#EU#Sweden#SocialDemocracy#Unions#ClassWar#ClassStruggle: "The Social Democratic–led trade unions organized 80 to 90 percent of the workers, the vast majority of whom voted Social Democrat. Large sections of the middle classes also supported the party’s policies. The broad Social Democratic movement was extraordinarily well organized. It was, to use [Antonio] Gramsci’s phrase, a party with a great capacity to produce and educate its intellectuals itself. The leadership was recruited mainly from the working class, and it soon acquired extensive experience in leading struggles and movements. [. . .]
But the conquests of the Swedish working class are also linked to waves of radicalization, recurrent periods of strikes, increased social struggles, and the emergence of new social movements and revitalization of existing ones. Virtually all important democratic and social reforms can be linked to such periods of intensified class struggle. The democratic reforms after World War I were a direct consequence of the massive hunger demonstrations initiated by working women, who were largely unorganized either politically or as laborers.
The social reforms initiated in the 1930s came about amid the threat of widespread strike movements, a surge in trade union organization, and women’s struggle for the right to work and for basic social security. The spectacular peak of the solidarity-based welfare state in the 1960s and ’70s coincided with the emergence of a series of new social movements with transformative ambitions, in which the women’s movement played a decisive role, and with a strong radicalization of the traditional labor movement, mainly expressed in a wave of spontaneous strikes.
Certainly, the Social Democratic Party has often played a central role in these processes."
