continuation of the cultural radical tradition,102 but the content of the concept in Swedish had neither the same heritage nor the same meaning as in Danish. Rather than referring to a specific group of intellectuals with a common project, the Swedish notion was one of a certain liberal and socialist attitude.103 Hence, though Zenit and Clarté presented the same forms of critique of cultural developments as in Denmark, they were both politically and conceptually in a more marginal position than their Danish counterparts. Within these groups, however, the critique was quite similar to that in Denmark. Here also, modernity was ‘corrupted’, but, in contrast to the Danish critique, the enemy was not bourgeois morals, but the immorality of capitalism. The particular Swedish puritanism enhanced the conservative traits: modernity was unclean and commercial culture corrupting. As in the rhetoric on China, the ideals of Swedish revivalism and its traditional critique of modernity thus survived in indirect forms on the left. Although politically opposed, the two critiques worked in the same framework of a corrupted present that must be ‘cleansed’ by those who have seen the light. Sweden could choose between a ‘Western’, decadent culture, and a real, authentic, pure culture. This theme would be much more prominent in the 1970s, but was already present in the early 1960s.

Class and People With the renewal of communism, the language of class came into focus as an ideological category. Again, the ideological innovation was much more prominent on the Danish left, which was beginning from scratch after the break with communism. For Marx, and in Soviet communism, the agent of change

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was without question the working class: the working class was the backbone of the nation, and – with the communist party as its natural leader – was to lead the people in the struggle for socialism. Within the party, this had been a common view of both reformers and hard core, and in the early publications of SF the workerist tone prevailed: following the DKP vision, the party should build on the ‘working people’ in alliance with ‘all democratic and socialist forces.’104 The language was already softened at the official founding meeting of the party in February 1959. In the draft for the official statement of the meeting ‘the workers’ or ‘the working class’ was in many instances replaced with ‘the people’, ‘the population’ or – a phrase that was to be a favourite in the party’s rhetoric – ‘the people’s majority.’105 In May 1959, Mogens Fog explained the phrase ‘People’s Party’: Why ’People’s Party‘? Why does the party not call itself a ’workers’ party’? Because socialist policies must build on a broader foundation than the working class … The working class goes in front in the battle for progress, but it is and will remain a minority in the population. However, a majority in the population lives under conditions that bind its interest firmly to that of the workers: public servants, whitecollar workers, intellectual workers, in other words the majority including the workers, who receive wages but have no property… It is not possible to declare that socialism has to be reached with the consent of the people’s majority, and then appeal only to the working class.106 Strategically, this proved to be a wise move. Though the workers formed the largest social group in the party, it was only the majority of the members during the first years of the 1960s, when the share of white-collar workers rose – as it did in society as a whole.107 The softening of the workerist language also helped to keep the alliance with the intellectual left. The atmosphere within the DKP had often been openly hostile to intellectuals, who had no experience in the class struggle and hence were unreliable allies of the working class.108 SF, on the contrary, put great weight on the importance of intellectuals (although not nearly as much importance as they ascribed to themselves). The party weekly welcomed articles by intellectuals, usually the cultural radicals. It prided itself of the fact that it made no difference between the ‘workers of the hand’ and ‘workers of the mind’ and emphasised that both groups were necessary for the transition to socialism.109 Indeed, the party soon gained the reputation as the organisation for leftist intellectuals and became a common point of reference for the intellectual establishment.110 This was a qualitative step away from communism. It meant a definite break with key concepts of orthodox Marxism and, in the long term, gave the party a flexibility to meet the structural changes

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with the rise of the tertiary sector in the decades to come. Also, it shows the realism and flexibility of the early SF: even though Marxist theory put the industrial working class at the centre of the revolution, this was not applicable to the Danish circumstances. Although the workers in manufacturing industry made up about 30 per cent of the workforce, this figure did not rise during the 1960s; in contrast, administration and services were growing steadily.111 Given the choice between ideological orthodoxy and pragmatic realism, SF was ready to abandon the first for the second. For the SKP, the class issue was less important. Though the public and service sector grew significantly in the 1960s, the blue-collar workers still made up more than a third of the workforce (about 5 per cent more than in Denmark),112 and their employment in heavy industry, forestry and mining enhanced the traditional working-class image. Moreover, the social democrats themselves had not found it necessary to change their official name SAP (Socialdemokratiska Arbetarpartiet), the Social Democratic Workers’ Party, and yet they presented a broad, popular programme that went beyond narrow classbased policies.113 Within the communist party itself, there was no debate to shed the working-class image. Its main constituencies remained northern miners and other blue-collar groups, and there was little incentive to focus on a more inclusive formula for the party’s basis. Even Tidsignal, which the traditionalists scorned as petty bourgeois, in part wrote about social problems and the struggles of the little man against the monopolies – unlike the Danish Politisk Revy, which was a truly intellectual and cultural magazine. Generally, however, the question of class was by far overshadowed by the issue of the Third World; the internal class divisions in Sweden had to be seen in relation to the real, global problems: ‘The problems that here rise like giants over the Earth are already on the way to turn our internal problems into mere episodes on the pages of history.’114 Where the Danes were struggling with the innovation of a New Left, the Swedes could often fall back on older conceptual patterns and issues – if they did not make it a part of the great conflict between North and South.

Notes 1. 2.

3.

J.K. Galbraith. 1977. The Affluent Society, London: Deutsch. For examples of this trend see L. Chun. 1993. The British New left, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Josefsson, Året var 1968, pp. 25–63, P. Anderson. 1976. Considerations on Western Marxism, London: New left Books, R. Eyerman and A. Jamison. 1994. Seeds of the Sixties, Berkeley: University of California Press. M. Bracke. 2002. ‘Proletarian Internationalism, Autonomy and Polycentrism’, in M. Bracke and T.E. Jørgensen, West European Communism after Stalinism, Fiesole: EUI Working Paper, HEC 2002/4, pp. 11–26.

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

Kragh, Opbrud på venstrefløjen 1956–1960, p. 57. Jørgensen, ‘Split or Reform?, pp. 47–58. Jacobsen, Aksel Larsen, pp. 205–6. A. Larsen. 1958. Den levende vej. Taler og artikler 1956 1957 1958, Copenhagen: Aksel Larsen, p. 8. Jacobsen, Aksel Larsen, pp. 572–73. Kragh, Folkesocialisme, p. 46. Frit Danmark, 8/1956, p. 1. Thing, Kommunismens kultur, p. 829. Despite the immense importance of cultural radicalism in the Danish political and cultural scene, there is surprisingly little literature on the phenomenon. The existing works are mainly written by cultural radicals themselves such as K. Rifbjerg et al. (eds). 2001. Den kulturradikale udfordring, Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter, P. Hammerich. 1986. Lysmageren. En krønike om Poul Henningsen, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, and M.B. Andersen et al. 1985. Velfærdsstat og kulturkritik. Gyldendals litteraturhistorie 8, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, maybe with the exception of B. Nodin (ed.). 1993. Kulturradikalismen. Det moderna genembrottets andra fas, Stockholm: Symposion, which mentions the Danish movement superficially. See A. Bengtsson. 1999. Radikal, radikalere, radikalest. 60–talsradikaliseringen och den syndikalistiska rörelsen, Huddinge: unpublished manuscript. A. Alsterdal. 1963. Den nya vänstern, Stockholm: Tiden, p. 155 – the book is quite polemical in its attempts to reduce the importance of the New left, however it is striking that Alsterdal can allow himself to ignore the main exponent of an independent left. G. Therborn (ed.). 1966. En ny vänster, Stockholm: Rabén och Sjögren, for examples of use as a source for New left thought, see Hermansson, Kommunism på svenska?, p. 214, C. Arvidsson. 1999. Ett annat land. Sverige och det långa 70–talet, Stockholm: Timbro, p. 62. Originally, Kent Lindkvist identified five groups in the party by viewing modernists and the New left separately, Lindkvist, Program och parti, pp. 62–73, usually, however, the ‘modernists’ and the ‘New left’ are seen as one group, see Hermansson, Kommunism på svenska?, pp. 214–221 and E. Tängerstad. 1988. Att organisera ett engagement. Om tillkomsten av den svenska FNL-rörelsen, Stockholm: unpublished manuscript, pp. 11–12. Tängerstad, Att organisera ett engagement, p. 18. Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti/Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna. 1967. Samling vänster i svensk politik, Stockholm: Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna. See R. Tiersky. 1985. Ordinary Stalinism. Democratic Centralism and the Question of Communist Political Development, Winchester: Allen & Unwin. Larsen, Den levende vej, p. 10. Kragh, Opbrud på venstrefløjen 1956–1960, p. 61. SF, 6/11 1959, p. 4. Jensen, Bjørnen og haren, pp. 589–90. B. Ehn et al. 1993. Försvenskningen av Sverige. Det nationellas förvandlingar, Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, p. 44, B. Stråth and O. Sørensen (eds). 1997. The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, p. 26. Stråth, Folkhemmet mot Europa, pp. 217–23.

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26. see Salomon, Rebeller i takt med tiden, p. 295. 27. see M.a. Malmborg. 1994. Den standaktiga nationalstaten Sverige och den västeuropeiska integrationen 1945–1959, Lund: Lund University Press, p. 387. 28. SF 6/1 1961, pp. 8–9. 29. Ibid. 30. Dialog 7/1959, p. 2. 31. T. Gitlin. 1989. The Sixties. Years of Hope, Days of Rage, New York: Bantam, pp. 23–24. 32. S. Pedersen. 2000. Kampen for fred. Den liberale fredsbevægelse i Danmark 1919–1960, Copenhagen: unpublished MA Thesis, p. 98. 33. SF, 1/4 1960, p. 9. 34. Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism, pp. 32–33. 35. B.R. Anderson. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London and New York: Blackwell, p. 6. 36. A. Edman. 2004. ‘Herrgårdslandet’, in H. Arvidsson et al. (eds), Hotad idyll, Lund: Nordic Academic Press. 37. B. Stråth. 2000. ‘Poverty, Neutrality and Welfare: Three Concepts in the Modern Foundation Myth of Sweden’, in B. Stråth (ed.), Myth and Memory in the Construction of Europe, Brussels: Peter Lang, pp. 394–97; A.W. Johansson and T. Norman. 1988. ‘Sveriges säkerhet och världens fred. Socialdemokratin och utrikespolitiken’, in K. Misgeld et al. (eds), Socialdemokratins samhälle, Stockholm: Tiden, pp. 275–79. 38. Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti, Sveriges väg till socialismen, p. 5. 39. Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti. 1966. Program 66, Stockholm: Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti, p. 6. 40. Zenit, 1/1963, p. 3. 41. Nils Holmberg published his program of opposition in N. Holmberg. 1965. Vart går Sveriges kommunistiska parti?, Gothenburg: Danelius. 42. C. Skoglund. 1991. Vita mössor under röda fanor. Vänsterstudenter, kulturradikalism och bildingsideal I Sverige 1880–1940, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. 43. The Maoist takeover is described in detail in Tängerstad, Att organisera ett engagement, pp. 12–18. 44. Clarté, no. 5–6, 1966, p. 12. 45. Salomon, Rebeller i takt med tiden, p. 246. 46. Quoted ibid., p. 247. 47. Ord och Bild, no. 5, 1966, p. 467. 48. F. Fanon. 2002. Les damnés de la terre, Paris: La Découverte. 49. About the reception of Fanon, see E. Tängerstad. 2000. ‘”The Third World” as an Element in the Collective Construction of a Post-colonial European Identity’, in B. Stråth (ed.), Europe and the Other and Europe as the Other, Brussels: Peter Lang, pp. 176–188 and E. Tängerstad. 2002. Vi i tredje världen, unpublished manuscript. 50. C.-H. Hermansson. 1965. Vänsterns väg, Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, p. 30. 51. Ibid., p. 47. 52. The Scandinavian word ‘Norden’ instead of ‘the Nordic countries’ is used to refer to an abstract idea about a common Nordic entity, see Stråth and Sørensen, The Cultural Construction of Norden. 53. SF 4/8 1960, pp. 1 and 6.

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54. Though feelings were expressed more moderately elsewhere, it has to be noticed that no-one in the political system liked the thought of military cooperation with Germany and that the joint command in the end was only achieved by heavy pressure from NATO headquarters. The negotiations are described in detail in P. Villaume. 1997. Allieret med forbehold, Copenhagen: Eirene, pp. 236–70. 55. SF 5/10 1962, p. 14. 56. SF, 16/6 1964, p. 6. 57. Frit Danmark, no. 1, 1962, p. 2. 58. Stråth, Folkhemmet mot Europa, pp. 198–205. 59. Clarté, no. 1, 1963, p. 22. 60. Stråth, Folkhemmet mot Europa, p. 219. 61. Ibid., pp. 212–14. 62. J. Myrdal. 1964. Samtida bekännelser av en europeisk intellektuell, Stockholm: Norstedt, p. 134. 63. Ord och Bild, no. 7, 1966, p. 410. 64. Myrdal, Samtida bekännelser av en europeisk intellektuell, p. 153. 65. Ibid. pp. 71 and 83. 66. Ibid., p. 31. 67. Fanon, Les damnés de la terre, pp. 42–48. 68. V. Sørensen. 1995. ‘Nordic Cooperation – a Social Democratic Alternative to Europe?’, in T.B. Olesen (ed.), Interdependece versus Integration, Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag. 69. SF, 1/12 1961, p. 5. 70. SF 20/10 1961, pp. 7–10. 71. SF 2/2 1962, p. 16. 72. Kragh, Opbrud på venstrefløjen 1956–1960, p. 59. 73. Quoted in Nordentoft and Rasmussen, Kampagnen mod Atomvåben og Vietnambevægelsen 1960–1972, p. 46. 74. SF 8/12 1961, p. 15. 75. Bracke, ‘Proletarian Internationalism, Autonomy and Polycentrism’, p. 26. 76. Jørgensen, ‘Split or Reform?’, p. 67. 77. Ibid. 78. Tidsignal, no. 7, 1966, p. 14. 79. For a detailed description of the internal policies of the SKP see Jørgensen, ‘Split or Reform? ’, pp. 59–72. 80. SF-Bladet 28/10 1965, pp. 6–7. 81. K. Almqvist and K. Glans (eds). 2001. Den svenska framtidssagan?, Stockholm: Fischer. 82. This argument was put forward in G. Petersen. 1960. Vejen til socialisme i Danmark, Copenhagen: SF. 83. The programme is printed in Kragh, Opbrud på venstrefløjen 1956–1960, pp. 193–201. 84. Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti. 1960. Hvad det er – hvad det vil: kommunisternes program, Copenhagen: DKP. 85. K. Petersen. 1998. Legitimität und Krise. Die politische Geschichte des dänischen Wohlfahrtsstaates 1945–1973, Berlin: Berlin Verlag, pp. 124–26. 86. Kragh, Opbrud på venstrefløjen 1956–1960, p. 115.

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87. This view was explicitly put forward by Aksel Larsen at the meeting between him and C.-H. Hermansson in February 1965: ARAB, Archive of SKP/VPK, volume F 7a:1, ‘Nordisk Konferens Protokoll 1965’, ’Aksel Larsens tale på det skandinaviske møde i København’, p. 2. 88. See also P. Madsen. 2001. ‘Kulturradikalismen og velfærdssamfundet’, in K. Rifbjerg et al. (eds), Den kulturradikale udfordring, Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter. 89. P. Henningsen. 1994. På hundredeåret. Tekster 1918–1967, Copenhagen: Hans Reitzel, p. 152. 90. C.W. Mills. 1956. The Power Elite, New York: Oxford University Press. 91. Stråth, Mellan två fonder, pp. 70–78. 92. B. Stråth. 1982. Varvsarbetare i två varvsstäder, Gothenburg: Svenska Varv. 93. Petersen, Legitimität und Krise, pp. 244–47. 94. Statens Kulturråd and Statistiska Centralbyrån. 1981. Kulturstatistik. Verksamhet, ekonomi, kulturvanor 1960–1979, Stockholm: Statens Kulturråd and Statistiska Centralbyrån, p. 9. 95. E.B. Olsen. 1966. Teenagerlove, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, p. 55. 96. Henningsen, På hundredeåret, p. 158. 97. Dialog, no. 4, 1961, p. 42. 98. K. Marx and F. Engels. 1969. ‘Die Deutsche Ideologie’, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Marx Engels Werke, 3, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, pp. 33–34. 99. Socialistisk Folkeparti. 1967. Principprogram for Socialistisk Folkeparti, Copenhagen: SF, p. 3. 100. Studentersamfundet. 1963. Kulturdebatten 1961–62, Copenhagen: Studentersamfundets skrifter, p. 63. 101. Henningsen, På hundredeåret, p. 173. 102. Clarté, no. 4, 1956, p. 2. 103. C. Skoglund. 1993. ‘Kulturradikalismen: arvet och förnyelsen’, in B. Nodin (ed.), Kulturradikalismen. Det moderna genembrottets andra fas, Stockholm: Symposion, p. 106. 104. Quoted in Kragh, Opbrud på venstrefløjen 1956–1960, pp. 181–82. 105. Ibid., p. 61. SF did not invent this phrase. It had been used by the DKP in the 1950s as well, however, SF re-emphasised it and gave it a central position. 106. Quoted in Kragh, Folkesocialisme, pp. 84–85. Privately as well, Fog criticised Aksel Larsen for calling the new party a ‘workers’ party’: Thing, Kommunismens kultur, p. 896. 107. Kragh, Mellem socialismens velsignelser og praktikable fremskridt: SF 1960–68, p. 253. 108. This explicit distrust had been there at least since the ‘Lynsenko’-debate in the late 1940s: Thing, Kommunismens kultur, pp. 831–6. 109. SF, 12/6 1958, p. 2. 110. Madsen, ‘Kulturradikalismen og velfærdssamfundet’, pp. 322–25. 111. S.A. Hansen and I. Henriksen. 1980. Velfærdsstaten 1940–78. Dansk Socialhistorie 7, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, p. 121. Also, there was relatively little blue-collar tradition and identity in Denmark: ibid., p. 137. 112. Statitiska Centralbyrån. 1969. Historisk statistik för Sverige, Stockholm: Statistiska Centralbyrån, p. 83. 113. L.C. Trägårdh. 1999. The concept of the people and the construction of popular political culture in Germany and Sweden, 1848–1933, Ann Arbor: PhD. Dissertation, p. 244. 114. Zenit, no. 4, 1960, p. 3.

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Chapter 3

Contesting Pragmatism

The Late 1960s and the Radical Youth By the mid-1960s, the creation of a new language of the left had prevailed. Those who had proposed to reinvent the concepts of communism, the SF and the modernists, held hegemony over the left. However, this hegemony was soon to be challenged by a new generation, who actively contested the eclectic and pragmatic elements of the renewal. At this time, the baby boomers had come of age. The big generation born in the 1940s now entered adult – or semi-adult – society filling the expanding educational systems and providing the market with a large and fairly affluent group of consumers. Cultural phenomena such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones became signals of a new and distinctively young lifestyle. Against the background of an ageing political elite and the lifestyle of the parents’ generation, the baby boomers appeared not only to have a different aesthetic taste, but also a completely different conception of society and their role in it. They had grown up in a world so politically and technically different from that of the pre-war years that their experience seemed almost incompatible with that of prior generations.1 Contemporaries used the term ‘generation gap’ to describe this mismatch between the world views of the old and the young. Within the left itself, this generation gap became ever more visible in the second half of the decade. As in the rest of society, the political elite consisted of men who had had their formative experience in the interwar period. As described in the previous chapter, the Comintern heritage still played a role in their conception of the world, as did the view of international politics shaped by the foreplay to the great deluge of the Second World War. In Denmark, the SF top consisted of veterans from the resistance and from the communist movement of the 1930s. This was also the case in the SKP/VPK, where C.-H. Hermansson (born 1917) might have been younger than the traditionalists, but was certainly from a very different generation from that of the baby boomers. These leaders faced a largely young membership who had no recollection of the Second World War, nor had they experienced the hardships of the great depression. Their worries about the state of the world derived from formative experiences such as the cold war, the liberation wars and the CND. To this generation, the realist, compromise-seeking policies of the established New Left

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seemed unsatisfactory in their inability to pose a real alternative to capitalism. The young generation explicitly wanted theoretical guidelines leading to radical changes, not common-sense reformism. In this light, the Comintern tradition, against which the pragmatism had been painfully established, again became attractive, together with left-socialist or critical theories offering a comprehensive, radical analysis of capitalism. This development on the left is usually described under the term ‘radicalisation.’ However, the concept itself is often defined rather vaguely. Either it is implicitly used as a synonym for dogmatism and extremism, which corresponds to the everyday use of the word, or it is connected to a particular political agenda, like Kjell Östberg’s definition: ‘[Radicalism] is about leftist movements working for social equality and extensive democratic rights.’2 This sort of definition has more of a describing function, inductively labelling some of the concrete agendas as ‘radicalism.’ Though the concept of radicalism was indeed originally connected with the left, this political usage has been largely outdated since the appearance of right-wing radicalism in the 1920s.3 As such, it makes little sense to apply the term to the political goals of either the right or the left. Hence, as an analytical concept, this definition has little value. Moreover, ‘radicalisation’ understood as the above agenda of equality and democracy, does not fit empirically with the developments of the late 1960s. The radical groups of the period can only with difficulty be described as democratic or egalitarian. Rather, radicalism in the following will refer to a specific way of reasoning, which aims at explaining phenomena by referring to ultimate reasons, the ‘root’ (in Latin radix) of the problem. Instead of looking at problems as separate entities, radical arguments would put them into a system with common characteristics and hence link them to the same underlying systemic dysfunction. Such radicalism challenges any partial or step-by-step solutions to problems and demands a once-and-for-all removal of the systemic causes: ‘cure the disease rather than treating the symptoms’ is a typical radical metaphor. In the same way, radicalism ultimately denies ‘special solutions’ or ‘particular circumstances’ as valid arguments, since these are inferior to general ‘laws’ and common causalities. The following chapter will deal with this contestation of pragmatism by focusing on the radicalisation of the left in the late 1960s. This radicalisation developed in relation to the global contestation between North and South, as well as being a reaction against the realism and compromises of the New Left of the early 1960s. It was an attempt to articulate a comprehensive explanation for both the wars in the Third World, particularly in Vietnam, and the European wave of protests around 1968. In contrast to the New Left’s attempts in the early 1960s to adapt dynamically to a changing context, the left of the decade’s last half sought to articulate systemic explanations of the fundamental nature of capitalism. Hence they were more inclined to incorporate experiences into general theories in a

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deductive manner than inductively to take the point of departure in the experiences themselves. Whereas the early New Left had interpreted their role as one of working for socialism in the specific context of the distinct traits of a particular nation, the new generation wanted to go beyond this national exceptionalism and work from a general, global point of departure. The consequences of radicalisation for the concept of nation were first and foremost the embedding of the nation in a global capitalist system: From the theories of imperialism, where Denmark and Sweden formed parts of a global system of oppression, to the challenge to the exceptionalist view of the nation as more democratic and less capitalist than its neighbours. The events of 1968 also meant the embedding of the nation in an international wave of conflicts in a more direct way than before.

The Global Contestation. Vietnam, America and the World Revolution By the mid-1960s, the euphoria of decolonisation had disappeared. After Congo, and certainly after Vietnam, no one argued that independence alone would create justice for the South. Instead, it seemed clear that the South would remain dependent on the North, unless some dramatic change were to take place in the world system. In this context, the South was still the scene for the global changes, and the Southern peoples the agent of change. However, this presentation of the battle between North and South took distinct forms, depending on the perspective. Sometimes the Third World was described as the victim of overwhelming and brutal oppression; sometimes it was portrayed as the victorious guerrilla that would inevitably bury the imperialist world, and sometimes again the struggle of the liberation movements abroad would mirror the struggles against capitalism at home. For the global perspective of the left in the mid-1960s, the view of the nation was highly dependent on this worldwide contestation. The all-overshadowing conflict was the Vietnam war. With the escalation of the American engagement from early 1965, Vietnam went from just another Third World conflict to the main stage of the world revolution.

Vietnam in Denmark: from Moral Indignation to Revolutionary Consciousness In Denmark, the war was from the beginning portrayed in the victim–perpetrator dichotomy, which had arisen out of the Congo experience. The struggle of the Vietnamese people was a desperate fight against the overwhelming power of the American war machine. The veterans of the CND used the language of moral indignation, common sense and appeals to civil courage that had served the New Left well in the first half of the decade. One

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hallmark of this tradition was to give objective information to the broad public. In this spirit, many of the early reports on Vietnam aimed at informing about US atrocities and showing the consequences for the Vietnamese civil population. Internationally, the most prominent exponent of this was the Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal, with testimonies from both civilians and veterans who talked about the American brutality. The tribunal itself consisted of internationally acknowledged intellectuals, first and foremost the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who stood behind the initiative. The first session was held in Stockholm in May 1967 and the second in Roskilde, close to Copenhagen, in December the same year. The reports from the Russell Tribunal were marked by a distanced moral condemnation of the war, but rather void of any explicit political analysis. The final verdict of the council, passed in Roskilde, in a brief and concrete statement found the USA and its Asian allies guilty of aggression and atrocities as defined by international law.4 There was, however, no comment made about the causes of the conflict in relation to North and South, capitalism and socialism. This fitted the broad appeal of the CND’s neutrality, where the causes of the cold war had been left aside, and focus put on the horrors of the bomb. It also continued the moralist, common-sense rhetoric of the early New Left, which shunned the lofty analyses associated with Stalinism and the Comintern tradition. Thus, the old generation of New Leftists continued to use the same language and the same explanations that they had become comfortable with since their departure from communism. In the first big SF-organised demonstration against the Vietnam war on 9 April 1965, twenty five years after the German occupation of Denmark, the image of the war became incorporated in the anti-German and patriotic language typical of the SF leadership: ‘On 9 April this year it is 25 years ago that the Danish people learnt for itself what foreign occupation and terror mean. On this anniversary SF call on to the population of the capital to demonstrate against the war and terror in Vietnam, for an active Danish contribution for peace and freedom in South-East Asia’.5 Once again, Denmark stood for the moral, peaceful contribution for the sake of world peace. The old SF members also had difficulties in ridding themselves of the image of Germany as the main threat, to the point where SF-Bladet (the former SF ) would speculate on secret German involvement in Vietnam.6 The younger group, however, were getting tired of the constant fear of an aggressive Germany. There was little reason to believe that Germany would rise to become an independent military power, or that NATO would be the tool of German revanchism. Indeed, Europe had been partitioned by the superpowers, with each their bloc of faithful allies; the real contestation was now happening in the South. Both the old and young generation, however, approached the war in the same way to begin with. It was a question of bringing objective information about the atrocities to counter the image of the war as a defence against

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communist aggression. It was not a war of the free West against Soviet infiltration, but a brutal intervention by America in a local conflict. One of the demands was that Denmark, as an ally, should raise her voice against the war. Again, this pattern had been established earlier by the CND, which worked through information aimed at changing public opinion and thus influencing government policies. Slowly, and almost exclusively in the circles around Politisk Revy, the pure, objective information gave way to more explanatory analyses. The magazine Politisk Revy, founded in 1963, soon became the main forum of leftist debate, mostly as an organ of cultural radicalism, but also important for the internal debate in SF. As opposed to SF-Bladet, it was free of the control of the party, and functioned as a platform for the younger generation. The explanations here went to a systemic level, rather than focusing on the particular Vietnamese situation. Writers who had been following the situation in the Third World began to ask for deeper causes to the large number of conflicts in the South. Ellen Brun, who wrote on Third World issues for Politisk Revy, was one of the first to present this kind of explanation. In an article entitled ‘The Lebensraum of Capitalism’ (‘Kapitalismens Lebensraum’) from 1965, she put the war into the perspective of global, capitalist exploitation. After the dismantling of the colonial empires, the new independent states had remained ‘the extension of the economies of the industrialised world’, with the result that poverty and hunger had spread, while the promised progress had never materialised. Indeed, ‘the motor of history is today hunger, poverty and disease’, and it was this inequality that lay behind the conflicts in the Third World. As the masses of the South were rising against exploitation, the North used its military might to keep the countries bound to the capitalist system. Should the South choose socialism over capitalism, the North would be deprived of its cheap raw materials. Just as the capitalists needed the proletariat, the North needed the South; it was class struggle on a global level: ‘The USA wages a war with all means in Vietnam, first and foremost out of fear that the riches of the poor countries will escape their dominance, first in Vietnam and then all over the “Third World”, because without this “Lebensraum”, the system of the “free world” will not survive.’7 The argument was a qualitative new one from the earlier years. SF had rarely argued in terms of economic systems, maybe out of fear of falling back into the abstract analyses (‘skrivebordsanalyser’) of the DKP. Moreover the excommunists in SF often recurred to arguments of military strategy in their explanations of international politics. This was partly due to their fixation on German revanchism, but was also understandable in the light of the cold war, American strategies of encirclement and the arms race. As this geostrategic chess game of the cold war receded into the background after the Cuban missile crisis, economic interests became an obvious factor of explanation. The confrontation between the superpowers had reached a stalemate, and, as an eventual confrontation increasingly seemed to be fought

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with intercontinental nuclear missiles and from nuclear submarines, geographical domination was less important than in the first phase of the cold war. Hence, controlling Vietnam did not give any obvious geostrategic advantage comparable to the resources that the USA used to protect the Saigon regime. For this reason, economic, world-system explanations presented themselves as alternative perspectives. The major shift, however, was not from military to economic explanations, but from particularistic reasoning to systemic analysis. The common-sense argumentation and pragmatism of SF was increasingly challenged by a more radical way of thinking, which aimed at the root of the problems rather than looking for concrete small steps. The Vietnam war undoubtedly played a major role in this shift, but as we shall see below, it pointed at a more profound generation gap on the left. The discrepancy between the two views, moral objectivism and systemic analysis, soon became a major issue of debate within the anti-war movement. While the established parties and parts of the CND veterans supported ‘neutral’ moral indignation on a broad political basis, the less organised milieu of young New Leftists preferred to see the protests as resistance to capitalism as such. In time this led to an organisational split between the two wings of the movement, the one that protested on a humanitarian basis and the one that aimed at an articulated political protest. While the neutral protest undoubtedly had the broadest appeal, it was the radical view that came to dominate what is here defined as the left.8 For the left, the wars in the Third World were seen as the first step in a global revolution. Especially Cuba and the rhetoric of Castro and Che Guevara fuelled this optimistic view of the coming downfall of the capitalist system. Certainly, the present situation looked bleak, but the worse the better, since the suffering of the exploited people was the seed of revolution: The pessimists, who predict hunger, study statistics and see the social balance of power in the developing countries as statistics. The revolutionaries, in contrast, study the people; this is why the time to come is not for hunger, but a time for revolution.9 As is clear from the quotations, the systemic perspective was accompanied by a radicalisation of the language. ‘Revolution’, which had been a taboo word for the early SF, entered the vocabulary once again. With the liberation wars, the term no longer meant entering the Eastern bloc, but attained more emancipatory connotations. After the early experiences of post-colonial oppression in Congo and the military coups in South America, it was deemed naive to believe in liberation by peaceful reform. Revolution was the only hope for the South to break with the capitalist system, by which it had been exploited for centuries. Hence, defining oneself as revolutionary signalled solidarity with the ‘wretched of the earth.’ The return of ‘revolution’ as a positive concept on the left only reaccentuated the old question of the agent of change: who were the true revolutionaries? With the Vietnam war as the all-overshadowing theme in the

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mid-1960s, this role was given exclusively to the South. Vietnam Solidaritet, the organ for the radical Vietnam Movement in Denmark, went as far as turning the concepts ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ upside down: They [the Third World] have changed, or are changing, their societies in a way more profound than changes in the West. I mean of course change through revolution. I am thinking about countries like Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Algeria and the liberated zones in Guinea. These countries have freed themselves from dominant classes, they have freed themselves from oppression, they have freed themselves from exploitation. They have made it possible to live in a humane way, and only this can be called development. We should call the revolutionary countries DEVELOPED COUNTRIES and the Western societies, which are still based on class and exploitation, UNDERDEVELOPED.10 This quite well shows the inferior role that Denmark was given in the great, global upheaval. Denmark’s position within this system seemed quite unclear, however. Sometimes the system was described primarily as US imperialism. In this case, American capital was also a threat to Denmark, and the country could soon share Vietnam’s fate. This view was particularly strong after the military coup in Greece (see below). Imperialism should hence be fought globally, also in Denmark: ‘American capital owns large parts of the industry in our land as well – American imperialism also exists here. One of the best ways to support the liberation of Vietnam is to fight imperialism in our own country.’11 In the perspective of capitalism as a broad, global system, however, Denmark as well took part in the exploitation of the South: ‘We recognise that the Danish government is a part of the imperialist system, and hence we will accentuate the direct struggle against imperialism.’12 Here the struggle was not so much against the agents of US interests, but for a revolutionary change in Denmark itself. As militancy rose among students, and later workers, this view got a much more prominent position. In the heyday of the Vietnam Movement from 1965–1968, however, Denmark’s role was only minor in relation to the revolutions in the Third World. In this way, the Danish development went from the neutral, moral language of SF and of the CND towards an explicitly revolutionary language. Despite this, there was very little identification with particular ideologies yet on the Danish left. Neither the DKP nor the diminutive Maoist or Trotskyite groups profited from the radicalisation.

Vietnam in Sweden: the Leninist Renaissance In Sweden, the reception of the Vietnam war happened in a conceptual context where the global perspective was already dominant. Since there had been considerably less interest in Europe than on the Danish left, the Vietnam war merely accentuated the already dominant North–South perspective, albeit in a more radical way.

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The Swedish Vietnam Movement was closely linked to the rise of Maoism, and hence to a much more ideological conceptualisation than in Denmark. The basic conflict within the left was the same as in Denmark. The ‘old’ New Left of the modernists in the SKP leadership and the circle around Tidsignal represented a moderate wing that continued the pacifist position from the CND, which condemned war as such and focused on the humanitarian side. On the other side, the left-wing opposition and the Maoists in Clarté supported the violent struggle of the FNL; for them, violence was a legitimate, if not the only, means of liberation from imperialism. These views were clear in the different magazines of the left. In Tidsignal, the argumentation was often built on empathy and moral indignation. For example, it described what Stockholm would look like if the Americans bombed it as they did Hanoi.13 This kind of information was intended to open the eyes of the Swedish public. Indeed, the New Left often held the belief that given the right, objective information, people would naturally support them: I have a dream that we should be able to organise an information seminar, which should go on for a long time, and where, for example, the police and the military should be obliged to take part so that they, through the thorough information that they would receive, would be able to understand what they are trying to stop … After that, we should, for instance, storm the mass media and force TV and radio to give lengthy and true information about Vietnam. Then another section could go around to people’s homes, like salesmen, and in a friendly and informative way talk to the housewives about what is happening in the world and maybe ask them how they would feel about seeing their child burned to death.14 For the Maoists, it was important to get beyond the pure information and ‘pettybourgeois’ empathy. The important issue was the victory of the Vietnamese people over US imperialism. Where Tidsignal published images of burned civilians, the Maoist-dominated Vietnambulletinen showed smiling guerrillas fighting bravely against the imperialists. Also, as in Denmark, the Maoists would put the war into a more general framework of US imperialism and see it as a symptom of the imperialist system. Around 1967, even the moderate wing had adopted this last view. Zenit, earlier the mouthpiece of the non-communist New Left, began to introduce systemic and very ideological accounts of world events. The journal left its image of a youth magazine and launched itself as a ‘Nordic socialist journal’ with a much more advanced and intellectual content in the style of the internationally recognised New Left Review. The former eclectic, New Left ideology was overtaken by a Leninism not unlike the one of the left-wing opposition.15 Such ideological platforms were seen as necessary for the struggle of the left. Indeed,

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they were not seen as ideological points of view, but as objective analytical tools for a complete understanding of the global situation. Lenin’s theory of imperialism was one of the first models for such an ideological systemic analysis. If the oppression of the Third World was just described as ‘imperialism’: then we have a definition of the word imperialism in the sense of a political term to characterise certain economic, political and military actions. But we have no explanation of imperialism, no analysis of the causalities that lie at the root of imperialist actions. In this perspective a study of the conditions that generate imperialism is of the greatest importance. For without having understood these conditions, we cannot ... effectively counter these and the vulgar liberal interpretation of imperialism as an effect of the special psychology of some politician or a combination of unlucky coincidences.16 Hence, a thorough, theoretical analysis was necessary in order to truly fight imperialism, and here Lenin offered an explicitly socialist theory of imperialism and a point of departure for further analysis. Lenin’s theory did have undeniable attractions in its compatibility with the geopolitics of the cold war. Lenin took his point of departure exactly in a situation where the whole world had been partitioned by the great powers, and where the only solution for a capitalist system in need of expansion was to fight other great powers for territory.17 This definitely looked like the situation of the cold war by the mid1960s. Although the big confrontation did not seem imminent any more, the proxy wars in the Third World showed that the USA and the Soviet Union still competed for territory. The hopes for a third force in the guise of the nonaligned countries had faded by the middle of the decade as the non-aligned countries did not show the strength and cohesion to represent an alternative to the bi-partite world. Tellingly, the references to the non-aligned movement, so dear to the early New Left, disappeared at the same time as Vietnam became the main theme. The respect for the moral superiority of these states yielded to demands for full solidarity with the fighters against US imperialism, who represented the correct analysis leading to final victory. Thus, politics in general were no longer perceived in the pragmatic, modernist sense, but as a continuation of an objective analysis that pointed at the right strategy. In general, the Swedish left adopted this kind of theoretical radicalism much more rigidly and in a less eclectic matter than the Danes. In the Swedish debate as a whole, the term ‘radical’ gained quite positive connotations by the mid1960s. To be radical meant to be on the side of progress in a broad sense, or to be aware of the problems in the world. It was a term that intellectuals wanted to be identified with. This trend became very visible in the general turn towards Leninism, whether by Zenit or by Maoists, which decidedly broke with the New Left’s pragmatism.

