Håkan Juholt ut och Stefan Löfven in, det blev resultatet efter ett vansinnigt mediadrev underblåst av högerfalangen inom socialdemokratin. Att Juholt var en kompromiss mellan de olika grupperingarna i den socialdemokratiska toppen har varit tydligt genom hela hans tid som ordförande. Som retoriker har han varit lysande och för första gången på väldigt länge hade SAP en partiordförande som vågade tala om ett annat samhälle.

Eller rättare sagt, han talade om behovet av reformer som stärker politiken på bekostnad av marknaden, klassisk socialdemokratisk politik med andra ord. Men det som var vardagsmat på 80-talet är idag radikal välfärdspolitik och värd att försvaras. Det tragiska ligger därför i hur mycket Håkan Juholts retorik skilde sig emot de konkreta politiska förslag som lades fram, skuggbudgeten som partiet lade fram i höstas var en mager historia som handlade mer om att bibehålla status quo än att genomföra en välfärdsoffensiv. Hela episoden Juholt visar med brutal tydlighet att om partiapparaten är kontrollerad av en socialdemokrati utan visioner eller kampvilja så spelar det ingen roll om partiordföranden talar om visioner.

Med Stefan Löfven har socialdemokratin återigen en ledare som sätter samförståndet främst, att under ordnade former montera ner välfärden är tidens melodi och socialdemokratin är i kommunerna och landstingen oftast medskyldiga till detta. Vi lever verkligen i en tid då allt präglas av den enda vägens politik. Gräsrotsentusiasmen över Juholt har bytts ut i en likgiltighet över Löfven.

Socialdemokratin är en dynamisk rörelse och nu när man cementerat sin plats i opposition finns det mycket mer utrymme för kampanjer och nätverk, det poppar upp Facebook-grupper för och emot viktiga frågor var och varannan vecka där gräsrötter i Socialdemokraterna diskuterar. Än så länge har det inte utkristalliserats någon reell rörelse för att påverka partiet men den grundläggande frustrationen finns där.

Arbetarrörelsen är en arena för konflikt och diskussion. Under lång tid har aktiviteten varit låg men efter några år av kapitalistisk kris finns möjligheten att återigen få rörelsen att faktiskt röra på sig. Det är alltid ovisst att sia om framtiden, men som socialister måste vi våga ta chanserna.

Vi i Socialisten tror att det viktigaste som måste göras inom SAP just nu är att bygga upp nätverk som inkluderar alla de medlemmar – och de som idag står utanför – som vill ha en offensiv socialdemokrati igen. Nästa år är det partikongress och den kommer att ha en stor påverkan för vilken politisk linje partiet kommer att ha i valet 2014. Att uppmana och peppa medlemmar till att lägga motioner, föra debatt och påverka ombud är helt centralt.

Efter Extrakongressen förra året kommenterande en ledarkrönika sarkastiskt att vårt partis kongresser snarare fungerar som Ring P1 för kommunalråd än arenor för politiska diskussioner. Det måste brytas inför nästa kongress. Om vi ska gå framåt måste de politiska skiljelinjer som finns i partiet upp till ytan och diskuteras. Vi kan inte lämna det till hemliga uppgörelser mellan diverse grupperingar i toppskiktet!

Just nu går Vänsterpartiet starkt framåt, både medlemsmässigt och i opinionen. Det är oerhört glädjande och mycket av framgångarna handlar om den öppna processen i partiledarvalet och att deras kongress satt fokus på frågor som verkligen berör dagens arbetarklass. Det är ett exempel som vi socialdemokrater bör ta efter.

Men oavsett hur bra det går för Vänsterpartiet kommer vi inte får en majoritet för arbetarrörelsen i valet 2014 om vi inte har en stark socialdemokrati. Lärdomen är att inte spela med i myglet och de interna uppgörelserna utan att sätta de politiska idéerna främst och lita på medlemmarnas engagemang. Öppenhet och demokrati måste vara ledord i en kampanj för en socialistisk socialdemokrati.

Även inom fackföreningsrörelsen finns det mycket uppdämd frustration. Man har fått ta den största smällen ifrån den borgliga regeringen och det mullrar även bland fackliga aktivister med positioner. Ett gott tecken, men utan en rörelse underifrån är det svårt att påverka. Det finns många glädjande exempel där lokala aktivister lyckats, Hotell- och Restaurangfacket tog till exempel ställning för sex timmars arbetsdag på sin senaste kongress i december efter påtryckningar underifrån.

Men sanningen är att för många arbetare är politik idag något abstrakt som inte är hopkopplat med vardagen. Att stärka det facklig-politiska samarbetet och koppla samman kampen på arbetsplatser, exempelvis mot bemanningsföretag, med det politiska måste också vara prioriterat.

Socialisten är en liten förening men vi vill gärna bidra till debatt och diskussion i socialdemokratin och den breda arbetarrörelsen. Det är lätt att tappa hoppet och bli bitter men ingen annan än just du och jag – vi – kommer att kunna göra det. Arbetarrörelsen är det organiserade uttrycket för alla oss i arbetarklassen och vi måste vinna den för demokratisk socialism.

Jonas Ryberg, medlem i Socialdemokratiska Arbetarepartiet

Vad skulle socialism kunna innebära i 2000-talets verklighet? Hur kan gemensamt ägda storföretag och banker kombineras med främjande av kooperativ? Vilken roll kan olika nya former av frivilligt samarbete, såsom open source, fri kunskapsdelning/-produktion osv, spela? Hur kan vi utveckla ett verkligt demokratiskt inflytande för anställda och brukare?

Dessa frågor tar Erik Andersson, medlem i Vänsterpartiet, upp i detta klipp, som argumenterar för en djupgående demokratisering av alla aspekter av samhällslivet. Det är dags att börja diskutera socialismen som en rad sammanhängande, konkreta lösningar på vår tids stora utmaningar. Vi har ingen tid att förlora.

Lyssna på Eriks diskussionsinledare nedan:

Erik Andersson om 2000-talets socialism

Nyligen hölls World Economic Forum i Davos. ”I fjol präglades toppmötet av optimism, tecken på att krisen äntligen var över och vad som skulle göras för att få fart på tillväxten igen. I år har de politiska ledarna, näringslivstopparna och ledande akademiker istället på rader av seminarier diskuterat inkomstklyftor, arbetslöshet, social oro och vart det kan leda. Ett seminarium ställde frågan om 1900-talets kapitalism misslyckas i det 20:e århundradet?” Det är presentation av mötet från Sveriges radios hemsida. Uppenbarligen är kapitalismens ledare och strateger oroliga över utvecklingen.  Den marxistiska ekonomen Michael Roberts har skrivit en ekonomisk analys som vi återpublicerar här.

Davos dilemma

The strategists of capital are attending their annual jamboree in the snow playground of the super-rich in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum.  Many of the top 0.1% of income earners are there.  And this year the main theme is whether capitalism works and is fair. Capitalism is in crisis – and this time the word ‘crisis’ is not hyperbole.  Even the 2600 attendees at Davos recognise that.  According to a survey by the financial broadcaster, Bloomberg, almost 70% of those asked believed that the capitalist system is in trouble, with 32% saying it needs “radical reworking”.  Less than 20% reckoned ‘free enterprise’ is working.   Most Davos 0.1 percenters are really worried that this failure of capitalism to work could lead to ‘social instability’ in one form or another.

And more than half who were asked at Davos thought that inequality of income and wealth under capitalism was damaging economic growth.  But only one in five wanted any urgent action on the issue!  It seems that greed triumphs over economic logic – or should we say, class interest rules   According to a new study by the OECD, the top 10% of income earners in the world have on average nine times as much income as the bottom 10%.   You can imagine the ratio between the top 0.1% and the bottom 10%.  One of those top 0.1%, Mitt Romney, the main contender for the Republican nomination for the US presidency,was obliged to reveal how much he earned each year and what tax he paid out.  Romney is head of one of the biggest private equity companies (Bain Capital) and one of the highest earners in the US, making over $20m a year.  But he paid only 13.9% of his declared income in tax, way less than the average earner pays as a proportion.  It’s another example of how class rules under ‘free enterprise’.