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Apart from Zenit and the remains of New Leftism around Tidsignal, Leninism and anti-imperialism were bound tightly together with explicit Maoism. As described above, the Maoists had gained control over Clarté by the mid-1960s and hence controlled a nation-wide network to spread their ideas. The Vietnam war only increased the Maoist influence. The American atrocities and the determination of the FNL seemed to demonstrate that the New Left ambitions to make practical progress in ‘the society at hand, namely, the Swedish’19 were too modest. The fight against domestic monopoly capitalism seemed to lose relevance in the big picture. Real progress happened in the South, which needed the support and solidarity of all revolutionaries. The Maoists combined this with an open admiration for Mao’s China and the Chinese self-image as the true guardian of the October heritage. Their argumentation was decidedly different from the modernists as they did not refer to ethics or common sense, but to the classics of Marxism-Leninism and ‘Mao Tsetung’s Thought’, as Maoism was officially called. While the modernists argued through information and discussion, the Maoists referred to Lenin and Mao as indisputable sources of truth: ‘Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung’s Thought, contains the general laws and truths that until now have been discovered about how the proletariat must act to gain victory.’20 The rise of the Third World revolutions was seen as a sign of this. The South had not gained sovereignty by the granting of formal independence; Vietnam demonstrated the necessity of purging the lackeys of imperialism from the country. Just as Fanon had stressed the necessity of forging true independence through revolutionary war, peace in Maoist terms meant continued oppression while war was the road to liberation. Peaceful coexistence as well as CND-style pacifism was hence challenged by the question ‘whose peace and whose war?’21 The revolutionary interpretation of this made the Third World the ‘storm centres of the world revolution.’22 The rhetoric of the CCP, if not the praxis, stressed this solidarity with the rising Third World. One often-cited metaphor by Mao himself described imperialism as a ‘paper tiger’, an enemy that has already had its time in world history, and which now must yield to new revolutionary forces. Though imperialism seemed strong, it was necessarily weaker than the people in the long run; given time, it would disappear. Hence, the present struggle against imperialism presented the essence of historical progress, and any forms of neutralism or pacifism was in the last instance reactionary. In this perspective, the modernist New Left was discarded as the petty-bourgeois and revisionist in its failure to fully support the cause of the world revolution. In the same spirit the Swedish foreign policy was scorned for its neutralist ‘UN fetish’23 – an accusation that could just as well be directed against the SF/modernist hopes for UN as a way to break the bipolarity of the cold war. Maoism influenced the image of the Third World through its emphasis on the historical necessity of victory. In contrast to the Danish focus on US atrocities in Vietnam, the Swedish Vietnam Movement of the late 1960s saw the

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war as an American defeat, against the stalwart Vietnamese people, who were determined to cast off the yoke of imperialism. The Vietnamese people seemed unstoppable in their efforts to defeat the imperialist forces. It was notably a ‘people’s war’, a concept that was given an increased weight on the Swedish left. The term ‘people’s war’ had been a part of Maoist vocabulary since the 1949 revolution and was copied be the FNL to promote a war of the whole people, with no distinction between soldiers and civilians, against the common enemy. Indeed, the concept of ‘the people’ soon became a constantly recurring reference for the Swedish left. The ongoing Chinese Cultural Revolution certainly helped launching the concept, with its focus on the popular masses and hostility to the educated elite. In Maoist rhetoric, the people were unquestionably the main revolutionary force, much more prominent than the working class of Soviet communism. Phrases like ‘listen to the people’ or references to ‘the masses’ were commonplace both in the Maoist circles and in the Vietnam Movement, since the two often overlapped. Unlike the communist preoccupation with definitions of the working class, the people remained a loosely defined entity. The people seemed to be anyone supporting the anti-imperialist cause, as opposed to the traitors who supported imperialist interests. Although the same concept had been used both by Sovietinclined communists and by the New Left, the Maoists did not emphasise the classic view of the working class as having a privileged position, nor did their version of the concept have any of the New Left’s democratic connotations. In the Maoist sense, the people were the broad, united masses, a collective and undivided entity. Combined with the ideas about scientific Marxism-Leninism, this call for unity and mass action explicitly went against the New Left appreciation of open debate and continuous exchange of opinions. As Maoists completely took over Clarté, they found no space for ‘an open, socialist forum for debate’, as was the original purpose of the organisation; the situation by contrast forced the organisation ‘out into the political struggle.’24 While C.-H. Hermansson in 1964 had proclaimed that ‘you only stop debating when you have one foot in the grave’,25 Bo Gustafsson, the ideological leader of Swedish Maoism, wrote in 1967 about ‘forging ideological unity.’26 There were no longer to be discussed with political opponents, modernists or social democrats; instead they were branded as enemies to be fought. Also, the belligerent Maoist language influenced the political metaphors; words like ‘bastion’, ‘phalanx’, ‘struggle’ and ‘victory’ reappeared as rhetorical figures to describe both foreign and domestic policies. These came both from the Vietnam war and from the Comintern tradition, which the Maoists sought to revive. The Maoists saw themselves as a part of the global upheaval against imperialism. They proposed a unity between the struggle in Sweden and the fight in Vietnam. One of their main aims was to define how this struggle should be fought in a Sweden that was not yet ready for revolution. Sweden was not the stage

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of world revolution, but a peripheral battlefield in the great contestation. On the other hand, there were clear parallels between the Swedish and the Vietnamese struggle: ‘Vietnam is here!’ was a slogan for Maoists and modernists alike. Part of the ‘Vietnam is here’ slogan continued the image of Sweden as a ‘small and hungry imperialist state.’ Like all other capitalist countries, Sweden built its wealth on the poverty of the Third World. The aim of the revolutionaries in Sweden should hence be to: ‘reveal the exploits of Swedish imperialism [and] support the national liberation movement against imperialism, since this fight is the only way for economic development and social progress in the Third World.’27 This challenged the official image of Sweden as the neutral, guilt-free nation that stayed out of the cold war and did its best to aid the Third World. Instead, it portrayed Sweden as imperialist because of its economic structure as a capitalist country. Political and historical neutrality did not change this; even if Sweden was not politically allied to the USA, Swedish capitalism was bound to the imperialist system of exploitation. At the same time, Sweden – or the Swedish people – was, like Denmark, herself a victim of imperialism. In Sweden, as well as in Vietnam, US capital made the nation a part of the imperialist game, which served American interests: ‘Sweden is in a way conquered by the USA… the Swedish and American markets are woven ever more tightly together. And when the giant and the dwarf become allies, then, in critical situations, the small one must go where the big one decides.’28 In this perspective, the war in Vietnam was an example for all victims of US imperialism, Sweden included, that the USA could be defeated, even by a small country like Vietnam. The Maoists often used this mirror to make a parallel between themselves and the development in China. At the founding of the Maoist organisation KFML (Kommunistiska Förbundet Marxist-Leninisterna, the Communist League of Marxist-Leninists) in 1967 (see below) the use of this mirror of the world revolution was quite explicit: If [the league follows the guidelines of the founding conference] the midsummer conference will be the beginning of a new epoch in the history of the Swedish workers’ movement and in the history of Sweden. This might sound strange to people who focus exclusively on the fact that both the conference and the league are very small. In the founding congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 only twelve delegates took part, and behind them stood only between fifty and sixty members … But who would deny that this congress began a new epoch in the history of the Chinese workers’ movement and of the Chinese people? … The work of the conference will create an invincible revolutionary party, which within the foreseeable future will be the strongest in the country and under the red banners of Marxism-Leninism lead Sweden’s working class to victory in the battle for socialism.29

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The revolutionary wave going out from China would reach Sweden. China showed Sweden an image of its own future, and the CCP the image of the future of Swedish Maoism. This was almost a repetition of the Comintern use of the Soviet Union as the model of socialism and the incarnation of the revolutionary utopian promise. It was a world apart from both Khrushchev’s ‘national roads to socialism’ and the SF/modernist ‘socialism on the basis of the Danish/Swedish reality.’ It presented a radicalisation in the form of uncompromising adherence to the ideal of Chinese communism, not only as a model, but as an example of a necessary historical development, of which the founding of a true communist party marked the beginning.

America and Anti-Americanism The Vietnam war resulted in a strengthening of the already existing antiAmerican sentiments on the left as a whole. Before 1965, the communist parties and the New Left intellectuals had occasionally criticised America for its lack of culture, its social inequality and its distorted version of modernity. It was, however, rarely a systematic critique nor did it occupy a very prominent position in the language of the left. The USA represented the essential capitalist society, where the forces of the market dominated society through commercials and other forms of manipulation. Even if all this was often repeated, it was either overshadowed by the loud Danish anti-Germanism or beyond the horizon of Swedish provincialism. The concept of anti-Americanism itself poses difficulties, since it has been used politically to silence or throw suspicion on any critique of America. One has to avoid putting any critical comment on the USA into the category of antiAmericanism. It is more constructive to look for a systematic and a priori disposition against things American in the definition of Paul Hollander: the term has been employed to denote a particular mindset, an attitude of distaste, aversion, or intense hostility the roots of which may be found in matters unrelated to the actual qualities or attributes of American society or the foreign policies of the United States. In short, as here used, anti-Americanism refers to a negative predisposition, a type of bias which is to varying degrees unfounded. I regard it as an attitude similar to its far more explored counterparts, hostile predispositions such as racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism.30 Hence, outrage over American atrocities does not count as anti-Americanism, whereas explanations of these atrocities through the inherent brutality of the Americans would. Likewise, general derogative statements about Americans as such are anti-American, while documented critique of the American society is not. Also, anti-Americanism as defined here has a systemic element that seeks to describe the fundamental dysfunctions or basic rottenness of the USA.

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Both in Denmark and Sweden, the image of America had been shaped by the New Left world view, which saw East and West as equally bad choices. Though the Soviet Union did no longer represented the model society, the American model was not an alternative. Both superpowers were tainted by their interventions in foreign countries and their domestic repression; in the Soviet Union it was Eastern Europe and the oppression of trade unions and intellectuals, in the USA it was the oppression of the black population and interventions like the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and the Dominican Republic in 1965. After the Cuban missile crisis and the Sino-Soviet split, the left lost interest in Soviet developments and rarely referred to the countries behind the Iron Curtain. The USA, on the other hand, got increased attention, not as one of the superpowers, but as the main force in the imperialist system. America became the big counter image to the progressive forces both at home and abroad. In Denmark, the image of the USA was for some time a mixed one, not without positive connotations despite the Vietnam war and anti-imperialism. Politisk Revy often referred to ‘the other America’ in opposition to the war of the government and the big capitalists. This other America was of course the American anti-war movement and the civil rights movement, which to some extent also served as models for the Danish left. There was a conscious division between the official USA of war and imperialism and the other USA with its active and innovative left. In Politisk Revy, the writer Elsa Gress wrote columns on American developments, which were well informed about both cultural and political aspects of the leftist scene in the USA. The magazine typically combined the critique of American society with references to ‘the other America’, the America of the civil rights movement and, later, of the experimental music scene. This mixture of positive and negative image pointed at a fairly good knowledge of American society. It was often based on first-hand knowledge, like Gress, who was married to an American, or like C. Wright Mills, who had taught at the University of Copenhagen. Also, the countercultural movement, provos and hippies, which had its breakthrough in Denmark around 1966, softened the straight imperialist view on America. Apart from the connection to capitalism and imperialist war, the USA was also Height Ashbury, LSD, the Doors and Jimi Hendrix. On the left as a whole, the countercultural movement had quite an impact through the late 1960s, and these very American phenomena were generally perceived as belonging to a progressive life style.31 In this way, America was both the great opponent and a model. As the left radicalised during the late 1960s, the view became increasingly sinister. As the American left itself became more radical with Maoists taking over the SDS, which before had been an international model for the humanist New Left, and with the race riots of 1968, the reception of the American development changed. Focus shifted from the happy hippies to the Black Panthers, who got a thorough coverage in Politisk Revy. Their theory, which stated that the USA would become fascist within a short while, was uncritically received by especially

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the main editor Bente Hansen, who fought to make this issue top priority for the magazine. Importantly, the events in the USA could turn out to affect the Danish future as well: ‘As long as our governments see the alliance with the USA as more important than anything else, there the danger will persist that our own political system becomes infected and will be like the American one.’32 Even fairly moderate reporters subscribed to this idea. In 1970, the US correspondent of the moderate leftist daily Information wrote a book about the ‘American Threat’ (Den amerikanske trusel ) coming from the reactionary, white Americans: ‘Those politicians, who play on chauvinism, racism and the police state mentality, belong to both political parties, and their leader sits in the White House with support from the majority of the white population. The threat against the rest of America and the rest of the world is that this is a majority of violence, oppression and censorship.’33 The ‘other America’ still played a role, but now the concept signified violent resistance against the fascist tendencies, rather than exponents of different life styles. This fitted with the general tendencies of the late 1960s to see Western societies as disguised dictatorships, with the USA as the most prominent example. However, it was only rarely anti-Americanism in Paul Hollander’s definition, since it typically reacted to and criticised specific tendencies and events, rather than stating general prejudices about things American. In Sweden, this was rather different. Here, anti-Americanism as an a priori negative bias was more the rule than the exception. There seems to be continuity from the communist anti-Americanism, which depicted the USA as uncivilised and aggressive. However, the Soviet Union was no longer presented as the positive counter image; the image of America was either contrasted to the Third World or seen as a mirror for Sweden’s future. The latter version was often articulated in the form that, where the USA demonstrated the ultimate consequences of capitalism, those consequences would eventually reach Sweden as well. In Tidsignal, derogatory remarks about the USA were fairly common, describing the Americans as immature, decadent and without culture: ‘America is a very interesting country, materially ahead of any other country, but emotionally they are all like little children.’34 The modernists focused on America exactly as perverted capitalism without democracy. It served as a horror image of monopoly capitalism ran amok, but was rarely connected to more than loose facts or sheer prejudice – apart from the ever-present Vietnam material. The Maoists presented a more systemic form of anti-Americanism connected to imperialism. Clarté brought the same kind of reports on ‘the other America’, as did Politisk Revy, but the weighting of the material was far more towards critique of the imperialist superpower. For the Maoists, whose main field of action was the Vietnam Movement, America was primarily the embodiment of imperialism – ‘US imperialism’, as it was called in the slogans. Thus, the conception of America became a more systemic one than the sporadic

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prejudices of the modernist New Left, even though the language was at least just as full of hatred. As the main force of imperialism, America posed the biggest threat against the peoples of the world; as the leftist writer Artur Lundkvist wrote in Clarté under the headline ‘USA is the problem’: ‘The problem … lies there, in America. The common enemy for the peoples in a large part of the world is America … because it is responsible for intolerable injustices, fascist regimes, oppression of peoples and races, imperialist and economic extortion in every place in the world where it has enough influence.’35 It was a political analysis that tended to reduce every injustice in the world to US influence. In the same article, Lundkvist (who was hardly a hard-core Maoist) wrote that the Chinese nuclear bomb was nothing else but a consequence of the American threat to communist China through its support for Taiwan. Clarté also had a weakness for the French cartoonist Siné, whose vignettes were popular on the whole of the European left. They usually depicted the USA as Uncle Sam, either as an oppressor of other races, or being killed off by representatives of the oppressed peoples (figs 3.1 and 3.2). Figure 3.1 Anti-Americanism I

Figure 3.2 Anti-Americanism II

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These were much like other stereotypical representations of nations and ethnicities in the past introducing a caricatured representation of the American conspiracy and the web of American interests oppressing the peoples. Again, the Swedish puritan heritage played an unmistakable role. Where the Danish left had considerable elements the of ‘freak left’, connected especially to the American drug and music scene, the Swedish left, modernist and Maoist alike, was very sceptical towards hedonist tendencies. There seems to have been a gap between the milieux that cultivated life style experiments and the politically oriented left. The left identified the counterculture as something strange that happened elsewhere, unconnected to the political struggle. It was explicitly categorised as an American phenomenon and hence a part of the US imperialist conspiracy: ‘It is already obvious, LSD will come. It has in fact already begun; authorised PR types in the culture Mafia have taken the on the task. As always, they operate under the agreed code word (“radical”), and the result will undoubtedly hit us just as hard as any other expression of American culture.’36 Obviously, the conscious socialist kept his mind clear and alert to the attacks of capitalism. The American drugs would only hold the pseudo-radicals in political unconsciousness and keep them away from the real political tasks. It is worth noticing that by the mid-1960s the American vices were rarely, if ever, contrasted to the Swedish virtues. In the 1950s and early 1960s, it would have been obvious to compare the unbound American capitalism to the essential virtues of the Swedish democratic traditions. Later, as we shall see, images like this would return, where the sound, simple Swedish worker stood as the model of a healthy culture, in contrast to American decadence. These national interpretations were not very present in the mid- or late 1960s, where the contrasting image was one of the conscious socialist/revolutionary (modernist or Maoist), who’s hallmark was the knowledge of capitalism and imperialism, not nationality or culture.

Party Splits While radicalism was on the rise among the young leftists, the established parties still continued their pragmatic, influence-seeking policies. In Denmark, the 1966 elections gave the left side of parliament an absolute majority; theoretically, social democrats and SF could now form a government without liberals or conservatives. The SF leadership saw this as a golden opportunity to gain maximum influence and commence socialist reforms. They compared the event to the introduction of parliamentarianism in 1901, and presented it as the first step towards socialism.37 The following negotiations, however, demonstrated that there was no basis for a common government. Instead, the two parties entered a system of political coordination, where SF secured the social democratic minority government in return for formal

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channels of influence on the government’s policies. It turned out that large parts of SF were anything but happy about the prospect of making compromises in return for influence. Radicalism had made an impact and raised demands that were incompatible with pragmatic government. For the radicals, it was necessary to make a thorough analysis of the party’s function within monopoly capitalism: ‘To deal with this problem is neither impractical nor superfluous; on the contrary such a complete consideration, with support from the knowledge of society that we have from Marxism, must be the condition for a discussion about concrete initiatives.’38 Pragmatism and common sense were not enough; socialist policies needed a systemic analysis (‘complete consideration’) of society as a foundation of its policies. This seemed to be a return to the language of the DKP, which had always boasted that its policies were founded on scientific knowledge and a product of Marxist analysis. Instead of having an eclectic view of society and the nation, based on ‘the Danish reality at hand’, the radical wing demanded that Denmark should be seen as a monopoly capitalist society, and that this knowledge should be the basis of policies, not any superficial Danish exceptions. In 1967, the conflict resulted in a break between the realists – dubbed ‘Larsenists’ in the Comintern style after Aksel Larsen – and the radicals. The result was a new party, Venstresocialisterne (VS, the left Socialists), which gathered together almost all of the non-parliamentary left, the Vietnam Movement, the Politisk Revy circle and parts of the counterculture. From now on, SF was a party confined to parliamentary life and without influence on what defined itself as the left. Instead, VS became the gathering point of all the different segments of the left, from Maoism to the ‘freak left.’(see notes) 39 In Sweden, the developments were somewhat similar. The modernist leadership of the SKP continued between 1964 and 1967 to dismantle all the remains of the Comintern heritage. Although they did not substantially change its policies, the party leadership worked hard to change the image of the party and make it acceptable to the electorate.40 The pragmatism, however, was being challenged from the Maoist left-wing opposition, who argued exactly opposite to the modernists: the here-and-now electoral gains were unimportant in the long run and reforms would only lead the party away from its historical mission. The task of a true communist party was to remain the keeper of the correct Marxist analysis and, when the right revolutionary moment occurred, to lead the working class to victory. The references of this argument were Lenin, Stalin and Mao, who supposedly had provided the definite strategy leading to revolutionary victory. Clearly, the pragmatism and realism of the modernists were incompatible with the goals of the left-wing opposition. After the 1967 congress, when the SKP adopted a new programme and renamed itself VPK (Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna, Communist left), the left wing founded their own ‘Communist League of Marxist-Leninists’ (KFML,

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Kommunistiska Förbundet Marxist-Leninisterna) as a ‘party forming group’ that would prepare the refounding of a true communist party. It, however, did not attain a monopoly status on the left; its profile was far from broad enough for this. The Swedish left was still split between the modernist New Left in VPK and around Tidsignal, and the Maoists in Clarté and KFML. Although the Maoists in 1967 seemed to be a minuscule group of fanatics to the remaining VPK, it is remarkable how quickly they formed themselves a position of power on the left. Their organ Gnistan (The Spark), which began as a couple of badly stencilled pages, was, according to its own numbers, printed in 10,000 copies in 1969. Also, KFML played a major role in the Vietnam Movement. Even if they could never muster much support at elections, they did have important channels of influence to spread their radical message. By 1967, the left in both Denmark and Sweden had thus formed independent, radical organisations, which defined themselves in explicit opposition to the values of the early New Left. Despite their ideological differences, both VS and KFML had turned their back on pragmatism and become the gathering places for those who favoured a systemic and theoretical foundation for politics. Their break with pragmatism resulted in a leftist field where radicalism was the lowest common denominator and what properly defined its members as leftists. With the rise of the student left in 1968, the basis of these parties would grow enough to make them sustainable movements, although never a parliamentary force.

Return of Europe After three years of protest against the Vietnam war, and paradoxically simultaneously with the Tet offensive launched by the FNL in January 1968, the attention of the left suddenly shifted from the Third World to the European scene. In Italy and Germany, the student movements had begun loud and violent protests already in 1967. The aim was mostly the university systems, but the protests explicitly pointed at capitalist society as a whole. They were to be followed by the French students, who in May launched the biggest protests in post-war Western Europe evoking images of revolution all over Europe. Until then, Western Europe had all in all been a quiet place, where employers and employees were sharing the fruits of an unprecedented growth. Both left- and right-wing governments were implementing social reforms and conducting the same kinds of policies.41 Hence, student radicalism stood out as a force of discontent in otherwise peaceful and consensual societies. For the left, they held the hope that revolutionary change was not only a phenomenon of the South, but also attainable in the Northern, capitalist societies. Indeed, it made Denmark and Sweden seem part of an international crisis of the capitalist system.

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New European Threats, Fascism and Imperialism The first event to awake a new interest in Europe was the military coup in Greece in 1967. The fact that this happened in a NATO country and seemingly even with US support led to the conclusion that Western Europe was not a safe haven in a violent world, but that US imperialism might strike here, as it had struck in South-East Asia or South America. Was this not ‘a Vietnam in Europe’? – as the leader of the Norwegian SF, Finn Gustavsen, asked in Politisk Revy: Greece tried for many years to create a development according to Western, democratic guidelines, with a policy that all in all was not redder than the social democrats. Even this was struck down by brutal force. Also today, many will comfort themselves by saying ’It can never happen here.’ They should know that all NATO countries have their Prometheus plan, that all NATO countries have a secret service in collaboration with the CIA… It can happen here.42 This theme was taken up in the ongoing debate about Danish membership of NATO. Here, the USA took the former role of Germany in the sense that the alliance brought the true enemies of the nation ‘inside the gates.’ This conception of the American threat was connected to a very different way of looking at international, and specifically European, relations. The fear of German revanchism was connected to an image of Europe as a chessboard, where the great powers competed for positions, and where Denmark as a small pawn should move herself out of harm’s way. As the fear of war in Europe had faded away by the middle of the decade, the perception of risk changed from a military to a political perspective. Since NATO bound Denmark to American interests, the country risked being dragged along the road towards fascism on which the USA had long ago embarked. What happened in Vietnam today could easily happen in Europe tomorrow. The Swedish left was less united in their reception of the coup. Although Tidsignal condemned the events, the conclusion was not drawn that this would happen in Sweden as well. The modernists still clung somewhat to the image of Sweden as an incomplete democracy; they still continued a programme of practical cooperation and were not keen to appear too extreme. While the rest of the left, the Zenit circle and the Maoists, moved towards ever more radical analysis, the modernists were more eager to distance themselves from theoretical communism and adopt a ‘normal’ political language. For the Maoists, the coup fitted only too well with the general image of Sweden as a fascist state, which had been proposed in Clarté since the Maoist take over. They saw a fascist offensive taking place in the Western world.43 Although Sweden was not a NATO member, they used the same ‘it could happen here’ theme that was

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common in Denmark. As a capitalist state, Sweden was fundamentally no different from other European states, and any Swedish exceptionalism that would allow for peaceful transition was deemed hopelessly naive. Other European events served to weaken the image of a stable Europe. Apart from the student revolt of 1968, the European peripheries such as the Spanish Basque Country and in Northern Ireland got attention. In August 1968, Spain declared a state of emergency in the Basque Country, which brought awareness of the ethnic conflict in Franco’s Spain, presented much in the style of the Third World conflicts, with ETA as ‘a European guerrilla.’44 In the same way, as violent clashes broke out in Northern Ireland, the drastic response of the British government could be used as an example of capitalist/fascist oppression and imperialism. The biggest of these events, however, was the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact in August 1968. This undoubtedly had the biggest direct effect on the VPK, which was still an active, albeit fairly independent, part of the world communist movement. The Soviet invasion effectively marked the beginning of a new and stronger Soviet control over the world communist movement. Even though most West European communist parties condemned the invasion, they did not manage to coordinate this critique, since the Soviet Union strongly opposed a separate conference for the communist parties of Western Europe. This, and the 1969 world communist conference, led to the end of the ideas of polycentrism and set the limits of independence for the individual parties.45 The development broke the wave on which the modernists had been riding since the beginning of the 1960s. Within the world communist movement it demonstrated that the limits for independence could not be pushed as far as C.-H. Hermansson had wanted. Moreover, and worse, the parliamentary elections following briefly after the invasion gave the VPK its worst result since the war, only 3.0 per cent. The electorate obviously, and rightly, still saw the VPK as a part of the world communist movement and punished the party for its perceived complicity in Soviet actions. At the same time, the leadership, who had criticised the invasion heavily, came under attack from the traditionalist wing. Norrskensflamman refused to criticise the Soviet Union and publicly cracked down on Hermansson. The legitimacy given by the good elections of 1964 and 1966 had vanished,46 and the traditionalists, with Hagberg as its re-emerged leader, now felt free to voice their opposition to the independent, modernist course. The traditionalists were certain that the bad election results were a consequence of a deviation from Marxism-Leninism and a resulting alienation of the workers.47 All this left the VPK in a situation where the modernist alternative had reached its limits.

1968! While the coup in Greece had been the first event to make the gaze of the left return to its own continent, the student revolts of 1968 certainly made Europe the centre of attention.

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Events had begun in Italy and Germany already in 1967, with the death of Benno Ohnesorg by police bullets in Berlin on 2 June as the most prominent event. Students of the Free University were marching the streets throughout 1967 and 1968, led by Rudi Dutschke who soon acquired European-wide fame. Not only did he provide the local movement with a charismatic leadership, but he was also extremely productive in his theoretical writings about the prospects of a West European revolution. He presented a mixture of Marxist-Leninist language, concerns for the Third World and anti-authoritarian methods,48 which appealed broadly to the whole of the European left. Maoists could appropriate the German events and the strong German anti-Vietnam Movement and present it as a part of their own conception of revolution, while the New Left could interpret it as a new, up-to-date Marxism, which pointed away from the Comintern tradition. Also, the students in Sweden and Denmark got inspiration from the Europeanwide student revolt and embarked on a rapid path of radicalisation. When the French student revolt began in early May 1968, seemingly bringing the country to the brink of revolution, it was the climax of an atmosphere of upheaval, which again put Europe on the revolutionary world map. The student revolts were the beginning of a protest cycle, where different forms of protest spread like rings in the water.49 The cycle would last well into the next decade, changing the perspective of the left several times. At its beginning in 1968, it rekindled the faint hopes of a change in the heartland of capitalism. Before 1968, the hopes of toppling capitalism in Europe had been largely confined to the most romantic communists. Most of the left subscribed to the view that the working class of the North had reached a level of affluence where a change of system was no longer attractive. The broad masses of the industrialised world had been numbed by ever-grinding commercialism, which promoted a senseless and empty materialism and destroyed all possibilities of imagining another, more humane society. The assumption was not unqualified given the fact that Europe in the mid1960s was experiencing a low in working-class activism. After a strike wave at the beginning of the decade, the workers now seemed peaceful and cooperative, unwilling to go on the barricades.50 Theoretically, this experience was presented in a number of forms, as, for example, the widely read economic Marxist version presented in Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital, where rising profit rates created ever-increasing needs for new areas of investment, thus producing a society of frivolous over-consumption.51 At the other end of the spectrum, in OneDimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse presented a philosophical and psychological analysis of Western societies, where the positivist hegemony in politics and the social sciences obstructed any radical thought that could provide a fundamental alternative to capitalism.52 Leninism, as a third explanation, offered a world systemic argument where the Northern working class were bribed by the profits from the colonies and thus kept from their real interests in taking over the means of production.53 Common to the economic and psychological models was the belief that the agent of

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change was no longer the working class or the broad majority, but marginalised minority groups who had been left out of the consumerist straitjacket. Students and blacks, who both lived on the fringes of society, deprived of the material wealth of the majority, were agents that could look through the falseness of consumerism and see the necessity for radical change. The racial unrest in the USA in 1968 and the student revolts of the same year seemed to prove exactly this point. In Denmark and Sweden, the events were less spectacular than in France and Germany, but both countries experienced their own student revolts. In Denmark, at the University of Copenhagen, students were occupying the institute of psychology already in the spring. This was before the Paris events, but the students were very well aware of the unrest in Italy and Germany and got their inspiration from there. The occupation turned out to be the beginning of a broad mobilisation of students nationwide, which led to an influx of young people into parties and movements.54 The Swedish student revolt was much less of a success story than that in Denmark. Whereas the Danish students had met little or no resistance, the Swedish student left was faced with a much stronger right-wing student movement. Also, the student revolt itself amounted to little more than a single occupation of the students’ own house.55 Nevertheless, a student movement did grow out of the Swedish 1968, especially the scene around Zenit and the new theoretical journals founded by students, but it never managed to play a role similar to, for instance, the Vietnam Movement as a field of recruitment. Generally for both Denmark and Sweden, 1968 meant the return of their own nation as a scene for change. With the student unrest, Europe suddenly appeared to have some revolutionary potential after all. Suddenly, it seemed, there existed a European left that was able to make itself heard. Though this dispersed movement never had the strength to enter into electoral politics, they still had sufficient numbers and the will to make an impact on politics. It consisted mainly of students and other youths who had been radicalised either through either the Vietnam Movement or through the revolts in the universities. A typical feature of the events of 1968 was that moderately leftist participants got pushed towards radicalism, strengthening radical sentiments.56 The big cohorts born in the 1940s now reached early adulthood at the same time as the educational systems had expanded explosively during the 1960s, and this created a pool of recruitment big enough to form a significant movement. On top of the student body came the group of young people who in lifestyle and outlook sympathised with the movement, Vietnam activists, provos, hippies or members of the political youth organisations. Together, they formed a distinct subculture that defined itself as the ‘left.’ Hence, concepts of ‘the left’ – ‘venstrefløjen’/’vänstern’ – in Denmark and Sweden changed fundamentally. From a purely political distinction that encompassed the fairly different lifestyles of academics, cultural radical intellectuals and blue-collar workers, ‘left’ became an almost existential definition of a certain habitus or belonging to a specific subculture.

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The scholars who define the radicalisation of the 1960s as the creation of a social movement, ascribe this to the development of ‘common structures of meaning’57 or ‘cognitive praxis’,58 where action, world view and aesthetics are bound together in a particular way, defining the movement. Though the implied coherence of this view is rather problematic, it does describe the contemporaries’ perceived feeling of community. Even though the elements of the subculture were often rather arbitrary and incoherent, they served as a distinction in the sense of Bourdieu, demarcating a difference between those within the community (or field, to stay in Bourdieu’s terminology) and those outside. The emphasis on radical arguments became one of these distinctions, just as the taste in music or clothing served as distinguishing practices. In this sense, politics melted together with lifestyle in a way that had been foreign to the early New Left. This subculture was tied together by international events mediated through television and the market, which made it possible for the left in Scandinavia to read the same books, listen to the same music and share the same sense of revolution as their counterparts in Germany, France or the USA. The participants felt part of a common cause, fighting the same enemy in different settings, and very often appropriating each other’s struggles to promote domestic agendas. In sum, this led to a feeling of redemption for the revolutionary left after the preceding years of pragmatism: ‘Only a few years ago, it seemed that potent political youth movements were a phenomenon of the developing continents only,’ but now the student movement had carried this potency to Europe itself.59 The difficulties of finding a role for the European left in the light of the global contestation seemed solved by the emergence of the new movement. The unrest on the streets of the European capitals promised the possibility that marginal groups could in fact fulfil the role as the agent of change. Where the movement in Berlin 1967–1968 had demonstrated the power of the students, the events in France in May 1968 further fuelled the hopes of a European revolt. What began as clashes between police and students in Paris soon developed into a general strike, which apparently endangered the whole system of de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic.60 The short-lived uprising faded away and actually ended with an electoral victory for the right; the images of students and workers on the barricades, however, functioned as powerful representations of the possibility of a European revolution. Indeed, it was a signal for a global revolt, where Europe played a role side by side with the Third World: ‘Today’s struggle in France is a part of the struggle that is led by the students from Sweden and the USA to Turkey, Thailand and Mexico. To develop this struggle, the important thing is to carefully study the experiences of the last period of struggle in France.’61 In Europe, May 1968 proved that capitalism was far from being as safe. It seemed that the inherent antagonisms within the system were about to surface. Capitalism was fighting for its survival:

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This is about a confrontation between reason and the overripe capitalism, which is defending itself to the bitter end – an end that threatens to be more frightening than one could have imagined, since it is becoming clear that the biological basis of human existence is threatened by the anarchy of the system of profit. Time is running out for stopping fascism in Western Europe. Therefore the experiences from France become ever more important.62 The events of 1968 were widely interpreted in an eschatological language like this; these were the last days of the great contestation between the forces of good and evil, represented by the promise of socialist emancipation and the threat of fascism. The events, of course, were received and interpreted differently according to the organisational and ideological dividing lines on the left. In Denmark, where the student movement was very strong, there was little room for appropriation by the rest of the left. In the spring of 1968, there was no dominating group on the Danish left. After the split, SF was a purely parliamentary party and did not play a role in the leftist field. VS was already split between its traditionalist, unionist members (some of them veterans from the DKP), the neo-Marxist New Left and the lifestyle oriented ‘freak left’ elements, and functioned more as a gathering point than an independent force. The circle around Politisk Revy, all of whom were also active in VS, did have a considerable cultural capital, but not the resources of a proper movement. The Vietnam Movement, which had worked as a recruitment basis, had lost a good part of its energy due to internal discussions.63 In this situation, the student movement managed to establish itself as a strong, independent force. Indeed, soon the activists of 1968 entered both VS and the editing board of Politisk Revy, where they were able to set the agenda of the left. Moreover, the outstanding success of the Danish student movement to actually recruit and mobilise large parts of the students made the universities the primary audience and membership basis of the left.64 In Sweden, the distribution of forces was quite different. The student movement, first of all, was far from being as successful in terms of recruitment and the level of activism. Its different parts were more often than not tied closely to already existing political groups. Hence, the leader of the ‘leftist Student Club’ (Vänsterns studentklubb), Anders Carlberg, who played a main role in the revolt at the Stockholm University, was a member of the VPK’s youth organisation VUF. His agenda was clearly influenced by Hermansson’s ideas about Sweden as an unfinished democracy ruled by the monopoly capitalism, which he connected to the function of the university within the capitalist system.65 The movement also had an element of radical social democrats and the Maoists in Clarté. Unlike Denmark, these groups mostly tried to bring in agendas from outside. This difference in the placement of the student movement in the field led to different interpretations of the student revolts themselves. In Denmark the revolt was too powerful to be appropriated by external groups, while in Sweden it was largely defined from the outside.