Take income inequality in the UK.  It has been growing faster than in any other rich country, according to the OECD.  And is this based on reward for successful profit-making?  No.  As Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England has pointed out, when referring to the US, if bankers’ pay were linked to return on assets (ROA) a figure based on profits, it would be much closer to median household incomes than if based on return on equity (ROE), a figure based on the stock market.  Haldane calculated that, if the CEOs of the seven largest US banks had in 1989 agreed to index their salaries not to ROE, but to ROA, by 2007, their compensation would not have grown tenfold.  Instead, it would have risen (only) from $2.8 million to $3.4 million.  Rather than rising to 500 times median US household income, it would have fallen to (only) around 68 times.

Nevertheless, the world’s second richest man in wealth (a Mexican telecoms tycoon is the richest), Bill Gates of Microsoft told the Davos faithful that capitalism was a “phenomenal system” because there is no other system that has improved humanity.  He left aside the question of whether all humanity has benefited from capitalism or the role of capitalism in wars, pollution, global warming, unemployment etc.  Despite these things, Gates supported capitalism because “it has generated so much innovation – it gave me the chance I had as a young boy to start Microsoft and hire my friends.  Other systems don’t allow that to happen”.

Thus Gates promotes the myth that innovation is only possible through the incentive of profit.  Marx too recognised that the capitalist system was a mode of production that drove technology and raised the productivity of labour more than any previous mode of human organisation.  But he reckoned that a socialist, collective mode of production that melded cooperative labour to social need would be even more productive and would not generate the huge inequalities and economic destruction.

Indeed, many, if not most, key innovations that have benefited humanity in the last hundred years were more the result of the incentive of public funding for research in genetics, satellites, health and the environment, much of it done in publicly-owned institutions where profit played no role.  The internet, after all, was invented in the military sector as a form of communication.  And many other innovations like radar came through military funding by the state.    The software basics of Microsoft were already developed in academic circles.   Gates was an entrepreneur who came up with a model to capture those innovations in a profit-making operation.  Indeed, there is much better software available free as ‘open source’ material.  But Microsoft’s monopoly in marketing and links with hardware have kept such free alternatives from being used globally.  Publicly-funded research would just as well have developed such software innovations without the need for a mega corporation that has made a few people super rich by charging for what could be free to all.

Francis Fukuyama once wrote a famous book in the 1990s called The end of history, in which he argued that Western capitalist democracy was the conclusion of all human development.   Now after the Great Recession and the revelations about the extreme inequalities that exist under ‘liberal democracy’, Fukuyama obviously  thought he should do something more.  This week he wrote another article called “The Future of History” in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.  He mused that if some “obscure scribbler … in a garret somewhere (is this him?)” would “outline an ideology of the future that could provide a realistic path toward a world with healthy middle-class societies and robust democracies“… he “could not begin with a denunciation of capitalism as such, as if old-fashioned socialism were still a viable alternative. It is more the variety of capitalism that is at stake and the degree to which governments should help societies adjust to change.  The new ideology would not see markets as an end in themselves; instead, it would value them to the extent that they contributed to a flourishing middle class, not just to greater aggregate national wealth.”

Fukuyama uses the word ‘middle-class’ as all apologists for capital now use it, as a euphemism for ‘working-class’, a word that no longer exists to describe the majority of people.  There are either the rich, the middle-class or the poor (see my post, The working  poor, 7 June 2011).  But whatever word you use, the 99% are not flourishing under modern capitalism.   Both the IMF and the World Bank have now presented reports that show that the major capitalist economies are struggling to sustain any recovery out of the Great Recession (see my post, The world economy – where are we now?, 18 January 2012). The IMF reckons the Eurozone will contract by 0.5% in 2012, with southern Europe dropping by around 2% or more.  Emerging capitalist economies will grow at a slower pace (5.4%) than the IMF thought back last September.  American capitalism looks a little better, but only with growth at 1.8% in 2012, hardly a rate that can get unemployment down or raise real incomes.  Indeed, Christian Lagarde, the head of the IMF, commented that “It is not about saving any one country or any one region. It is about saving the world from a downward economic spiral. It is about avoiding a 1930s moment … in which a combination of inaction, insularity and rigid ideology could cause a collapse of global demand.’

The figures for the UK economy were released this week.  In the last quarter of 2011, the UK economy contracted by 0.2% qoq after growing 0.6% in Q3’2011.  For the whole of 2011, real GDP rose just 0.9%, half the already paltry rise achieved in 2010.  Another quarter of contraction and the UK economy will be back in a ‘technical recession’, two consecutive quarters of decline.  This is still way short of the slump during the Great Recession of 2008-9, when British capitalism contracted 7.1%.  But it ain’t good.  While the government sector managed a small rise in Q4 of o.4%, the private sector declined, with manufacturing down 0.9%, the biggest drop in over two years.  The recovery from the trough of the Great Recession is stuttering, with only 45% of the output lost in the slump recouped so far.

The chief economist at the IMF, Oliver Blanchard, commented that the global economy is driving “with the brakes on”.  What are those brakes?  Well, one is the draconian measures of fiscal austerity being imposed on households and the public sector across Europe, but soon in the US and Japan.  This is squeezing back the only areas of growth in the economy since the Great Recession, the public sector.  But the other brake is the size and level of debt, both private and public, that capital is burdened with.  A recent report by the McKinsey Institute shows that debt relative to GDP in the major capitalist economies rocketed prior to the credit crunch in 2007.  But since then, ‘deleveraging’ that debt has made only limited progress in the major economies (MGI_Debt_and_deleveraging_Uneven_progress_to_growth_Report).

Now there are those who argue that debt does not matter and the burden of servicing it will fall when economic growth is restored to a sufficient level or, alternatively the real burden can be reduced by higher inflation.  Well, neither of these options is happening.  So the real burden of debt servicing is high.  The other argument is that one man’s debt is another’s credit.  So the size of debt does not matter because it just means that assets are up too.  But that assumes that debts are honoured and there is no default.  If there are defaults, then the reckoning comes.  We have already seen the impact of that when the housing market in the US collapsed and defaults on mortgages rocketed.  The banks found that their assets were worth way less than they thought.  Similarly, there is every possibility that the Greek government will default on its debt to the banks in Europe.  Indeed, it is currently negotiating a 60% ‘voluntary haircut’ on the value of its bonds held by those banks.  That entails huge losses to the banks.

Debt does matter and this form of deleveraging is a severely damaging to the real economy.  In effect, as debt or credit rises, the value it represents gets out of line with real value.  Its value becomes the buyer or seller’s expectation of its real value.  The value is thus fictitious, as Marx called it, which at a certain point will be exposed as such and forced to its real value through deleverage, ie liquidation, bankruptcy and, of course, job losses.

It is not debt as such that is the issue; it is what credit is used for.  Government borrowing used to invest in new industries and employment could pay for itself.  But borrowing to bail out banks that have taken losses on fictitious capital is clearly not productive, but a deduction of resources available for productive investment.  In the 13th century,at the beginning of capitalism, it was bankers bankrupting banks. In the 21st century, in modern mature capitalism, bankers are still bankrupting banks. But it is no longer just banks. In the UK, over half a million individuals and nearly 100,000 businesses have found themselves in insolvency since 2007.

What is clear is that the UK economy, along with other major capitalist economies, is suffering from a long depression similar to that experienced by Japanese capitalism after the collapse of its credit bubble in the late 1980s.  During the decade of the 1990s, Japan’s economy could only grow in real terms by 0.8% a year.  The huge private sector debt mountain was only written down very slowly to avoid a major slump.  The banks were bailed out by the taxpayer and Japanese households had to take the pain in a stagnation of real living standards.  Public sector debt rocketed to over 200% of GDP and household savings fell.

Japanese capitalism did not adopt the policies of fiscal austerity that are advocated by mainstream economics and implemented now.  So Japan avoided a significant rise in unemployment, but the economy stagnated and profitability remained in the doldrums.  Japan’s example shows that the option of fiscal austerity can be avoided, but without deleveraging to cleanse the corporate books of ‘dead capital’ and restore profitability, economic recovery will be weak.  Without profitability restored, capitalism stays in depression.

According to a new report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the world faces a challenge of creating 600 million jobs over the next decade.  Global unemployment is now 200 million – an increase of 27 million since the start of the crisis.  In addition, more than 400 million new jobs will be needed over the next decade to avoid a further increase in unemployment.  Even if those jobs were created, it would still leave 900 million workers living with their families below the US$2 a day poverty line, largely in developing countries. Young people are nearly three times as likely as adults to be unemployed.  Even those young people who are employed are increasingly likely to find themselves in part-time employment and often on temporary contracts.