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The battle of appropriation and interpretation of the Swedish student revolt stood between the modernists in VPK and around Tidsignal and the Maoists in Clarté. The first were seemingly the strongest among the students themselves: the modernist oriented Vänsterns Studentklubb got six mandates at the 1968 student elections in Stockholm, while Clarté got none at all (only 244 votes).66 This, however, did not discourage the Maoists from presenting themselves as the avant-garde of a Marxist-Leninist student uprising, uniting with ‘the student masses in the struggle for better educational, social and economic conditions.’67 This was undoubtedly also connected with the emerging splits within the Maoist circles themselves. The majority of the Vietnam Movement officially aimed at a ‘united front’ that theoretically could unite all anti-imperialists – though they continued the hate-filled language against the modernists and the VPK. In 1968, this was challenged by an emerging ultra-left wing, the Rebels (Rebellrörelsen), which also adhered to the thesis that the workers had been bribed, but did not believe in the revolutionary potential of the students either. To the extent that they had a political programme, they saw the South as the only source of revolutionary change.68 For the KFML, which in many ways upheld the belief in the Swedish worker as a potential revolutionary, it was important to stress the revolutionary possibilities of a united front of students and workers. The reconstruction of a Swedish communist party and the united front relied on the possibility of a Swedish revolution; hence the KFML had to present a domestic agent of change apart from the global revolution. The short-lived Rebels were definitely the most radical in denying the agency of the Swedish working class. In general, the Swedish left was much more blue-collar oriented than their Danish counterpart. Even if Zenit or Tidsignal did at times describe the students as the revolutionary avant-garde, they never presented any explicit anti-workerism. Certainly, after the French revolt, no one would say that the workers had been bribed to silence and incorporated into bourgeois society. Moreover, the pure student organisations within the universities, which generally were not Maoist, seemed to have a tendency towards more abstract and theoretical themes and rarely subscribed to the revolutionary romanticism of Clarté and the Vietnam Movement. Their view of the current Swedish situation was often obscured by their preference to stay within the theoretical horizon of the classics of Marxism. Although the VPK had more success among the students, the Swedish student movement was not big enough to give the modernists the upper hand over the Maoists. The main pool of recruitment on the left was the Vietnam Movement, which had a nationwide network of local groups at its disposal, counting between 2500 and 3000 members in 1969. Gnistan’s circulation was steadily rising, and KFML began to organise ‘Red Front’ May Day demonstrations, which mobilised quite significant numbers in the years to come. In contrast, Tidsignal only survived on money from the VPK and stopped in 1970, after this support had been withdrawn. Hence, the student movement

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became confined to its own public sphere of theoretical journals, while the modernist element vanished from the left as a whole, and the Maoists extended their base of recruitment elsewhere. In Denmark, the students themselves soon came to dominate VS, which became the political wing of the student movement. In the years of 1968–1969, the students were developing ideas about their own ability to reform science as well as play a role in changing the society. They got much inspiration from Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas, who did not have great hopes for the potential of the working class. Groups within VS went as far as taking an explicit anti-workerist position: ‘In this country, the political apathy of the workers is extensive, and the same goes for their faith in authority and their worshipping of status symbols. I am inclined to believe that the working class here is more conservative than other groups in society.’69 This kind of explicitness was extreme, but it matched the relative disinterest about the working class in the student movement’s first years. The goal was to establish a critical science as an alternative to the existing positivism. The students wanted to criticise the rationality of capitalism and present alternative perspectives in the spirit of Jürgen Habermas and Herbert Marcuse. They saw themselves as an agent of change, but had difficulties in taking this agency outside the university walls.70 A common characteristic for the interpretations of 1968 was the end of exceptionalism in their arguments about the nation. Whereas the concept of the nation for communists and the early New Left alike had been connected to a notion of Denmark and Sweden as special cases, different from other countries, the return of Europe as a scene of revolutionary change, in both its fascist and socialist forms, meant an incorporation of their own nation in this scene.

Capitalism at Home – the End of Exceptionalism As described in the preceding chapters, the left in both Denmark and Sweden had, albeit with different emphasis, subscribed to a concept of nation that presented Denmark and Sweden as exceptional countries, different from their neighbours. The welfare state, democracy and the lack of a colonial past were the main arguments for this exceptionalism. With the radicalisation in the last half of the decade, this changed profoundly. The systemic logic looked for common denominators, not for superficial differences. Hence the images of the two countries as better than the rest were broken down by radical critique. Denmark and Sweden were both at the core capitalist countries, and hence like other capitalist countries ruled by big capital, oppressing the Third World and potentially fascist.

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Welfare or Capitalism The change of the revolutionary scene from the Third World to Europe brought the focus back to domestic issues, the welfare state and the capitalist structure of Denmark and Sweden. After the general turn towards the left in the middle of the decade, leftist critiques of the welfare state were also raised outside the narrow circle of the revolutionary left. Within the social democracies themselves, the internal left wing voiced serious concerns with the shortcomings of the welfare state project. The tenor of the critique was the existence of poverty and inequality within the welfare society. Income distribution was lagging behind and large groups were still underprivileged both socially and economically.71 The social democrats had established the historic defeat of poverty through the welfare state as a defining aspect of the Nordic countries;72 this was now being deconstructed and replaced by one of persisting inequality and poverty. The SKP/VPK had been active in this debate, which fitted well with the classic communist policies of going one better on welfare issues. The Maoists, however, had kept their rhetoric on a more or less symbolic level of images of the starved, oppressed worker, without going into concrete examples and using most of their energy on Third World issues. In Denmark, this pattern was repeated in SF’s right and left wing, later in SF and the student movement, VS and Politisk Revy. Whereas the SF leadership led a day-to-day policy of expanding the welfare state on concrete issues, the young New Left either was absorbed by the global contestation or articulated their critique in very general terms. With the broad debate about the factual shortcomings of welfare, combined with the renewed belief in domestic change, the concept of the nation as a welfare state again came into focus. In Denmark, the view on the welfare state in SF had two elements, as shown above. The pragmatists used demands for expansion of the welfare state as a way of proving their ability to work for concrete and attainable goals – as opposed to the DKP – while the cultural radicals were criticising the growing consumerism that followed the rising living standards. In this, both wings implicitly agreed that the welfare project actually had concrete, social effects, and that the average citizen was getting increasingly more affluent. At the end of the 1960s, the discussion of the welfare state took another direction. Now, the critique took a point of departure in the question whether welfare was at all possible within a capitalist society. Could the welfare state in any way solve the problems of redistribution and social security while the capitalists were controlling the state apparatus? Instead of a means of creating more equality, state planning was increasingly described as a tool of monopoly capitalism to ensure its grip on society. In a large feature about Danish society in Politisk Revy in 1971, the points of criticism were summarised in connection with the upcoming elections. The point was to reveal the dysfunctions of welfare and the impossibility of attaining

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the ideals of equality within the framework of capitalism. The social democratic project of creating social justice and equality had failed; economic redistribution was not taking place, despite the egalitarian ideals, nor did the workers harvest the fruits of their labour. Instead, the welfare state had become a tool to control society and secure profits, the more the profits fell, the more control was necessary: ‘One day, the demands for control and compensation will exceed the capacity of the production – and then we are in an absurd situation. This is the crisis of capitalism in the modern welfare state.73 Thus, the welfare state did not remove the dysfunctions of capitalism or make Denmark an exceptional country where the transition to socialism could proceed more smoothly and peacefully than in other countries – as the SF had claimed. Denmark was a capitalist state just like any other. In Sweden, the critique took more diverse forms, mostly because of the existence of the orthodox Marxist interpretations provided by Maoism. The Maoists were quite explicit that the solution to the shortcomings of the welfare state was a social revolution. Indeed, not only did they criticise the welfare state for being insufficient, but they painted an image of a society in a profound crisis: Long queues for getting a place to live. Outrageous rents. Increasing consumers’ tax. State-owned investment banks and development funds are betting people’s money in the capitalist roulette. The capitalists get the winnings, the people pays the losses. Faster rationalisations. Continued pollution. Monopoly capitalism is under hard pressure and tries to defend itself through increased oppression and increased extortion of the working people. The class antagonisms are sharpened.74 The Maoist in fact liked to foresee big changes in the close future, they seemed fascinated by what Philippe Buton has called the ‘phantasmal revolution’ (la révolution fantasmée), the idea that every change or crisis in society is the sign of a coming revolution, the big change waiting just around the corner.75 In relation to the Third World, it was the imminent defeat of imperialism. At home, the crisis of the welfare state proved that a revolutionary situation was near, and that the working class needed the true communist party to lead it to a successful overthrowing of the capitalist society. Gnistan, which explicitly aimed at a working-class audience (though hardly read by it), described how the welfare state was financed by the extortion and overtaxation of the working class, and how capitalists were behind inflation and rising prices. The welfare state was thus not an unfinished project to be perfected, but a capitalist scam to fool the Swedish worker. In reality, he was increasingly extorted by the real power holders of the country, monopoly capitalism. This could only be changed by revolution and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, as laid out by Lenin. In sum, the Maoists held on to the traditions and dogmas of the Comintern era. Capitalism necessarily

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meant impoverishment of the working class and would just as necessarily lead to a social revolution; any attempt to deny this was pure revisionism. Just as in the Comintern, the argumentation was often purely deductive, pointing at general laws rather than actual facts and statistics, or manipulating statistics to make them fit the theory. In this way, the Maoists could construct a situation of a ‘phantasmal revolution’, where they would soon lead the united to people in the final destruction of monopoly capitalism. The more moderate left did not go this far. The circle around Zenit and the modernists in VPK were eager to present grim analyses of Swedish capitalism, but very moderate when it came to explicitly suggesting their solution, a profound, revolutionary change. The welfare state critique ran much along the general lines of the debate. A typical example is the front page of Tidsignal from October 1968 with the headline ‘Sweden is a good country!’ (Sverige är bra!) and an image of the model family of the Folkhem, sitting on the spacious balcony of a modern apartment bloc. Below, the journal turned the headline into the question ‘Is Sweden a good country?76 This indeed was the big question within the SAP as well: did the lowincome groups and the less privileged actually benefit from the welfare state, or was it still an unfinished project? While the SAP itself explicitly countered any attempts to turn this into a critique of reformism,77 the VPK was in the predicament where it had been since the war. How could the party shed the revolutionary image and be generally accepted without turning into another SAP? Its radicalism was sincerely hampered by emphasis on electoral policies. Generally, the party followed the same well-trodden paths as it had done for two decades, repeating the image of Sweden as a country ruled by monopoly capitalism and a social democracy unable to fulfil the final aims of the workers’ movement. The VPK’s task was still to fulfil these aims in the spirit of the Swedish popular movements and take the final steps towards a true democracy. The revolutionary claims, however, remained on the ambiguous level of the communist vision of transition to socialism: the VPK aimed at a radical change, but not at a violent revolution. This compromise pointed to VPK’s precarious situation within the field. As opposed to the Maoists, VPK could not be satisfied by mobilising only within the emerging leftist subculture. The party was part of the parliamentary game as well and needed an electoral basis for its policies. It could not be content with a successful demonstration now and then, and it had to attract other groups than the pure of heart. This put a limit to the radicalisation of the party, but the partaking in the parliamentary game itself also gave the party a more realist political language. The members worked and often thought within the framework of the existing system. This attitude also entailed a day-to-day reformist approach to the issues of the welfare state. In theory, true welfare could only be obtained by the dismantling of monopoly capitalist power, but in practice, the party worked through concrete suggestions for reforms within the system.

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By 1968, this position of having a leg in both the camp of the left and that of the parliament became increasingly difficult: Not least because events forced the modernists on to the defensive. The legitimacy of Hermansson and the modernists had been partly built on their ability to attract voters, partly on their detachment from Soviet communism. However, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and the following election effectively put an end to this. Moreover, Hermansson’s moderate and pragmatic modernism was no longer an appealing novelty on the radicalised left. With the demands for theoretical analysis coming from the Zenit wing and the relative success of ideological Puritanism as presented by Maoism, the intellectual attractiveness of the eclectic New Left was declining towards the end of the decade. The party youth league VUF broke with the party and went its own, radical ways, as did many of the intellectual supporters of the New Left. Indeed, the modernists themselves became radicalised and began to support a more stringent Leninist interpretation of communism from around 1970.

The Fascist Threat As systemic, radical interpretations of the nation became commonplace, the image of Denmark and Sweden as democratic nations was weakened. Although the DKP, SF and SKP had criticised the undemocratic influence of big capital, all these parties had shared a notion of Denmark and Sweden as countries with strong democratic traditions, which made them stand out from authoritarian continental Europe and super-capitalist America. Histories of the resistance and the popular movements demonstrated the profound democratic elements of the two nations. Radicalism, however, challenged this view. The nation was not democratic, but capitalist and hence potentially fascist. The fear of a fascist takeover in the USA had been a part of the antiAmerican images connected with the Vietnam war, as described above. Without the exceptionalist images of Denmark and Sweden, it was a small step to suggest that the same threat existed domestically as well; as capitalist countries, they were susceptible to the same authoritarianism. Indeed, fascism was often seen as inherent in the capitalist system itself. The appearance of an image of Denmark as a fascist state was a complete break with the prior images of the good country in bad company. After the split of SF, the young left had turned its back on the old concepts of the left as represented by DKP and SF and extended its radical language to an image of Denmark on the verge of fascism. Whereas the DKP and SF would have ascribed such a danger to corrupting, outside influences, VS, the Vietnam Movement and Politisk Revy repeated their systemic argumentation that fascism was inherent in the capitalist system. Hence it was not an outside threat but a menace from within. This was mainly connected to the experience of capitalism on the retreat, which appeared after 1968. The more the system was threatened from the emerging radical movements, the more openly it would reveal its true

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oppressive character. Violent clashes between demonstrators and police both at home and abroad seemed to prove this. As a consequence of the prevailing systemic argumentation, international events were perceived at the same level as domestic ones; the system in Germany, USA and Denmark after all was one and the same. Hence, all oppression in capitalist countries proved the oppressive character of Danish society. Not that Denmark lacked violent episodes. Though the student revolt in itself had been remarkably peaceful, there were clashes between demonstrators and police on several occasions. In April 1968, a Vietnam demonstration evolved into violence between police and Vietnam activists, pictures from the events showing policemen beating running demonstrators with batons. In 1970, at the World Bank meeting in Copenhagen, daily clashes developed into regular street battles, with barricades in the streets of Copenhagen. The violence was documented by the left to give examples of the repressive character of the system.78 The dysfunctions of the welfare state were compared to the vices of open fascism, as in Jesper Jensen’s sarcastic piece ‘Vi er ikke fascister’ (We are not fascists) from 1971: We do not throw infants into the air and shoot at them. We only leave them by the thousands in unhealthy houses and to desperate and broken mothers, who have given up the fight. We do not let sadistic petty officers loose on the defenceless. We only let the speculators use our system to make money on the misery of the defenceless… We do not whip or burn people like Greeks and Spaniards – we put them on a waiting list, send them on to the next office or the next asylum.79 By making these parallels to systems that before had served as counter images, the radicalisation of the left definitely marked a rupture between the image of Danish exceptionalism and Denmark as just another repressive capitalist state. In Sweden, the image of Sweden as semi-fascist had existed among the Maoists since the mid-1960s, partly connected to the feeling of guilt nourished by authors like Jan Myrdal. Even though the New Left around Tidsignal had also been highly critical of Swedish society, they nevertheless retained some of the exceptionalist overtones of the SKP conception about an unfinished national democratic project. With the decline of modernism and radicalisation, the equation ‘capitalism equals fascism’ attained validity among broader parts of the left. One example of this is the book Korporatismen och den borgerliga klassdiktaturen (Corporatism and Bourgeois Class Dictatorship) from 1969. Here, the VPK member Jörn Svensson argued that any capitalist society was a class dictatorship, and that fascism was only a particularly harsh form of an everpresent oppression. Indeed, fascism was not a system in itself, but an integrated part of capitalism. ‘Two classes with profoundly different interests and values

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cannot share the role of the ruler… One class must be the ruling one ”for the sake of order”. It is only the content of “order” that is changing. For this reason, the words “order”, “freedom”, “coercion” or “democracy” have profoundly different meanings under different “orders”.’80 His argumentation relied firmly on deductive arguments like this, taking concrete historical examples only as illustration of the main point: that capitalism and fascism were one. Hence, the Swedish history did not have the popular movements as its main agent, but the ruling capitalist class, just like any other country. The present corporatist form of the Swedish welfare state and the idea of the Folkhem were thus ideologically indistinguishable from dictatorships like Peron’s Argentina.81 This, notably, was not an uncommon form of argumentation for the time. Radical analyses in their search for unique, defining principles and deductive logic have the tendency to equate very different phenomena on the basis of the one similarity, which is perceived as the defining principle. With capitalism as a defining factor, logically Sweden could not be a democracy but a class dictatorship, ‘multiparty fascism’, like other dictatorships.82 The fact that Sweden did not at the moment practise fascism as in Nazi Germany was a historical coincidence. At the moment, Swedish capitalism felt strong enough to allow criticism, but this only served to hide the real fascist nature of the system. Actually, Sweden experienced much less confrontation than other European countries. Despite of the more militant rhetoric, the clashes between the left and the police were fairly small compared to the Danish incidents, and certainly to France, Italy or the USA. This, however, did not dampen a feeling of fascist oppression, which built on deductive reasoning, rather than concrete experience. Apart from the deductive equation of capitalism and fascism, both the Danish and Swedish left developed an interest in the 1930s as a parallel to their own time. There was, as it was put in Zenit ‘a historical bond between that decade and ours.’83 The assumed fascist threat and the upsurge of radicalism both made this parallel plausible. In Denmark, the alliance with the USA was described as a repetition of the country’s close relationship to Nazi Germany in the 1930s and during the occupation. Back then, we were forced into an alliance with a single, very strong fascist country. The pressure was minimal and the majority of the people stood behind this alliance. For this reason, the country remained democratic according to the still prevailing parliamentary formula. Today we are allies of fascism itself. The USA is not only a fascist country, like Hitler’s Germany. USA is the very sword and shield of fascism.84 In a short time, Denmark would become a true fascist country, like its big neighbour. It was necessary to study the lessons of the 1930s to overcome the present threat of an aggressive fascist power. This notably broke drastically with DKP

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and SF’s image of Denmark as profoundly anti-fascist and their history of the war as one of the Danish people united in the resistance. Denmark had been split between the capitalist class, who had willingly cooperated with the Germans, and the resistance, who had been in opposition to the collaborating politicians and big business. It was not the history of the ‘fighting Denmark’, but of a class struggle within the fight for liberation. Here, the capitalist system had revealed its tendency to evolve into fascism, a tendency that was apparent also in the late 1960s.85 In Sweden, the same historical parallel was commonplace, albeit with another content. Even though the Swedish cooperation with Nazi Germany before and during the war was mentioned from time to time, there was no myth of an anti-fascist Sweden comparable to the Danish one to be deconstructed. Instead the 1930s were presented as the decade of class struggle, especially the infamous incident in Ådalen in 1931, where the military had attacked a demonstration of strikers and killed five. When the well-known film director Bo Widerberg in 1969 made a film about the events in Ådalen, Ådalen 31, which won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, it led to a broad public debate in Sweden.86 The incident had a prominent place in the history of the Folkhem, where it symbolised the violent alternative to SAP’s class compromise. The communists had always had their own counter-narrative to this, where the shootings pointed at the essential repressive character of capitalism. This last image reappeared on the radical left at the end of the 1960s. Although the film had an undeniable reformist message, the debate connected to the leftist discussions about the irreparable deficiencies of capitalism. The events of 1931 demonstrated the inherent fascist potential of the capitalist system and the need to overcome this by some kind of revolutionary change. In this spirit, the VPK republished its version of the events, originally written to mark the twenty-five years anniversary.87 The fascination with the interwar period also appeared in the internal divisions on the left. The continuous search for valid, radical analyses and, not to be forgotten, for a radical political identity inevitably led to an increased interest in the history of the Comintern. The Sino-Soviet split had already initiated a battle over the October heritage, but, whereas the New Left had seen this heritage as a liability in 1964, it now became a source of ideological legitimacy. The fifty years anniversary of the Soviet Union in 1967 was an important event in this development. In Sweden, the Maoists used the occasion to scorn the revisionist deviations in the Soviet Union and emphasise Mao Tsetung’s Thought as the true continuation of Leninism, which in itself was no novelty. It was, however, new that the New Left followed suit in their evaluation of the anniversary. Tidsignal spent considerable space on a historical analysis of the October Revolution, illustrated with portraits of Lenin, and Politisk Revy explicitly linked its own political agenda to the Soviet experience:

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The Soviet Union of today is strong enough to be estimated critically, which is a more genuine form of solidarity! … By being the first to realise revolutionary theory in practice, the Bolsheviks trod new paths and made new experiences, which, when they are analysed as a whole one day, will be a rich source and spare those who are to come unnecessary mistakes.88 This marked the beginning of a reinvention of the traditions of the Comintern and a re-enactment of the battles of the 1920s and 1930s. On the small stage of the left, Stalinists fought against Trotskyites, Leninists against anarchists. In the late 1960s, these skirmishes were mostly held within the existing organisations and forums. In the decade to come, this would be an even more pronounced feature of the left, where each group claimed to be the true successor of the revolution.

Nordic Colonialism Both communists and the early New Left had prided themselves of the fact that their nation had not been one of the colonial powers. This had been a main distinction from the imperialist USA and the continental European powers and a cornerstone of Swedish and Danish exceptionalism. Just as the welfare state and the democratic traditions had been dismantled by radicalism, the myth of the Nordic abstinence from expansion was being torn down in the late 1960s. The Danish myth had always had its Achilles heel in the remaining North Atlantic colonies, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. SF had printed articles about these already in the early 1960s, but it had little effect on the general image of Denmark as the good nation in bad company. Now that this image had been shattered by more radical views, the Danish guilt towards especially the indigenous Inuit population in Greenland came into focus. This was no doubt inspired by the Inuit revival of the 1960s, which in turn appeared as a reaction to the politics of rapid modernisation in Greenland. In Politisk Revy, Inuit writers began to contribute with reports from Greenlandic society. Here, the Danes were portrayed as colonisers, who used Greenland as a market, but otherwise did not care about the population or about the culture, which they attempted to modernise in the interest of capitalism. Much like in Fanon’s writings, the Inuit ‘upper class’ was attacked for its effort to ape the colonial power; they no longer felt solidarity with other Greenlanders and used the colonial system for their own gains.89 Whereas the Faroe Islands proved less of a cultural problem, the description of Denmark as a colonial power was no less present here. Just as Denmark on the global level was forced into the capitalist, imperialist world system by its alliance with the USA, the Danish supremacy over the Faroe Islands kept them within the capitalist camp and prevented ‘liberation from the global system that Denmark is a part of.’90 In both cases, the rhetorical figures were strikingly like the ones of the North–South confrontation. Denmark as a colonial power kept the indigenous

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people in an inferior position, where they (in Greenland) formed a coloured lower class. The local cultures became signs of this inferiority as the upper class distinguished itself by Danish manners and Danish language. The characteristics of colonialism, which Fanon had described for Africa, now became evident in the Danish colonial context. Denmark’s presence in Greenland was just like the systems of the continental colonial powers, and the country shared the European responsibility for the unjust state of the world. In the same vein, the old problem of Norrland continued as an important theme on the Swedish left. But, whereas the traditionalists in SKP/VPK, who were the established protagonists of this issue, had articulated it in the centreperiphery perspective, the younger generation tended to see it in the frame of colonialism. Here, the indigenous Sami population appeared in the image of Norrland. The Norrland of the traditionalist was a country of sturdy miners and lumberjacks, orthodox Protestants and communists.91 It was a neglected part of Sweden where the political struggle evolved around equality with the central regions. Now the Sami entered the picture as a colonised people within the Swedish country, requiring special attention to protect their way of life. The northern economy of nomadic reindeer herding demanded particular consideration in order not to be destroyed by the capitalism and rational bureaucracy coming from the south. Apart from the colonial extortion of the North, the appearance of the Sami completed the image of Sweden as a traditional colonial power, which forced the indigenous population to adapt to the Western, capitalist culture. The Sami were a colonised people, and the Swedes the greedy coloniser who destroyed the old ways of the original culture.92 This difference very well illustrates radicalisation as the end of exceptionalism in the two countries. Whereas the Danes constructed an image of their nation almost the opposite of the good nation of the DKP and SF, the Swedes could largely reuse and expand upon already existing formulas. The continuous blame of monopoly capital and the image of a guilty, colonialist nation were not themselves products of radicalisation, but rather radical interpretations of old themes of the communist party. The break with the image of Sweden as a country of particular democratic traditions was, however, an obvious demarcation from the language of the SKP/VPK. The communists had used the Swedish history of the popular movements to distance themselves from the image of violent revolution. As the left put higher priority on thorough analysis and ideological purity, such considerations towards the electorate lost their importance. Hence, the systemic presentation of Sweden as a fascist state became more attractive than the eclecticism of the early 1960s. For the Danish left, the end of exceptionalism was tightly connected with the split of SF. The young leftists that came to dominate were explicitly going against the pragmatism of Aksel Larsen and demanded an analysis of Denmark as a capitalist country, not as an idyllic exception. As in Sweden, considerations towards the rest of the political field were of little importance; parliamentary influence should not be bought with ideological opportunism.

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Notes 1.

2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

E.J. Hobsbawm. 1994. The Age of Extremes, London: Abacus, p. 326. For a detailed overview, see A. Schildt and D. Siegfried (eds). 2006. Between Marx and Coca-Cola: Youth Cultures in Changing European Societies, 1960–1980, Oxford and New York: Berghahn. Östberg, 1968 när allting var i rörelse, p. 12. P. Wende. 1994. ‘Radikalismus’, in O. Brunner et al. (eds), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 5, Stuttgart: Klett Verlag, R. Barker. 2001. ‘Radicalism’, in N.J. Smelser and P.B. Baltes (eds), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Oxford and New York: Elsevier. Vietnamindsamlingen-Giro 1616 et al. 1967. Det Internationale KrigsforbrydelsesTribunal: Roskilde 20.11.1967 – 1.12.1967, Copenhagen: Vietnam Solidaritet. SF-Bladet 8/4 1965, p. 1. SF-Bladet, 20/9 1965, p. 4. Politisk Revy, no. 36, 1965, p. 10. For a detailed description of the split see Nordentoft and Rasmussen, Kampagnen mod Atomvåben og Vietnambevægelsen 1960–1972. Politisk Revy, no. 78, 1967, p. 11. Vietnam Solidaritet, no. 2, February 1968. Quoted in Nordentoft and Rasmussen, Kampagnen mod Atomvåben og Vietnambevægelsen 1960–1972, p. 99. Quoted ibid., p. 128. Tidsignal, 24/5 1967. Ibid., p. 11. M. Wiklund. 2003. ‘Leninismens renässans i 1960–talets Sverige’, Den jyske historiker 101, pp. 107–8. Zenit, no. 3, 1967, p. 25. V.I. Lenin. 1978. Imperialism: the Highest Form of Capitalism, Moscow: Progress Publishers. A. Frenander. 1999. Debattens vågor, Gothenburg: Arachne, pp. 141–5. Therborn, En ny vänster, p. 8. Clarté, no. 3, 1968, p. 3. Salomon, Rebeller i takt med tiden, p. 90. Stern, The Rise and Decline of International Communism, p. 183. B. Gustafsson. 1966. Från kolonialism till socialism, Stockholm: Clarté, p. 122. Clarté, no. 3, 1968, p. 71. Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti. 1964. För vidgat folkstyre – mot storfinansen, Stockholm: Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti, p. 129. Gnistan, no. 4, 1967, p. 2. Clarté, no. 2, 1967, p. 3. Vietnambulletinen, no. 1–2, 1967, pp. 48–49. Gnistan, no. 3, 1967, p. 6. P. Hollander. 1992. Anti-Americanism. Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965–1990, New York: Oxford University Press, p. x. See T.E. Jørgensen. 2006. ‘Utopia and Disillusion’, in D. Siegfried and A. Schildt (eds), Between Marx and Coca Cola, Oxford and New York: Berghahn. Politisk Revy, no. 97, 1968, p. 3.

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33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

T. Krogh. 1970. Den amerikanske trusel, Copenhagen: Rhodos, p. 245. Tidsignal, no. 33, 1966, p. 10. Clarté, no. 4, 1965, p. 2. Tidsignal, no. 14, 1967, p. 4. SF-Bladet 28/12 1966, p. 2. Politisk Revy, no. 71, 1967, p. 4. T.E. Jørgensen. 2003. ‘Jagten på røde oktober’, in A Holm and P. Scharff Smith (eds), Idealisme eller fanatisme. Opgøret om venstrefløjen under den kolde krig, Copenhagen: Forum pp. 78–81. Jørgensen, ‘Split or Reform?’, pp. 65–70. Politisk Revy, no. 84, 1967, p. 2. Clarté, no. 4, 1967, p. 7. Politisk Revy, no. 119, 1969, pp. 6–7. Bracke, ‘Proletarian Internationalism, Autonomy and Polycentrism’, pp. 29–33. Holmberg, Folkmakt, folkfront, folkdemokrati, p. 141. See H. Hagberg. 1968. I Marx-Lenins anda, Lund: Bo Cavefors. See for example R. Dutschke. 1980. Geschichte ist machbar, Berlin: Wagenbach. See S. Tarrow. 1995. ‘Cycles of Collective Action’, in M. Traugott (ed.), Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action, Durham: Duke University Press, and F. Mikkelsen. 2002. ‘Kollektive aktioner og politiske bevægelser i Danmark efter anden verdenskrig’, in F. Mikkelsen (ed.), Bevægelser i demokrati: foreninger og kollektive aktioner i Danmark, Århus: Århus Universitetsforlag, pp. 65–71. Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism, pp. 357–9. P. Baran and P. Sweezy. 1968. Monopoly Capital, Harmondsworth: Penguin. H. Marcuse. 1991. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, Boston: Beacon Press. Lenin, Imperialism, p. 98. For the Danish student revolt, see Jensen and Jørgensen, 1968 – og det der fulgte. For a description of the Swedish student revolt, see Josefsson, Året var 1968. Marwick, The Sixties, p. 586. I. Gilcher-Holtey. 2000. ‘Der Transfer zwischen den Studentenbewegungen von 1968 und die Enstehung einer Transnationalen Gegenöffentlichkeit’, Berliner Journal für Soziologie 4/2000. R. Eyerman and A. Jamison. 1991. Social Movements. A Cognitive Approach, Cambridge: Polity Press; and R. Eyerman and A. Jamison. 1998. Music and Social Movements. Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Politisk Revy, no. 102, 1968, p. 2. For a detailed description of the events May 1968, see Gilcher-Holtey, Die Phantasie an die Macht. Gnistan, no. 7, 1968, p. 2. Tidsignal, no. 27, 1968, p. 2. Nordentoft and Rasmussen, Kampagnen mod Atomvåben og Vietnambevægelsen 1960–1972, p. 101. Madsen and Madsen, Fra sandkasse til kadreparti?, p. 100. See for example the interview with Anders Carlberg in P. Bratt (ed.). 1969. Kan vi lita på demokratin, Stockholm: Almqvist och Wiksell.

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65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

Josefsson, Året var 1968, p. 108. Clarté, no. 1, 1969, p. 3. Salomon, Rebeller i takt med tiden, pp. 152–56. Quoted in Madsen and Madsen, Fra sandkasse til kadreparti?, p. 105. Jensen and Jørgensen, Studenteroprøret i Danmark 1968. Forudsætninger og konsekvenser, pp. 282–310. J. Andersson. 2001. ‘Mellan tillväxt och trygghet. Idélinjer i socialdemokratisk socialpolitik’, Arkiv för studier i arbetarrörelsens historia 82–83, pp. 6–7, U. Lundberg and K. Petersen. 1998. ‘Velfærdsstatens fuldbyrdelse, krise og genkomst: Socialdemokratiet og velfærdsstaten i Sverige og Danmark fra 1960’erne og frem’, Den jyske historiker 82; Petersen, Legitimität und Krise, pp. 257–275. See Stråth, ‘Poverty, Neutrality and Welfare’. Politisk Revy, no. 180, 1971, p. 5. Clarté, no. 4, 1969, p. 22. P. Buton. 1999. ‘Débats et faux-débats autour du Livre Noir’, Communisme 59–60, pp. 82–83. Tidsignal, no. 44, 1968, p. 1. Andersson, ‘Mellan tillväxt och trygghet’, p. 11. C. Madsen. 1969. Proces mod politiet, Copenhagen: Stig Vendelkærs Forlag, F.E. Madsen and B.S. Nielsen. 1971. En politisk domstol, Copenhagen: Demos. J. Jensen. 1971. Tag del, Copenhagen: Røde Hane, pp. 56–7. J. Svensson. 1969. Korporatismen och den borgerliga klassdiktaturen, Lund: Berling, p. 8. Ibid., p. 188. Ibid., p. 44. Zenit, no. 1, 1967, p. 8. Politisk Revy, no. 155, 1970, p. 8. Politisk Revy, no. 147, 1970, pp. 8–9+12. For a thorough description of the debate, see R. Johansson. 2001. Kampen om historien. Ådalen 1931, Stockholm: Hjalmarson och Högberg, pp. 373–413. F. Lager. 1969. Ådalen 1931, Stockholm: Arbetarkultur. Politisk Revy, no. 88, 1967, p. 13. Politisk Revy, no. 146, 1970, p. 7. Politisk Revy, no. 160, 1970, p. 8. Hagberg’s memoirs are fine examples of this H. Hagberg. 1982. Socialismen i tiden, Gothenburg: Fram; H. Hagberg. 1995. Minnen, Stockholm: Carlssons. Tidsignal, no. 10, 1968, p. 11.