Falling labour force participation masks an even worse global unemployment situation. In the world as a whole, there were nearly 29 million fewer people in the labour force in 2011 than expected based on pre-crisis trends, with 6.4 million fewer youth and 22.3 million fewer adults. This is equal to nearly 1 per cent of the actual global labour force in 2011, and nearly 15 per cent of the total number of unemployed in the world. If all of these potential workers were available to work and sought work, the number of unemployed would swell to over 225 million, or to a rate of 6.9 per cent, versus the actual rate of 6 per cent.  Globally, the employment-to-population ratio declined sharply during the crisis, from 61.2 per cent in 2007 to 60.2 per cent in 2010. This represents the largest such decline on record (since 1991).

Those meeting at Davos who defend capitalism as the only or best system of human social organisation have no answer to this appalling mess.

Vi håller på och arbetar med ett utkast till ett socialistiskt manifest. Här nere publicerar vi på engelska en inledning. Texten är skriven av Jean Lievens. Om du vill delta i diskussionen och läsa mer texter gå in på vårt diskussionsforum.

Manifesto for a socialist alternative

Introduction

The ongoing financial crisis since 2007 and the Great Recession stroke a big blow to the legitimacy of capitalism. The system has lost its self-evidence amongst a growing layer of the population, resulting in the worldwide ‘Occupy Movement’, under the slogan ‘we are the 99%!’ Although this movement has an enormous potential, it is very unlikely that out of it an alternative to capitalism will arise ‘spontaneously’. The old system is breaking down, and although a new, alternative system is waiting in the wings, there is no political force to bring it into place.

There used to be an alternative to the capitalist system, commonly known as “socialism”. However, this alternative has been largely discredited, not only by the failure of the bureaucratic planned economies (known as “communism”), but also by the disappointment in the policies of social democratic reformism and its failure to successfully reform the capitalist system in the interests of working people. The term socialism may have been discredited, but the ideas of democratic socialism are far from dead. They are reflected in the day-to-day actions and activity of the Occupy Movements around the world, especially in the United States and, to a large extent even confirmed by new findings in social and human sciences.

The labour movement has been historically the main driving force of social progress and emancipation. But in order to continue this role, organised labour has to change. It needs to become more democratic and more ‘open’, but above all, it requires a program for radical social and economic change. In the course of the history of the labour movement, most of the official labour representatives in the developed capitalist countries have been fully integrated in the political and state institutions, where they defend and protect the existing social and economic order. In that sense, they are blocking social progress and play a contra-revolutionary role. Under the pressure of major events, however, they can be pushed to the left defending more ‘classical’ socialist positions. Although leadership is of crucial importance, social and democratic change however cannot be left over to ‘heroic leaders’, but need the continuous and active participation of citizens. In addition, it is insufficient to repeat mechanically the old formulas of the past. The ideas of socialism need desperately ‘updating,’ in order to link up with present day movements and struggles.

It is not the purpose of this document to explain the shortcomings and true horrors of capitalism, which are self-evident for millions of people. The present crisis and the malfunctioning of a system that is governed by the blind forces of the ‘financial markets’ in their pursuit for profits, speak for themselves. Cuts, closures, home evictions, and the sheer injustice of the system forces people again and again into struggle. But as long as don’t believe an alternative system is possible, they won’t see the point in joining a movement against capitalism.

On the other hand, it would be entirely one-sided to look at capitalism and only see crisis. Only on very few occasions has capitalism meant an actual decline in the economy and then, with the exception of the depression in the thirties, only for a very short period of time. The normal condition for capitalism is for the means of production to develop. Although production can sometimes decline during a slump, all production and development does not cease even then.

Our main criticism on capitalism is therefore not that this system has not developed the means of production. In fact, it has done so on an unimaginable scale. But it has also created an unacceptable degree of social inequality, suffering and unhappiness and, most importantly, it has brought the world on the verge of ecological collapse and even nuclear holocaust, threatening the very survival of the human species.

In the last 40 years alone, world population doubled, but life expectancy has gone up by about 25 years. It took from the Stone Age to achieve that. Income has gone up for a majority of the world’s population and illiteracy has gone down from a half to about a quarter of the people on earth. It is clear that these technological advances make it possible not only to meet the basic needs of the whole world population, but also to improve substantially the lives of billions by a more rational management of the natural resources of the planet and a more active and democratic participation of the citizens in the organisations, institutions, communities and societies they are part of on different levels. That means a fundamental transformation from a profit-driven economy based on egoism and self-interest to a rational planned economy based on more ‘noble’ human characteristics such as collaboration, empathy and altruism. This does not mean the extinction of ‘selfishness’ and other less sympathetic characteristics of human nature, nor the establishment of ‘paradise on earth’ or other communist utopias. But it does mean a break with the economic logic of the profit system and a transformation to a new, more social, higher form of society.

The good news is that this ‘new society’ is embedded in the present one. To a certain extent, it is already there. But it is very unlikely that it will replace the old system ‘spontaneously’, without a fight. The birth of a new system can be a painful process, and there is always the chance of a dead-born. But this possibility can be reduced to a minimum if we monitor and guide the process with the best tools available. The better we understand how the present system works, and the clearer our vision for a future society, the more efficient we will be to realise the much-needed change on all levels in society.

Understanding economic development

Essentially, ‘developing the means of production’ means the development of human cooperation. This is the true source of economic development. This is what Marx called the socialisation of production. The myths of capitalist ideology portray the single person -usually a man- who comes with some great new idea. He then makes a fortune by marketing his idea in the face of stiff competition from others. Undoubtedly, individuals do come with great ideas, but they always do so in a context. Hence the difficulty of ascertaining whose idea it was. Increasingly the courts, as in the example of Facebook, have to be resorted to in a vain attempt to separate out who the “owner” of an idea is. The other end -moving from an idea into mass production– present an even greater problem with finding the “great individual”. To most people it is obvious that this cannot be done without many people cooperating.

But there is also a ‘socialist’ myth about economic development, in the form of the development of huge factories with big, technologically complicated machines. This vision misses the point entirely. Without the development of factories, machines, railways, the telephone, and the Internet, human cooperation would obviously be limited. The more advanced human cooperation is, the more it is dependent on machines and technology. But the development of human cooperation is the primary driving force of economic development – the main reason for making and using machines. Besides, machines and technology are not only the means for developing human cooperation, but they are themselves an expression of human cooperation. A forklift truck concentrates the labour of many workers into lifting one heavily loaded pallet with ease. The cooperative labour of many workers, so to say, continuous to live on in a dead object and do useful things. A factory or office building is also the product of human cooperation and enables human cooperation within its walls. A fetishist view of machines and buildings has been the norm, as if in and by themselves machines had a meaning and a value.

Elementary socialisation

The most elementary form of production was individual production. The worker had his own tools, which he possibly even made himself. He sat in his workshop, perhaps with a few apprentices, and produced a pair of shoes or whatever. Production started to become socialised when individual workers were moved into factories. It got even more socialised when the employer supplied machines and it took a group of workers to produce even a single pair of shoes. People became dependent upon each other in order to produce something, but their dependency also meant that they could be a lot more productive. Socialisation has developed in many different ways since these early days of capitalism; therefore this can be called elementary socialisation.

In an individual workplace cooperation is done according to a plan, worked out by the owner or by somebody employed by him. This is rather problematic, as can be experienced at most workplaces. All kinds of conflicts arise. True human cooperation cannot be based upon force – the boss forcing you to do what he has decided by using the threat of being demoted, pay reduction or sacking. Real human cooperation cannot be based upon a hierarchy, where each layer can force the layer below it to do what it wants and where everybody is competing to climb the hierarchy. This is very destructive and if things get completely out of hand, which they can easily do, for example when one gets the non too uncommon feature of a psychopathic boss, a whole department or even the whole company can be destroyed. Yet normally, even that inefficient form of cooperation, based upon fear, is more efficient than individual production.

Within the field of managerial science, there has been a long-running debate between those who recommend controlled, “incentive-compatible” business models and those who advocate the so-called “human side of enterprise.” The fact that companies like Toyota, Southwest, and others representing the latter view are more successful than their rivals proves that success in any business isn’t achieved through rigid corporate hierarchies or astronomical CEO pay packages, but by fostering an inclusive, social, and collaborative workplace where performance is intrinsically rewarding. These companies also know that continuous learning and innovation can’t happen in an organization that treats its members like mindless robots. It can only happen in a company that welcomes and taps the diverse insights, skills, and talents of every human being it employs. Therefore organizations that motivate employees intrinsically, and engage them in the enterprise as a community of shared interests and common purpose, often thrive far better than old-style hierarchical organisations.