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Chapter 4

Turning Inwards

The Transformation of Capitalism and the Establishment of Estrangement On the threshold of the 1970s, the left had developed very fixed concepts of capitalism as a system of exploitation and oppression. Whereas the 1960s in many ways had been the culmination of capitalism as it had developed since the Great Depression, the 1970s would see a crisis and transformation of capitalism, which at first seemed to prove its inherent faults, but later would evolve beyond the concepts of the left. Signs of crisis had been appearing since the late 1960s, not only through the global unrest of 1968; there were also indicators that the global economic system and Keynesian planning did not guarantee a crisis-free capitalism for the future. From the 1970s onwards, it seemed that society had become less governable and that the classifications as well as the solutions of the preceding decades no longer applied to social and economic reality. The economic and social stability of the 1960s yielded to a much less certain state of things.1 Around 1970, the protest cycle set off in 1968 grew to include a newly revived working-class militancy breaking the long peace in the labour market. In the period 1968–1972 Western Europe experienced a wave of strikes, particularly wildcat strikes set off outside the established framework of negotiation. In fact, the official trade union leaderships were more often than not taken by surprise by their members’ militancy. All this contributed to an atmosphere of impending crisis, only sustained by the dollar crisis and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. When the full-blown crisis came in 1973, the dreams of stable capitalism as a rationally planned perpetuum mobile had gone. Victims of the crisis were often the big manufacturing plants, shipyards and mines. This added further to the diminishing of the blue-collar segment of the workforce, who either fell into unemployment or found new jobs in the service sector or in the new high-tech industry, which emerged with the invention of the microchip in 1971. Hence, the crisis of capitalism led to a transformation from the manufacturing-based planned system of the 1960s to an economy of new markets and new commodities. These new modes of production also

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contributed to the erosion the securities of the classic industrial society, including the securities of steady employment and fixed class identities. To use the concepts of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, it was the end of ‘simple modernity’ and the beginning of a ‘reflexive modernity.’ The point of these authors is that modernity itself goes beyond the logic of industrial society and detaches the individuals from their prescribed roles in the class society of classic capitalism. The traditions that were established by the rise of capitalism break down as their structural underpinnings vanish. Technology and economy are no longer manageable tools of rational planning, but incalculable sources of risk and progress alike.2 Whether one subscribes to these particular theories or not, there is a consensus that the present state of society has gone beyond the rational ideals of Keynesian capitalism. These developments became clear from the 1970s onwards, simultaneously with the breakdown of the Keynesian tools of economic management and the further dissolution of class-based identities, which revealed the new, shifting foundations of a different modernity. A part of this transformation, particularly in the private sphere, had begun in the 1960s with the left as one of the most visible agents. The so-called counterculture together with the rising affluence had created new possibilities of identification beyond class. The political left had been more or less connected to this ‘cultural revolution’, though rarely without scepticism, as described in the preceding chapter. Aesthetic subcultures had emerged, intermingled with the political ones and disseminated to broader segments of the society as what Ronald Inglehart labelled ‘postmaterialism.’ Rather than a fixed ideology, Inglehart pointed at the general traits in Western societies among the younger cohorts, who gave a lower priority to the parent generation’s concern about material wealth and security and attached greater importance to more aesthetic and existential values. Indeed, this tendency often correlated with leftist sentiment.3 In this landscape of aesthetic and political identities, the left formed a distinct subculture with distinguishable dress codes, its own venues and values. It formed, in the words of Paul Hollander, an ‘establishment of estrangement’,4 which saw itself as the political avant-garde of society, the ones who could present the right analysis and change society. This subculture saw itself in a continuous opposition to the established system and cultivated an atmosphere of entrenchment where the members exemplified an alternative to the mainstream of capitalism. Being leftist was a demanding identity, which influenced every aspect of life. The stereotypical leftist was living in a commune, dressing according to a laid-down code, keeping up to date by reading political journals and frequenting the bookstore and café of his or her particular group. It was hence theoretically possible to submerge oneself into the group and avoid contact with the world outside, especially for those employed at the universities, where the movement was dominant. Although it never mobilised large portions of the voters, the left did attain hegemony on certain fields, particularly in the educational and cultural sector,

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where leftist values and lifestyles dominated, and it was possible for the left to influence the agenda of the public debate. It is thus not an exaggeration to label the period from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s as ‘the Red Decade’, as does Gerd Koenen in his book about the German left.5 In this way, there existed a curious discrepancy between the left as a closed subculture and its ability to reach out to a broader public. It was as if the left were only capable of one-way communication and not receptive towards input from outside. It increasingly developed an osmotic relationship to its surroundings, where its messages could disseminate outwards into society, but where the membrane around the left would not let feedback pass through. In this situation, the left’s concept of nation became ever more conservative. Whereas the New Left a decade before had been eager to bring its language ‘up to date’, the left of the 1970s were more concerned with preservation of what were conceived as authentic values. As will be described below, the relation between the national and the international receded to the background, and the nation in terms of the authentic people, the true working class and the national traditions came into the foreground. This fostered a rather conservative, even nationalistic, view of the nation. It seemed that the changes of the 1970s were met with conservative resistance, an unwillingness to modify the radical positions of the late 1960s. The domestic aspect became further enhanced by the economic crisis of the 1970s, which questioned the nation as a welfare state and – for a while – seemed to hold promise for a future beyond capitalism and the social democratic class compromise.

Splits on Common Ground, the ‘Groupuscules’ Phenomenon Until the late 1960s, the left in both Denmark and Sweden had been centred on one major organisation, in which the debates on theory and strategy took place. In Denmark this had been the SF, in Sweden the SKP. The split of SF in 1967 did not change this general trait, as the self-defined left all moved over to VS, and SF became integrated into the political mainstream. In Sweden, however, the exit of the left-wing opposition and the founding of the KFML redefined the organisational structure of the left. The newly renamed VPK maintained a position as the biggest organisation on the left of social democracy, even though it lost Clarté and influence in the Vietnam Movement. In this way, the Swedes got an early taste of the splits and competition that would characterise the left in the 1970s. In Denmark, the monopoly of VS as the umbrella organisation for the left only lasted for a short time. Already in 1968, the Maoists left the party as a reaction to the party’s support for Dubcek’s reforms in Czechoslovakia, as did many of the trade–union-based, working-class members, who felt alienated in the student-dominated and highly ideological party. The former founded the Maoist group named KFML like its Swedish sister organisation. The latter diffused into existing structures; remarkably, Member of Parliament Hanne

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Reintoft joined the DKP in 1970 and thus ended the party’s ten years of extraparliamentary existence.6 In the 1970s, this pattern would repeat itself as the solution to ideological differences within existing groups. Usually, the minority would leave and form a new group or party, creating splinter groups of splinter groups. This phenomenon characterised the whole of the European left. The French named the scene ‘les groupuscules’, which seems a good noun to encompass the undergrowth of groups and subgroups. Radicalism, as discussed in the preceding chapter, played a big part in this by turning otherwise practical questions into dogmatic discussions. However, one should not forget the small numbers of devoted activists on the left. In such a small environment, bordering on the incestuous, ideological disagreements might well have covered personal antagonisms or, indeed, the ambitions and vanity of certain charismatic persons creating their personal group of followers.7 In terms of ideology, it is also worth noticing that most groups shared a large common ground and were only separated by some detail in the interpretation of the Marxist classics. They were all (apart from the anarchists) Leninist and shared the same systemic view of the capitalist world. Numerous and productive – at least in terms of written material – as these groups were, there is little reason to give a detailed description of their development and ideological particularities. Most of them reproduced, with maybe one or two particular additions, the world view and concepts of the ‘mainstream left’, which in Denmark consisted mainly of VS and the student movement, with Politisk Revy at its main organ. In Sweden the common denominator became Leninism, either in the Maoist or in the VPK version. While the Maoists had always recognised their Leninist heritage, the VKP had almost abandoned it at the 1967 congress.8 In the 1970s, however, the party returned to its Leninist roots, most clearly by the issue of an introduction to Marx and Lenin at Lenin’s 100 years anniversary in 1970.9 In Denmark, the DKP again began to present a real competitor for the hearts and minds of the left from the early 1970s. The party had remained basically unchanged through the 1960s with the hard core continuing the politics and language from the split in 1958. Through the process of radicalisation and the acceptance of the views on the left in large parts of society, DKP was no longer in a situation of complete isolation, as it had been in the heyday of SF. Politisk Revy had proclaimed its ‘critical solidarity’ with the Soviet Union already at the fifty years anniversary of the October Revolution in 1967. The concept was also taken up by the cultural radical veteran Erik Knudsen, who asserted that the socialists should not criticise Moscow using the ‘bourgeois phrases’ of the West.10 This rapprochement between the New and the Old left mainly consisted of the New Left’s fascination with the October heritage and the following movement towards the DKP. The DKP itself moved only a little; it theoretically adopted a people’s front strategy under the slogan ‘anti-monopolist democracy’, but remained reluctant towards the rest of the left. Moreover, it did

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not need the alliance with the rest. As the wave of wildcat strikes hit Denmark, the party seized its moment of opportunity and successfully used its influence in the trade unions to coordinate strikes and articulate demands, in opposition to the moderate social democrat unionists. Also in the movement against EEC membership, culminating around the referendum in October 1972, the party used its organisational capabilities to gain a new basis for recruitment. The communists even gained a foothold in the student movement by providing a bridge to cooperation with the working class. These efforts were crowned with success in 1973, when the DKP officially re-entered parliament and got six seats. Though this was not matched by a similar success in dominating the leftist scene, the DKP had become a party to be reckoned with as an alternative to the more intellectually inclined groups around VS, the student movement and Politisk Revy. In Sweden, the two main blocks consisted of the VPK and the Maoists. Unlike the SF, the VKP had succeeded in remaining as a major organisation on the left. The party played a role in the student movement and managed to engage in a number of social movements while continuing its policies against the monopolies and its support for the northern peripheries. Ideologically, the offensive of the New Left, primarily through the support for Tidsignal, halted as the young New Leftists radicalised themselves and turned from a pragmatic, moral socialism and back towards the Comintern tradition. Generally, after the closure of Tidsignal, the ideological discussions were confined to the theoretical journal Socialistisk Debatt, while Ny Dag (now appearing twice a week) focused primarily on social and trade union issues. Inside the party the modernists were still opposed by the traditionalists, who maintained a very conservative agenda by forming their own party within the party in Norrbotten. Their position was relatively weak and the party leadership remained dominated by the modernists with C.-H. Hermansson still chairman. After the catastrophic ‘Czechoslovak election’ of 1968, the party regained its modest electoral strength and passed the new 4 per cent threshold to enter parliament. The VPK thus managed to combine its role on the extraparliamentary scene with that of keeping its electoral ambitions, although the ambitions to form the basis of a new and broader left had failed. On the left, the main opponents of the VPK were the Maoists and their organisations. Also here, the groupuscule phenomenon created an undergrowth of, mainly Maoist, sub- and splinter groups, all portraying themselves as the true revolutionary party. Unlike Denmark, there existed no clear ‘apostolic succession’ from the October Revolution. The VPK could not and did not, as the DKP, present itself as the unshakeable keeper of the October heritage. The KFML certainly aspired to that position, but lacked the historical ties, although the party tried to amend this by adopting the name SKP in 1973. Other parties made the same claim, however, both the workerist splinter group KFML(r) (‘r’ for ‘revolutionary’) and the Trotskyite organisations would present themselves as

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the true heirs of communism. These were nevertheless small groups with little significance for the left as a whole. The strength of the Maoists was their ability to mobilise on single issues. While they only got around 0.5 per cent of the votes in the elections, they succeeded in spreading their ideas throughout the subculture, where they formed a very visible part of Swedish society. The most important asset, after the Vietnam Movement faded, was the magazine Folket i Bild/Kulturfront (Pictures of the People/Culture Front), the organ of a movement with the same name. Though not officially part of the Maoist network of organisations, it had obvious connections to the KFML/SKP, most significantly through Jan Myrdal, who was one of the founders. Its main goal was to sustain and develop a true popular culture as an alternative to the empty, Americanised comics and films. In this way, it continued the Maoist passion for the people, focusing on the authentic popular tradition of the countryside and of the working class. Despite of this, the magazine did not have the same aggressive edge against VPK as did Clarté and Gnistan. The organisation soon branched out into several ‘fronts’, working on music, literature, etc. It worked, much like Clarté or the Vietnam Movement, through local groups, organising activities in their area and spreading initiatives through the national umbrella organisation. The magazine had between 15,000 and 20,000 subscribers in the first half of the 1970s, and its glossy covers and appealing layout aimed at a public beyond the readers of the smudged Gnistan. Through these cultural initiatives, the Maoists could mobilise on selected issues, but not in any way develop into the mass movement, which they saw as their destiny. Both in the Vietnam Movement and in Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, they had to downplay explicit ideological Maoism in order to sustain broad support. Their competition with the VPK hence took place within the leftist subculture, not on the level of national politics. The main structure of the left in the two countries was thus quite similar: While the communist parties were the only ones capable of mustering significant electoral support on the national level, they did rarely set the agenda of the left itself. Within the subculture, the main themes were more often than not brought forward by magazines such as Politisk Revy and Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, which were affiliated with political groups, but remained fairly independent. The style and ideas, however, of both the two communist parties and the rest of the left were quite different in the two countries. In Denmark, the student movement – as mentioned in the preceding chapter – was the dominant element, both in VS and in Politisk Revy, which gave the left a very theoretical approach. The practical initiatives were often taken over by the DKP and its affiliates, which on the other hand presented a very rigid ideological framework besides their obvious organisational talents. The Swedish left was on the whole much less theoretical; the intellectuals from Tidsignal played a much less prominent role now that the New Left

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experiments had become radicalised beyond the intellectual eclecticism of the 1960s. The popular style of Folket i Bild/Kulturfront was explicitly sceptical about intellectual quibbling and the magazine preferred a down–to-earth, practical approach. Intellectual magazines like Zenit or Häften för kritiska studier had much less impact than their Danish counterparts. The VPK remained a remarkably un-ideological communist party and more a representative of the interests of radical workers and particularly the northern periphery. Despite the differences, it is reasonable to speak about a general convergence on the left. The New Left experiment had turned back to the Comintern tradition in one form or another, and the leftist subculture worked as a network of common values and truth claims on which the discussions were conducted. Ideological differences and struggles became much more outspoken due to a combination of hard competition and a very narrow ideological space, where the distinctions had to be demonstrated loudly to be noticed, or even where distinctions had to be constructed a posteriori in order to create an individual ideological position. Though organisationally more diverse, the left in fact turning increasingly towards the same positions.

Popular Movements Revisited Just as the last years of the 1960s were marked by a renewed interest in Europe, the left of the 1970s narrowed its focus yet another step to take a dominating interest in the domestic, even local, perspective. Not that the Third World and Europe were forgotten, but they were in some respects overshadowed by the new national turn, or they served as examples for national strategies. One reason for this was that there seemed to be a renewed potential for change on the national scenes. The apathy of the pre-1968 years concerning domestic change had transformed into hopes of a European revolution with the student revolt. Now, particularly the renewed working-class radicalism and the signs of a capitalism in crisis were interpreted as a prelude to revolution. ‘The people’ and the working class became the perceived agents of the approaching change. From around 1970 (earlier in Maoist circles) the people shifted from a reference to mostly the oppressed masses of the South to indicating the domestic people. The concept remained rather vague, either as a broad definition of everyone not capitalist or as an almost metaphysical reference to the true carriers of progress or of the national traditions, as we shall see below. The working class was a much more well-defined concept. It usually meant blue-collar workers or those directly occupied in the manufacturing industry. Although there existed some acknowledgement of the broader ‘wage earner’ (or alternatively ‘the working class in a broad sense’) as a more inclusive term, the image of the traditional worker as the revolutionary vanguard prevailed.

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The two concepts, ‘people’ and ‘working class’, were explicitly connected to the Scandinavian tradition of popular movements. This tradition dates back to the nineteenth century where the popular movements, religious and political, appeared as a rural-based opposition to the established society, and was carried into the twentieth century by social democracy.11 Hence, it had connotations both of people, in the sense of broad opposition from below, and of working class, through the traditions of the trade unions. The Scandinavian concept of folk (people) and particularly the adjective folklig/folkelig (literally ‘like the people’) are difficult to translate into English. The two words have historical connotations and are heavily politically loaded. They connote anti-elitism as well as authenticity, the idea that the true spirit of the nation is to be found among the common people. Hence, it is also a key to political legitimacy, since being folkelig/folklig signifies a rooting in the people and an assumption of representing popular sentiments. However, at the same time, it links to an explicitly democratic tradition of dialogue as opposed to use of force.12 The SKP/VPK had used this tradition in their advocacy for a peaceful transition, as had the SF in its choice of name (Folkeparti, People’s, or Popular, Party – popular movement is folkebevægelse). With the national turn of the left, the concept was yet again mobilised.

Return of the Working Class In the winter of 1969, the miners of Kiruna in the far north of Sweden went on strike. The images of sturdy miners defying the LKAB mining company in the deep frozen polar night had an obvious appeal, even to those less inclined to working-class romanticism. But the strike had more than mere aesthetic qualities. The LKAB was state owned, and hence in the last resort under the responsibility of the SAP, which presented itself as the working-class party governing the Folkhem for the good of all. The conditions in the mines and the strike itself seemed to demonstrate the affinity between the social democratic government and monopoly capitalism; how else could a so-called workers’ party act so clearly against the interests of the workers? The LKAB was even represented in the employers’ organisation, the very institutionalisation of capitalist interest. These themes had caught the attention of the left even before the strike with the book Gruva (Mine ) by Sara Lidman, a collection of interviews with miners telling about the hard work in the iron mines and the constant conflicts with the mine company. The book also contained a section of photographs of the miners, which were often used to illustrate articles about working-class militancy (see fig. 4.1).13 The miners’ strike was undoubtedly the most spectacular of the wave of wildcat strikes that hit Denmark and Sweden almost simultaneously in 1969–1970. Its images conquered the pages of Danish as well as Swedish leftist magazines, which speculated on the revolutionary potential of such strikes. The strikers’ protests against the lack of democracy within the trade unions and for

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Figure 4.1 Portrait of a miner from Gruva. Copyright © Odd Uhrbom

higher wages, against the social democrats and the trade union leadership were interpreted as a rupture in the consciousness of the working class. This could be the end of the traditional reformism and the beginning of a new anti-capitalist awareness. Politisk Revy saw the strikes as a continuation and escalation of the revolt that began at the universities in 1968, a revolutionary movement, which ‘has gained a momentum that makes even the social democrats’ ears buzz.’14 The magazine even spoke of ‘one, two, many Kiruna.’15 In the same vein, Zenit spoke of a ‘new workers’ movement’ as the seat of new ‘revolutionary politics that break radically in form as well as in content with the politics of the last decades.’16 In this way, the new working-class militancy was incorporated into the concept of nation as both the true people (in the sense of demos) and the agent of change. The working class was the legitimate ruler of the nation, and the workers were now aware of this role and ready to take the power that belonged to them. Despite of these great promises, the new attention to the unions in many ways dampened the revolutionary spirit in comparison with the rhetoric surrounding the student revolt and the liberation movements. Violent confrontation and revolution became substituted with the day-to-day problems of the workers and the shop floor become the scene of anti-capitalist struggle. Most of the left outside the communist parties, however, had but few connections to this world. The student-worker alliance of May 1968 had never materialised in Scandinavia, much to the disappointment of the left. Gnistan, for example, aimed explicitly at a working-class audience and preserved the image

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of a newspaper read by the man in the street, though it was actually mostly read by the relatively well-educated young members of the KFML. The group claimed to fight shoulder to shoulder with the miners, but hardly won any votes in the northern districts in the 1970 elections (the party got 0.4 per cent nation wide). Also, characteristically for the left at the time, in 1970 the KFML was engaged in a struggle with the KFML(r) splinter group, which had taken control of the party printing press and funds in Gothenburg. Hence, there was little energy to mobilise among the dissatisfied workers. Also Denmark was hit by a strike wave, although no single strike had the same impact as the miners’ strike in Sweden. The years 1969–1970 saw a rise in the number of strikes, which seemed dramatic in comparison with the peaceful labour market of the 1960s. The strikers protested both against the tax reform of the liberal government and against the conciliatory attitude of the trade union leadership and the system of labour relations.17 This wave of dissatisfaction attracted the left, which both was fascinated by the new militancy of the workers and wanted to profit from the discontent. The students had just lost a major campaign against university reform and were looking for new initiatives to keep the impetus of the movement going. The solution was to emphasise student-worker cooperation through research ‘in the interest of the working class’: typically reports by students of medicine or science on working conditions, toxic materials, etc., which did have a considerable impact on the debate and the following legislation on the working environment. Apart from this practical aim, the reports also tried to show how the reformist policies of the social democrats did not serve the interests of the workers.18 Apart from this, however, the non-communist left had little success among the workers. VS had quite lofty ideas about a reconstruction of the trade unions as a basis for revolutionary action and heavily attacked the existing structures. The party explained the strikes from a radical position as the result of alienation and a lack of meaning in daily work, which again came from the fundamental antagonism between employer and employee. In this way, however, the party paid little attention to the demands from the strikers themselves, which were first and foremost demands for higher wages.19 Needless to say, the academic and patronising form of the party did not attract many new, working-class members. The ones to make a real profit in terms both of social and cultural capital were the communist parties. They were the only ones who actually had a real role to play in the strike wave, as well as the only ones who could justifiably claim to be workers’ parties. Especially for the DKP, this was the window of opportunity to escape from isolation and reclaim the role as the leftist alternative to social democracy. The party still had a few bastions within the trade unions, acting as opposition to the social democratic leaders. Though the strikes themselves had not begun on a communist initiative, the party managed to coordinate strikes and articulate demands, mainly through the communist shop stewards. For the first time since 1956, the DKP was acting as the centre of

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working-class opposition. The demands, however, were far from the revolutionary battle cries of the New Left. The strategy of the DKP was to channel the strikes into a general policy directed at the right-wing government by demanding one krone more an hour and protesting about the government’s tax policy.20 Though the momentum of the strikes ebbed out in the spring of 1970, the DKP had made a visible impact for the first time in a decade and actually outmanoeuvred SF in the unions. This did not yet translate into growing electoral support for the DKP, but it definitely made the DKP a player to be reckoned with on the left itself. It also, importantly, made the rest of the left take up topics that had otherwise been neglected by the New Left of VS and the student movement, namely, concrete work on the shop floor. Here, the way went through the DKP, and the party became accepted to the extent that top communists would write in Politisk Revy. As another example, the reports of the student movement were made in cooperation with DKP-controlled unions, and report writing would soon be connected with the DKP student organisation Kommunistiske Studenter. For the VPK, the disastrous 1968 elections and the following struggle between modernists and traditionalists within the party had ruined C.-H. Hermansson’s ambitious plans to broaden the party’s ideological scope and electoral basis. With the introduction of a 4 per cent threshold to enter parliament, the question was no longer one of gaining broad support, but of surviving as a force in Swedish politics. Here, especially the miners’ strike was a way of demonstrating the need for a working-class opposition to the social democratic class compromise. But, just like the DKP, the party leadership was careful to avoid the revolutionary romanticism of the groupuscules and supported concrete bread-and-butter demands, better wages, fewer consumer taxes and demands for more democracy within the trade unions. Ny Dag would even tone down the ideological vocabulary and avoid the more Marxist ‘power to the workers’ in favour of ‘power to the wage earners’ (löntagermakt). The strategy turned out relatively well, and the VPK made the threshold, although only by 0.8 per cent. The party continued this policy of concrete demands going one better than the SAP, and steadily increased its share of the vote through the 1970s. Just like the DKP, the VPK could boast of being the only organisation of the left with real and lasting ties to the working class, the party that made the difference on the shop floor. The renewed interest in trade union issues only emphasised further the end of the New Left experiment of the 1960s. The theoretical debates raised in books like En ny vänster and in Tidsignal got very low priority; the ideological debate was reduced to the odd article in Ny Dag, since the party did not even have a theoretical journal of its own. Even when Socialistisk Debatt reappeared in 1973, it had a clear focus on working-class issues. It attacked the groupuscules to the left for being arrogant and ignorant about the real life of the working class, and

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Figure 4.2 LP cover by Røde Mor

did much effort to demonstrate the importance and size of the Swedish working class, of whose interests the VPK was the true representative. For the left in general, the most important and lasting effect of the strikes was the convergence with the communist parties on the issue of the working class. The 1960s’ discussions and images of the apathetic worker completely integrated in the capitalist society vanished in favour of an image of the worker at the forefront of a continuous class struggle. The conceptual struggle was no longer focused on what social group was the agent of change, but on the interests of the working class, which was recognised by all as having a privileged position in the fight for a socialist Denmark or Sweden. This convergence also meant a convergence in the aesthetics on the left. The worker in a flat cap and with a clenched fist (see fig. 4.2) became a common icon on the left, as did Lenin portraits and social realist woodcuts. Where the taste of the existential, ‘freak’ left of the 1960s with its dreamy, art nouveau style had distinguished the New Left, its images now had the same stern (if not crude) simplicity as those of communist social realism.

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Hence, the worker was not only a social category in the socialist analysis of society, but just as much an aesthetic category for the left. The worker became an icon of the movement, a symbol connected to a certain habitus, which was conceived as being ‘workerist.’ As described below, the culture of the working class became immensely important as a resource of ‘authentic’ practices to be appropriated by the left. Here, the worker appeared in the classic appearance of early industrialisation, with reminiscences of Soviet social realism, still grimy after a hard day’s work on the shop floor, but yet full of energy and revolutionary enthusiasm. His antithesis, the capitalist, also appeared in the guises of the past, dressed in top hat and a dark suit. Another consequence of the new workerism was the general agreement that the left needed an objective class analysis to formulate the right political strategy. This analysis would provide the parties with a map of society, its groups and their relation to capitalist production, and hence with a measure of each groups revolutionary potential and the possibility of alliances between different groups. Especially the students, for whom the ‘alliance problem’ and the sensation of isolation were the biggest, saw this as their raison d’être in the class struggle. A final class analysis would demonstrate and legitimise the student movement’s position vis-à-vis the struggling working class. Hence, the VPK would point at the growing discrepancy between workers (broadly defined as wage earners in general) and monopoly capitalists. The middle class was disappearing and becoming wage earners for a shrinking number of big capitalists. Thus, the discrepancy between the numbers and the influence of the capitalist class would gradually delegitimise its power and with it the social democratic class compromise.21 For this reason, the anti-monopolist strategy of the VPK would prevail in the long run. For the Danish left, dominated as it was by students, the role of the students themselves posed bigger problems. Were they a revolutionary vanguard, knowledge-providers for the working class, or future administrators of capital? Questions like these dominated the discussions throughout the decade. The underlying proposition for this convergence, the truth claim that made the discussions possible, was the assumption that the nation was the scene of a continuous class struggle. The nation was at its core split between two main classes with profoundly different interests, the workers and the capitalists. The antagonism between work and capital led unavoidably to clashes on a bigger or smaller scale, and it was in these clashes that the left could make a difference by supporting the struggling working class. This further emphasised the turn inwards to national problems. While the period prior to 1968 had been marked by its global agenda, which later turned European with student revolts, the agenda of the 1970s was highly national, even local. The centre of attention moved to the problems of the agreements on the national labour market and the social problems of the local area. Especially since the local level was the seat of trade union opposition to social democratic

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dominance, the radicalism that the left was looking for was to be found in individual branches of industry – as was typical in Denmark – or in particular geographical areas – as in Sweden. Hence the main battleground of the left had moved from faraway continents to the factory around the corner. One part of this view was the notion that capitalism had reached its final stage. The class struggle was fought on the basis of a circulation of manual work, surplus value and capital in an economy based on the manufacturing industry with a superstructure to keep the system ideologically in place. This view excluded the possibility that capitalism could transform itself. It could not change fundamentally and hence would not mend its own basic antagonisms. This could only be done by a radical change that would once and for all disband capitalism as a mode of production. In this perspective, the events in the labour market were interpreted radically as the sharpening of the antagonisms to the point where a breakdown of the system was foreseeable. The alternative interpretation that they were signs of deep structural changes in capitalism itself was not compatible with the left’s radical frame of mind.

Popular Culture The cultural turn was one of the defining features of the left in the 1970s. In the heyday of cultural radicalism, the Danish left had had culture on the agenda as a battleground against commercialism, while the Swedes had been more focused on social themes. In the 1970s, both the Danish and the Swedish left emphasised the struggle against commercial, capitalist culture and for a culture ‘of the people.’ A difference from the 1960s, though, was the abandoning of the explicit elitism of bringing culture ‘out’ or ‘down’ to the people. Instead, the cultural left of the 1970s saw themselves as being of the people, discovering and reintroducing the true and authentic values of popular culture. The increased attention to the field of culture was sustained by a growth in the available resources, especially state funding. During the 1960s, the available funds increased and with them the possibilities of jobs in the cultural sector or the media, and many of these opportunities were taken by leftist culture workers. In addition to this came the independent initiatives, such as noncommercial recording studios or theatre groups, many of which, however, directly or indirectly profited from the money flowing from the state.22 The cultural turn of the 1970s was characterised by its collective, organised form. Being ‘of the people’ meant abandoning the image of the artist as an individual figure who communicated his insights and instead embracing artistic expression as a collaborative venture. Thus, the new popular culture was mainly produced within the framework of artist collectives or broad organisations, which explicitly worked to spread political art. The movement without doubt had its most significant impact in Sweden, where it united a broad segment of the left in support of the ‘people’s culture.’ In Denmark, the movement was less organised, and it had less of an independent political agenda. Nevertheless, it

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was still a significant part of the leftist subculture and an important way for different groups to communicate their programme. In Sweden, the scene for independent, leftist music and theatre developed around 1970 with plays about working-class problems, especially the famous Pjäsen om Norrbotten (The Play about Norrbotten) about the depopulation of the north.23 The same year, the so-called ‘progressive rock’ or ‘progg’ initiated a yearly festival (Gärdetsfesterna) in Stockholm.24 Both initiatives presented political messages in artistic form, through either theatre or music. These tendencies soon found a common forum in a movement for a culture of the people centred on Folket i Bild/Kulturfront. The magazine Folket i Bild had originally been an organ of the SAP, but in the early 1960s, the big publishing house Bonniers bought it and emptied it of ideological content. In 1972, it re-emerged as a leftist cultural magazine, with the three main aims to ‘defend the freedom of expression, for a culture of the people, anti-imperialism’ (‘försvar av yttrande- och tryckfriheten; för en folkets kultur; anti-imperialism’). The magazine was introduced by a telling article, written by a pensioned cleaning lady, who praised the re-establishment of an organ for true popular culture. In her youth, she had read and cherished Folket i Bild, where become familiar with the great authors and artists of the workingclass movement. Then, however, the social democratic leaders of the movement had betrayed the cause, allied themselves with the capitalists and left Sweden at their mercy: ‘Capitalism offers a culture of such a bad quality that it can at best be compared with a plastic pot in contrast to the beautiful handmade things of noble materials produced by the peasant culture.’25 This quote would entail the main programme of Folket i Bild/Kulturfront for the whole decade. Its task was to support and spread the beauty of the people’s culture against the ugly plastic culture offered by capitalism. It wanted to go back to the roots, to the authentic expressions of the people itself, free from the phoney ideas of the upper class, in order to propose an alternative for the people and by the people. The capitalist monopoly of culture had to be broken by creating a cultural front that worked for its ultimate abolition hence the second half of the magazine’s name Culture Front. There was some disagreement as to what this really meant: If it required a thorough Marxist analysis of the role of culture in the class struggle, or if the culture of the people consisted of the historical traditions passed down through the generations. But the magazine never got carried away by these theoretical debates. Its profile remained remarkably intact, with a mixture of reports and exposés on the malfunctioning of capitalism, historical features and short stories, all from a ‘popular’ perspective. It drew an image of a Sweden populated by brave, honest, sensible workers and peasants whose good, ordinary lives were being disturbed by greedy capitalists. It was an image of the ‘world of yesterday’, of a Sweden inhabited by villagers living in the clearings of the big forest, dancing among the birch trees in the bright summer night. Unlike the interpretation of the reappearance of working-class militancy, an event for which the left had been unprepared, the turn towards a popular culture

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was a far more consciously constructed enterprise. Its aim to find and spread the authentic people’s culture did not spring out of any particular event but from a political act. The founders of Folket i Bild/Kulturfront knew what they were going to (re)-produce, namely, the beautiful, noble tradition of the rural tradition. This ‘imagined authenticity’26 was made concrete by seeking it or outright reconstructing it. The writers and journalists had something specific in mind when they went out in the country to interview the foresters and miners. They actively sought out the still existing pockets of perceived authenticity in the periphery and presented them as examples of the true popular culture. In the same vein the photographers chose the pictures that fitted the preconceived image of the people. These examples could then be reproduced back in the urban environment, where, after all, the left had its base. Thus, authentic customs like folk music, dances and food became a part of leftist habitus in the communes of Stockholm and Gothenburg. Thus, the turn ‘back’ was to a large extent an invented tradition in the sense of Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger,27 a tradition whose ‘continuity is largely factitious.’28 It was the selective reconstruction of an imagined past by a largely urban and intellectual subculture. The members of the subculture (or at least the promoters) rarely had direct links to the traditions they attempted to revive. A prominent example would be Jan Myrdal, whose parents were well-known spokesmen of modern living, who prided themselves on their functional home, stripped of traditional, non-functional furniture and paraphernalia.29 For many, the longing for the countryside was a longing for a partly unknown, lost country, which had to be rebuilt by seeking out the presumed authentic pieces still surviving in the backwoods. An opposite view on this invention of tradition would be Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison’s interpretation of the turn to the popular movements (in the USA as well as in Sweden) as a mobilisation of tradition.30 That is seeing traditions as links to the past, where the practices of earlier generations are passed on and transformed in a continuous manner to connect social movements to the experiences of former generations. Whereas this is certainly a valid way to see traditions (which is not in contradiction to Hobsbawm and Ranger, who recognise these traditions as ‘true’ traditions), it fits poorly with particularly the Swedish experience. Indeed, those who could have secured this passing-on of radical traditions were the VPK traditionalists, who represented a personal continuity of the radical, working-class left from the time of First World War. However, this tradition did not fit with the Maoist ideas, which counterpoised popular patriotism and allegiance to the Soviet Union. The link between the radical tradition of the northern miners and the solidarity with the Eastern bloc was erased from the Maoist image of the past. The past was carefully invented to fit the present political agenda, and unfitting continuities were filtered out. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront saw itself as the voice of the people against the system. Authenticity had its contrast in the technocratic state of social democracy and

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monopoly capital. Where the people represented warmth and humanity, the system was cold, calculating and inhuman – the struggle stood between these two world views: There is an alternative, another way of constructing society. There competition, rates of investments, growth in productivity, rationalisation are not the most beautiful words, but solidarity, self-respect, equality, the value of all human beings, culture and – indeed – love. This is socialism, and it is one of the ugliest words that the owners of our language know.31 In Sweden, the technocratic alliance between SAP and monopoly capital ‘owned’ language and hence controlled people’s possibility of thinking alternatives for themselves. The opposition against the technocratic state became sharpened when the police arrested two journalists from Folket i Bild/Kulturfront after they had published an article about the secret service. The interpretation of this connected to the already existing ideas about Sweden as a fascist country. The system felt threatened and hence suspended the freedoms of those who seriously questioned the existing order. The case of the two journalists became a common rallying point for the whole left, and gave Folket i Bild/Kulturfront even more cultural capital as the main organ of the subculture. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront saw itself as an attempt to reappropriate the Swedish language and culture. However, its resistance towards the perceived totality of commercial culture led to an equally total alternative. On the one hand, it fought the control of the system over the life of the individuals, but on the other hand the alternative of authenticity was even more rigid in its view of the ‘good life.’ The mixture of lifestyle and political views, which had come into existence in the 1960s, was now articulated as a rigid code of behaviour. In the ‘counterculture’ it was primarily a question of experimenting to find alternative ways of living. Now, the good life was prescribed by the ‘imagined authenticity.’ Folket i Bild/Kulturfront was soon to condemn habits that did not fit the culture of the people. Hippie fashion was ridiculed as a consumerist trick and deemed inferior to the genuine, simple style of the workers and peasants; so were the food and habits of the upper class. The programmatic re-appropriation went hand in hand with a view of history as the systematic repression of the true people by the upper classes, from the fight between chiefs and peasants in medieval times to the present-day treachery of the SAP. The magazine presented this as ‘Our Unknown History’, where the ‘we’ was the struggling people, and ‘they’ the reactionary upper classes. The circle around Folket i Bild/Kulturfront saw Swedish history as a history of oppression, where the repressive traits of the state had prevailed over the resistance of the popular movement. Only by knowing the history could it be changed. Jan Myrdal, for example saw the arrest of the two journalists as a continuation of the authoritarian characteristics of the Swedish state. It was an atrocity bound to happen in such a system. Only by struggling on the ‘culture front’ could the nation finally escape its repressive traditions: ‘It is with Folket i Bild/Kulturfront in your hand in a small street in the province that you break the

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iron laws of predestination.’32 The popular movements were the losers of history, constantly kept down by the upper classes, but at the same time portrayed as a strong tradition of resistance and a source of inspiration. Although the spirit of the popular movements had faded, partly due to the treachery of the social democrats, it had once presented an alternative to the dominance of the upper classes. Through Folket i Bild/Kulturfront this spirit could be revived to finally counter capitalism. Similar articles would appear especially in Clarté and Gnistan, which had strong personal and ideological ties to Folket i Bild/Kulturfront. Here, however, they were connected more explicitly to a Maoist programme and calls for support for KFML/SKP. This division between what was meant as general ‘consciousness creation’ and explicit political work for the already convinced had been a strategy already in the Vietnam Movement. Though controlled by Maoists, the movement was careful not to be too explicit about this in order to appeal broadly. Once recruited by the war issue, the members were then thought to be more open to, or ideologically mature enough for the ideas of Maoism.33 Although not as directly linked to the KFML/SKP, the same attempt to create a ‘revolutionary basis’ on the lowest common denominator can be seen in Folket i Bild/Kulturfront. This also made it difficult for the VPK to position itself in relation to the ‘culture front.’ The lowest common denominator also included many of the positions of the VPK, the struggle against monopoly capital, the praise of the simple life, particularly in the northern peripheries, and the suspicion of the proto-fascist system. Nevertheless, the party was fully aware that Folket i Bild/Kulturfront represented a political competitor on the left. Ny Dag and Socialistisk Debatt featured some criticism of the lack of theoretical foundation in Folket i Bild/Kulturfront; the magazine had never really come to a conclusive definition of ‘people’ let alone ‘people’s culture.’ Such unclear concepts had to be delimited sharply through class analysis; otherwise they could include everyone from workers to petty capitalists.34 However, the VPK could not really take pride in any such cogency itself, since both party organs used the concept of the people just as indiscriminately.35 The communists, moreover, did not take the step to directly oppose Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, but actually recommended it as a good leftist alternative to the right-wing press.36 Similar tendencies in Denmark took a much weaker form: First of all because the Danish left was much more theoretical and intellectual and secondly because the traditions, which were dying out in Sweden, had already vanished in Denmark. The traditional country life had disappeared in a highly industrialised agricultural sector, and the countryside proletarians like the Swedish foresters and petty farmers hardly existed. This could not be compensated by a rich bluecollar tradition, since there existed only a few big, old, manufacturing industries. The Danish working class more often than not consisted of so-called firstgeneration workers, with little class identity. Hence, the Danish search for

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authenticity often took place in a completely imaginary universe of record covers and drawn posters, whereas the photographic montage so dear to Folket i Bild/Kulturfront was very rare. As in Sweden, music was an important medium for the rediscovery of popular culture. In the wake of the counterculture, folk music was reinvented as a back-to-the-roots alternative to the electric experiments of the 1960s. This was emphasised by the historical edge to some of the bands, which cultivated a ‘medieval’ sound, with references to ancient kings and queens.37 In the centre of leftist culture stood the artist group Røde Mor (Red Mother), mainly a rock band, but also producing posters and illustration for the left. Their image of Denmark was a gloomy one of a working class fighting in a dark and threatening world. Little images of love and beauty would appear almost as parentheses in a cruel and distorted society. As in the poster, Danmark – et billeddigt I (Denmark – a poem in pictures, fig. 5.3), which has the love-making couple in the centre as a contrast to the surrounding images of alienation and loneliness. Such contrasts were typical for Røde Mor, where depiction of the present misery would be put next to images of red banners and happy marchers, representing the hopes of revolution.