But even these “success stories” of companies, that are more human, values-driven, fair, trusting, and trustworthy from the top down, have their limits under capitalism, once the economy turns from boom to slump. Somebody has to sack somebody else and maybe worsen others wages and working conditions. And all the hard work put down to get people to cooperate, risks getting torn down. And a sense of alienation returns. This is an elementary expression of the contradiction between the socialisation of production and private ownership.

General socialisation

That is not the end of the story. Small-scale production in one factory develops into giant global companies that approach monopolies in their branch. As capitalism moves along this trajectory of growth another form of human cooperation is created, an unconscious one – that between rubber plantation workers in Malaysia, tyre producers in Italy, steel workers in Sweden, and car workers in Belgium. All of whom cooperate to produce a car, that is then distributed throughout a large part of the world. This can be called general socialisation.

Inventions speed up this form of the socialisation of production. An early example was the railways that tied the economy of a country together. A more modern example is the use of the Internet for so called Business-to-business (B2B) transactions. One of the main economic gains of the Internet so far is not a better supply of books, YouTube or even open source programming. It is Internet trade between businesses, such as between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer. The volume of B2B transactions is much higher than the volume of business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions. This in turn allows for the development of much larger manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers as they are given access to larger and cheaper suppliers. Over the last couple of hundred of years the whole physical production and distribution system of the world has been more and more tied together. Many parts of the economy have become dependent on each other. What happens in one place or one branch has a major effect on the others. This more developed form of socialisation is initially mediated by the market and it is not consciously planned, unlike socialisation within an individual workplace.

This kind of socialisation brings with its own problems – the investment cycles as described above. That is the classic boom slump cycle. Big resources are squandered in times of boom through speculative ventures, and even bigger ones during slump when unemployment leaps up. This is another form of the contradiction between the socialised nature of production and private ownership of the means of production. However, as generalised socialisation increases in scope, it begins to chaff at the limits to conscious cooperation imposed by the market, in an attempt to overcome this conflict.
Initially, towards the end of the 19th century, this took the form of trying to achieve a monopoly in a field and thus more or less dictate the price and conditions for the production and sale of a particular commodity. An alternative strategy was to try and control production vertically, that is by controlling everything from the production of raw materials to distribution of the final product to consumers. The traditional command economy was rooted in these old strategies. It was a simple extension of them into one big vertically integrated monopoly controlled from the top. These strategies proved untenable, partly as a result of government legislation, but mainly because it is almost impossible under capitalism to guard against competition from other big companies entering a field if the profits are sufficiently high there.

During the fifties and sixties, yet another strategy was developed – horizontal integration. It was the time of giant conglomerates producing everything from television to turbines. The idea behind this was that if the production of one commodity was going well it would compensate for another going badly. Typically some commodities went better during economic crisis while others fared worse. However, these conglomerates proved unwieldy, as they grew truly gigantic. And as the world economy went into a less stable epoch from the mid-seventies they had to be ditched. The worst performing companies within a conglomerate risked pulling down the whole group.

The history of the development of the means of production under capitalism can therefore be reduced to: first creating conscious, but dictatorial, cooperation within a workplace; then unconscious cooperation through the market; the expansion of conscious cooperation through the expansion of individual companies; followed by attempts to overcome the limits imposed upon conscious human cooperation by the market through monopolies, oligopolies, and vertical and horizontal integration.

Advanced socialisation

In the last thirty years capitalism has made once again new attempts to overcome the limits imposed by the market. As a consequence, there has been a big restructuring of the working class in the advanced capitalist countries. Manufacturing jobs have declined steeply, but new jobs have arisen. Much has been said and written about industrial jobs moving from Europe and the US to China and other developing countries. But the fact of the matter is that every single year in the past twenty-five years the number of jobs in the EU has risen in absolute terms. The claim that Foreign Direct Investment is creating jobs in China instead of the USA is false. The largest recipient of Foreign Direct Investment is the United States. And nobody is complaining about industrial jobs disappearing from Europe, Japan and China to the US.

Of course, many of the new jobs are low paid service jobs that have reappeared to look after the rich, because the rich have become vastly richer. Other jobs have arisen in the parasitic financial sector. But these are far from all jobs. Many jobs actually represent a development of the means of production away from the old dirty repetitive jobs in huge factories to a higher level.
In the eighties the watchwords of capital became concentrate on the core business, outsource and just-in-time production. Components and services that were outsourced made it possible to create big companies for the production of components that are a small part of the final product. A car company can outsource production to over one thousand other companies. The company that produces the batteries or the plastic bumpers or the seats can be partially or completely dependent on supplying to one or a few car companies. Things are not freely bought and sold on a market, but regulated by longer-term contracts. These contracts specify exactly what should be produced and when. This is the beginning of conscious cooperation rather than a market economy.

Outsourcing also has the consequence of reducing the number of workers defined as industrial workers. In the past a factory employed cleaners, drivers, canteen staff, repairmen, janitors and so on. They were all considered industrial workers; nowadays they are considered service workers.
The development towards smaller workplaces (although not smaller companies) is also part of the ‘scaling-down’ that enables better human cooperation. People cooperate better when smaller groups are linked together, than when there is one all encompassing group controlled from the top.
And then, in the interstices of capitalism, not least through the development of the Internet, there has been the development of communities of self-organising groups of people that exist outside of capitalism, but are connected to it. They are used by capitalism, but also influence it. They are encouraged by capitalism, but at the same capitalism tries to control them. These new method that are developing are revolutionising the way in which corporations invent, design, develop and distribute products and services.

The old mentality of planning and implementation is being replaced by a new, dynamic economy of collaboration and common development. The old monolithic multinational organised in a closed hierarchical structure is under attack. Open source and other forms of peer-to-peer production are partially tearing down the walls between competing corporations. Self-organising communities on the Internet such as Wikipedia, Linux (but there are at least 200 000 other successful examples on a smaller scale), or sharing platforms like Flickr, YouTube… show again and again that they can develop things more effectively than hierarchical organisations.

The same ‘principles’ should be applied on the shop floor. In Western Europe, many parts of Asia, North America, and Australia, business needs more and more to rely on the creative skills of their workers. Routine, rule-based ‘left-brain’ work, certain kinds of accounting, certain kinds of financial analysis, certain kinds of computer programming, has become fairly easy to automate.
In order to ‘motivate’ the workforce, the old methods of sticks and carrots don’t work. This is proved over and over again by scientists, who come to the conclusion that there is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. Management consultants develop new theories concerning ‘intrinsic motivation’ that are very close to the old ideas of self-management. Intrinsic motivation is based on understanding that people have the desire to do things because they matter, because they like it, because it is interesting, because they are part of something important.

Some modern management schools suggest a new operating system, based around three elements: autonomy, the urge to direct our own lives; mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters and purpose: the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. The bottom line of the thesis of this motivation theory is: the main driving force for people is “doing things that matter”, not “doing things for profit”.

This mismatch between what science knows and what corporations do, can be seen in a wide variety of examples, provided by thousands of studies on human motivation, on happiness, on ‘sharing’, alternative business models, etc. They show how in fact not only businesses (private and public), but all the institutions under modern capitalism are completely outdated and are in fact to a large effect a fetter on the free development of what is possible today. All these examples are very inspirational and add to a clearer understanding of how a future society, superior to capitalism, could look like. These new developments can be called advanced socialisation.

A more complex social structure

The slogan “we are the 99%” of the worldwide Occupy movement expresses the consciousness that only a small elite of the top one percent, that owes nearly half of the world’s richness’s, in fact rules the planet. They control the politicians and international institutions, own and therefore control the commanding heights of the economy, decide on all investments and make a mockery of ‘democracy’. But it is also clear that the so-called 99% are far from a heterogeneous group politically. There is what Chomsky calls the ‘manufactured consent’ produced by the mass media, the education system, the public relation business etc. to accept the present system as the only possible, but contradictory to Marx’ expectations, the working class has become also more heterogeneous, holding “contradictory locations within the class relations.”