Figure 4.3 ‘Danmark – et billeddigt I.’ By Røde Mor

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The artistic expressions of the group were changing between simple images of the class struggle and avant-guardist spontaneity. The more existential and anarchistic tendencies of the Danish ‘freak left’ could still be noticed, despite of the political messages. All this, however, functioned mostly as a backdrop to the intellectual discussions and analyses of capitalism. Culture, music, art and comics played an important role for the aesthetic identity within the subculture, but were only rarely perceived as the main weapon against capitalism. This had the secondary effect of actually allowing much more space for artistic freedom on the Danish cultural scene. Whereas the Swedish culture front often demanded clear political messages, the Danish cultural left could diverge from the political message and give more creative freedom. The most obvious example is the comic strips of, respectively, Folket i Bild/Kulturfront and Politisk Revy. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront featured the strip ‘Bellman’ whose protagonist was the archetypal ‘man in the street’, who liked a simple, authentic life, but whose existence was made difficult by capitalists, greedy landlords, consumerism, etc. Each page had an easily identifiable message against high rents, monopolisation or similar topics. Politisk Revy, in turn, ran the strip ‘Thorfinn’ whose protagonist was much more a

Figure 4.4 ‘Thorfinn forms a gang of bank robbers’ Copyright © Politisk Revy

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product of the freak left. The young Thorfinn could not conform to the simple life as a worker or farmer, but yearned for adventure. This anarchic personality was matched by an even more anarchic, stream-of-consciousness storyline, where the political content appeared as hints or asides while Thorfinn was being abducted by pirates, fighting dragons or robbing banks. Even in his short career as a bank robber, which could easily have been turned into a political story, the main joke is that Thorfinn’s accomplice speaks bogus German, with Thorfinn commenting, ‘Quit speaking Russian all the time!’ (see fig. 5.4).39

Revival of Nationalism As the concept of the people turned from the people of the Third World to the people of respectively Denmark and Sweden, national themes and traditions came into focus in different way from that in the 1960s. In Sweden, this developed into classic nationalism, while the Danish left attempted to hold a balance between interest in the national and political nationalism. In Denmark, the nationalist tendencies were at their clearest around the referendum about EEC membership in October 1972. As described earlier, the anti-EEC sentiments on the left had roots back in the first discussion about Danish membership around 1964. Now, the old arguments about the authoritarian and capitalist Europe reappeared, often carried forward by the very same people as ten years before.38 In the DKP, the leadership had remained unchanged since the break in 1958, and so had the rhetoric. The resistance veterans, who still led the ideological tenor of the party, saw themselves as the protectors of Danish independence against the onslaught of international capital. The party typically saw itself as the representatives of the true feelings of the Danish people, although this did not manifest itself in electoral support; ‘folkestemning’ (roughly ‘popular sentiment’) was a much-used term in Tiden. The Danes wanted national independence and freedom: ‘Our party has grown out of the best traditions in the Danish people. All activities of the party are inextricably connected to the fight for Denmark’s freedom.’ One difference from 1964, though, was the relative absence of German revanchism. As mentioned above the anti-German theme had been played down in the world communist movement since the 1960s, followed by the DKP with some delay. In 1972, after the Berlin Agreement and the international recognition of the GDR, the German question seemed solved de facto. Instead, the DKP put its focus on Denmark’s vulnerability to the constant expansion of international monopoly capital, which historically had always attempted to undermine national independence.40 The communists, however, articulated most of their anti-EEC campaign through the bigger association of anti-EEC forces, Folkebevægelsen mod EF (the Popular Movement against the EEC). This umbrella organisation united most of the anti-EEC groups and persons from all over the political spectrum. The DKP saw this as an opportunity to realise their ambitions of a popular front and

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bring together the forces in opposition to the monopolies. Hence, the party devoted considerable energy to the movement, and through its large organisational capacities, it succeeded in playing a major role here. The strongest trump of Folkebevægelsen, whose name gave associations to the nationalist, popular movements of the nineteenth century, was indeed its national rhetoric. As the pro-EEC campaign for the most concentrated on the economic advantages of international cooperation and led a quite defensive strategy towards the emotional arguments against membership, the ‘no’ campaign could more or less monopolise the national and nationalistic themes.41 For the communists, this was mostly a continuation of tried-out patterns from the antiNATO rhetoric of the 1950s and the first anti-EEC campaign of the early 1960s. Denmark was portrayed as the victim of outside predators and their treacherous allies in the parliament and big business. Again, only the communists were trustworthy in defending the nation and the people against the foreign threat. There were no barriers in this world view to prevent nationalistic tendencies. On the contrary, the communists were nationalist and proud. For the groupuscule left, things were more complicated. The disposition towards lengthy theoretical analysis and the thorough reading of the Marxist classics did not allow for the same unproblematic relationship to the question of national independence, and it certainly did not give any easy suggestion for appropriate forms of action. VS quickly left Folkebevægelsen in protest over its undisguised nationalism. In accordance with its radical legacy, the party required that the struggle be fought on the basis of the interests of the working class.42 The debate in the VS internal publication, VS Bulletin, followed this radical line much as a continuation of the end of the exceptionalist view on the nation discussed in the last chapter. If the system was capitalist, it theoretically did not matter what the state boundaries were; basically all capitalist states were alike. Hence, the arguments against the EEC had to be arguments against capitalism. This led in turn to lengthy and mostly inconclusive discussions about the relation between national independence, Marxism and the interests of the working class. The main difference from the DKP was that national independence was never an argument per se; even those who did argue for national independence as a political goal did so in connection with the prospect of revolutionary class struggle: ‘the struggle against the EEC necessarily takes the form of a national struggle, but this is in accordance with the international interests of the working class and the anti-imperialist struggle, because the struggle is against the imperialistic instrument of the European bourgeoisie.’43 Despite the ambitious intentions on behalf of the working class, the Danish non-communist left had little impact on the EEC campaign, and the discussions on the national independence died out when the EEC campaign ended with a large majority for Danish membership at the referendum. Nevertheless, the national agenda made inroads on this part of the left from an unexpected quarter. While the student revolt shook the Danish universities

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in Copenhagen and Århus, the folk high schools also experienced their own leftist movement. The folk high schools are a product of the nineteenth-century popular movement centred on the thoughts of N.F.S. Grundtvig. Grundtvig was a theologian who had (and has) an immense influence on the Danish self-image. His Christian national philosophy directed itself primarily towards the unsophisticated qualities of the farmers, and he spoke against the dominance of intellectuals over the people. In Grundtvigianism the terms ‘people’ (folket) and ‘popular’ (folkelig) acquire certain connotations of a specific Nordic rural tradition characterised by a lively simplicity, in contrast to the ‘Roman’ speculative and authoritarian tradition. For Grundtvig, the common people are the carriers of true wisdom and closer to life and God than the learned and wealthy upper classes.44 The egalitarian programme and anti-capitalist ideas of the movement had brought some of its members in contact with the left before. From the beginning, SF had had strong contact to the folk high schools, not the least through Poul Dam, who was both Member of Parliament for SF from 1964, leader of a folk high school and editor of Højskolebladet, the main organ of the folk high school movement.45 Another key figure was Niels Højlund, who wrote explicitly about the ideological connections between the New Left and the folk high school, and recommended the readers of Højskolebladet to vote for SF.46 The radical wave of the late 1960s hit the folk high schools more profoundly than the earlier rapprochement to the left. Now – as was typical for the uncompromising spirit of those years – the disagreements developed into political struggles. In the end, the prestigious Askov Højskole split in 1971, and the leftist teachers and pupils went on to found their own, ‘red’ folk high school in 1972. On the conceptual level, the encounter between the two movements, the left and the folk high school, led to a very visible influence of the vocabulary of Grundtvigianism. Especially folk and folkelighed were mixed with the more strictly socialist sense of the words inherent on the left. The most thoughtthrough example of this was the folk high school teacher Ejvind Larsen’s attempt to reconcile Grundtvigian theology and Marxism by pointing to ontological and epistemological similarities between Grundtvig’s theology and Marx’s communist vision. The important issue for Larsen was the utopian (a word he uses himself ) image of a world without hierarchies or division of labour, which he found in both Grundtvig and Marx. This entailed an image of the people as the opposition to experts and authorities and the folkelige as the anti-hierarchical tradition, which formed the alternative to the crisis-ridden capitalism.47 Ebbe Kløvedal Reich,48 former editor of Politisk Revy and organiser of the Vietnam Tribunal in Roskilde, was the second, more popularising, figure in the Grundtvig revival. He consciously connected with the nationalistic part of Grundtvigianism when he began to write novels. In 1970, he published a rewriting of the myth of Holger Danske, the mythological warrior protecting

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Denmark from foreign invasions, in 1972 came his big work on Grundtvig himself, Frederik, and in 1977 Fæ og Frænde, a historical novel about the Cimbrian invasion of the Roman Empire. His works depicted the North as the home of liberty and egalitarianism as opposed to the ‘Roman’, hierarchical world, where the people were subjugated to popes or emperors. The folkelighed, which Ejvind Larsen connected to communism, hence became a special Nordic, or even Danish, quality. Ebbe Kløvedal Reich himself explicitly described the connection between Danish nationalism, the national character, history and socialism: The most relevant reason for a Grundtvig-revival and not just a memorial at the anniversary of his death is that he went deeper into the question of being Danish than any other Dane... The love for the kin and language is today acutely threatened by greedy money-makers and empire-builders, to whom other people are not relatives, but slaves, and who do not speak a living language, but international numbers and codes... To be Danish against this challenge is to be familiar with the language in which we speak to each other, when we speak about our most important feelings. It is to revive and reincarnate the brightest moments in the history that we have been given by fate.49 In this way, parts of the Danish left wanted to reconcile socialism and nationalism by reaching back to the traditions of the nineteenth century. In Sweden, the Maoists developed their own version of nationalism. During the 1970s China improved its relations with the West, while tensions grew with the Soviet Union, to the point where, in 1977, the chairman of the CCP, Hua Guofeng, declared that the Soviet Union presented a greater threat than the United States. This changed the Maoists’ image of Sweden from a nation removed from the storm centres of the world revolution, to a frontline state immediately threatened by an aggressive, imperialist power. From the mid-1970s, especially Gnistan, and Clarté printed long articles condemning Soviet imperialism and analysing the immediate threat from the east. The Maoist SKP added the slogan ‘Stand Guard around Sweden’s National Independence!’ to its anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist repertoire. Sweden was no longer simply an imperialist perpetrator, but at the same time exposed to the threats of the great imperialist powers: Countries like France, England, the GDR and Sweden have an inbetween position. They are at one and the same time imperialist and themselves exposed to imperialist threats. The superpowers have their biggest interests in the protection of these densely populated and highly industrialised countries. This is why they try to control them and to prevent each other from penetrating their ’own‘ core regions.50

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The Swedish people had to resist this threat in solidarity with all other peoples living under the threat of imperialist aggression. As the liberation wars in the Third World ebbed away by the middle of the decade, the objects of solidarity moved to the European victims of Soviet imperialism. Especially the plight of Czechoslovakia occupied the Maoists, who wholeheartedly supported the popular resistance to the Soviet occupiers. In the same vein, dissidents like the Charter 77 movement and the GDR’s Wolf Biermann received much positive attention. Again, the people played a key role in the Maoist vocabulary. The imperialist elites of Europe (East and West) had succumbed to the pressure of the superpowers and sold the national independence for profit. In the West, monopoly capital was the ally of American imperialism, in the East, it was the state-capitalist bureaucratic elite who acted as the instrument of the Soviet Union. Finland occupied a special position in this world view as a horror scenario for Sweden. ‘Finlandisation’ became a possibility for Sweden’s future; the Soviet dominance in Finland and the economic ties between Finland and the Eastern bloc were seen as an example of how the capitalists were willing to give up sovereignty for profit. Had Finland not been a buffer between Sweden and the Soviet Union, or if Soviet pressure on Sweden increased, the Swedish capitalist class would do the same. ‘Had Finland not been Finland, Sweden would be Finland.’51 However, the predictions of the Maoists went more in the direction of an impending Soviet invasion. Maps of Sweden showed the threat of Soviet encirclement; Soviet warships and submarines lurked in the Baltic to the east, the Soviet fleet based in Murmansk threatened the Scandinavian Peninsula from the west, and to the north, the Soviet army had large quantities of infantry, tanks and air force units based on the Kola Peninsula. In this bleak situation, the defence of Sweden could not be left to the country’s present unreliable rulers. They had given in to German demands during the Second World War, and would certainly give in to the Soviet Union in a coming war. Only the people could truly defend Swedish independence. Using the rhetoric from the Vietnam Movement, the Maoists called for a People’s War: ‘If Sweden is attacked by a superpower, the Swedish army will collapse already after a few days. We cannot trust the military and the bourgeoisie… The answer of the working class and the people must be the People’s War.’52 Here, the Maoist SKP saw a major role for itself. Only the communist party could be the leading force protecting the people against the imperialists and fighting for Sweden’s independence. Hence, the Maoists should be ready, in the event of occupation, to clandestinely organise the national resistance in a people’s army (folkarmé).53 Another strategy was to infiltrate the military by recommending party members to join the army and to mobilise among the recruits so that there would always be a group of reliable patriots in the armed forces. As Sweden’s position in the world changed from a peripheral, imperialist power to a front-line state, the rhetoric around the concept of nation changed as

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well. When the main enemy shifted from the distant United States to the Soviet neighbour, territory entered the conceptual field as an important element. The Maoists presented themselves as true patriots, fighting for the Swedish territory. This was particularly obvious in the Baltic, where Sweden and the Soviet Union were negotiating territorial claims and fishing rights. In the nationalist language of the SKP, this led to slogans like ‘Not an inch of Swedish water to the Soviets!’ Or the eastern island Gotland was described as ‘Sweden’s first bastion against Russian imperialism.’54 Hence the image of Sweden acquired a new physical component, where the actual Swedish territory, or claims to territory in the Baltic Sea, was an important part of the nation, which had to be protected from the intrusions of foreign powers. These were notions that had been foreign to the image of the nation, or rather, had gone without saying for decades. Also, using the militaristic metaphors about territory as ‘bastions’ seemed oddly anachronistic in a world where the military threat came from ballistic missiles, which could be fired at Sweden from nuclear submarines. Passionate territorial claims like these seemed to belong to a pre-war Europe, not to the 1970s. Adding to the anachronistic air of the rhetoric, the historical role of Russia as the archenemy was revived. Although this image had historically been less pronounced than the corresponding image of Germany in Denmark, there were parallels between the ‘David and Goliath’ relation between the big state and its small neighbour. In this, the Maoists returned to the images of nineteenthcentury nationalism. The notion of an expansionist, aggressive Russia had been part of Swedish political culture and Swedish foreign policy since the loss of Finland in 1809, and had culminated at the turn of the century. The images of this menace were often exactly the same as in the 1970s; the Russians aimed at better access to the oceans, particularly the North Atlantic, or the Russians were trying to expand their dominance over the Baltic Sea.55 There was an obvious continuity and reproduction of Swedish ‘russophobia’ built around an image of the aggressive great power just waiting to strike on its weaker neighbours. But continuity of Russophobia in the Maoist version also entailed a language that belonged to the apogee of anti-Russian sentiments seventy years before. The nationalist revival, however, was almost a purely Maoist phenomena. For good reasons, the VPK did not see the Soviet Union as the main threat to Sweden. After all, the party was still part of the world communist movement and perceived the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc as a source of inspiration for Sweden, although not a model to be copied directly. For the VPK, the main threat came from the EEC, an enemy that did not invoke old xeno-stereotypes and could not be connected to territorial threats; rather the communist antiEuropean arguments followed the party’s main line against monopolies.

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Revivalism and Conservatism The revival of the popular movements in its workerist, cultural and nationalist forms had a very remarkably conservative tenor. In all cases, the image of the nation focused on elements that were in decline. The blue-collar working class had been diminishing for more than a decade. Nevertheless the left saw exactly this group as the both the agent of change and the true representative of the people. As deindustrialisation put on speed from the middle of the decade, the inherent conservatism of working-class romanticism became apparent. In Sweden, the icon of the worker became linked to a praise of manual labour and the traditions of the crafts of the workshops: ‘Monopoly capitalism will now sacrifice inalienable values, century-old traditions for iron working, culture and working environments on the altar of profit.’56 The workplace represented an old, authentic way of life, which had to be protected against the changes in the industrial structure. As an example, Folket i Bild/Kulturfront presented the view that Sweden’s future was to stick to the ‘safe options’ in the manufacturing industry and the primary sector.57 The status quo came to have a value in itself in the light of a changing society. In Denmark, the structural changes were less pronounced, since the manufacturing industry had never been as prominent as in Sweden. The conservatism typically took more theoretical forms about the leading role of the working class. Through Marxism, the Danish left clung on to an image of capitalism where surplus value was created by the physical labour of exploited workers. There were only a few attempts to theoretically reconceptualise the relation between work and capital. For the most, both theoretically and aesthetically, the worker lived and looked like he did at the time of Marx himself. The conservatism of the Swedish ‘cultural front’ was obvious. The search for authenticity, the glorification of the simple life and popular traditions were all focused on the past. In this light, new developments were a threat to the true popular traditions. They were usually interpreted as commercial onslaughts of monopoly capitalism to deprive the working class of their own culture. Hence, almost everything new was looked upon sceptically. This also created a form of alienation from the developments of commercial culture in the 1970s. Everything was seen through the lenses of trickery, false consciousness or even deprivation and perversion. Hence, the cultural left had difficulties differentiating and understanding popular culture (in the sense of broadly consumed culture). When Star Wars captured the hearts of Swedish audiences in 1978, Folket i Bild/Kulturfront categorised it as ‘a film exploiting violence’ (‘våldsfilm’),58 which is to say in the same category as for example the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which had appeared some years before. Instead of following the actual innovations of the decade, they discarded them as commercial junk, and continued the revivalist project with their gaze fixed on the traditions of the past. The revival of nationalism in itself brought back themes and concepts from the nineteenth century that were more focused on the past than on the future. The

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Grundtvig revival in Denmark was first and foremost a mobilisation of a certain tradition from the nineteenth century, which sought to revive the ideas of the nationalist movement in leftist garments. The Maoist attempt to evoke the Russian menace was a similar return to the construction of nationalism in the nineteenth century, its militaristic rhetoric and images largely foreign to its own time. In this way, the revivalism of the beginning of the decade became combined with a set of values and interpretations that drew on another time. Revivalism in a time of change fostered conservatism.

The End is Near! Countries in Crisis One major shift from the 1960s to the 1970s was the appearance of the concept of crisis in Western societies. Whereas the economic problems of the previous decade had seemed solvable by small adjustments to an otherwise well-running machine, the economic turmoil of the 1970s spread a general mood of profound crisis. The concept would be constantly re-invoked in different contexts for the whole decade – and well into the 1990s – as an almost constant factor in the economic situation of the Western countries.59 In 1971, the Bretton Woods system, which had regulated currency exchange rates from the end of the Second World War, broke down, adding further to the signs of crisis that had been visible from the late 1960s. When the OPEC countries in 1973 raised the price on oil dramatically, the Western economies suffered another blow, which put a definite end to any notion of crisis-free capitalism. Unemployment, inflation and interest rates could no longer be tamed by the trimmings of Keynesian economics. The left reacted to the crisis in diverse ways. First and foremost, it reinforced the turn towards domestic politics, which had been begun with the wildcat strikes. The global analyses aimed at explaining why the North was rich and the South poor now definitely yielded to domestic, economic analyses, or considerations about the economic system of the capitalist countries. Secondly, it also sustained the image of the nation as a scene for a continuous class struggle. The major groups on the left shared these perspectives, but disagreed in their conclusions about the nature and outcome of the crisis. The communist analysis of the crisis was to a large degree derived from the theories of state monopoly capitalism, which had been developed in particular by the PCF in the late 1960s.60 This theory continued the accusations against the Western democracies that the real power was not in the hands of the elected representatives, but wielded by the monopoly capitalists behind the scenes. In state monopoly capitalism, the monopolies and the state apparatus had merged so that the state had turned into a mere instrument to secure the profits of the monopolies, for example, through public investments. However, the theory also insisted on the possibility to separate state and monopolies and hence to use the selfsame apparatus, which before had been a tool of the capitalists, to overcome

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capitalism and embark on the road to socialism. The strategy to reach this goal was to mobilise the broad masses of those who suffered from the monopolist policies in a common front against the power of the monopolies. According to this theory, the current crisis was a logical outcome of the economic laws of capitalism, first and foremost the falling rates of profit, and would only increase the differences in society. The monopolies would use the state to alleviate the effects of the crisis, but at the expense of the large majority of the people. Hence, the people, from workers to small businesses and shop owners, should unite on the basis of their common interest to break the power of the monopolies over the state. The role of the communist party was to facilitate this unity of the people. If the social democrats continued their cooperation with the monopolies, they would in time lose their foothold in the population, whose objective interests were with the communists and their antimonopolist strategy. The crisis would only accelerate this process. Meanwhile the communists would fight on concrete issues to organise the common front on the day-to-day problems of the crisis. In Sweden, the VPK, for example, linked the rise in consumer taxes to the increased state expenses to support the monopolies; in short, ‘The people pay for the crisis of capitalism.’61 But the people would not pay for ever. Signs were appearing that the working class could unite broadly with all those who suffered under the misgovernment of state monopoly capitalism and form a genuinely democratic alternative. The DKP aptly named this ‘anti-monopolist democracy’, which meant government of the people directed against its ‘anti-popular’ (folkefjendtlige) enemies. Hence, the communists set up the counter concepts of state monopoly capitalism and democracy, one representing the past and present state of the nation, the other its future. In this perspective of past and future, the crisis represented a turning point: This is the crisis of the capitalist system. Even though the monopolies have enormous power, they cannot control their own system… It is becoming ever clearer that it is the capitalist order that prevents the colossal forces of production of our age to guarantee safety for the peoples and the possibility to fulfil themselves as human beings. For this reason, unrest is spreading among the peoples as well as a search for other possibilities. From this, wide-ranging democratic movements are developed, aiming at the power of big capital.62 The scenario envisaged by the communist parties was an alliance of all forces in opposition to the monopolies, a popular front, which would seize the state apparatus and nationalise the key industries and banks to ‘put them under democratic control.’ Allende’s popular front in Chile was the main reference to such a strategy. Even after the coup in 1973, it served as an example of how far it was possible to go with a united people against the capitalists.

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In general, the early 1970s was a period of optimism in the world communist movement, due partly to international developments such as the American retreat from Vietnam, and partly to the prospects of a capitalism in crisis.63 This was reinforced by the relative electoral support for both the DKP and the VPK; the DKP re-entered parliament in 1973 and stayed there for rest of the decade, while VPK stayed well clear of the dreaded 4 per cent threshold. Although they were still minuscule parties, they had some basis for hope for further progress. The non-communist left in Denmark and Sweden had more diverse interpretations of the crisis. These national differences followed the general pattern of the Danish left being much more theoretical and intellectual, while the Swedish left was more focused on the concrete class struggle. Both, however, like the communists, saw the world crisis as a potential turning point and the beginning of the end of capitalism. In Denmark, Politisk Revy led the theoretical discussions about the roots and the possible outcomes of the crisis. Generally, the magazine was more inclined to explain the causes of the crisis than to form clear conclusions about it. It featured long articles written in a style only comprehensible to those already familiar with the neo-Marxist jargon of the student movement. Here, the crisis was presented as an object of study to harvest new understanding of the capitalist system in order to overthrow it when the time was ripe. The style of the economic overviews of Politisk Revy was a mixture between empirical summaries of economic indicators and speculative paragraphs about possible future developments. The world seemed to be a calculable machine, where understanding of the laws of capitalism could be used for broad predictions; only the final analysis was missing in order to make predictions with certainty. This echoed the style of numerous publications of the student movement at the time, where the need for a comprehensive analysis of the system was often emphasised, but never carried out. Instead, the students wrote ‘preliminary overviews’ or ‘outlines’ that should eventually form the basis for the final analysis and hence the final, unambiguous political strategy.64 As the crisis prolonged, these conditional predictions got ever longer and more complex. The article series ‘De mazuriske sumpe’ (the Mazurian Marshes)65 attempted to give a yearly overview of the crisis. The title points at the defeat of the Russian army in the Mazurian marshes in 1914 after their initial advance into Germany, the capitalist economies were facing a similar defeat or standstill in the marshes of the crisis. While the 1974 overview was focused on the strategic possibilities of the left in a crisis-stricken capitalism, predictably calling for more detailed analyses as the immediate task, the 1975 overview was almost twice the length and attempted a full report on both the state of capitalism and the possible strategies of the left. The article very well summarised the general tenor of the mid-1970s. It explained the crisis through the falling rates of profit inherent to the capitalist system. The profits could no longer be reinvested in a satisfactory manner, which meant the end of the

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accumulation of capital – a pillar of capitalism in the Marxist sense. The profit rates, notably, were not quantifiable, but a qualitative change in the basis of the system. The real understanding of the crisis did not lie in statistics, but in a complex, systemic analysis: ‘between the immediate experiences and understanding there are many complex links.’66 Hence, it was not the direct registration of economic developments that demonstrated the reasons for the crisis, but the Marxist interpretation of them. The ‘many complex links’ in praxis often meant a mere citing of Das Kapital. Indeed, the predominant Marxist school in the student movement of the time was the so-called ‘logic of capital’ (kapitallogik), which saw Marx’s main work as a precise map of the laws of capitalism. The explicit aim of this was to break down the barrier between theory and praxis, get beyond the empirical observation and find the laws of society hidden behind the observable phenomena. The observable was always ‘mystified’ and had to be put in the context of its society i.e. of capitalism. Hence, every observable phenomenon had to be analysed through Das Kapital, which contained these hidden, basic laws.67 Hence, as the crisis was clearly produced by the inner limits of accumulation, capitalist societies were confronted with a need to change. The class compromises of the welfare state were no longer tenable, and class antagonisms would be sharpened as the capitalists would attempt to secure the profitability of their enterprises by lowering the wages. The economic crisis of capitalism could lead to a crisis for the system as a whole: ‘If the global crisis really is of the fundamental nature that we speak about, then we are at the beginning of a decisive period of historical transformation. At the far end we see the alternatives: socialism or capitalist barbarism at the horizon.’68 The task for the left was to use the coming class struggles to reveal the systemic faults of capitalism and, in the very long run, prepare the working class for revolution. Denmark was not yet ripe for change, but the seeds had to be planted now in order to harvest the fruits of socialism later. The calls for patience and working in the long-term perspective were at times overtaken by hopes and signs of beginning unrest. In May 1974, Denmark experienced a new strike wave, in terms of the number of strikers much bigger than the wildcat strikes of 1969–1970. In a response to the liberal government’s increase on duties, large portions of wage earners went on strike. The strike soon diffused into a number of sectors and began to take on the proportions of a general strike with over 100,000 strikers in diverse sectors. Both Politisk Revy and VS saw big possibilities in this militancy. Politisk Revy predicted that ‘The May strikes are a decisive event in the development of the class struggle in Denmark,’ and stated that: ‘The big strikes in the beginning of May emphasise that the social democrats very well can be at the end of their career as the best administrators of the capitalist society.’69 At the big demonstration that marked the peak of the protest, VS distributed a leaflet to the workers where the party described the strikes as the

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beginning of a period of confrontation. The strikers were encouraged to continue the struggle on the shop floor, not through the big parties. It was not the crisis of the workers, but the crisis of capitalism, and the struggle had to continue, ‘tomorrow – and the day after tomorrow!’70 The high hopes, however, were in vain; the next strike wave against a social democratic government in 1975 only mobilised a small part of those who had gone on strike the year before. The working class still clung to its reformist traditions. Indeed, the May strikes would prove to be not the beginning of the end of capitalism, but merely the high point of the protest cycle set off by 1968. Although the whole decade was marked by strikes,71 none of them had the revolutionary potential that the left was looking for. Also, one cannot cry wolf on every occasion. As the high level of strikes continued through the decade, the strikes came to look like recurring parts of labour negotiations rather than unique beginnings of a revolutionary process. In Sweden, the non-communist left had a less intellectual approach to the questions raised by the crisis of capitalism. In Gnistan and Folket i Bild/Kulturfront the economic analyses were consciously kept on a fairly comprehensible theoretical level directed at the ‘working people,’ who were supposed to be mobilised by the crisis. Especially Gnistan used the belligerent rhetoric of Maoism to describe the crisis. The initial reaction to the oil and currency crises was to interpret them as a ‘war against the Swedish people,’72 an offensive against the working class by Swedish capital. The crisis was a scam to cover the super profits of the big companies and to exploit the workers by making them believe that they had to lower their demands because of the recession. The attack had to be countered by a conscious, struggling working class, ready to fight back. Instead of waiting for the right, objective analysis, as the Danish left did, the Maoist wanted to play an active part in the daily class struggle by making concrete – though excessive – demands for shorter working hours and more pay. Sweden was ‘a paradise for capitalists,’73 and the talk of crisis was a bad excuse not to share the fat profits with the workers. This changed, however, around 1976. Meanwhile, in 1975, the debate about Sweden’s economic future had taken a new turn with the book Löntagarfonder (wage-earner funds) about collecting some of the profits in funds administered by the wage earners.74 Now, the Maoists began to subscribe to the notion of capitalism in crisis. Chief ideologist Bo Gustafsson used a similar Marxist interpretation to that of the Danes in Politisk Revy, that the present crisis was a symptom of the general crisis of capitalism, first and foremost the falling rate of profit. The wage-earner funds were another way of turning the workers’ pay into capital to be invested,75 or, in Marxist terms (which Gustafsson carefully avoided in order not to alienate Gnistan’s supposedly working-class readership), another way of administering surplus value. Indeed, Gustafsson envisaged falling wages as a result of the attempts to counter the declining profits through funds.

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Also, the fund question brought up the old notion of cooperative capitalism, which was usually associated with fascism and state repression of the people: ‘there is a great risk of a faster development through the wage earner funds. If trade unions (without real democratic structures), business and state melt together, then fascism is close at hand, if not already a reality.’76 Hence, from 1976, the Maoist SKP subscribed fully to the crisis. The capitalist system had profound dysfunctions, which state and capital attempted to shift onto the working people. The time was one of sharpened class struggle, now that the dream of a crisis-free capitalism had crashed. This did not, however, have any profound effects on the language and programme of the SKP. The calls for working-class militancy and struggle against the ‘attacks’ on the people were the same, whether these attacks were the products of a fake crisis or not. Typically for the 1970s, the rhetoric seemed to have reached a stage of inertia, where the same phrases were used as a reaction to different circumstances. A unique trait for the Maoists was their connection between the crisis and the military threat to Sweden. The crisis as an international phenomenon was described as the crisis of the imperialist system. Taking departure from Lenin’s theory of imperialism, the current period of crisis was presented as the third phase of the general crisis of imperialism. As Lenin predicted, the imperialist powers had to compete for markets and territories, ultimately by military means; this was the explanation for the First and the Second World War. The present situation was characterised by two competing imperialist powers, the USA and the Soviet Union. Their competition was sharpened by the growing number of independent states that had left the imperialist system, and hence could not be used as outlets for the imperialist need for economic expansion. Hence, the economic crisis of imperialism would inevitably lead to a new world war, probably on the initiative of the Soviet Union. Thus, the trade union rhetoric of the Maoists about domestic social welfare was explicitly connected to the necessity to protect Sweden’s independence against the Soviet menace.77 As the crisis continued in the latter half of the decade, it began to have consequences for the whole economic structure, taking the form of a contraction of the manufacturing industries. Especially shipbuilding was hit, but also steel, textiles and coal.78 For Sweden, ships and steel had been major export commodities, which provided work opportunities and were often the seat of working-class radicalism. The steel and shipbuilding industry in many ways formed the stage for the blue-collar workerism so dear to the Swedish left. As these industries contracted, the inherent conservatism mentioned above became very explicit. The image of the sturdy blue-collar worker as the backbone of the Swedish people was under threat now that the actual blue-collar jobs were disappearing. Gnistan and Folket i Bild/Kulturfront both argued for keeping the manufacturing industries, which were seen as the backbone of Swedish industry. The tenor of the numerous articles about closures and cuts was one of a

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stubborn belief that Sweden by definition was an industrial country and should not change. Despite of the obvious crisis and the overwhelming competition, especially from Japan, there was an insistence that ‘if man, and not the market, take control, then it will be possible for Sweden to overcome the steel crisis.’79 Sweden should remain the same, instead of finding new sectors to replace the old industries, the country should invest more in the ‘old safe cards’ of manufacturing and steel.80 VPK communists and Maoists alike clung to their faith in a rational planned economy. If only the power of the monopolies could be exchanged with true democratic power over the production, the crisis would be over, and the steel plants and shipyards would remain. The utopian images of a socialist future hence converged with the conservative images of the Sweden of the past; socialism became associated with preserving Sweden as it was – or rather preserving a vision of an imagined past. One consequence was also a large scepticism towards new technologies; a telling headline from Folket i Bild/Kulturfront read ‘Soon it will control our lives’ and featured an image of a printed circuit board. In fact, the article was very factual, even far-sighted, one about the microchip. Soon microchips would be incorporated into TVs, phones, cars, etc. This was a dangerous development, which could have grave consequences. In the workplace, they could make the task more monotonous and they could substitute real human contact as ‘electronic playmates.’81 Prophetic as this may sound, it was also symptomatic of an attitude that increasingly approached any new development with uncertainty at best. The more society moved away from the increasingly conservative ideals of the left, the more scepticism became the dominating sentiment. The crisis of the economies, to sum up, initially held promises of a brighter future beyond the collapse of capitalism. However, the ‘socialism on the horizon’ kept moving away. Those parties with the strongest day-to-day agenda, DKP and VPK, found their interpretation of the crisis in the theories of state monopoly capitalism and their political niche in the resulting policy of broad, anti-monopolist alliances. The factual bread-and-butter policies in the guise of anti-monopolist struggle provided the parties with a political base and gave them grounds for optimism. The groups looking for more radical outcomes, though, were increasingly frustrated. As the crisis deepened without creating major social upheavals, the initial optimism was replaced by disillusionment and scepticism.

Notes 1.

B. Stråth. 2000. ‘After Full Employment and the Breakdown of Conventions of Social Responsibility’, in B. Stråth (ed.), After Full Employment, Brussels: Peter Lang, pp. 11–16; L. Boltanski and E. Chiapello. 1999. Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme, Paris: Gallimard; P. Wagner. 1994. A Sociology of Modernity. Liberty and Discipline, London: Routledge, pp. 121–171.

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2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

24. 25. 26.

See U. Beck. 1986. Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, U. Beck et al. 1994. Reflexive Modernization. Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, Cambridge: Polity Press, A. Giddens. 1994. Beyond left and Right. The Future of Radical Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press. R. Inglehart. 1977. The Silent Revolution. Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics, Princeton: Princeton University Press; for the correlations between ‘postmaterialism’, right and left, see pp. 60–62. P. Hollander. 1998. Political Pilgrims. Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, p. 24. G. Koenen. 2001. Das rote Jahrzehnt, Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch; the same point is made about Sweden in Arvidsson, Ett annat land. For a details, see Madsen and Madsen, Fra sandkasse til kadreparti?, pp. 105–119. See D. Tourish and T. Wohlforth. 2000. On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left, Armonk and London: M.E. Sharpe, particularly p. 204. Jørgensen, ‘Split or Reform?’, p. 71. P.-O. Zennström (ed.). 1970. Från Marx till Lenin, Stockholm: Arbetarkultur. E. Knudsen. 1969. Tag parti. En socialistisk debatbog, Copenhagen: Spektrum, p. 38. Stråth and Sørensen, The Cultural Construction of Norden, pp. 4–7; S. Lundkvist. 1977. Folkrörelserna i det svenska samhället 1850–1920, Uppsala and Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. See Trägårdh, The Concept of the People and the Construction of Popular Political Culture in Germany and Sweden, 1848–1933, particularly pp. 94–99. S. Lidman. 1968. Gruva, Stockholm: Bonniers. Politisk Revy, no. 145, 1970, p. 1. Politisk Revy, no. 141, 1970, p. 2. Zenit, no. 19, 1970, p. 21. K. Jespersen. 1977. Strejkebevægelsen i Danmark marts 1969 til marts 1970, Copenhagen: unpublished MA Thesis. Jensen and Jørgensen, 1968 – og det der fulgte, pp. 218–19 K. Schmidt and I. Wechselmann. 1970. Den danske fagforstening, Copenhagen: Røde Hane, see also Madsen and Madsen, Fra sandkasse til kadreparti?, pp. 167–80. See: Jespersen, Strejkebevægelsen i Danmark marts 1969 til marts 1970; and Larsen, Kommunisterne og arbejderklassen, pp. 177–85. Socialistisk Debatt, no. 10, 1974, pp. 5–7. Östberg, 1968 när allting var i rörelse, pp. 78–80; Arvidsson, Ett annat land, p. 159 in particular about the media; for Denmark M. Bakke. 1988. Spillet om kulturen: dansk kulturpolitik 1945–1985, Århus: Århus Universitetsforlag. See C. Holmberg. 1998. Längtan till landet civilisationskritik och framtidsvisioner i 1970–talets regionalpolitiska debatt, Gothenburg: Historiska institutionen i Göteborg, pp. 9–12. For the history of the ‘progg’, see H. Lahger. 1999. Proggen: musikrörelsens uppgång och fall, Stockholm: Atlas. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, no. 1, 1972, p. 2. I took this concept from H. Schulz-Forberg 2006. London – Berlin. Authenticity, Modernity and the Metropolis in Urban Travel Writing, 1851–1939, Brussels: Peter Lang, pp. 55–56.

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27. E.J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds). 1983. The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 28. E.J. Hobsbawm. 1983. ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in E.J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, The Invention of tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 2. 29. Y. Hirdman. 1990. Att lägga livet tillrätta -studier i svensk folkhemspolitik, Stockholm: Carlsson, p.105–28. 30. Eyerman and Jamison, Music and Social Movements, pp. 41–45. 31. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, no. 7, 1973, p. 2. 32. L. Gustafsson and J. Myrdal. 1974. Den onödiga samtiden, Stockholm: PAN, p. 207. 33. Salomon, Rebeller i takt med tiden, pp. 147–152. 34. Socialistisk Debatt, no. 7, 1973, p. 39. 35. Holmberg, Folkmakt, folkfront, folkdemokrati, p. 160. 36. Ny Dag, 15–16 November 1972, p. 6. 37. P. Bundgaard. 1998. Lykkens Pamfil. Dansk rock i 60’erne, Copenhagen: Borgen, pp. 281–3. 38. For an account on the anti-EEC movements in Denmark, see Rasmussen, Sære alliancer, pp. 63–121. 39. Tiden, no. 3, 1969, p. 63. 40. Tiden, no. 4–5, 1972, pp. 88–92. 41. H.S. Nissen. 1991. ‘Danskeren 1972 – billeder og budskab’, in O. Feldbæk (ed.), Dansk identitetshistorie, 4, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag, pp. 416–7. 42. Madsen and Madsen, Fra sandkasse til kadreparti? p. 306. 43. VS Bulletin, no. 78, 1972, p. 11. 44. For an introduction to Grundtvig, see F. Lundgreen-Nielsen. 1992. ‘Grundtvig og danskhed’, in O. Feldbæk (ed.), Folkets Danmark 1848–1940. Dansk identitetshistorie, III, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag. 45. Kragh, Mellem socialismens velsignelser og praktikable fremskridt, p. 205. 46. The article in Højskolebladet is referred in SF, 21 July 1961, p. 2. 47. E. Larsen. 1974. Grundtvig – og noget om Marx, Århus: Studenterkredsen. 48. He had added the middle name ‘Kløvedal’ (Rivendell) together with a group of other leftist intellectuals as a tribute to J.R.R. Tolkien. 49. E.K. Reich. 1972. Frederik – en folkebog om N.F.S. Grundtvigs tid og liv, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, pp. 11–12. 50. Gnistan, no. 15, 1975, p. 14. 51. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, no. 1, 1977, p. 23. 52. Clarté, no. 5, 1976, p. 26. 53. Ibid. 54. Gnistan, no. 30, 1979, pp. 12–13. 55. G. Åselius. 1994. The ’Russian Menace‘ to Sweden: the Belief System of a Small Power Security Elite in the Age of Imperialism, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. 56. Gnistan, no. 1, 1977, p. 4, the headline for the article is ’Save Sweden!’. 57. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, no. 22, 1978, pp. 14–16. 58. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, no. 9, 1978, p. 30. 59. Boltanski and Chiapello, Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme, p. 18. 60. Lazar, Maisons rouges, pp. 125–26. 61. Ny Dag, 3–4 November 1971, p. 2. 62. Tiden, no. 5–6, 1974, p. 186.

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63. Bracke, ‘Proletarian Internationalism, Autonomy and Polycentrism’, p. 37. 64. Jensen and Jørgensen, Studenteroprøret i Danmark 1968, p. 335. 65. Politisk Revy, no. 255, 1974, pp. 3–4, no. 280, 1975, pp. 2–5 and, no. 281, 1976, pp. 2–4+16. 66. Politisk Revy, no. 280, 1975, p. 3. 67. Jensen and Jørgensen, 1968 – og det der fulgte, pp. 239–41 68. Politisk Revy, no. 281, 1976, p. 4. 69. Politisk Revy, no. 244, 1974, p. 2. 70. Printed in VS Bulletin, no. 122, 1974, pp. 1–2. 71. F. Mikkelsen. 1997. ‘Cycles of Struggle and Innovation in Industrial Relations in Denmark After World War II’, Scandinavian Journal of History 22. 72. Gnistan, no. 1, 1974, p. 2. 73. Gnistan, no. 28, 1974, p. 2. 74. For a detailed description of the fund question, see Stråth, Mellan två fonder, pp. 137–206. 75. Gnistan, no. 35, 1975, p. 18. 76. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, no. 9, 1976, p. 9. 77. Gnistan, no. 42, 1977, p. 18. 78. B. Stråth. 1987. The Politics of De-Industrialisation: the Contraction of the West European Shipbuilding Industry, London and New York: Croom Helm, p. 1. 79. Gnistan, no. 25, 1978, p. 9. 80. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, no. 22, 1978, pp. 14–16. 81. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, no. 9, 1979, pp. 14–15.

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Chapter 5

The End of the Road

The End of Leftist Hegemony At the end of the 1970s, the left had lost its hegemony in the public debate. It was no longer the place where the problems of society were being formulated and spread to the rest of the political field. Also, it was increasingly difficult to recruit new members to the groupuscules; it was even hard to keep the members that were already there. In Denmark, most of the remaining members of the political subculture sought out VS as a gathering point for the wreckage of the many revolutionary endeavours of the early 1970s. In Sweden, even successes like Folket i Bild/Kulturfront were struggling for survival. At the beginning of the 1980s, there was a widespread feeling, even on the left itself that the tide had ebbed. The reappearance a self-conscious Right in government in Great Britain, Germany and the United States only emphasised the atmosphere of defeat. There is a consensus in most of the literature that the leftist wave set off in the 1960s, lost its force at the end of the 1970s. For some, the terrorist experience in Germany and Italy and the following self-criticism in the rest of Europe are perceived as the perverted ending point of the New Left.1 In Denmark and Sweden, the ‘fundamentalist deformations’2 of the groupuscules is seen as the reason for the downfall of the left, but also the outside pressure from a more self-assured Right.3 Another explanation, more directed at the leftist subculture than at its ideology, looks to the crisis of 1973 as the end of a particular social context of affluence that was the basis of the high expectations of the left.4 The following argumentation about the end of the ‘wave from the left’ (vänstervågen) will focus on how these two factors, the internal weakening and the external pressure became visible in the image of the nation. Moreover, it is the aim to give an interpretation of the implosion of the movement, to attempt to give a more detailed account of the consequences of the language of left. How could concepts, which shortly before had had a privileged position in the general debate, in a few years become a liability to the left? The description of the years of defeat requires a short note on the sources. As a difference from the 1960s, the debates of the late 1970s were much less apparent in the main journals. It seems that the members left their groups and parties in silence. Where the Maoist exit from the VPK happened after years of

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debate, the exits of the late 1970s did more often than not mean an exit from the leftist public sphere as such. There were few articles or letters to the editor that explained why people cancelled their subscription or left their parties. People seemed to leave the left in quiet dissatisfaction, and only exceptionally did the established journals give substantial thought to the crisis of the left. One exception, however, is the area of fiction. Several authors used a more or less fictional form to express their frustrations in novels and plays. Others chose the autobiographical genre as a way to deal with the apparent crisis of the left. Around 1978, the ten-year anniversary of 1968 was tellingly celebrated by works that looked back and tried to draw up the balance sheet of the passed decade, rather than looking forward.5 Especially the Danish literature about the left has paid a lot of attention to the so-called ‘literature of confession’ (bekendelseslitteratur) of the late 1970s. Poul Behrendt, in his early confrontation with the movement, Bissen og Dullen (The Brute and the Tart) from 1984 exclusively uses this genre for his Freudian analysis of the 1968 generation.6 In Demokrati i bevægelse from 1991, Henrik Kaare Nielsen identifies two ‘confessional’ novels (respectively the Danish Fodboldenglen and the German Lenz) as ‘the two most important literary monuments of the period,’7 and takes them as a point of departure for understanding the subjective reactions to the development of the left in the 1970s. Given the richness of the texts and their references to otherwise obscure fields, such an approach is productive, even necessary. In the following, the same sources will be used for the same reasons: for Denmark, Fodboldenglen (The Football Angel) by Hans-Jørgen Nielsen, and the autobiographical anthology Livsstykker (Pieces of Lives), for Sweden Per Olov Enquist and Anders Ehnmark’s Mannen på trottoaren (The Man on the Sidewalk). However, they have to be accessed with caution. The two Danish works are both heavily inspired by Freud. Childhood experiences have a prominent place as explanations for contemporary frustration, but it is very problematic to use these accounts without a heavy dose of source criticism. It is not possible, as Behrendt does, to conclude from the weight of the childhood experiences in the works the actual importance of the childhood of the 1968 generation for the decline of the left. The focus in the late 1970s on childhood is most likely a product of the contemporary Freudian wave rather than a product of a sudden self-realisation. For this reason, the autobiographical aspects will not play a big role in the following. Instead, the signs of present frustration in the works will be used as points of departure. As described in the preceding chapter, the language of the left became increasingly rigid and anachronistic during the 1970s. At the end of the decade, the language became dysfunctional in the sense that it did no longer seemed to have any reference to the social reality. The concept of nation no longer fitted the nation where the users of the language were living their daily lives. The propositions in the conceptual field became abstract and irrelevant phrases,

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referring to purely theoretical world views. It was as if the end of the decade also marked the end of the road for the generations whose political language had been shaped by the CND, the New Left and 1968.

The End of Progression For the left, the chronological aspect of the concept of nation had always been one of progression. This was inherent in Marx’s philosophy of history, where history is moving forward – or rather in a dialectical zigzag course – towards the final, communist stage. The nation, people and society, was by necessity moving towards socialism in the long perspective (hence the Maoists’ beloved reference to Mao’s ‘paper tiger’-metaphor). Despite the apparent strength of the opponent, the people had history on their side and would eventually be victorious. The left was searching for the signs of the final battle to end capitalism, as well as for the agent that would bring about this change. To sum up the preceding chapters, this agent of change had been replaced several times from the late 1950s to the 1970s. The communist movement saw the working class as the prime domestic agent of change on the one hand and the socialist countries headed by the Soviet Union as the international guarantee for a socialist future on the other. The New Left of the 1960s turned away from these interpretations as the working class was transformed into complacent consumers and the Soviet Union had lost its credibility. Instead, it put its faith in marginal, politically conscious groups who could enlighten the misled, such as the students, and saw the Third World and the non-aligned countries as the promise of a new, just world order. In the 1970s, the worker entered the conceptual field again as the agent of change, which could bring the nation its socialist future. It was as if one agent had always been ready to take the place of the previous one, once it was clear that the promises would be unfulfilled. At the end of the 1970s, however, it seemed that the motors of history had ground to a halt, both nationally and internationally. The events in the Third World could no longer be interpreted as steps forward in a continuous fight for liberation. The reappearance of working-class radicalism did not last throughout the decade, and the hope that the intellectuals, students and excluded would change the world had been irreparably disfigured by the appearance of red terrorism. While the liberation wars raged in the Third World, they had been a seemingly endless source of conflicts, which could inspire the hopes of the left. In Africa, Asia and South America, the oppressed were rising against the capitalist, neocolonialist oppressors. It was not hard to choose sides in these conflicts, as colonialism had long lost its legitimacy. Moreover, the expressions of solidarity from the Northern left served to keep alive the internationalist traditions. The non-communist left could embed itself in the same kind of

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global struggle as the world communist movement; they could side with the global good against the global evil. After the independence of the Portuguese colonies in 1975, the last significant remnants of the European empires had vanished. The year 1975 also saw the final victory of North Vietnam and the FNL in the Vietnam war. After this, the North–South conflict lost its potency as a motor of history. When Saigon fell in April 1975, the left was euphoric. For almost ten years, the war had been the most important issue for the left. Although the focus in the 1970s had moved to more domestic issues, Vietnam remained an inspiration and a reference point as an example of popular, anti-imperialist struggle. Gnistan was, as always, extreme in its interpretation, but the magazine described the atmosphere well, as it proclaimed: ‘The DFFG has through its ten years of solidarity work become the driving force of the Swedish Vietnam Movement. During those years the DFFG has also organised large material support for Vietnam... for this reason, DFFG and the Swedish people belong to the winning side of the Vietnam war.’8 But how should this victory be used in the North? Vietnam had been an issue for recruitment to the whole left, but how should the solidarity work be carried on when the violent North–South conflicts were over? Of the few remaining conflicts of this sort, only the Palestinian issue could qualify, but it was much less intense and its victims much less visible than in the full scale Vietnam war. Many veterans of the Vietnam Movement turned their attention increasingly to the whole of Indochina, but with a much less ambitious programme than the ‘Crush US Imperialism’ slogans of the high point of the Vietnam Movement. Now, the task was to Explain and defend the victories in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia Unconditional support for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia Solidarity and friendship with the peoples of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.9 The vagueness of this programme alone points to the difficulty of assigning a place for the northern left, once the global armed struggle between North and South had ended. Now, that these countries had officially broken away from the imperialist system, it was hard to see the immediate connection between the Northern and Southern nations. However, the black-and-white image of the North–South conflict suffered more significant blows. As the former colonies on the southern continents gained independence, conflicts appeared that could not easily be interpreted through the lens of North versus South. As Southern countries waged war against other Southern countries, the former ease of choosing sides vanished. It was not obvious whether Ethiopia was waging a just war against the Eritrean separatists, or whether the Eritreans were fighting for their independence against

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the Ethiopian colonisers. In such cases, too certain declarations of unconditional solidarity could return as a boomerang. The final breakdown of the North–South conflict as the motor of history came with the Indochina War in 1978. The communist victories in Cambodia and Vietnam had been viewed as two parallel events. The people had vanquished their oppressors and were on the road towards socialism. Solidarity with Vietnam went hand in hand with solidarity with Cambodia. Hence, as rumours about Pol Pot’s terror regime reached the West, they were mostly discarded as ‘anti-communist gossip’ – much in the same vein as the communist – discarded criticism of the Soviet invasion of Hungary.10 When war broke out between the two countries in 1978, how should the left choose sides? The choice was not made easier by China’s entry in the war on the side of Cambodia in 1979. The Maoist Vietnam Movement in Sweden had always sought to use the solidarity with Vietnam as a stepping stone to Maoism, where the emphasis lay on Third World liberation, but now the two seemed incompatible. Suddenly, the choice between friend and enemy was no longer obvious. Vietnambulletinen managed in one issue to both publish a resolution in support of Cambodia on page 20 and lament the false line of the Cambodian leadership and its crimes against its own people on page 27.11 The atmosphere of the movement became increasingly similar to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where yesterday’s slogans are changed overnight. In 1979, the remnants of the Vietnam Movement – once the core organisation of the left – finally collapsed. The events in South-East Asia were a shock to the whole of the left. Only by considerable self-delusion could one find a ‘clean’, socialist utopia. The crimes in Cambodia cast a shadow on the euphoric support for the Indochina revolutions. Also hard-core supporters of China had their faith put to the test by the events after Mao’s death. The arrest of the Gang of Four followed by Deng Xiaoping’s reforms made it difficult for the old supporters of radical Maoism to maintain their loyalty to China. Soviet-inclined communists were faring no better after the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago in 1973 and subsequent translation into Danish and Swedish in 1974, or after the Czechoslovak Charter 77 three years later – an initiative that received much attention in both Denmark and Sweden. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, it was even more difficult to portray the socialist bloc as an ideal society, incarnating the hope for world peace. Although a few socialist countries, like Cuba, still retained some of their utopian qualities, they were no longer seen as global agents of change in the epic battle between North and South. Since the wildcat strikes of 1969–1970, the working class had occupied a central position as the agent of change, which in time would carry the nation into its socialist future. The confidence in working-class militancy coincided with a European-wide protest cycle, which reintroduced a militant repertoire of contention among the employees. The protest cycle, however, peaked in the middle of the decade – although the situation did not return to the peaceful

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relations of the 1960s.12 For Denmark, there exists quite an extensive research on the protest cycle particularly through the works of Flemming Mikkelsen.13 This shows a generally high level of industrial protest through the 1970s, which to some extent was carried into the 1980s by the public employees. However, the general cycle of protest reached its peak in the first half of the 1970s to fall to a lower level towards the end of the decade.14 The first part of the industrial protest cycle was enhanced by the protests of the new social movements, in particular students, which in Denmark peaked around 1970 and then slowly declined through the decade.15 As described in the preceding chapter, the left received the renewed working-class militancy as a confirmation of Marx’s view of the workers as the revolutionary avant-garde. The strikes became signs of a revolution almost visible on the horizon: in Sweden, in particular, the Kiruna strike of 1969–1970 and the forester strike in 1975, in Denmark the wildcat strikes of 1969–1970 and the May strikes of 1974. The strikes were described as possible turning points towards a more revolutionary consciousness among the workers. The proletariat was finding its role as the motor of history. However, as the strikes did not take on revolutionary proportions, but for the most ended in a compromise between the parties, it became ever more difficult to believe that the working class could actually be the agent of change. Although the level of strikes remained high through the 1970s and 1980s – particularly in Denmark – the general international trend was a downward one from the mid-1970s onwards.16 As big strikes became a recurring event in the 1970s, the exceptional qualities of militancy faded. One can draw a parallel to Max Weber’s considerations about charisma and charismatic leadership.17 The leading role of the working class was reinstalled by the exceptional events of 1969–1970, where the otherwise peaceful labour market relations were shaken by the new militancy. Also the new methods of protest, particularly plant occupations, partly derived from the student movement, lent the strike wave an atmosphere of something extraordinary. As Weber remarks about charisma, it is dependent on exactly this quality of being exceptional, beyond everyday life (außeralltäglich as Weber calls it). Hence, with time charisma vanishes as it becomes part of normality. The promise of a turning point has to be exceptional; it cannot be an everyday occurrence without creating frustration and disillusion. If the workers strike regularly, they lose their charisma as the harbinger of change. If every strike is described as the harbinger of revolution, these predictions seem more and more dull and unrealistic. HansJørgen Nielsen lets the main character of Fodboldenglen describe the sensation of being increasingly out of touch with the rest of society in the constant awaiting of the revolution: We [the 1968 generation] who all the time await Christmas as a revolution around the next corner, well not that corner, but then the

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next, or the next. Only after a while do we start to realise that we are not that many, that we really are quite isolated in the midst of our own noise: we have run offside, have not been able to run ahead in the firm belief that the rest will follow us by themselves.18 In Sweden, despite of the spectacular strikes of 1969–1970, the protest cycle set off at the end of the 1960s did not make the 1970s a contentious decade in the same way as in Denmark. The critique from the left was met on two fronts, from the social democratic attempts to integrate the protests and from the counteroffensive of the right wing. The social democrats regained initiative from the left by launching the idea about wage-earner funds, first at the 1969 congress of the metalworkers union, but only as a central theme from the middle of the decade.19 As described in the preceding chapter, the Maoists criticised the idea, but without being able to present any alternative beyond the repeated pleas for a Swedish revolution. The VPK to some extent shared the criticism that the funds would save, not abolish, capitalism, but had difficulties in finding its feet in the debate, waving between ‘critical support’ and radical critique.20 The left was on the defensive against social democratic initiatives. More importantly, both the social democratic LO and the employers’ organisation, SAF, had taken the message from the ‘strike winter’ of 1969–1970 seriously. They both worked to integrate the shop-floor critique to keep it within the framework of the Swedish cooperative model. The outburst of militancy among the workers pointed at the necessity to improve relations in the individual plants. Many strikers had explicitly protested against the central negotiations and the lack of democracy within the centralised trade unions. The representatives ‘down in Stockholm’ had been a main target of the miners’ strike. Through agreements between LO and SAF as well as government legislation, the centre of gravity in labour relations moved from the offices in Stockholm to the individual companies.21 This made it possible to go through deindustrialisation and the transformation of the Swedish economy without massive conflicts in the labour market.22 The Swedish worker, who entered the decade looking like a newborn revolutionary, had been tamed by its end. As Per Olov Enquist and Anders Ehnmark put it satirically: ‘very few workers today deserve to belong to the working class’.23 The last agent of change for the left had been the intellectuals themselves. In the heyday of the New Left, the idea of the intellectual avant-garde as the motor of history had been received with great interest more so in Denmark than in Sweden, but nevertheless, the modernist wing of the SKP/VPK as well as the circle connected to Zenit had embraced this idea at least partially. The student revolts of 1967–1968 seemed to demonstrate the idea that the revolutionary potential lay with the marginalised groups outside the grasp of consumerism, especially the students. Within the ‘freak’ left, whose influence peaked simultaneously with the student revolts, the same thoughts were prevailing. It

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was the small groups at the fringe of society that could set an example to break the alienating bourgeois way of life. In the 1970s, even as the working class and the people regained their position as the core of the coming revolution, the intellectuals envisaged themselves, or ‘the movement’, as the vanguard that would make them realise their historical mission. In this, the left had not lost its confidence as, if not the motor, then the catalyst of history – the spark that would start the prairie fire, as a popular Leninist metaphor put it. Despite internal differences, the left saw itself as a movement united for the good cause. The self-image of the left as the forces of the good was heavily challenged by the appearance of left-wing terrorism, especially in Italy and West Germany. These groups legitimised their actions by the same vision of the revolutionary avant-garde unmasking the capitalist system as the rest of the left. Instead of demonstrations, books and journals, they used direct action to prove that the system was fascist at its core and hoped that their militancy would spread to the oppressed classes.24 Indeed, the terrorist organisations had not just personally but also ideologically grown out of the left. The left as a whole did not condemn violence, and the logic of the terrorists was to a large extent compatible with that of the left. In this vein, the left had supported terrorism in both Northern Ireland and the Basque Country and had at least an ambiguous relation to the West German and Italian groups.25 The bloody deeds of the ‘German Autumn’ of 1977, however, did not gain applause on the left in either Denmark or Sweden. The different organisations were very explicit in their distancing from the German terrorism. Nevertheless, they were also trapped in the language of violent revolution, which made their arguments less convincing. In Denmark, Politisk Revy tried to separate the terrorists completely from the rest of the left; in Italy, the terror was a product of a conscious strategy of the Christian Democrats,26 and any attempts to make parallels between the RAF and the left was the work of ‘bourgeois forces.’27 The arguments, however, were often limited to pure strategy. VS and Folket i Bild/Kulturfront both used the argument that the deeds of the terrorists only increased the oppression in West Germany, but had no moral objections to the use of violence in itself.28 The critique could obviously not contend with the moral aversion that the terrorist actions provoked: at the same time as it completely denied the obvious sensation that this was connected to and had come out of the development of the left itself. The character of these journals was not one of self-criticism, but more of explanation and self-defence. Instead, the distaste for the cynicism of the terrorists appeared in fictional writings. The story of Fodboldenglen indeed happens in the autumn of 1977, and the main character, Frands’, distaste for the leftist milieu in which he lives is connected to the events of that autumn. The climax, the shooting of the hijackers in Mogadishu and the death of the RAF members in the German prisons, coincide with the climax of the book. For Frands, there is no theoretical

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explanation or excuse for terrorism, only aversion for the disdain for human lives displayed by terrorists and governments alike.29 In Mannen på trottoaren, where the story is told during a court case against a terrorist, one theme is continuously repeated: The connection between the left and terrorism: It is too easy to call him a robber murderer lunatic It is not true Something must have happened He was like us but sort of took other consequences a little too logical ones30 The Maoists in Gnistan and Folket i Bild/Kulturfront understood the play as a criticism of against intellectual left, those who act outside and without the people.31 While they play revolution, the common man stands on the pavement (hence the title) as a spectator, where he should be the main actor. They chose to ignore the play’s prologue, which explicitly named Leninism as the main reason for the crisis of the left.32 Despite of the more than ten years when the Maoists had tried in vain to mobilise the working class, they still portrayed themselves as a workers’ party and the vanguard of the people, not as the minuscule group they were. The play aimed exactly at this self-delusion of being the elite of a mass movement. The avant-garde had failed, isolated itself, and in the worst cases degenerated into terrorism, and only the most stubborn would deny it. Thus, the idea of historical progress seemed increasingly untenable at the end of the decade. The agents of change, both globally and locally, had lost credibility as carriers of a brave new world. At the end of the 1970s, the only thing that remained was a widespread scepticism about almost any new development. With no one to represent a hope for progression towards a better future, only conservatism remained.

The Radical Trap From the mid-1960s, the left had defined itself through its radical interpretation of society. The New Left eclecticism had been explicitly abandoned in the search for coherent and systemic models of analysis. Moreover, the reformist, eclectic position was used as a derogatory label for those lacking ideological coherence. The left was thus dogmatic in the literary sense of the word; adherence to basic dogmas about the nature of society was a necessary ingredient of leftist political identity. Radicalism in the form of Marx’s description of capitalism as a coherent system based on the division of labour had an obvious intellectual appeal and attained near-hegemony on the left in the 1970s. This, however, proved much too inflexible as capitalism changed its face.

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With Marxism came a very fixed view on the nature of capitalism. The system rested upon the production of surplus value and its exploitation by the capitalists. Surplus value in Marx’s writings is created exclusively in a world of manufacturing industry, work is manual labour and commodities are the materialisation of the manual labour (vergegenständlichte Arbeit 33). The Marxist universe is one of shop floors, machines and tangible products. This universe was mirrored in the left’s image of society. The worker was a blue-collar worker, working in manufacturing among big machines. Already from the 1960s, however, the blue-collar worker had been a declining group in both Denmark and Sweden. SF had realised this and included public employees and other white-collar workers in their broad ‘people’s party’, but the radicals in VS and the groupuscules stubbornly stuck to an image of the nation built on the efforts of manual labour. In the 1970s, manufacturing industry as such was declining. Gradually, the classic capitalist economy built on the industrial production of goods within a national framework was transformed into an economy where the Marxist concepts were less recognisable. The profits no longer came so obviously from the surplus value created in the sweat of the workers’ brows. Instead of the shop floor, the Danes and Swedes sat at desks in offices, often in the public sector, but also in firms that did not earn their profits by selling the products of physical labour. The new technological innovations, especially within the field of electronics, demanded employers with other competences than those of the blue-collar worker. Instead of the physical, routine work at the conveyer belt, the employees were now more overseers of an automatic production process.34 In this way, the correspondence between the movement symbols, the classic worker with a smudged but honest face, clad in a flat cap and clenching his fist in resistance against the capitalist, disappeared. The arenas of this kind of class struggle diminished with deindustrialisation. The B&W shipyard in Copenhagen, for example, cut its workforce by 919 out of 2600 employees in 1976. The yard had always been a seat of working-class militancy and a communist stronghold; for instance, it was one of the centres of the strikes in 1956 and 1969–1970. Now, SF had taken over the leadership, and the large cuts did not result in major conflicts in the yard.35 By the 1980s, this archetypal site of radical blue-collar traditions was but a shadow of its old image. Deindustrialisation also deprived the left of sources for aesthetic representation of the working class. B&W had always been a place to find the real worker; its large canteen, factory whistles and employees in boiler suits were a goldmine of images to stimulate working-class romanticism. Now such places were disappearing at an increasing rate. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, which thrived on photographic features from life on the shop floor, clearly had problems finding motifs; the workers depicted in the magazine became ever older. This made the old problem of contacts between the left-wing intellectuals and the working class ever more challenging. The workers seemed increasingly to exist

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only in the minds of the left: ‘for me and my comrades, the working class remains “they”, something out there, over there, the completely different. An exotic category generally only existing as class through the class struggle, if and when it appears at all, never also as individuals’.36 The working class was no longer there (to the extent that it had ever been there as a class); by the end of the decade, it existed in small islands of contracting industries. The protagonist of history was leaving the stage unheroically through redundancy schemes. Moreover, the scene itself, the industrial society in which Marxism had staged the downfall of capitalism, was disappearing. The industrial shop floor, the light of the welding flame and the pounding of heavy machinery were replaced by clean offices lit by neon tubes and the humming of computers or electric typewriters. In this society, the concepts of the left seemed oddly anachronistic. The discrepancy led to a crisis of correspondence between everyday experience and the political language. In the official, political publications of the left, this was dealt with in the form of theoretical discussions about the revolutionary potential of the middle class.37 But this could by no means compensate for the powerful aesthetics and historical traditions of the working class, which continued to appear in the rhetoric. Others, like the Swedish Maoists met the crisis with denial; the political crisis of the 1970s would be succeeded by new victories in the 1980s. The political line was correct and there were signs of change on the horizon, if the members would just ‘keep the head cold and the heart warm!’38 Yet the anachronism of the concepts of the left was apparent on the individual level. The experienced world seemed inconsistent with the theoretical concepts that should have helped to make it explicable. It was as if the image of society in the discussions of the left were separated from the outside world. In Fodboldenglen, Hans Jørgen-Nielsen lets Frands articulate the frustration ironically: In an article for the journal, some comrades criticise the environmental movement for having disgracefully ’isolated itself from the left‘. Is our situation really caused by the fact that reality has isolated itself from the left? I want to return the article, some insist that it has to be printed, even after I cite the famous English headline: The Continent isolated from England because of fog. I want to get out, get over to the continent.39 This view was expressed widely, although in different contexts. Some used the old communist concept of sectarianism as an explanation. The radical views were too far removed from the daily problems of the people to create a mass movement. In Denmark, some saw the theoretical faults and blamed a too abstract conception of capitalism and revolutionary hopes unconnected with the peaceful reality. It became painfully clear that ‘it is not possible to leave one’s own history by ignoring it.’40

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In Sweden, the image of the true people as presented in Folket i Bild/Kulturfront became too idealised, even for those close to the movement. One reader asked the obvious question in a letter to the editor: ‘Does Folket i Bild at the moment mirror a reality in which the greater part of its readers can recognise themselves? Do our critical reports and commentaries correspond to a progressive popular sentiment in our country, or could it be that our magazine only mirrors some politically attractive prejudices about how the popular sentiment ought to be!?’41 In the organ of the progressive music movement, Musikens Makt, one writer complained: ‘Through some kind of demand for being simple and of the people, the songs have been more vulgar and lame. One suspects an implicit view ... that the Swedish worker wears a check shirt and a cap ... and gets a wistful expression on his face every time he hears an accordion.’42 However, the insistence on Marxism, and indeed the insistence on the language of the Third International, blocked the way out of conceptual isolation. For ten years, the left had prided itself on being Marxist and defined itself as being theoretically well founded, as opposed to the pragmatism of social democrats and the SF. Now the concepts of Marx had lost their explanatory power, as capitalism had been transformed into something quite different from the industrial society of the nineteenth century. One could argue that Marx’s ideas about the division of labour and exploitation of the producers of value were still applicable also to transformed capitalism. However, it has to be remembered how big a role the left had attributed to exactly the industrial working class: Not only theoretically by taking Marx’s concept of ‘worker’ very literally, but also aesthetically by imagining the agent of change as this classic figure of militancy. The absolute status of Marx’s writings left little space for alternative, pragmatic readings, which could be applied to a society dominated by the service sector. It would require a much too compromising and critical reading of Marx than was possible for a left that for years had claimed the infallibility of Marxism. Leaving the Marxist dogmas, which had been the political foundation and source of identity, was in itself difficult. Moreover, there was no grand theory of society that could replace it. The left had taken radicalism as its hallmark; it could not just strike the colours under which it had fought for ten years. The radical, comprehensive explanation was vital to the movement, without this, it would lose its raison d’être; it would just be a conglomeration of isolated parties, whose politics found no echo in the population. Radicalism and the ‘correct analysis’ were the hopes in the midst of isolation that history was ultimately on the side of the left; more successful parties would sooner or later be unmasked because of their wrong and superficial conceptions, and the correct analysis would hold the key to victory. For such a view of history, ‘normal politics’ of pragmatism and compromise would be utterly destructive to the movement. As there were no new comprehensive radical theories explaining the new constellation of capitalism, abandoning Marxism meant abandoning the radical,

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systemic explanation. The choice was between going into single-issue movements or persistently hold on to Marxism regardless of its diminishing explanatory value.