Society cannot be neatly divided into two basic classes: capitalists and workers. For instance, managers and supervisors have the relational properties of both capitalists and workers and thus occupy “contradictory locations.” Professionals and highly skilled technical workers also occupy contradictory locations through their control over credentials. According to Olin Wright, somewhat less than half of the labour force in most developed capitalist countries occupies such contradictory locations. In that sense, the class nature of a modern capitalist society is more complex than in the past. At the same time, from the point of view of the economic position in society, the class composition has become in fact simpler. The main income of workers and the so-called ‘middle class’ (including public servants) are wages. 90% of the population of the Unites States consists of wage earners; in Europe the figure is 80%; the rest is ‘self-employed’ (farmers, small businessmen, professionals, freelancers, etc.), although as a result of the crisis and downsizing, this segment of the population is in many capitalist countries growing. Most of small firms and independent self-employed persons are in various ways subordinated to large corporations, but nevertheless they are quit distinct from the working class.

Despite the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a small group of super rich, an increasing proportion of wage earners have also some corporate or public ‘investments’, either in the form of investments in stocks or government bonds, or in contributory pension funds. This adds complexity to the class structure of capitalism. Another important development over the last 40 years was the large-scale entry of women into the labour force. That also adds to the complexity of the class structure of society since in two-earner households, family members are linked to the class structure through two jobs, not just one. However, non of these forms of complexity in class relations mean that class is of lesser importance in people’s lives, or that class structures are becoming less capitalist in any fundamental way.

Towards an economy of cooperation and sharing

Since the near collapse of the financial system and the economic crisis, the idea that pursuing selfish
interest is actually beneficial to society, as defended by neo-liberalism and monetarism, has suffered a major blow. There is a revival of neo-Keynesianism, represented by economists as Paul Krugman, but more importantly, ideas defending ‘the commons’ and of the benefits of cooperation and sharing is on the rise. These ideas don’t fall from the sky, but are rooted in major developments that are taking place in the real economy. The emergence of social production on the Internet has given us countless newer, cheaper, easier, and more rewarding platforms for collaboration than we ever had before.

Capitalist corporations have always organized themselves according to strict hierarchical lines of authority. However, according to the authors of “Wikinomics – how mass collaboration changes everything”, profound changes in the nature of technology, demographics and the global economy are giving rise to powerful new models of production based on community, collaboration and self-organization rather than on hierarchy and control. So within the present system, a new human dynamic is emerging: peer-to-peer (P2P). A prominent example is Wikipedia. The fundamental principles of organizations based on the Wikipedia model are not only simply non-capitalist; they are thoroughly anti-capitalist. They involve non-market relations: voluntary, unpaid contributions and free access; there is full, open, egalitarian participation, direct and deliberative interactions among contributors and democratic governance and arbitration. The designers of Wikipedia didn’t set any official rules or regulations. They relied entirely on a (initially) simple set of norms, and on the community to keep the project in line. But as vandalism and other mischief intensified with the growing notoriety of the encyclopaedia, a kind of quasi-administrative structure was instituted which enabled users to acquire different levels of organizational responsibility and roles in resolving conflicts.
This is one of the most interesting aspects of the design of the Wikipedia-model. It offers an example of a system that governs itself primarily through conversation and self-regulating norms rather than by market mechanisms or a formal and authoritarian management structure. It is a remarkable example of how people can cooperate, even on an international level, and of how they can solve problems, resolve conflicts and produce actual outcomes. The question is: can the model of Wikipedia be used in designing other systems and institutions, including political ones? People follow more readily norms when these are self-imposed or freely chosen. In terms of system designs, even if some rules or norms are set from above, the more mechanisms for self-governance, and the more opportunities for people to participate in reviewing and revising the rules, the better the system (and the happier the participants).

Self-regulating and collaborative systems are not confined to the Wiki-model. Elinor Ostrom’s ‘Governing the commons’ (1990) describes systems of self-regulated commons that have functioned very well, sometimes for centuries. Her study set the background for the explosive growth in common-based practices in the twenty-first century. In today’s knowledge economy, the most valuable resources –information and knowledge- are themselves a public good, and the best way to develop and maximize this good is through millions of networked people pooling that knowledge and working together to create new products, ideas and solutions. The Internet makes it indeed possible for companies and non-profit organizations to harness the collective insights, ideas, and contributions not just of the people within the organization, but also of the millions of people outside it. According to the authors of Wikinomics, this kind of mass collaboration represents the emergence of a new mode of production. Companies are beginning to conceive, design, develop, and distribute products and services in profoundly new ways. With the costs of collaboration falling sharply, enterprises can increasingly source ideas, innovations, and uniquely qualified minds from a vast global pool of talent. Therefore, corporations may be going through the biggest change in their history.

Another important development according to the ‘Wikipedians’ is a shift in the advanced capitalist economies from an overwhelmingly industrial economy to an economy that is more based on services and “knowledge”. They claim that it will become more and more difficult for owners of capital to dominate economic activity. The reason is that intellectual property is inherently more difficult to monopolize than physical capital. In addition, the production of knowledge and information is most efficiently done as a collaborative, cooperative social activity. The imposition of capitalist property rights on these processes is increasingly becoming a fetter on the further development of the forces of production. Capitalism will therefore become more and more vulnerable to the challenge of non-capitalist ways of organizing the production and distribution of information and knowledge. In our opinion, the same is true for the property rights of the traditional commanding heights of the economy, including the financial sector.

The authors of Wikinomics speak of “revolution”: “A new economic democracy is emerging in which we all have a lead role. As with all previous economic revolutions, the demands on individuals, organizations and nations will be intense, and at times traumatic, as old industries and ways of life give way to new processes, technologies and business models.” This vision is shared by digital pioneer Howard Rheingold: “Mass collaboration is based on individuals and companies employing widely distributed computation and communication technologies to achieve shared outcomes through loose voluntary associations. What’s more, the participation revolution now underway opens up new possibilities for billions of people to play active roles in their workplaces, communities, national democracies, and the global economy at large.” According to Rheingold, twenty years from now we will look back at this period of the early twenty-first century as a critical turning point in economic and social history: “We will understand that we entered a new age, based on new principles, worldviews, and business models where the nature of the game was changed. Peering succeeds because it leverages self-organization – a style of production that works more effectively than hierarchical management for certain tasks. Is greatest impact today is in the production of software, media, entertainment, and culture – but there are a few reasons for peer production to stop there.”

Mainly as a result of the economic crisis, there is also a shift in “consumption patterns”; a shift from ‘owing’ to ‘sharing’ that is changing our relationship with “stuff”. Sharing is a fundamental human value. People share transportation, wine and food and all sorts of entertainment: sports arenas, public parks, concert halls, libraries, etc. Access to certain kinds of goods and services will trump ownership of them. Secondly, population growth and density into cities (today more than half of the world’s population is living in cities) is forcing us to ‘share’ more and more: carpooling, city bikes, etc. This development towards more “collectivism” is also necessary from an ecological point of view. In addition, there is a recent distrust of global big brands in a bunch of different industries. Research in the United States, Canada and Western Europe shows that most of us are much more open to local companies, or brands that maybe we haven’t heard of. The same is true for banks: a growing number of people are redrawing their money from big banks and open an account in small, local banks. Increasing food prices lead to a return to ‘home farming’, even in big cities.

This ‘return to local economies’ does not however mean the end of globalization. It is impossible to feed 7 billion people and provide them with all the necessities of life on the basis of autarchy. Quit the contrary, we are in reality witnessing the reweaving of the social, political, and economic fabric that binds our planet, with long-term consequences that are probably more profound than those of the industrial revolution. In China ‘innovation cities’ are emerging across the country, where thousands of intermingling companies leverage technology, low-cost structures, and physical proximity to destroy their worldwide competition. China also leads the way in the field of public investment and control over the commanding heights of the economy. Within its borders lives the world’s biggest proletariat in human history. We could be moving towards a world where the door for a true collaboration across borders, cultures, companies, and disciplines is wide open, but that will not happen without the necessary social and political transformations.

So the main question is: what will the result of technology driven changes within the framework of capitalism be on the working and middle classes, and on the political institutions? These are questions that are left unanswered by most economists and management experts. Their writings are full of declarations of ‘the end of the job’, ‘the end of the traditional career (and pensions!), ‘tomorrow we all be freelancers, etc.” They imagine a world in which everyone lives and think like themselves. They forget that even in a highly developed economy, the majority of the population still have very traditional (local) jobs in very traditional top-down hierarchical organisations. But even if a growing number of the workforce will enter the new world of peer-production and distributed networks, one very important question remains: how will they get paid? How will they generate an income between jobs if the welfare state cannot be sustained? There is incompatibility between sharing and cooperating work, but not income. The new generation of workers that grew up with the new technology want to be treated fairly. Studies show that they have a strong ethos, and that they want to share in the wealth they create. They have a strong sense of the common good and of collective social and civic responsibility. For all those reasons, it seems practically unavoidable that technological and managerial revolutions need to be accompanied by social revolution.

Another vision on human nature

The advantages of sharing and cooperating have also been confirmed by the work of hundreds of scientists, we have began to see mounting evidence in psychology, organizational sociology, political science, experimental economics, and elsewhere that people are in fact more cooperative and selfless, or at least far less selfishly, than most economists and business men assumed. Even in the study of human biology, evolutionary biologists and psychologist are finding neural and possible genetic evidence of a human predisposition to cooperate. Out of hundreds of experiments, about 30 percent of people behave as though they really are selfish, as the mainstream commonly assumes. But fully half of all people systematically, significantly, and predictably behave cooperatively. It is impossible to tell to which extent the egoist behaviour of the minority is inherent to their character, or shaped by the social (capitalist) environment. But from those experiments follows without doubt that most of the existing social and economic systems are based on and designed with the wrong concept of who we are and why we do what we do. To motivate people, we need systems that rely on engagement, communication, and a sense of common purpose and identity. Wither we call these systems socialist or not, is of secondary importance. But what is clear is that they are superior to the traditional capitalist models.

Main sources:
Wikinomics (Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams)
The Penguin and the Leviathan (Yochai Benkler)
Envisioning Real Utopias (Erik Olin Wright)
Articles by Michel Bauwens (P2P foundation)
Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Daniel H. Pink)
TED Talks by Rachel Botsman, Howard Rheingold, Lisa Gansky and Tim Jackson

Kort efter valet hösten 2010 pratade de fackligt aktiva socialdemokraterna Monica Calderon och Lena Ericsson-Höijer med varandra. Efter ett katastrofval för arbetarrörelsen kände de att något måste göras. Monica kom med idén: det behövdes en röd partiförening som folk kunde lita på, som skulle jobba i folks vardag och försöka få till ett uppsving för socialistiska idéer.

Föreningen fick ett namn: S-föreningen Rött Alternativ. Men vad skulle föreningen göra? En sak var klar: man ville att partiet skulle återvända till socialistiska idéer och vinna folks förtroende åter genom att göra nytta i konkreta frågor.

Vad var det första man gjorde? Man slog upp lokaltidningen! Där stod det om den privata värden Kvarnskvaltan som låtit bostäderna förfalla. Trots återkommande klagomål gjorde värden inget åt problemen. Så nätverkarna beslutade sig för att bege sig ut och knacka dörr i området. Det var lite nervöst och just innan de skulle sätta igång upplevde några av dem tvivel…skulle folk inte bara tycka att man störde sådär mitt på kvällen?

Men folks reaktioner överraskade. Den första reaktionen var den obetalbart förbluffade ”Men det är ju inte val?!”. Det säger något sorgligt om vad arbetarrörelsen allt mer har blivit – en parlamentarisk apparat snarare än en folkrörelse. Så fort folk förstod att de här människorna inte var ute efter den politiska motsvarigheten till att sälja telefonabonnemang välkomnades de aktiva in i folks hem med värme. Vid de första dörrknackningarna fick man en del kontakter. Man började med att helt enkelt fråga folk hur situationen var, och själva försöka få en bild av problemens utbredning och karaktär. Det visade sig att nästan alla hade problem.

Efter att ha kliat sig i huvudet en bra stund kom man fram till hur man skulle kunna lägga upp arbetet för att förbättra bostadssituationen. Man började med att kalla till ett möte lokalt för att diskutera vad som borde göras. Ett femtiotal hyresgäster dykte upp. Hyresgästföreningens centrala representanter på plats sade att de behövde dokumenterade, tydliga fall för att kunna agera. Därför beslutade mötet att nästa steg skulle vara att dokumentera bristerna.

Det är värt att dröja vid hur dokumentationen gjordes rent konkret. Till att börja med upprättades en enkel hemsida för kommunikation, och folk kunde även anmäla intresse av att få besök av nätverket i sin lägenhet på plats. Därefter framställdes ett formulär. I A4-formuläret som användes vid lägenhetsbesöken innehöll fält för namn och lägenhetsnummer, och en checklista över potentiella fel och brister: skadedjur, mögel, tapeter osv. Det var ett tiotal kategorier, med utrymme för kommentarer av typen ”Mycket svartmögel i badrumstaket” eller ”Avrivna tapeter i barnens sovrum”.

Slutligen fanns utrymme för lägenhetsinnehavarens underskrift, en ruta om huruvida lägenhetsinnehavaren var medlem i Hyresgästföreningen eller var beredd att bli det om de började ta tag i problemen, och slutligen en ruta om att man ville att ens fall skulle driva i Hyresnämnden. Det är den nämnd som avgör om värdar respektive hyresgäster har misskött sig. I princip alla som inte var medlemmar i Hyresgästföreningen var beredda att bli det, och alla ville att deras fall skulle drivas i Hyresnämnden. Alla dessa brister som antecknades i formulären fotograferades noggrant. Det blev totalt sextiotalet dokumentationer med dryga tiotalet foton per lägenhet. Sannerligen en nådig lunta som tydligt visade på brister som det var svårt för värden att förneka, särskilt inför Hyresnämnden!

Efter hand började nätverket använda sig av nyhetsbrev för att kommunicera med de boende. Dessa delades ut till alla boende och lades ut på hemsidan www.bostadskampen.se. Under kampanjens gång hölls regelbundna möten för de boende, i samarbete med lokala och centrala Hyresgästföreningen. I huvudsak fungerade samarbetet med Hyresgästföreningen exemplariskt. Hyresgästföreningen på central och regional nivå gick in med stora insatser för att utreda frågan och hantera dokumentationerna. Det bidrog till att sätta en extra press på värden.

Mitt i kampanjens gång började det gå rykten om att bostäderna skulle säljas till en annan privat ägare. Folk hoppades på bättring och tänkte att det i alla fall inte kunde bli värre. När det stod klart att en ny ägare tog över utredde ”Rött Alternativ” noggrant dennes ekonomiska förutsättningar. Man var skeptiska till att det skulle bli en seriös värd. Inför hyresgästerna och lokala Hyresgästföreningen föreslog man att den nya värden skulle få svara på hyresgästernas krav – men först efter att man på egen hand utan värden hade fått formulera dessa ifred.

Efter diskussion på ett välbesökt möte i Rinkeby Folkets Hus kom man fram till några huvudkrav, som utgick från att värden skulle följa ”normal standard” snarare än genomföra ”upprustningar”, vilket i laglig mening öppnar upp för hyreshöjningar. Regelbundet underhåll för att möjliggöra en normal bostadsstandard däremot ska inte innebära hyreshöjningar. Detta var särskilt viktigt eftersom de boende, som ofta har sparsamma inkomster, redan betalar lika mycket eller mer i hyra som folk i välskötta bostadsområden. En värdig bostad är ingen lyx, utan en rättighet.

Efter att de boende diskuterat igenom en kravlista bjöds den nya värden in till ett möte. Tiotals boende deltog i utfrågningen, uppbackade av en stor delegation från Hyresgästföreningens förbundskontor, och en nådig lunta med dokumentationer. Värden tvingades ge med sig på i princip varje punkt. Det var mycket positivt att få värden att, ”on the record”, inför Hyresgästföreningens centrala representanter och de boende, lova att fixa problemen. Förhoppningsvis genomförs en del förbättringar för de boende. Om värden inte håller sitt ord kommer det att bli nödvändigt med en ny kamp. I så fall behöver den inkludera mobiliseringar, mediaexponering och att driva varje fall till Hyresnämnden.