The Left on the Defensive The atmosphere of crisis led to diverse defensive reactions from the left. The different parties and groups sought to find ways of resisting or compensating for the loss of strength that was felt from the middle of the decade. It could be argued that this search for compensation had been going on ever since the promises of revolution from 1968 dispersed around 1970. In Henrik Kaare Nielsen’s analysis, the potential for conflict in the late 1960s had been blocked, and the 1970s represent a long period of dissolution. The hopes connected to the militant working class, the theoretical discussions and the groupuscules phenomenon were all part of a ‘dialectic of dissolution’ (opløsningens dialektik), which in Germany led to terrorism, and in Denmark to a slow decline of the left.43 In this view, the crisis of the left at the end of the decade can be read as an exhaustion of alternatives. The dynamic that had hitherto replaced one failed theory with a new one, one failed utopia with another, ran out of steam; the offshoots of 1968 would grow no longer. This explanation is certainly viable, but not exhaustive. The dynamic between failed hopes and new horizons goes back to the beginning of the New Left and its need to reinvent the lost promises of communism. Also SF had broken hopes in its first years, but managed to find a durable political identity nevertheless. The hopes for the Third World or the non-aligned countries as the future homes of socialism or the ambitions for a Nordic New Left are examples that reach beyond the disappointments of the student movement. The radical left of the 1970s, however, turned to a defensive strategy and rhetoric very different from the language of the confident years after 1968. Whereas the 1960s had been characterised by an ability and a readiness to keep the language flexible in relation to social and political change, the left of the late 1970s reacted like the traditionalists in the SKP and the hard core of the DKP. They stubbornly stuck to their dogmas and refused to acknowledge changing circumstances. Just like the hard core of the DKP, they paid the price in isolation. They became custodians of a language that was already overtaken by new events and interpretations. One defensive strategy was the turn to the past, as had already been done especially in Sweden. As the utopias of the present faded, the search for new models went into the past, even to models that had never become reality and hence were untainted by a problematic history. The failed German communist revolution of 1918, for example, was dedicated a whole issue of Politisk Revy at its sixty years anniversary.44 This was a continuation of the interest in the 1930s and

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the history of the workers’ movement, which had been prominent since the late 1960s. In Sweden, the conservative tenor of publications like Folket i Bild/Kulturfront and Gnistan increased. The use of historical examples was observable in several contexts. Peasant revolts, revolutions, the popular movements from past centuries were all described with vigour, as if they were current events. However, as the prospects of revolution seemed ever further away, the history served more to give positive images of the past than guidelines for the future. Another defensive strategy consisted of an increased attention to the personal sphere. This was somewhat connected to the women’s movement, which explicitly had the merger of the private and the political in its programme. As the crisis of the left became a personal crisis for many, it became fashionable to look back to the past, the childhood of the 1968 generation and the personal experience with the subculture of the left. This had been attempted before, especially in the German and American debates, where the rebellion of the young in the 1960s was explained by their upbringing in the 1940s and 1950s.45 Now, the generation themselves took up this explanation from a psychoanalytic point of departure and tried to find a way out of the crisis by searching for clarity in their own life stories.46 Freud entered the leftist canon as an addition to Marx, who admittedly had very little to say about individual life stories. The endeavour, however, was connected to the radical agenda of the late 1960s. Like Marxism, it attempted to go behind the superficial signs and get clarity about the roots of the problem. The literature of confession of the late 1970s was a product of this idea. The promise of psychoanalysis lay in the connection between clarity and redemption: once conscious, the traumas could be overcome. This promise was very similar to the hopes for the working class: once it had become conscious, capitalism could be overcome. However, the necessity of psychoanalysis presupposes traumas, it presupposes that something has gone wrong and must be corrected. This was indeed the tenor of the literature of confession. The left, which ten years before had been absolutely certain of its ability to transform the world, had become paralysed.47 The ambitions about changing the wrongs of the society came to stand in the shadow of changing the wrongs of the movement. However, the last turn inwards, towards the subconscious, did not lead to redemption and a way out of the crisis. Indeed, it often led to the realisation of the vanity of the high ambitions of the late 1960s. Clarity thus to a certain extent made the crisis even more difficult to handle: It is hard. It is hard to live and realise one’s hopes and dreams. It is hard to live with the fact that we enter and reproduce the forms of oppression and relations of power that we can see through and criticise... The vision is so comprehensive and includes life as a whole – every aspect down to the last detail. It is all so important... No – we cannot live as socialists.48

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The alternative to the total vision becomes the individual self-realisation in the ‘pockets’ within capitalist society where the ideals can still survive, the communes or the single-issue movements,49 a de facto abandonment of the radical programme, but not as a re-innovation, but as an attempt to salvage what was left. In Poul Behrendt’s Freud-inspired account of the left – which in itself belongs to the literature of confession – the political sphere is completely subordinated to the attempts of men and women of the 1968 generation to come to terms with themselves and each other. The political ambitions and the goal of a complete and profound change of society are almost reduced to a mere strategy of self-realisation. The figure from the title, the Brute (Bissen), is a role that the men of the post-war generation take as a reaction to their weak fathers, a role in which they try to be ‘ahead, more advanced, more radical, to have taken risks and be more experienced than the others.’50 Hence, the whole process of radicalisation, the student revolt and the Vietnam Movement becomes little more than an unconscious personal struggle with a childhood trauma. For Behrendt, although he claims the opposite, the turn to psychoanalysis does not open new roads of political participation; it reveals the superficial, compensatory nature of the whole history of the left.51 The self-absorption of the literature of confession leaves behind the question of changing society on a national scale. It implicitly sees the nation as the scene of defeat, the place of lost hopes. The ambitions for a new society, change led by the revolutionary vanguard together with the people against the capitalist oppressors, were shattered. Even in the search for explanations for the defeat, the left did not turn to theories that referred to the national scene, but to personal life stories, which might hold some answers, but could not transcend the personal sphere of the individual. These defensive strategies of the left were in stark contrast to the dynamic critique of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The turn towards the personal was not a novelty on the left. Also the existential, ‘freak’ left had had a programme of self-realisation. However, this project had been endowed with a large forward momentum. Here, the experiences were used as the foundation for a project of creative transformation as an example for society as a whole, not as pockets of resistance in an otherwise unchangeable world. The pockets of resistance were often single-issue movements, which might have begun on the left. These had, however, outgrown the constraints of the radical left and broadened out both in terms of membership and ideology. Groups like the Danish anti-nuclear energy organisation OOA or the environmental organisation NOAH were offspring of the student revolt, but, as they grew, their programmes became much more practical and much less radical than those of the left. Parties like VS tried to jump on the bandwagon by, for example, linking nuclear energy with the ‘influence of multinational capital in Denmark.’52 OOA, in contrast, avoided such argumentation and focused on parliamentary influence, explicitly distancing itself from the left.53 The single-

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issue movements, which had their heyday in the late 1970s, were, moreover, often alliances that were brought together by common interests, but from diverse points of departure. Hence, they were not platforms for the radical agenda of the left. Indeed, as Søren Hein Rasmussen argues, the movements were not working towards fundamental changes in society, but more often than not against changes in the existing order.54 In this way, their basis in the lowest common denominator was incompatible with the political identity of the radical left. The model of the Swedish Vietnam Movement, where the Maoists could use the movement as a front organisation to recruit members, did not reappear. The radical Marxist agenda did not fit the way these movements worked, not as agents of profound change, but as actors in a multi faceted political world. Hence, the 1980s were from the beginning seen as a decade of confusion and angst. The utopian hopes of radicalism were exhausted and replaced by dystopian bewilderment sustained by the prolonged economic crisis and the renewed cold war. The young intellectual Carsten Jensen, who wrote for Politisk Revy from the end of the 1970s, articulated his feeling of estrangement in a telling quote on the brink of the new decade: I confess that I am addicted to disaster movies. I have seen most disaster movies with the same eagerness as I afterwards have read the analysis of my reaction to them. I have a question for you who claim to know me well: What do I do about my need to experience earthquakes, ragnarok and sudden death? The question is, of course, put rhetorically, because I think I know your answer. You want to name and place the angst that drives me to the cinema. You will recommend me books to read, explain to me my class background, reveal to me what forces control our society. You will tell me about income policies, Anker Jørgensen [social democratic Prime Minister] and his turn to the right, you will optimistically urge me to enter a political organisation and join the organisation of tenants in my neighbourhood. I know that you are right. And yet I am not satisfied with your answers.55

Notes 1.

2. 3.

Very strong in Koenen, Das rote Jahrzehnt; see also A. Melucci. 1989. Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual needs in Contemporary Society, London: Hutchinson Radius, p. 58. Salomon, Rebeller i takt med Tiden, p. 324. See: Arvidsson, Ett annat land, p. 331; and Stråth, Mellan två fonder, pp. 221–242.

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4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

See for example Bundgaard, Lykkens Pamfil, p. 11. For example B. Hansen (ed.). 1978. Dengang i 60’erne, Copenhagen: Information; O.G. Hansen. 1978. Studenter i bevægelse 1968/78, Copenhagen: DSF Forlag; J. Engberg (ed.). 1978. Utanför systemet: vänstern i Sverige 1968–78, Stockholm: Rabén och Sjögren. P. Behrendt. 1984. Bissen og Dullen. Familiehistorier fra nutiden, Copenhagen: Gyldendal. H.K. Nielsen. 1991. Demokrati i bevægelse, Århus: Århus Universitetsforlag, p. 184. Gnistan, no. 18, 1975, p. 1. Vietnambulletinen, no. 2, 1977, p. 13. Politisk Revy, no. 295, 1976, p. 15. Vietnambulletinen, no. 1, 1978. see Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism, pp. 357–82 for Europe and Mikkelsen, ‘Cycles of Struggle and Innovation in Industrial Relations in Denmark After World War II’ for Denmark. For Sweden C. Thörnqvist. 1994. Arbeterna lämnar fabriken. Strejkrörelser i Sverige under efterkrigstiden, deras bakgrund, förlopp och följder, Gothenburg: Avhandlingar från historiska institutionen i Göteborg, pp. 123–28. F. Mikkelsen (ed.). 2002. Bevægelser i demokrati: foreninger og kollektive aktioner i Danmark, Århus: Århus Universitetsforlag; F. Mikkelsen. 1999. ‘Contention and Social Movements in an International and Transnational Perspective: Denmark 1914–1995’, Journal of Historical Sociology 2/1999; and Mikkelsen, ‘Cycles of Struggle and Innovation in Industrial Relations in Denmark after World War II’. Mikkelsen, ‘Kollektive aktioner og politiske bevægelser i Danmark efter anden verdenskrig’, figure 3.6, p. 67. Ibid., figure 3.4, p. 63. Thörnqvist, Arbeterna lämnar fabriken, pp. 47–58. M. Weber. 1972. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), pp. 140–48. The concept here is not strictly used as Weber uses it himself, as he talks about personal qualities and not the quality of an event or a group. The important feature, however, remains the connection between charisma and the extraordinary. H.-J. Nielsen. 1979. Fodboldenglen, Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter, p. 128. Stråth, Mellan två fonder, pp. 137–48. See: Socialistisk Debatt, no. 29, 1977, which has the funds as its topic. B. Stråth. 2000. Mellan medbestämmande och medarbetare, Stockholm: Svenska metallindustriarbetareförbundet, p. 135. Stråth, The politics of de-industrialisation, p. 114. P.O. Enquist and A. Ehnmark. 1979. Manden på fortovet, Copenhagen: Samlerens forlag, p. 92. A. Sørensen. 2003. Terrorisme, Århus: unpublished PhD. Dissertation, pp. 94–135. Nielsen, Demokrati i bevægelse, p. 179. Politisk Revy, no. 312, 1977, p. 11. Politisk Revy, no. 322, 1977, p. 5. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, no. 20, 1977, p. 7, VS Bulletin, no. 176, 1977, pp. 2–3. Nielsen, Fodboldenglen, p. 234. The actual terrorist-related activities in Denmark were less spectacular, consisting mostly of armed robberies and cooperation with the Palestinian PFLP. The connection between these events and leftist terrorism were only uncovered in the 1980s. See Knudsen, Blekingegadebanden.

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30. Enquist and Ehnmark, Manden på fortovet, p. 29. 31. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, no. 20, 1979, pp. 22–23 and Gnistan, no. 38, 1979, pp. 6–7. 32. Enquist and Ehnmark, Manden på fortovet, p. 7. 33. K. Marx. 1993. Das Kapital I, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, p. 210. 34. L. Schön. 2000. En modern svensk ekonomisk historia, Stockholm: SNS Förlag, pp. 446–448; for Denmark H. Rasmussen and M. Rüdiger. 1990. Tiden efter 1945. Danmarks historie, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, p. 267. 35. see Stråth, The politics of de-industrialisation, pp. 199–203. 36. Nielsen, Fodboldenglen, p. 130. 37. See for example Politisk Revy, no. 332, 1978, pp. 7–8. 38. Gnistan, no. 56, 1979, p. 5. 39. Nielsen, Fodboldenglen, p. 134. 40. N.O. Finnemann et al. 1979. Livsstykker. Fem historier fra det nye venstres almanak, Århus: Modtryk, p. 167. 41. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, no. 8, 1978, p. 25. 42. Quoted in Lahger, Proggen: musikrörelsens uppgång och fall, p. 142. 43. Nielsen, Demokrati i bevægelse, pp. 174–92. 44. Politisk Revy, no. 336, 1978. 45. See J. Habermas. 1970. Protestbewegung und Hochschulreform, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 33–38. 46. The attempts to explain the student revolt and its aftermath by placing them in the personal life stories continued through the 1980s; see, for example, Behrendt, Bissen og Dullen; and L. Passerini. 1996. Autobiography of a Generation: Italy, 1968, Hanover: University Press of New England. 47. Finnemann et al., Livsstykker, p. 138. 48. Ibid., p. 113. 49. Ibid., p. 114. 50. Behrendt, Bissen og Dullen, p. 46. Originally taken from Livsstykker. 51. For a critique of Bissen og Dullen see J.B. Nielsen. 1988. Oprøret 1968, Copenhagen: Babette, pp. 67–93. 52. VS Bulletin, special issue, 30 July 1976, p. 1. 53. Rasmussen, Sære alliancer, pp. 136–7. 54 Ibid., p. 285. 55. Politisk Revy, no. 361, 1979, p. 8.

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Chapter 6

Summary, Conclusions and Outlook

These final remarks are divided into three parts. First there is a thorough summary to recapitulate the history that has been told in the preceding five chapters and emphasise the most important points for the following considerations. The summary will deal with the overarching narrative to separate it from the subplots of the individual chapters, as well as summarising the differences and similarities between Denmark and Sweden. The second part will be a closer consideration of the theoretical perspective of the research, namely, the relationship between crisis and conceptual change. The third and largest part will present a short outlook on the left after the implosion in the late 1970s.

Summary: Transformations and Crises The story told in this book is stretched between two conceptual crises of the political field of the left: First, the crisis of communism around 1960, and, secondly, the crisis of the radical left at the end of the 1970s. In the period between these two narrative landmarks, the left managed to reinvent and reformulate much of its communist heritage, while keeping some of the key elements of the communist view on the nation. The three most important elements, or questions that required answers, were: (1) The position of the nation in the international context, the relation between national and international: where did the nation naturally belong? Who were the friends and enemies? (2) The internal stratification of the nation: which group was the backbone of the nation? Who were the rulers and the ruled? (3) The placement of the nation in time: where did the nation come from, where would it logically go and who would bring it there? The leftist concept of nation required a vision of the socialist future for the nation and an explanation of how this future would come about. The crisis of communism began with the secret speech at the twentieth congress of the CPSU, but it went beyond the immediate crisis of confidence towards the Soviet Union. The communist answers to the national and international questions were severely challenged by this event as well as by the invasion of Hungary the same year. From the foundation of the Comintern, the

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Soviet Union had played the role of model as well as the international guarantor of peace and democracy, the leader of the ‘anti-imperialist and democratic camp.’ By the end of the 1950s, the Soviet Union had definitively lost its goodwill as the defeater of Nazi Germany, and the revolts in Poland and Hungary clearly revealed the oppression of the population in the so-called people’s democracies. Internally, de-Stalinisation meant a weakening of cohesion within the world communist movement, a space to fill now that Moscow had loosened its grip. This hit Denmark considerably harder than Sweden, since the DKP put much more weight on the international dimension of communism. In addition, the economic boom of the 1960s also forced the communists to reconsider their answers to the internal stratification of the nation, and here both Swedes and Danes were hit. The hypothesis of falling real wages and absolute impoverishment did not fit the affluent society of the 1960s; the worker was no longer a starved individual, oppressed and exploited by capitalism. In fact, the promises of the welfare state seemed to be fulfilled. It seemed possible to use the wealth created by capitalism to create more social justice and better conditions for all. Why should the workers follow the communist call for a radical change, when, first, their model society seemed much less free than liberal capitalism, and when, secondly, the social promises could also be attained in a capitalist society? The rising incomes of the 1960s demanded a change in the communist vocabulary of poverty and social injustice. The answers to the crisis were provided by the emergent New Left, in Denmark the SF and the cultural radicals, in Sweden the modernists and the circles around Tidsignal, Clarté and Zenit. Their re-conceptualisations, with different weightings and details, evolved around a replacement of the elements of the communist concept of nation. Instead of the Eastern bloc as the dynamic force in the world, they focused on the emerging Third World as an alternative international community. In SF, this was seen as an alternative to the bad company of the NATO alliance. The non-aligned countries were the true friends of Denmark. In Sweden, the nation was seen more as a part of the imperialist system, but the hope attached to the South was at least equally strong. Politically, the strong focus on the working class as the core of the nation yielded to an ambition of attracting larger groups on a broader political platform. SF’s choice of ‘people’s party’ over ‘workers’ party’ and C.-H. Hermansson’s attempts to attract voters by removing the Bolshevik elements of the party were examples of this. Another answer, most prominent in Denmark, was to focus on the role of those not integrated in welfare capitalism, the intellectuals and the students, as the agents of political change. Another replacement within the conceptual field was necessary in relation to economic oppression and exploitation in capitalism. As the affluence of the capitalist boom benefited society as a whole, the Marxist theory of increasing impoverishment lost its explanatory value. Oppression could no longer be illustrated by the social inequalities between the luxury lives of the capitalists and

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the starved working class. Instead, the New Left focused on the existential oppression, where the ruling classes kept their privileged position of power over the majority of the people by binding them to an alienating and numbing system of consumerism. Liberation was no longer liberation from poverty, but a liberation of the spirit, freedom from the mental chains of pop and hollow materialism. Hence, the image of the future for the New Left was a truly democratic society, where people were liberated and given the possibility to live complete, fruitful and authentic lives. It was not the revolution of the starved masses storming the palaces of the rich, but the democratic transition to a society where production was for the well-being of the citizens and not for the irrational needs of capitalist accumulation. This thorough re-conceptualisation turned out to be an asset for the left. From the middle of the 1960s, the left attained a large degree of hegemony in both Denmark and Sweden. The new constellation of concepts seemed to give valid answers to the questions of the time. Especially the concern for the Third World after the dissolution of the European empires became increasingly urgent. The French war in Algeria, the continued involvement of Western capital in the newly independent states, and, most importantly, the American atrocities in Vietnam pointed at large problems in the new international order. The East–West orientation of the political establishment and the rhetoric of the ‘free world’ lost its relevance in the face of détente between the superpowers and the confrontations in the South. Also the increasing commodification of culture was consistent with the critique from the left. As the new affluence allowed larger groups of consumers for culture goods, culture became a commodity and a profitable object for investment. For those that saw culture as either a spiritual, non-materialistic enterprise, incompatible with profit making, or those that saw culture as a means political of liberation, the critique expressed in Politisk Revy or Zenit described the dangers very well. Politically, the success was tangible in the form of increased votes for those parties that represented the New Left. The spectacular entrance of SF in the parliamentary elections of 1960 and the steady rise in votes after C.-H. Hermansson had taken over the SKP proved that their ideas had sympathy beyond the circles of leftist intellectuals. The radical turn of the left was an internal reaction to the compromises and the ‘watering down’ of ideology that followed the pragmatic approach of the modernists and the SF leadership. The radicalising effect of the Vietnam war in particular fuelled a latent tension between those who wanted to uphold some kind of revolutionary socialism, the ‘young SF’ in Denmark and the Maoists in Sweden, and those who worked for concrete, daily influence. In the last half of the 1960s, the radical interpretations of capitalism gained ground on the left. They held the promise that capitalism could be understood by grasping its fundamental principle and be removed by cutting away its root.

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Radicalism meant a turn towards more deductive and abstract analyses, instead of pragmatic politics. It also meant an inversion of many of the propositions about the nation on which the New Left had built its politics. Whereas the SF and the modernists had worked out from an assumption of their own countries as carriers of strong democratic and anti-capitalist traditions through which capitalism could be abandoned peacefully, radicalism denied this national exceptionalism. Indeed, in the end, there was no difference between the open fascist dictatorships and the democratic Nordic welfare states; capitalism remained capitalism. This also meant a return to more orthodox Marxist assumptions about the nation. Whereas the international dimension was still dominated by the Third World, this was put into a Leninist analysis of imperialism, where the falling rates of profit forced capitalism to expand abroad. Internally, the radical left returned to a stricter view on a stratified nation with capitalists oppressing and extorting the working people. However, at some point the working class would necessarily rise to shake off the yoke and lead the way to socialism, all in all a conceptualisation very similar to that of the communists. For some time, this view on the nation could also find some confirmation in the events of the time. The Vietnam war seemed explicable in the light of a systemic view of global imperialism, where Denmark and Sweden took part on the side of the aggressors. The military coup in Greece, the violent contestations in France, Germany and Italy in 1968 and the revival of working-class militancy around 1969 both shaped and confirmed the radical world view. The European protest cycle of the 1970s provided ample examples for revolutionary hopes as well. Although its electoral appeal was more limited than that of the New Left of the early 1960s, radicalism attained hegemony over the left as well as over most of the intellectual field in both countries. At the end of the 1970s, however, the conceptualisation was again challenged from changes within capitalism. Although the crisis had to some extent seemed to affirm the Marxist claims about the frailty of the capitalist system, the protest cycle did not develop to become truly revolutionary. Instead the protests repeated themselves to the point of being everyday events, and not the beginning of a new society; or they departed from radicalism and focused on single issues and not societal transformation. Capitalism itself changed its face in this period and became ever less compatible with the Marxist universe. Rather than collapse, it transformed and hence became increasingly difficult to grasp with the radical concepts of the left. As the 1980s began, it was obvious that the leftist wave, which had been born out of the crisis of communism and in many ways put its mark on the two preceding decades, had now flattened and been overtaken by new tides from different directions. Seen in the comparative perspective, this narrative of crisis, innovation and crisis is mirrored in the two countries. However, the similarities in the long run are contrasted with the differences in the road that these two developments took. The main difference is the experience of a clean break with communism in Denmark and a continuous ambiguity towards communism in Sweden.

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The founding of SF and the continuing distancing from the communist universe gave the coming Danish left-wing generations a socialisation in an environment much less dependent on tradition than in Sweden. Also, the SF only maintained hegemony over the Danish left for a few years; after 1965 the intellectual circle around Politisk Revy had a radical agenda of its own, and again after 1968 the student movement could find the space to play an important role. Hence, there was very little continuity on the Danish left; by the 1970s, there was little left of the concepts that had characterised SF a decade before. Sweden presents a different case. The SKP/VPK represented a strong continuity on both the personal and the conceptual level. Even the appearance of Maoism kept traces of its origins in its image of Sweden – indeed, Maoism presented itself as the keeper of the authentic communism as opposed to VPK’s deviations. The New Left in Sweden was a short intermezzo between periods where communism dominated, either as the ideological conservatism of Maoism, or as the continuation of the idea of a ‘Swedish road to socialism.’ The main topics of the 1950s, monopoly capitalism, popular movements and the peripheries were present all the time, from Vår Tid to Folket i Bild/Kulturfront. They were, however, presented and used differently. As stated in the introduction, change and continuity are never unambiguous concepts. One reason for this was undoubtedly also the difference in the origins of those concepts. Whereas the concepts of the DKP referred to the Second World War and the cold war of the 1950s, the concept of the nation of the SKP/VPK pointed to the constant tension between centre and periphery as well as economic and political power, which were of a more long-lasting character in a large country dominated by big companies – as opposed to the anti-German rhetoric of the DKP, which soon became anachronistic. Thus, the Danish left was forced to make more profound conceptual changes than the Swedish left. Nevertheless, the left in both countries contained elements that would lead them the crisis of the late 1970s.

Concepts and Crises Although the concept of crisis has been evoked several times in the above, I have found it best to wait with a more thorough consideration of its meaning until this point. The common-sense understanding of the word should have been sufficient for the general usage in the investigation. At this point, however, it is necessary to make a more precise definition in order to make more general comments on the relationship between concepts and crises. As Koselleck describes, the concept of crisis is originally a medical metaphor, which points to the moment in which the disease results either in death or in a return to health. This metaphor implies a cycle of a condition of

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health, illness, crisis, health or death and hence a notion of a clear division between health and disease. Here the crisis is the turning point, where the ill can return to the normal state or perish. The historical use of this metaphor has similar characteristics to a point in time when things are decided, a time of transition from one state to another.1 The notion of transition between different states, points of decision between success and failure, could be transferred to history as a metaphor for moments of radical change or periods of instability. Crisis in the first sense points to the critical moment of transformation from one order to the other, a short point in time where the foundations of the old system break down and a new one is being constructed. In the second sense, the concept of crisis represents a period rather than a point, a permanent condition of instability where critical situations are constantly reproduced.2 Both notions contain an idea about a possible condition of healthiness, a condition of stability. Used in the context of conceptual history, this would refer to periods in which concepts work as representations of experience, where they form an unchallenged interpretation. Stable structures of this kind would characterise conditions of ‘health’ whereas the periods in which they are challenged are ‘diseases’ leading to the crisis. The implicit use of crisis in the above corresponds somewhat to this notion; concepts are challenged and enter a period of crisis, leading either to reinnovation or decay. On closer investigation, however, the shifts between stability and crisis are far from being so clear-cut. The crisis of communism and the crisis of the New Left did indeed occur when the references of the concepts disappeared and the interpretations lost plausibility. But, when these challenges are compared with the periods of supposed stability, the challenges were no less in number at these points. Upon a closer look, the healthy, stable condition of coherent, plausible concepts dissolves and reveals of constant state of forced change: The hope for the Third World as a progressive and peaceful force vanished almost as soon as it had been uttered, eclecticism was challenged by radicalism, the view of the complacent working class was overtaken by the upsurge of militancy. Yet none of these challenges developed into crises of the same gravity as that of communism around 1960 and that of the New Left at the end of the 1970s. In fact, the periods immediately before the big crises were marked by ideological continuity rather than increasing instability. In comparison with the 1960s, the 1950s and 1970s were both decades with remarkably little conceptual change. The concepts of the communist parties could be traced all the way back to at least the 1940s. The 1950s did not see any radical change in these concepts. The 1970s were also rather stable; the tenor of magazines like Folket i Bild/Kulturfront and Politisk Revy did not change remarkably during the decade. Only a few new themes appeared during those years, and no major changes happened in the general tendency of the arguments. It was as if the language of the left had found a stable form with little need for

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change. In contrast, it would seem that the 1960s were a period of crisis in the sense of constant instability. Nevertheless, it was also the period of progress and of relative success for the left. It was here that the left managed to attain hegemony over the public debate, and attract the majority of intellectuals as well as making electoral progress. Conversely, the periods of stability before the crises were times in which the left began to lose ground. They both occurred about ten years after significant victories, respectively the victory of the Soviet Union and the following successes of the communist parties in 1945 and the rise of left-wing radicalism in 1968. Both of these two events were followed by a period of consolidation and cohesion and, eventually, a major crisis of the interpretations from the moment of success. The ideas that had been instrumental in the victory became liabilities ten years later. The communists’ dependence on the Soviet Union, which in 1945 had been an asset, now became an embarrassment. This had been ignored since the coups in Eastern Europe (especially Czechoslovakia) in the late 1940s, which presented a problem that arose again in 1956. Likewise for the left in the 1970s, the activism of 1968 and the solidarity with the Third World had been assets in the 1960s. Their dark sides, violence and internal oppression in states like North Vietnam or China, had been ignored. With the red terrorism in Italy and Germany and Pol Pot’s reign of terror in Cambodia, it became impossible not to ask unpleasant questions, which had been latent for a decade. In this light, it is tempting to suggest that it was indeed the stability of those two decades, 1945–1956 and 1968–1978 that led to the crises. Following this lead, it is necessary to ask how this stability came about. In the case of the world communist movement, it was unquestionably the product of coercion from the Soviet Union. As was obvious in the case of the DKP split, the CPSU actively obstructed attempts to change or reinterpret communist concepts. Aksel Larsen’s efforts to reform the party was met with stubborn resistance from the hard core, which denied any possibility of change, although the crisis was obvious. With the help from a concerted international campaign against ‘revisionism’, they managed to keep an unchanged DKP – even at the cost of complete isolation. In the 1970s coercion did not function through central control. Rather, the period was characterised by internal constraints. The ‘establishment of estrangement’ had continuously isolated itself from the rest of society. It became almost completely self-referential in its discussions and analyses and thus had little possibility of verifying its interpretations against other views. The arguments were given in oversimplified slogans, as with the Swedish Maoists, or theories inaccessible to outsiders, as in the Politisk Revy circle. Moreover, the ideological constraint of radicalism worked as a hindrance to flexibility. By demanding comprehensive analysis, the left denied itself the possibility to adjust the concepts to the changing context. Moreover, the ability to adjust to change was blocked by the persisting belief that observable facts were secondary to the ‘deeper’ reality revealed in abstract analyses.

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It seems fair to argue that the crises occurred after periods of forced stability. The interpretations, which had come out of other contexts, had been kept in place as unchangeable truths, but as the context changed, they became ever further removed from the reference. The growing tension between the concepts and their reference can be compared to a boiling kettle with no escape for the steam; the pressure rises until the whole kettle explodes. In the case of communism, the sequence of events starting with deStalinisation, Hungary and the Berlin Wall tore away the foundations from under the feet of the communist parties. For those like the DKP, who had little to build on except admiration for the Soviet Union, this was a devastating blow. Even for the SKP/VPK, it showed the necessity to radically reassess the party’s role. In the 1970s, the situation was similar. Instead of the pragmatic change of the language of the New Left at the beginning of the 1960s, which sought to move with the changes – letting out steam, to keep with the metaphor – the radical left kept the lid on the kettle and ignored the rising pressure. Once the explosion occurred, it laid bare the frailty of the dogmas of the left: Marxist analysis, the revolutionary working class and the liberation of the Third World. After this, the left remained but a shadow of its former self.

Outlook – the left in the 1980s In the last chapter, I described the implosion of the left in the late 1970s, almost to the point where the reader would suppose that after 1980, there was no longer such a thing as the left in Denmark and Sweden. This, of course, was far from the case. It is implicit in the relative nature of left and Right that they alter content and political position, but remain as a basic means of orientation in politics (see particularly the discussion on Norberto Bobbio in the introduction). In this way, there was still a political space for the left after the period where the protagonists of the radical leftism were paralysed by disillusion. In the literature, there is an obvious ideological divide between those that see a decline of the left in the 1970s and those who argue for a continuity that reaches up until this day. The first group represents those who either see 1968 as a watershed year, the climax and end of the anti-authoritarian left of the 1960s3 or see the student revolt as the beginning of a ‘red decade’, which ends in the blind alley of terrorism and dogmatism.4 While the first chronology effectively seals the student revolt and the left of the 1960s off from the dogmatism of the 1970s, the second conversely sees the roots of dogmatism in the movements around 1968 and follows this dogmatism to its extreme consequences, typically red terrorism, in the late 1970s – the present work would be in line with this chronology. However, there are a number of authors who focus on continuity rather than historical breaks. Here, the left is presented almost as a historical force that drives progress forward against sinister

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reactionaries,5 or as repeated manifestations of a latent conflict in capitalist society.6 My impression of these works is mostly that they require a quick change of agents from the 1980s onwards: most prominently in Geoff Eley’s Forging Democracy, where single-issue movements are put forward as the representatives of the leftist tradition in the 1980s, until even the techno culture of the 1990s counts as a part of the left.7 This shows the problems of writing a long history of the left. Even in the relatively short period of twenty years discussed in this book, the protagonists change several times. The crisis of communism opened a space for new groups like the New Left or the Maoists, who again changed or were challenged by new circumstances. Overviewing the period, it seems that the only long-time survivors were those groups with a solid organisational basis held together by practical political work, the DKP, the SKP/VPK and the SF. The communist parties remained as representatives for specific groups, the SKP/VPK as a regional party, the DKP as organiser of the left wing of the trade unions and the SF as an integrated part of the parliamentary game to the left of the social democrats. Organisations like the Vietnam Movement or the student movement were much more vulnerable to crises, since their political scope was smaller and dependent on specific contemporary events. Hence, they enter the scene only for short periods. For this reason, a longer history of the left must either take the stable organisations as their protagonists, or find some common denominator for the shifting field of smaller groups and movements. The change of protagonists in Eley’s work shows the difficulty of doing the latter. To continue the history of progress, new movements are constantly put under the leftist umbrella, with the result that the definition of left seems ever more arbitrary. Especially after 1980, it appears difficult to write a success story of the left without bending the concept of left to (or even beyond) its maximum descriptive capacity.