Efter detta möte meddelade nätverket i ett nyhetsbrev till alla boende att bollen nu låg på de boendes och värdens planhalva, och att man var beredda att återkomma om denne inte levererade. Men den långsiktiga kraften måste bestå av de boendes engagemang. Nu planerar S-nätverket Rött Alternativ att gå vidare och driva bostadsfrågan i arbetarrörelsen: inför nästa val bör arbetarpartierna tydligt ta ställning för offensiva satsningar på billiga och värdiga allmännyttiga bostäder. I de fall där privata värdar missköter sig bör bostäderna överföras till allmännyttan. Oavsett ägandeform ska normerna för en värdig bostadsstandard gälla för alla. De boende i miljonprogrammens ofta nedslitna bostäder betalar rejäla hyror. Då har man rätt att förvänta sig motsvarande bostadsstandard. En värdig bostad är ingen lyx – det är en rättighet!

Om arbetet i Rinkeby leder till att arbetarrörelsen får upp ögonen för frågan, gör bostäderna mer värdiga för de boende och blir en modell för Hyresgästföreningar och andra att bruka på andra ställen vore det stora segrar. I förlängningen skulle det kunna förändra vardagslivet för tusentals människor. Det är sådana konkreta förbättringar av tillvaron som en gång arbetarrörelsen byggdes upp genom, och de skulle kunna tjäna till att återknyta banden mellan vanligt folk och den rörelse som ska vara deras.

Erik Andersson

“Marx says that revolutions are the locomotives of world history. But the situation may be quite different. Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake.”
- Walter Benjamin

För 94 år sedan på denna dag drogs nödbromsen i Ryssland för att stoppa första världskriget som höll på att förstöra mänskligheten. Händelsen har gått till historien som Oktoberrevolutionen. Den provisoriska regeringen störtades, den all-ryska Sovjetkongressen valde en ny regering: folkkommissariernas råd. Målet var fred, bröd, jord och världsrevolution. Idag har den ryska revolutionens betydelse för världen begravts tack vare den urartning som skedde i Sovjetunionen, arbetarrörelsen och inom historieämnet.

Revolutionen hade internationell betydelse. Låt oss ta ett exempel från artikeln: A defence of the Bolshevik revolution som beskriver effekten av revolutionen i ett amerikanskt perspektiv:

”If you read Philip Foner’s fascinating account of the immediate impact of the Russian Revolution on American politics, you find that, for anyone even slightly to the left of center, the Russian Revolution was a fantastic beacon of hope and inspiration. For example, at a mass rally at Parkview Palace in New York City, 500 workers volunteered to join a Red Guard to defend the Soviet Union against the German invasion, while hundreds of working women threw their jewelry on the stage to give their support to the revolution.

But perhaps these workers had been deceived. When Lloyd George lamented that “the whole of Europe is filled with the spirit of revolution” maybe the European workers who were joining the communist parties in their hundreds of thousands should also have been better informed about the impure nature of the Russian Revolution.

Perhaps the academic experts are correct, that they have a better understanding about what a genuine revolution should look like and why the Russian Revolution does not meet these standards. But, surely, if that were the case, they could enlighten us with some previously unknown details about October.”

Oktoberrevolutionen var den logiska fortsättningen av Februarirevolutionen. Utan Oktoberrevolutionen hade revolutionen krossats. Första världskriget hade fortsatt oavbrutet. I Sverige skrämdes borgerligheten till att införa allmän rösträtt. Den ryska revolutionen sände en signal till förtrycka folk om en möjlig utväg ur kolonialismens förtryck.

Med det sagt: revolutionen urartade, Sovjetstaten blev en mardröm. Sovjetunionen och de kommunistiska partierna kom att spela en negativ roll för världsrevolutionen. Drömmarna om en bättre värld naggades i kanten.

Socialisten kommer från en historiska tradition som utgår från Trotskijs försvar av Oktoberrevolutionen och Sovjetstaten. En nationaliserad och planerad ekonomi är en landvinning som behöver försvaras. Det som behövs är en politisk revolution. I huvudsak tycker vi det fortfarande, även om det behöver utvecklas och konkretiseras.

Under 1900-talet övergavs revolutionen av den socialdemokratiska delen av arbetarrörelsen. Stalinismens kollaps ledde till att revolutionen övergavs av hela arbetarrörelsen. Socialismen har tömts på ett innehåll. Idag är både reformismen och stalinismen avslutade som politiska trender för framtiden. Stalinismens kollaps har haft en förödande effekt på historieskrivningen och den intellektuella världen.

För de inom vänstern som genomlidit en lång period av angrepp på socialismen, marxismen och revolutionen har en reaktion varit att skärma av sig i en bubbla. ”Försvara marxismen” och ”ändra ingenting” har varit ledorden. På olika sätt har grupper idealiserat någon del av Sovjetunionen som man har velat upphöja till sin bild av socialismen. I relation till de grupperna känner de flesta av oss att vi behöver gå vidare. Socialismen idag kommer att basera sig på de kunskaper och lärdomar som finns idag. Inte vad som hände för över 90 år sedan i ett underutvecklat land.

På samma sätt har revolutionärer fastnat i historien. Oktoberrevolutionen och Sovjetstaten blir till fenomen som kan ge oss svar och insikt på alla frågor, alla problem kan lösas genom att gå tillbaka i historien. Det är inget nytt drag hos revolutionärer: i Franska revolutionen sneglade man på antiken, den ryska revolutionen tittade på den franska, och vi ska följaktligen titta på den ryska.

Finns det poänger med att jämföra nutida händelser med tidigare skeenden ? Ja, utan tvekan. Kan det överanvändas? Ja. Har det gjorts? Ja. Poängen är inte att överge historien utan att förhålla sig till den, diskutera och granska den för att fördjupa förståelsen.

För att sammanfatta: arbetarrörelsen och vänstern behöver återerövra sitt historiska arv. De måste stå upp för det som är rätt, och inte överge historiska erfarenheter för att det är känsligt inom det politiska etablissemanget. Den revolutionära vänstern behöver komma ur historiefetischismen. Castro sa att ”historien ska frigöra mig”, den revolutionära vänstern behöver frigöra sig från historien.

Idag är revolution något som är populärt i samhället. Ingen kan tro att revolutionen har försvunnit från mänsklighetens utveckling. Återigen sträcker sig människor efter nödbromsen. Det som saknas är en inriktning: hur ska vi nå socialismen? Vilka konkreta steg behöver genomföras? Socialisten deltar just nu ihop med andra inom TANIT för att utveckla ett socialistiskt manifest. Det är vårt försök att föra samhället vidare.

Martin Lööf

Erik Andersson (redaktör för Socialisten/Tema: Förorten)

Innehåll:

Välkommen till Rinkeby!
- Rinkeby i verkligheten

I två artiklar försöker vi tränga bakom rubrikerna och nå fram till verklighetens Rinkeby.

Efter kravallerna i Rinkeby – vad hände sedan?

I juni 2010 skrev tidningarna om vad de kallade ”Rinkebykravallerna”. Ungdomar i Stockholmsförorten Rinkeby tände på byggnader och bilar och kastade sten mot polisen och brandkåren. Vi åkte ut till Rinkeby, som kallas Byn av de som bor där, dels för att prata om vad som verkligen låg bakom kravallerna, men framför allt om ungdomarnas kamp för att få en fungerande ungdomsverksamhet.

Vi mötte en stark gemenskap och ungdomar som vill bestämma själva i en ungdomsverksamhet som bryter etniska och religiösa gränser. Ungdomarna har organiserat sig för att göra sina intressen gällande gentemot politiker, men också olika etniska och religiösa särintressen.

Skriven av: Lena Hanno som jobbar med film och Håkan Siljehag som är busschaufför. Lena är medlem i Vänsterpartiet, Håkan i Socialdemokratiska Arbetarepartiet.

Folkrörelsebygge i praktiken: Bostadskampen i Rinkeby

Kort efter valet 2010 pratade de fackligt aktiva socialdemokraterna Monica Calderon och Lena Ericsson-Höijer med varandra. Efter ett katastrofval för arbetarrörelsen kände de att något måste göras. Monica kom med idén: det behövdes en röd partiförening som folk kunde lita på, som skulle jobba i folks vardag och försöka få till ett uppsving för socialistiska idéer. Men vad skulle föreningen göra?

Svaret blev ett konkret folkrörelsearbete i bostadsområdet Kvarnskvaltan i Rinkeby. Ett år senare verkar arbetet bära frukt i form av bättre bostäder för de boende. Det här är berättelsen om vägen dit.

Skriven av: Erik Andersson, som studerar arkivvetenskap och är medlem i Vänsterpartiet.