Militancy and Pragmatism – the Danish left For Denmark, at least, there exists rather good evidence for a generational shift around 1980. The veterans of 1968 left the stage for a new generation. This is obvious if one looks at the educational background of the participants in demonstrations in the 1970s and 1980s. From the late 1970s, a significant number are school students (in Denmark this means from seven to sixteen or seventeen years old), while the 1980s has a high participation of high school students (sixteen-nineteen year-olds). From the numbers, it seems obvious that these are the same persons at different stages in their lives. This group was mainly mobilised by the DKP-influenced organisation LOE (Landsorganisationen af Elever – the organisation of school students) in the late 1970s and was to become one of the foundations for the activities during the 1980s.8 Although in many ways indebted to the generation of 1968, they were clearly marked by other experiences, not least the disillusion of the left as a

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whole around 1980. The oldest group had been mobilised through the initiatives of the radical 1970s like the school student movement or in places like the alternative high school Det frie gymnasium in Copenhagen, which were breeding grounds for future activists, and they used places such as the old counterculture Huset or Christiania for their activities. However, they distinguished themselves through an uncompromising activism, which they explicitly opposed to the theoretical dogmatism of the left. In Denmark, the most dramatic and captivating group of the early 1980s was the squatter movement, or the BZ movement, as they quickly named themselves, from the verb besæt (imperative form of ‘occupy’). This group protested against the housing situation and urged the need for an autonomous youth house in Copenhagen, using occupation as their main form of protest. This in turn led to numerous and violent clashes with the police, which gave the movement widespread publicity as well as an uncompromising culture of violent protest. The uncompromising practices were curiously contrasting with the moderate aims of the movement. The radical idea that society could be changed as a whole had been exchanged for rather moderate goals of establishing spaces of autonomy within a society, where the activists felt deeply alienated. Carsten Jensen, who still played a role in Politisk Revy, published a small book about the movement, where he noticed that: ‘There is no faith in the possibility of changing society as a whole among the young. Instead they try to establish small, liberated islands where they can live according to their own lifestyle.’9 Indeed, the movement’s goal was to hold on to the occupied houses and fight off the police that threatened to clear the buildings, places where they could establish an alternative to the world of the ‘adults’ and turn their back on the society they had escaped from. The immediate creation of autonomy was thus the main aim of the BZ movement. They wanted the space to be free to carry out activities ranging from establishing a pottery shop to demonstrating against Apartheid in South Africa or for the rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories. The latter appeared at a later stage, from the mid-1980s, and did point to a political horizon beyond the local neighbourhood, but it was hardly ever put into the context of global revolution in any explicit way. They lived outside the world in their own, threatened nation, submerged in the relentless capitalist ocean.10 It was in a way an extreme version of the defensive strategies of the left in the late 1970s and a notion that would be typical for the 1980s. As the cultural hegemony of the left faded away, those still attracted to the oppositional lifestyle and ideas found themselves in a context of new aesthetic expressions, interpretations and values. The counter-offensive of the right became visible through liberal–conservative governments in Great Britain and Germany, and from 1982 also in Denmark. Moreover, the lifestyles and fashions of what from a leftist point of view was shallow materialism made an impact on youth all over the Western world. The extreme example of this was the stereotypical image of the Yuppie, the ‘young urban professional’, well dressed, career-minded and

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focusing on material wealth rather than ideological commitment and fulfilment. Although this was in many ways a constructed image, the turn towards less idealistic, more bourgeois and complacent lifestyles was visible in popular music and fashion. Light colours, happy melodies and bright smiles contrasted with the doomsday prophecies of the left, who felt that the development had confined them to the edge of a society they did not feel part of. In this atmosphere, and in explicit opposition to the impotent left of the 1970s, the new generation turned to pragmatism, though in a much more concrete form than the ideologically pragmatic New Left in the early 1960s. The pragmatism of the 1980s was centred on concrete, attainable goals and projects that became the soil for the movements that either grew out of them or found new nourishment in practical work. The most important example of the latter was the Danish communist youth organisation, DKU (Danmarks Kommunistiske Ungdom). The youth organisation had grown in the 1970s, both due to the general rallying behind the DKP and due to the activities of the LOE in the schools. While the communist leadership had remained the same since the 1950s, the party now got a new influx of young people whose introduction to political activism was the organisational work among school students. In the available statistics about the youth movement, it is obvious that the ideological dogmatism of the party leadership was paralleled by a decreasing interest in communist doctrine among the youth. Many of them came from left-wing, though not necessarily communist, backgrounds, but only a very few joined for ideological reasons; fewer than a third had chosen the DKU because they were inspired ‘very much’ or ‘to a significant degree’ by Marxism, while Marxism had ‘no significance’ for more than 40 per cent.11 This was mirrored in the DKU’s focus on concrete, often logistically demanding, projects, which, however, had little or very vague explicit long-term content. On example of such projects was the ‘Next Stop’ activities from 1985 to 1989. The first initiative, ‘Next Stop Nevada’, was a continuation of DKU activities in the peace movement in the first half of the decade. The idea was to travel across the USA to Nevada in order to advocate that the US government should follow the Soviet nuclear test ban as well as creating a dialogue between Danish and American youth. Although the communist element was visible both through the immediate context and the participants, the main aim was contained within the project itself; the fact of having planned and carried out such an ambitious venture was an achievement per se, even without being put into a larger political horizon. Tellingly, the main perspective for the activists after returning to Denmark was to use the experience to launch a new ‘Next Stop’ project to the Soviet Union, a project that was realised shortly before the fall of the wall in 1989.12 Politisk Revy, which had kept its high-brow, theoretical profile of the 1970s, had been in constant crisis through the first half of the 1980s. It was kept afloat

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by repeated pleds to the readers to donate extra sums to the magazine, tellingly in return for unsold books from the affiliated publishing house – ‘unsold books is the one thing that we have in surplus’, as one advertisement self-ironically put it.13 In 1987 the former flagship of the left stopped, rather unnoticed by the new, younger groups who were busy elsewhere. It was thus revealing that the new, leftist magazine Press, which began in 1985, had no references to what after all could be seen as its predecessor. It styled itself as the representative of those ‘travelling second class’, the majority of the people, who were being ruled arrogantly by those ‘in first class.’ However, one would look in vain for concepts like class struggle or socialism in Press; rather – again – the project was one of partial liberation, of creating a free space against the prevailing hegemony: The worst thing we know is people in the first class that absolutely needs to tell us how to live our lives, what the future will be like, why there is no reason to sulk, why we should not be afraid – or happy – in short, people with an urge to tell us how we are, what we feel and why we do it, as was written in the introduction to the first issue.14 The aim was to reveal the hollowness of the ‘management culture’ and retain respect for the lives of ordinary people. In practice, Press was more about a new form of journalism than about leftist ideology. It was certainly on the left in its choice of themes, such as a critique of the right-wing Schlüter government or the numerous articles about Ronald Reagan, but the word ‘left’ itself hardly ever appeared on its pages. The magazine consciously wanted to free itself of what it felt was the rigidity of the left from the 1970s, and it succeeded first and foremost by not letting the political agenda control the good story or necessarily aiming at clear conclusions. One example of the latter was the so-called photographic essays, which consisted of long series of photographs, at times just of the lives of ordinary people, at other times giving a glimpse into the world of transvestites, prisoners or other groups on the edge. This had been used also by Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, but with a much more explicit ideological aim. Press was about journalism, a journalism that wanted to investigate the darker sides of society as well as providing an alternative to what was seen as the onslaught of shallow consumerism and egoistic management culture, and hence it was on the left – not the other way round.15 While the above-mentioned groups were definitely on the left, the 1980s were also marked by the activities of grass-roots and social movements. I am quite reluctant to include them in the left, despite the very visible leftist element in these groups. On the level of local, grass-roots groups working for better kindergartens, more local democracy or better traffic regulations, there is actually very little correlation between left-wing sympathies and grass-roots activity. Although the left was more active, this kind of activity was by no means limited to left-wing circles.16 In addition, many groups and movements aimed at

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being above the right-left divide in order to gain more credibility. The peace movement, however, offers an example of the difficulties of delimiting the left from the movements. The Danish peace movement grew out of the broader European initiatives against NATO and Warsaw Pact plans to place new missiles in Europe; it was split into two major organisations, one communist-leaning organisation, which mainly criticised NATO, and one broader organisation, which emphasised that both East and West should engage in nuclear disarmament. They were both dominated by veterans from the left, but their agenda was mostly a broad appeal for peace, and they did not offer a clear socialist alternative to the order of the cold war. Compared with the Vietnam Movement, which had explicitly connected US retreat from Vietnam with a global battle against capitalism, the peace movement mostly argued in negative terms. The survival of the human race was at stake, and the struggle for peace was to end this threat, to secure survival – socialist or capitalist. In this, the movement was not on the left, but in terms of activists, there was little doubt that many disillusioned radicals from the 1970s had found a new stage for their political protest. Also, many young people were mobilised by the movement and typically continued in organisations like the DKU. However, in this context, I would place the peace movement on the edge of the left, reaching from the left to a larger audience that was not part of the leftist milieu, to social democrats, liberals and others afraid of the new tension between the superpowers.

Alternative Roads – Beyond Left and Right in Sweden In Sweden, the break with the left was much more accentuated than in Denmark. Indeed, the movement that took over the critical potential of the left appropriately called itself the ‘alternative movement’ (Alternativrörelsen). This movement had its roots in the 1970s and was in many ways close to Folket i Bild/Kulturfront in its general critique of Swedish society. The alternative movement stressed the alienating effects of the rational, social democratic welfare state; it was sceptical towards new technologies and hailed the virtues of traditional living. However, and here lies the difference from the explicit socialism of Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, it rejected the schematic solutions of both Right and left. The term ‘alternative’ replaced socialism as the defining ideology of the movement, it pointed at solutions beyond capitalism or socialism both in terms of alternative lifestyles, alternative technology and an alternative relationship between man and nature. In this way, the alternative movement embraced a number of issues, covered by different movements: the peace movement, feminists, urban activists and parts of the progg scene. These groups were often bound together by common projects, a pragmatism similar to that the Danish scene, but free from the organisational agenda of, for instance, the DKU. The climax of the alternative movement came early in the 1980s with the ‘alternative campaign’, a travelling exhibition that showed alternative solutions to individual and collective solutions. The exhibition itself was structured like a

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cake in a round circus tent with twelve triangular pieces, each representing an alternative solution. It was stressed that this was not a comprehensive alternative vision, but a demonstration of some of the many roads that had to be travelled simultaneously.17 The metaphor of the many roads contrasted with the radical vision of hierarchical and systemic analysis, which distinguished between superficial problems and radical solutions. Instead of one ultimate solution – socialism – parallel pragmatic alternatives were at the centre of the vision of an alternative society. In this way the pragmatism that was visible on the Danish left in the 1980s took more ideological forms in the Swedish alternative movement; it became a programme of its own. The militancy of the BZ movement, however, was hardly present in Sweden. The alternative movement did not aim at confrontation, but at changing the individual way of life, creating small initiatives, which could point at a broader change in the long perspective. This obviously created a diverse movement in terms of both ideology and practical content. To be part of the alternative movement could entail activities in one’s neighbourhood such as working for more green areas or creating more social ties within ones housing block – the problems of the concrete suburbs remained a theme for decades as well as a scene for alternative initiatives – joining a feminist group or being active for the environment: hence groups with different agendas and different practices, although with the common ambition to create an alternative to the existing order. The environmentalist movement was by far the biggest and most influential part of the alternative scene. Like the rest of the scene, it had its roots in the radical 1970s, but with a large liberal element, visible in the leader and cofounder Per Gahrton of the Environment Party (Miljöpartiet), who had a past as a spokesperson for a liberal youth organisation. The liberal youth (albeit not so much Per Gahrton’s organisation as the centrist CUF – Centerpartiets Ungdomsförbund) had played a key role in the so-called green wave of the 1970s, a reaction to urbanisation and centralisation in favour of small-scale planning around the local community.18 The environmentalist movement had a considerable impact in throughout the 1980s, not only in Sweden but in general in Western societies, most prominently represented by the German Greens (Die Grünen). The Environment Party like the alternative movement styled itself as being beyond the ‘old-fashioned’ division between left and right and instead taking its point of reference in individual needs as opposed to the anonymous ‘advances’ of a technocratic society. Though this vision showed radical elements by presenting the ‘green vision’ as a new and comprehensive ideology, it had little of Leninism’s grand systemic analysis, and it was explicitly non-socialist.19 Also here, the general development went away from ideology and towards pragmatism, the more ideological organisations from the 1970s lost members, whereas the organisations that focused on information campaigns and concrete action, like the apolitical Conservation Society (Svenska naturskyddsföreningen) and Greenpeace, gained widespread support.20 In a report from 1988 for the

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Swedish Institute for Future Studies (Institut för framtidsstudier), based on interviews with leading environmentalist activists, there was no mention of left or right by those who were interviewed, but a marked distancing from the alternative movement as something that belonged more to the 1970s than to the present.21 The same year, under the impact of the Chernobyl disaster, which hit Sweden particularly hard, and a case of seals killed by pollution off the Swedish west coast, the Environment Party entered parliament with 5.5 per cent – a percentage equalling that of the VPK. VPK, like the rest of the leftist organisations, had a hard time finding its feet in the new political environment. It tried to jump on the environmentalist wagon, but was hampered both by the very different political cultures in the two movements22 and by its continued connections with the communist countries, which in many ways represented everything opposite to the alternative and environmentalist movement. Through the 1980s, the party stayed in the position between an independent party and an affiliate of the world communist movement. Its ideology and strategy remained diffuse,23 although the party had stabilised itself around 5–6 per cent in terms of electoral support. Contrary to the DKP, it managed to survive the implosion of the Soviet empire and transform itself into a serious political force to the left of the SAP. The Maoists, however, did not last the decade out. With China itself moving beyond the austere orthodoxy that had been the main attraction of the 1960s and 1970s and left-wing radicalism being generally discredited, there was not much to hold the movement together, and the movement that had hoped to grow to raise the revolutionary banner of Swedish communism confined itself to one local representative in a small township north of Stockholm until its final disappearance from the political scene in 1994. The Maoist – first and foremost anti-Soviet – line continued in Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, which seemed most of all like a reservation for the old guard of the 1970s, barely surviving economically, but keeping the old agendas. One could say that the Swedish left as it has been described here ceased to exist as an active movement in the 1980s. As opposed to Denmark, there was no socialist domination of the – in any case small – peace movement and there was no parallel to the militancy of the BZ movement and no left-wing activism comparable to that of the DKU. The movements that took over the themes of the left did not define themselves as leftist; they were broad social movements that worked more or less in harmony with the system of political representation, despite of their criticism of that same system. This could be due to the fact that Sweden in the 1980s on the whole was a more consensual and peaceful society than the Danish. The social democratic governments managed to keep the economy under control without the clashes and harsh measures of their rightwing Danish counterpart, and the peace issue was less relevant to Sweden as a neutral state. The issue of housing and resistance to central technocratic solutions, which was at the root of the violence in Copenhagen, also took more

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peaceful forms in Sweden. Many of those defining themselves to be part of the left joined the social democrats or continued to be active in the VPK or subscribed to Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, while the ‘movement’ scene was taken over by others. It is beyond the scope of this overview to give detailed explanations of these differences, interesting as they might be. The similarities, however, point at a common thread in the history of the left in both countries, namely, the shift towards pragmatism and away from radical ideologies. This pragmatism makes it increasingly difficult to delimit the left after the 1980s. Themes that belonged to the left before were taken over by new groups, while the activists in the leftist groups themselves were markedly less ideological in their political outlook. Where the left of the 1960s and 1970s sought to change society and create a link between socialist theory and practice, the left after 1980 looked for autonomy within capitalism and practically abandoned ideology for pragmatism. In this, the left became a subculture among many others in culturally complex societies, where individual political and aesthetic choices became ever less coherent. This does not mean that there was no longer such a thing as a left, but being part of this left meant something different in terms of both the internal and the external relations. The turn towards pragmatism was only one change among many in the history of the left. When Che Guevara’s portrait is displayed next to the hammer and sickle at political rallies today, they carry with them a tradition of left-wing activism, which has been both theoretical and radical, pragmatic and militant, a movement whose concepts are in a state of continuous transformation, not to be defined by particular moral standards or historical missions, but as people who try to make sense of the societies in which they are living, lending, bending and reinventing concepts in the political space that we choose to call the left.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

R. Koselleck. 1982. ‘Krise’, in O. Brunner et al. (eds), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 3, Stuttgart: Klett Verlag. Ibid., p. 627; see also R. Koselleck. 1973. Kritik und Krise, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. The most prominent representative would be Gilcher-Holtey, Die Phantasie an die Macht. Koenen, Das rote Jahrzehnt. As is the case in Eley, Forging Democracy. See for example K. Ross. 2002. May ‘68 and its Afterlives, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Eley, Forging Democracy p. 476. The statistics have most generously been made available by Knud Holt Nielsen, see also, K.H. Nielsen. 2007. Giv mig de rene og de ranke. – Danmarks Kommunistiske Ungdom, 1960–1990. Copenhagen: PhD dissertation.

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9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

C. Jensen (ed.). 1982. BZ Europa. Ungdomsbevægelser i 80’erne, Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter, p. 9. For an overview of the roots and history of the BZ movement, see R. Karpantschof and F. Mikkelsen. 2002. ‘Fra slumstormere til autonome. Husbesættelse, ungdom og social protest i Danmark 1965–2001’, in F. Mikkelsen (ed.), Bevægelser i demokrati, Århus: Århus Universitetsforlag. K.H. Nielsen. 2004. ‘”Giv mig de bedste blandt jer...”: hvem var DKU’erne?: resultater af en spørgeskemaundersøgelse’, Arbejderhistorie 4/2004. The figures are based on a questionnaire filled out by 163 formerly active DKU members of different age groups. Both projects were described by participants and sympathisers shortly afterwards in C. Lindstrøm. 1987. Next Stop Nevada – om det USA, fredsvagterne mødte, Århus: CPR; and J. Knudsen. 1989. I Sovjet. På rejse med next stop, Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter. Politisk Revy no. 398, 1981, p. 5. Press no. 1, September 1985, p. 5. In a book from 1994 with articles from the first 100 issues every article has a comment from the author on the aims and background of the individual article, here the predominance of journalistic arguments over political ones becomes very clear. F. Andersen et al. (eds). 1994. Flot, fræk og forførende. 18 uundværlige historier om pressens mest banebrydende magasin, Copenhagen: P. Haase & Søn. P. Gundelach. 1980. Græsrødder er seje! Århus: Politica, pp. 100–101. The above is based on the description of the alternative movement in Wiklund, I det modernas landskap, pp. 277–312. Holmberg, Längtan till landet. See election manifestos, http://www.mp.se/historia.asp. A. Jamison et al. 1990. The making of the New Environmental Consciousness. A Comparative Study of Environmental Movements in Sweden,Denmark and the Netherlands, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 58–59. F. Sjöberg. 1988. På maktens tröskel. Miljörörelsen i det sena 80–talet, Stockholm: Carlsson, p. 61. Ibid., p. 36. Hermansson, Kommunism på svenska?, pp. 310–11.

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A Afghanistan, 167 Algeria, 54, 57, 66, 91, 183 allargamento, 70–71 Alsterdal, Alvar, 49 alternativrörelsen (alternative movement), 193–94, 195 Althusser, Louis, 46 America see USA anti-Americanism, 66, 97–101 anti-Europeanism, 62–67 apartheid, 58, 190 arbetarkultur, 27 Asia, 33, 61, 165 see also South-East Asia authenticity, 132, 140–41, 143, 151 imagined authenticity, 140–41 B Baltic Sea, 24, 62, 63, 150 Beck, Ulrich, 126 Belgium, 53 Berlin, 106, 108 Berlin Agreement, 145 Berlin Wall, 38, 39 Black Panther Party, 98 Bourdieu, Pierre, 9, 108 Brun, Ellen, 89 BZ movement, 190, 195 C Cambodia, 166–67, 187 capitalism, 23–24, 28, 59, 65, 75, 99, 106, 108, 118, 138, 139, 153–58, 171–74, 182, 184 and fascism, 115–17, 157, 184 monopoly capitalism, 23, 26, 28–31, 61, 74, 94, 99, 102, 151, 185, 193 state monopoly capitalism, 152, 158

and Third World liberation 57, 87–97, 98, 119–20, 193 transformation of, 124–26, 152, 154, 184 and Welfare, 72–74, 111–15, 184 Castro, Fidel, 90 CCP (Chinese Communist Party), 40, 58, 94, 97, 148 centre-periphery, 4, 28, 73–74, 120, 185 charisma, 168–69 Charter 77, 149, 167 Chile, 153 China, 40, 58–59, 60, 66, 94, 96–97, 100, 148, 167, 195 Christiania, 190 Clarté, 50, 59–60, 77, 92, 94, 95, 99, 100, 103, 104, 109, 127, 130, 142, 148, 182 CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), 55, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 165 Cold War, 3, 24, 26, 53, 55, 89–90, 93, 178, 193 colonialism, 11, 53, 55, 57–58, 60, 62, 65, 69, 119–20, 165 Cominform, 23, 34, 35, 56, 70 Comintern (Communist International), 34, 39, 56, 85–86, 95, 97, 113–14, 118–19, 181–82 commercialism, 66, 76, 106, 138, 141, 151 see also consumerism communism, 5, 21–23, 32–34, 39–42, 45, 47, 51–52, 54–55, 58, 72, 77–78, 85, 95, 102, 115, 129–130, 175, 181–82, 184, 185,186, 188, 189, 195 see also individual parties comparison, 3–4, 6, 184–85

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conceptual history, 2, 12, 186 Congo, 46, 53, 54, 56, 57, 87, 90 consumerism/consumer society, 49, 64, 69, 73, 76–77, 107, 112, 141, 144, 169, 183, 192 Copenhagen, 22, 71, 75, 116, 147, 172, 190, 195 corporatism 60, 116–17 counterculture, 101, 126, 141, 143 CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), 31, 32–42, 47, 187 crisis concept of, 3, 185–88 crisis of communism, 5, 21–22, 32–42, 45–46, 181–82 crisis of The New Left, 5, 163–78 economic crisis, 24, 113, 125, 127, 152–58, 184 Cuba, 90, 167 CUF (Centerpartiets Ungdomsförbund), 194 cultural radicalism, 48–49, 73, 74–77, 80n12, 112 culture, 62, 65–66, 74–77, 101, 138–45, 151, 183 Czechoslovakia, 31, 149 invasion of, 105, 115

E Eastern Europe, 31, 34, 52, 55, 68, 187 EEC, 25–26, 62–63, 65, 150 Danish referendum 1972, 145–46 environmentalist movement (Sweden), 194–95 ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), 105 eurocommunism, 41–42

D decolonisation, 45, 53, 56–57 democracy, 30–31, 117, 153 democratic centralism, 51, 67 Deng Xiaopeng, 167 de-Stalinisation, 32–33, 35–36, 40, 182 Dialog, 49, 64 dictatorship of the proletariat, 13, 31, 113 DKP (Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti), 22, 23–26, 34–35, 40, 72, 78, 115, 128–29, 130, 134–35, 145–46, 153–54, 182, 188, 191 split, 36–38, 187 DKU (Danmarks Kommunistiske Ungdom), 191 Dutschke, Rudi, 106

G Gahrton, Per, 194 Gang of Four, 167 generations, 34, 64, 85–86, 88, 126, 142, 189 Germany, 25–26, 42n8, 63–64, 68, 82n54, 88, 106, 170 Giddens, Anthony, 126 Gnistan, 103, 113, 130, 133–34, 148, 156, 166, 176 Gothenburg, 22, 50, 73, 134 Gramsci, Antonio, 49 Great Britian, 46 Greece, 104 Grundtvig, Niels F.S., 147–48 Guevara, Ernesto 'Che', 90 Gustafsson, Bo, 95, 156 Gustavsen, Finn, 104

F Fanon, Frantz, 61, 66 fascism, 60, 104, 115–19, 157 Finland, 30, 149 Finlandisation, 149 FNL (Front National de Libération), 95, 103, 166 Fog, Mogens, 37, 78, 93n106 folk high school, 147 Folkebevægelsen mod EF (The Popular Movement against the EEC), 145–46 Folket i Bild/Kulturfont, 130, 131, 139–42 folkhem, 53, 118 France, 46, 108–109 freak left, 101, 136, 144, 169 Freud, Sigmund, 164, 176 Frit Danmark, 64

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H Habermas, Jürgen, 111 Hagberg, Hilding, 30, 105 Hansen, Bente, 99 Henningsen, Poul, 69, 73, 75 Hermansson, C-.H., 28, 36, 50, 70, 74, 85, 95, 105, 109, 115, 135 Hiroshima, 55 Hobsbawm, Eric, 10–11, 22, 140 Hollander, Paul, 97, 126 Holmberg, Nils, 59, 81n41 Holocaust, 62 Hungary, invasion of, 36–39, 46, 48, 167, 181 I identity class, 142 communist, 25, 34, 45 left wing, 118, 126, 144, 171, 174, 178 national, 53, 64 Nordic, 61–62, 64–71 ideology, 1, 8–9, 46, 49, 92, 128, 193–94 imagined communities, 56 imperialism, 26, 87, 91–96, 99–100 Lenin's theory of, 93, 157, 184 Soviet, 148–49, 157 US, 60–61, 91, 93, 96, 119, 149, 157, 166 Indochina see South East Asia Indochina War, 167 industry, 79, 125, 151, 157, 172 internationalism, 13, 45, 47, 51–61, 71–72 proletarian internationalism, 13, 22, 32, 37–38, 45, 70 virtual internationalism, 56–57 Italy, 170 J Jensen, Carsten, 178, 190 Jespersen, Knud, 25

K KFML (Kommunistiska Förbundet Marxist-Leninisterna) – after 1973 SKP, 96, 102–103, 110, 127, 129, 134, 148–50, 157 Khrushchev, Nikita, 5, 33, 40, 51, 52 Kiruna, 22 Kiruna strike, 132–33, 168 Knudsen, Erik, 128 Kola Peninsula, 52, 149 Koselleck, Reinhart, 3, 12–14, 185–86 L labour market/labour relations, 73, 125, 134, 137–38, 169 Lager, Fritjof, 27 Land og Folk, 35 Laos, 56–57 Larsen, Aksel, 25, 34–35, 37, 47–48, 52, 70, 102, 120, 187 Larsen, Ejvind, 147–48 Leninism, 2, 41, 50, 58, 92–96, 106, 115, 118, 128, 157, 171, 184 LO (Landsorganisationen), 73, 169 LOE (Landsorganisationen af Elever), 189, 191 LSD, 98, 101 Lumumba, Patrice, 56 Lund, Gelius, 37, Lundkvist, Artur, 100 M Mao Tse-tung, 40, 58–59, 94 Maoism, 40, 50, 57–61, 92, 94–97, 99, 102–104, 113–14, 118, 130, 140, 142, 149, 156–57, 167, 185 Marcuse, Herbert, 106, 111 Marx, Karl, 51 Marxism, 8, 24, 59, 71–72, 102, 106, 128, 147, 154, 155, 184, 191 alienation, 76 class, 13–14, 77–79, 168 impoverishment, 45,182, philosophy of history, 165 and radicalism, 171–75, 178 surplus value, 151, 157

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Marxism-Leninism see Leninism May strikes (1974), 155–56, 168 Miljöpartiet (Environment Party), 194–95 Mills, C. Wright, 73, 98 modernisation, 30, 47, 71–72, 74, 119 Molkte, Kai, 37, 64, morality, 55, 57–58, 68–69 and intellectuals, 76 moral socialism, 49, 69, 129 moral superpower, 53–54, 60 and terrorism, 170 and the Vietnam War, 87–88, 90, 92 Myrdal, Jan, 65–67, 130, 140, 141 N Nagasaki, 55 National roads to socialism, 32–33, 35, 40, 51, 97 Nationalism, 1, 10–11, 53, 64, 127, 145–50 NATO, 23–26, 54, 55, 61–64, 68, 104, 146, 182, 193 Neutrality/neutralism, in Denmark, 24–26, 54–55, 67–68 in Sweden, 26–27, 49, 53, 64–65, 70, 96, 195 and Third World liberation, 94 New Left, 3, 5, 39, 45–46, 56, 97–98, 106, 111, 119, 127–28, 131, 136, 163, 165, 169, 175, 182–83, 188 in Denmark, 47–49, 64, 69, 72–73, 76, 79, 109, 112, 135, 147 historiography of, 15–17, 46 in Sweden, 49–51, 57–58, 61, 92, 94, 103, 115, 118, 129, 185 New Left Review, 46, 192 Next Stop Nevada, 191 Next Stop Sovjet, 191 Nielsen, Hans-Jørgen, 164, 168, 173 non-aligned nations, 45, 54–55, 93, 165, 175, 182 Norden, 58, 61–62, 67–71, 72, 81n52 Norrbotten, 22, 30, 50, 129, 139 Norrskensflamman, 30, 50, 51, 105 Northern Ireland, 105, 170

Norway, 67, 68, 70 nuclear free zone, 24, 52, 67 nuclear war, 55 nuclear weapons, 49, 193 Ny Dag, 28, 38, 129, 135, 142 Nørlund, Ib, 35–36, 37 O October Revolution, 21, 31, 36, 58–59, 118, 128, 129 P pacifism, 55, 61, 92, 94 Palestine 166, 179n29, 190 patriotism, 27, 32, 88, 140, 149–50 PCF (Parti communiste français), 33, 47, 152 PCI (Partito communista italiano), 33, 39–40, 47, 69–70 peace movement, 22, 45, 191, 193, 195 peaceful coexistence, 33, 40, 59, 61, 67, 94 Pol Pot, 167, 187 Poland, 25, 182 Politisk Revy, 60, 79, 89, 98–99, 102, 109, 112–13, 115, 118–19, 128, 130, 133, 135, 144–45, 147, 154–56, 170, 175–76, 178, 183, 185–87, 191–92 polycentrism, 39–40, 105 popular front, 48, 145, 153 popular movements, 30, 114, 115, 117, 120, 131–32, 140–42, 146–47, 151, 176, 185 postmaterialism, 126 Pravda, 37, 52 progg, 139, 193 protest cycle, 106, 125, 156, 167–69, 184 Protestantism, 66–67 see also Puritanism PSU (Partie Socialiste Unifié), 46 Puritanism, 3, 60, 77, 115 R Radical Party (Det Radikale Venstre), 55 radicalism, 86–87, 90, 93, 97, 102–103, 107–108, 114–15, 117–18, 120, 128,

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134, 146, 171–75, 176, 178, 183–84, 187 RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion), 170 rebellrörelsen, 110 reflexive modernity, 126 Reich, Ebbe (Kløvedal), 147–48 Reintoft, Hanne, 127–28 revisionism, 37–38, 47, 50, 52, 58–59, 94, 114, 118, 187 revolution, 13, 21, 24, 31, 33, 59, 90, 103, 106, 108, 113–14, 120, 143, 176 agent of, 56, 79, 102, 110, 137, 169–70, 173, 177, 188 Chinese Cultural Revolution, 65–66, 95 French Revolution, 8–9 phantasmal revolution, 113–14 Russian Revolution see October Revolution and working class radicalism, 131–35, 155–56, 168–69 World revolution, 40, 51, 56, 58, 69, 87–101, 148, 190 Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal, 88 S SAC (Svenska Arbetares Centralorganisation), 49 Scharnberg, Carl, 69 Schleswig, 64 SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), 98 Second World War, 24, 25, 33, 85, 149, 157, 185 Secret Speech, 33–36, 181 Senander, Knut, 59 SF (Socialistisk Folkeparti – Denmark), 38–39, 47–49, 52, 53–55, 62–64, 67–71, 72–73, 76, 78–79, 85, 88–89, 101–102, 109, 112, 120, 127, 132, 147, 172, 175, 182–83, 185, 189 SF (Sosialistisk Folkeparti - Norway), 70 Sino-Soviet split, 40, 45, 47, 59, 69, 98, 118

Situationist International, 46 SKP (Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti) / VPK (Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna), 22, 26–32, 35–36, 38–39, 40–41, 46, 53, 58, 67, 73–74, 77, 79, 85, 92, 102, 105, 110, 112, 114, 120, 127–29, 131, 132, 135–37, 142, 150, 153–54, 158, 169, 185, 188–89, 195–96 after 1973 see KFML factions, 49–51 historiography of, 15 reform, 50–51, 69–71 social democrats, 1, 4, 21–22, 51, 67, 112, 132, 174 in Denmark, 48, 55, 72, 74, 101, 129, 134, 138–39, in Sweden, 8, 28, 31, 50, 58, 64–65, 73–74, 79, 109, 114, 118, 132–33, 141, 153, 169, 195–96 social movements, 108, 129, 140, 168, 177–78, 189, 192, 195 socialism and the Eastern Bloc, 52, 97 and national history, 148, 158 Nordic socialism, 70–71 and radicalism, 102, 183, 194 and rationalism, 76 and the Third World, 47, 59, 89, 167, 175 transition to, 30–32, 36, 72, 78, 101, 114, 152–53, 155, 165, 181 see also moral socialism Socialistisk Debatt, 129, 135, 142 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 167 South Africa, 58, 190 South-East Asia, 53, 88, 104, 166–67 Soviet Union and Danish or Swedish communist parties, 21–32, 34–38, 49–50, 70–71, 165, 167, 181–82, 187–88 foreign policy, 67, 93 and Maoism, 97, 118, 140, 148–50, 157 and the New Left, 52, 98–99, 118–19, 128

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and the world communist movement, 47, 51, 105 see also proletarian internationalism; Sino-Soviet split Spain, 105 Stalin, Joseph, 33, 35–36, 40, 102 Stalinism, 34, 40–41, 68, 88 state, 4, 14, 31, 60 Nation state, 10–11, 67, 146 state economic control, 73–74, 112 state funding, 138 state repression, 140–41, 157 see also state monopoly capitalism; Welfare state Stockholm, 22, 30, 50, 71, 88, 139, 140, 169, 195 Stockholm University, 109–10 student movement, 107, 109–11, 128–30, 134, 135, 137, 154–55, 168, 185, 189 student revolts, 103, 105–11, 116, 131, 133, 146–47, 169, 177, 180n46, 188 Suez Crisis, 32, 36–38 Svensson, Jörn, 116 T terrorism, 163, 165, 170–71, 175, 179n29, 187, 188 The New Left, 1, 3, 5, 39, 45–46, 56–57, 79, 87, 97–98, 103, 106, 118, 131, 163, 165, 169, 175, 182–83, 185, 188 in Denmark, 47–49, 55, 64, 69, 72, 76, 88, 90, 109, 112, 128, 147 historiography of, 15–16, 46 in Sweden, 49–51, 57–58, 61, 92, 94, 103, 115, 116, 129–30 see also crisis of the New Left Third International see Comintern Third World, 5, 11, 26, 47, 51–61, 65, 79, 86–87, 89–90, 94, 96, 99, 103, 106, 108, 113, 165–67, 182–83, 186–87 see also imperialism; internationalism; Vietnam war Tiden, 25–26, 145

Tidsignal, 50, 60–61, 70, 79, 92, 99, 104, 110, 114, 116, 118, 129, 130, 135, 182 Togliatti, Palmiro, 39–40 trade unions, 137–38 see also LO; wildcat strikes; workers’ movement tradition, 140 U USA and capitalism, 65, 73, 97 communist view, 23–25, 36, 71 and fascism, 73, 104, 115, 117 New Left in, 46 the other America, 98–99 And the Third World, 53, 56–57 see also anti-americanism; imperialism; Vietnam war V Vietnam see Vietnam war Vietnam Movement in Denmark, 90–91, 109, 177 in Sweden, 59, 92, 95–96, 103, 110, 166–67 VS (Venstresocialisterne), 102–103, 109, 111, 112, 115, 127–28, 130, 134, 146, 155–56, 163, 170, 172, 177 Vår Tid, 28, 35, 185 W Wage-earner funds, 156–57, 169 Warsaw Pact, 25, 38, 54, 105, 193 Welfare state, 4, 46, 47, 71–74, 77, 111–17, 127, 155, 182, 184, 193, Western Europe, 24, 33, 45, 53, 68, 103–106, 125 White, Hayden, 4 Wildcat strikes, 125, 129, 132–36, 152, 167, 168–69, 172 see also Kiruna Strike Workers’ movement, 22, 48, 52, 70, 72, 133, 175–76 Working class, 132–38 as the agent of change 14, 30, 49, 113, 155–56, 165, 167–70, 184

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authenticity, 127, 137, 142–43, 151 and capitalism, 151 complacency, 106–107, 110–111, 165, 186 impoverishment of, 39, 45, 113–14, 182–83 militancy, 125, 131–33, 156–57, 168, 175, 186 and the nation, 1, 27–28, 32, 78, 143, 146, 182 and people, 78–79, 95, 131–32 romanticism, 172–74 and the student movement, 129, 134, 137 World communist movement see proletarian internationalism; Soviet Union World Marxist Review, 25, 26, 34

Z Zenit, 49–50, 57, 77, 92–94, 104, 107, 110, 114, 115, 117, 131, 133, 169, 182–83 Ådalen, 118

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