London´s burning

För att får mer information om vad som hände under upploppen i London i augusti kontaktade vi David O Connell, Londonbo och fackföreningsaktivist. David reflekterar om de bakomliggande orsakerna och de omedelbara följderna, men resonerar också kring hur frustrationen kan få ett konstruktivt, organiserat uttryck. Liksom i Sverige behövs en upprustning av folkrörelser och fackliga organisationer.

Skriven av: Martin Lööf, som studerar sociologi och är medlem i Vänsterpartiet.

Dags att ta tillbaka rörelsen

Kravallerna sprider sig. Senast var det London, tidigare har det skett i många av Europas storstäder. I mindre skala har vi sett samma sak i Sverige – i Rosengård och Rinkeby. Lena Ericsson-Höijer sätter händelserna i ett sammanhang och pekar på likheterna med situationen i arbetarrörelsens barndom.

Nya skikt av arbetarklassen, vars levnadsvillkor blir allt sämre, måste organisera sig för att uppnå konkreta förändringar. Lena berättar om hur arbetarrörelsen byggdes upp genom att arbetare krävde kontroll över sin egen rörelse, i konflikt med rika världsförbättrare som ansåg sig veta bättre. Parallellerna till dagens situation är upp till er läsare att dra.

Skriven av: Lena Ericsson-Höijer, som är vårdbiträde och medlem i Socialdemokratiska Arbetarepartiet.

Klassförakt i vår tid

Klassföraktet har blivit allt mer rumsrent. Peter Stolpe skriver om mellanskiktens behov av att positionera sig som bärare av god smak, genom att markera nedåt. Vi tar också en titt på kopplingarna mellan de stereotyper som målas upp av svenska respektive invandrade delar av arbetarklassen. Det visar sig finnas många gemensamma drag.

Dessutom ställer vi oss en brännande fråga: hur mycket ligger det i stereotyperna? Vi söker rötterna till negativa attityder och traditioner i arbetarklassens och arbetarrörelsens kris, och ser en väg ut i bygget av en arbetarrörelse med en gemenskap och kultur där vår egen bildning och ideal kan frodas.

Skriven av: Peter Stolpe, som är vaktmästare och medlem i Socialdemokratiska Arbetarepartiet.

Musik mot strömmen

De senaste åren har samhällskritik och socialrealism blivit allt mer utbredda teman inom den svenska hiphopscenen. Även om skillnaderna mellan de olika artisterna är stort skulle jag vilja använda begreppet ”verklighetsrap” för att beskriva fenomenet i dess olika skepnader.

Vi ger en inblick i ett socialt, kulturellt fenomen som går rakt mot strömmen. Här finns en skarp samhällskritik parat med ett osvikligt underifrånperspektiv. Det står i skarp kontrast till den etablerade politiken, där alla verkar jaga en tänkt medelklass och söker sig mot mitten.

Skriven av: Erik Andersson.

Rasismen, förorten och världsordningen

Utifrån upplevelser i uppväxten målas en bild av hur relationen mellan det etablerade samhället och förorten är en avspegling av den rådande världsordningens maktförhållanden. Följ med på en tankeresa från det lokala och vardagliga till det globala och storpolitiska. Skribenten frågar sig också om den kriminalitet vi associerar med förorten verkligen är så främmande för den svenska och västerländska kulturen.

Skriven av: Magnus Rei-Ho Lundgren, som är student, telefonintervjuare och fristående aktivist.

Vad är boxning?

Det kan vid första anblick tyckas som en dum fråga, men svaret är inte så självklart som man tänker sig. Utifrån två sociologiska studier av boxningen som socialt och kulturellt fenomen försöker vi föra läsaren närmare boxningens kärna, dess kultur och koppling till ett större socialt sammanhang. Hur kan en sport som går ut på att slå sin motståndare medvetslös skapa en så stark gemenskap?

Skriven av: Martin Lööf.

Så får du tag på temanumret:

1. Vi planerar flera djupgående temanummer nästa år. Ta en prenumeration på fem nummer för 120 kr! Sätt in 120 kronor på PG 11 56 26-4, märk inbetalningen ”Prenumeration”. Skicka samtidigt ett mail med namn och adress till red@socialisten.se

2. Om du bor i Stockholm, Gävleborg eller Borlänge: ta kontakt med våra lokalt ansvariga:

Stockholm: Jonathan Clyne, 0707- 60 05 08
Borlänge: Henrik Wolgast, 0243-23 28 10
Gävleborg: Jonas Ryberg, 070-64 56 357

Tidningen går också att köpa på vår redaktion i Stockholm. De flesta dagar i veckan är vi på plats, men hör av dig innan för säkerhets skull: numret till redaktionen är 076-25 87 531.

Det var lägre än 50% valdeltagande, en stor majoritet saknar tilltro till de politiska partierna. Segrare i valet blev partiet Al-Nahda, ett islamskt parti som ser upp till turkiska AKP. Dess ledare har inreseförbud till Iran och Saudiarabien, och har under valkampanjen bl.a. uttryckt att ”alla försök att införa krav på bärande av huvudduk har misslyckats fullständigt”. Det är ett starkt konservativt parti, men som verkar i ett samhälle där majoriteten inte vill att deras liv ska fullständigt underkastas religiösa företrädares tolkning av Koranen, särskilt inte extrema tolkningar.

Partiet fick 40% av rösterna. Man kan notera att Al-Nahda fick betydligt större stöd bland exiltunisier än hemma. Partiet kan politiskt beskrivas som social-konservativt.

Totalt har tjugotalet partier fått representanter invalda i Tunisiens konstituerande församling. De andra och tredje största partierna har en liberal respektive socialdemokratisk prägel. Även kommunistiska partier fick en handfull mandat.

Det kommer att bli en samlingsregering av någon typ, där Al-Nahda givetvis kommer finnas med, liksom ett flertal kvinnor med och utan huvudduk (återstår att se hur många). Gissningsvis lär liberaler och socialdemokrater finnas med, om man ser till vilka de närmaste utmanarna till Al-Nahda varit.

En sak man kan notera är att det verkar ha funnits en tendens till att man antingen röstade på Al-Nahda, eller något helt annat. Al-Nahda verkar ha varit ett tydligt alternativ för en stor grupp väljare, medan rösterna har splittrats mer mellan en rad olika partier i andra väljargrupper. Ungefär tjugo procent av de röstberättigade tunisierna gick och röstade på Al-Nahda, och ändå var de långt framför närmaste konkurrenten. Det säger en del.

Man får inte glömma bort att ta valresultatet med en nypa salt, med tanke på att mer än 50% av de röstberättigade av olika orsaker inte gick och röstade. Det finns alltså, liksom i Europa för övrigt, en känsla av brist på alternativ. Tunisierna känner att inga grundläggande problem har lösts, att den sociala och ekonomiska situationen som var huvudorsaken till upproret, förblir densamma.

Det kommer att behövas nya uppror och en djupgående revolution för att lösa problemen. De sociala problemen förblir olösta, och den kommande regeringen lär vara lika oförmögen som sina motparter i Europa att ta sig ur den nuvarande återvändsgränd som världen befinner sig i. Framtiden ligger hos ett återuppvaknande i den fackliga rörelsen UGTT:s led och en ny kamp anförd av den unga tunisiska generation som utgjort revolutionens kärna tillsammans med UGTT:s aktivister.

Erik Andersson

Omröstningen pågår t.o.m. 28:e oktober.

Resultatet av omröstningen visar att drygt 70% av er läsare rört er i spannet mellan 20-40.000 kronor i månaden. Alternativet ”20-30.000 kr” vann med bara en rösts marginal över ”30.40.000″ kr-förslaget. 85% av de röstande vill se lägre löner för riksdagsledamöterna än idag, medan 13% tycker att de borde vara lika hög eller högre än idag.

Diskussionen lär återkomma, och rymmer många dimensioner. En fråga är hur man förhindrar att politiker blir en särskild syssla för karriärister som lever i en separat värld. Ett annat hänsynstagande som kommit upp är att det faktiskt är ett rätt krävande arbete.

Vilken är den rätta balansen? Bör politiker överhuvudtaget vara ett separat yrke, eller mer en tillfällig deltidssysselsättning? Hur skulle man i så fall kunna organisera de folkvalda församlingarna för att se till att de folkvalda är i kontakt med verkligheten och faktiskt företräder vanligt folks intressen?

Vad säger ni?