"The working class, its role and
its mission today.
The tasks and concrete experiences of the Communist Party in the working class
and the trade union."
Brussels, 16-18 May 2008
www.icsbrussels.org , ics@icsbrussels.org
Collective Welfare and Communist Ambitions in the Danish Class Struggle
Danish Communist Party
1. Mass conflict among public employees of the Danish working class
In this very moment the Danish Communist Party is gaining new experiences in mass struggle, a long side 100.000’s of workers in the public sector. The subject of this seminar is more present for Danish conditions than seen for long. Through several years there have been mass mobilisations around the collective welfare and in favour of the so-called "welfare state". This issue is undisputedly the most likely issue on which to bring down the right wing government. A mass conflict between public employees and public employers around the negotiations of the 3 year agreement of salary and work conditions is the culmination so far.
Around 118.000 public employees in the health care sector are involved in a strike conflict on the new agreement in this very moment. They will be joined by further 50.000 in the child care and pedagogical sector Monday. Only last week an agreement was made for public employees mainly in the elder care sector after almost 3 weeks of strike, including 200.000 public employees. So from Monday 368.000 public employees of the working class either are active or have been active recently in the Danish class struggle. They have been fighting for their own interests against their employer, which is of course the politicians and essentially the right-wing, neo-liberal government. The have been fighting for better salaries, equal wages between the sexes and for collective welfare and well functioning public sector.
Before elaborating further on this mass conflict, let us discuss a few of the principal positions concerning the role and the mission of the working class in Danish society today.
2. The Working Class in Denmark
Denmark is a class society where development is determined by the battle between the classes. The Communist Party must continue to analyze the development and the movement in the relations between the classes and within the class structure as a whole to develop the party and its policies. The strategy and the tactics of the party must be adjusted continuously on the basis of the concrete class analysis.
The working class and the bourgeois class, the capitalist class are the main classes in the Danish society. The battle between these two classes whose basic interests are antagonistic in contrast to each other, is the main motive power of the development. A continuously analysis of these main classes, the relations between them and of changes in their composition and structure is a fundamental aspect of the communist class analysis.
The working class is at the same time both an exploited and an oppressed class. It is deprived of the ownership of the means of production as well as control over them. Therefore the working class is forced to take paid work from a private or public employer to maintain life.
The working class consists of different groups and layers, which is constantly changing according to the growth and development of the class. They can play different roles in the particular class struggle. Especially these years the working class is undergoing rapidly changes. The inclusion of new trades and new professions makes the class more and more diverse.
These changes in the working class are linked to the development of the productive forces, the economy and industrial structure. The working class creates the wealth of society and constitutes the vast majority of the Danish population. The working class is the only class that, because of its objective position, can play a leading and vital role in the showdown with capitalism.
The workers who are employed in the public sector with different service related work tasks are not directly involved in production and have an indirect relation to the means of production. However since production in the developed capitalist society is socialised their work is indispensable in withholding the direct production.
A conflict in the public sector of service is therefore indirectly aimed at the capitalist class but directly aimed at the public employers, which are of course the politicians who represent the bourgeois class political system. A conflict in this sector thereby has a great political potential.
3. The Struggle Organisations of the Working Class – Communist Party and Trade Union
The working class has two key organisations that are essential for its struggle to obtain its goals. The communist party and the trade union movement. There are obstacles for the working class to apply these two organisations in its struggle for its objective interest. These obstacles are of a subjective character.
3.1 The Communist Party
The Danish Communist Party seeks to be the independent and sovereign party of the Danish working class. The goal of the party is to defend the fundamental interests of the working class, and to organize and lead its struggle for Peace, Democracy, welfare, national sovereignty, and Socialism.
The Party’s entire activity is built on scientific Socialism, on Marxism-Leninism. This revolutionary theory guides the party in its efforts to lead the ideological, economic, and political struggles of the working class. That the working class possesses the ability to draw its own conclusions from its victories as well as from its defeats is an important task of the party. The party connects the struggles for the demands of everyday struggle with the struggle against Capitalism, and for Socialism, thereby raising the political awareness of the class.
The Party is a part of the Danish working class and strives, at the same time, to become the vanguard of the class. Only by taking part in the struggles of the class, assisting it in learning by experience, and by inspiring future struggles will the party be acting as the revolutionary vanguard of the working class.
The communists in Denmark for the moment are too few and therefore in the moment not able to carry out the influence in the working class as they seek. We are extremely aware of this in the Danish Communist Party and therefore our main focus next to playing an active role as possible in the Danish class struggle, is to build and develop the communist party, putting great emphasis on the local branches, the youth work and in the trade union movement.
3.2 The trade unions
The trade unions in Denmark are truly mass organisations organising different sectors from 70-90%, with an average closer to 90 than to 70%. However the trade unions are dominated by reformist and opportunist views, but occasionally they do perform as class struggle organisations. Especially local branches have a tendency to progressiveness compared with the federations.
The Danish Communist Party considers the trade union movement as the most potent opponent to the bourgeois class and the capitalist regime. The trade unions are the most important organisations of the workers. The trade union movement must free itself from its policies of class cooperation and the bourgeois approach of servicing its members. In stead it must take on and develop its role as organisations of and for the struggle of the working class.
The main union struggle is at the workplaces. The task is to strengthen the clubs and observing the collective agreements. Attempts to split Danish and foreign workers will be overcome through securing trade union organisation on Danish agreements. The trade unions must reject the extreme right wing speculations in division of the workers no matter if it is based on religious, cultural, ethnic or other prejudices. The Danish Communist Party fights to strengthen the united trade union movement.
4. The current struggle in Denmark in the mass conflict of the public employees and the welfare struggle against the right-wing and neo-liberal regime.
As stated above, around 368.000 publically employed members of the Danish working classes are or have been very recently involved in a mass conflict. A vast majority of the workers in conflict are women. Many are immigrants or have immigrant backgrounds. Not all workers have been actively on strike, but all have been in the conflict. This conflict involves 3 major federations of trade unions among the public employees (Sundhedskartellet, BUPL, FOA) organising different trades with the health care sector, child care and pedagogical sector, the elder care sector and a broader variety of public employees.
While some trades and federations of trade unions in public sectors decided to make an agreement with the public employers, accepting a salary increase of 12,8 % over a 3 year period, these trade union federations have chosen to take up the struggle. They are demanding a considerable bigger increase, equal pay between the public and the private sector and equal pay between men and women, in order to make up for a historically fall behind compared to more typical male sectors, which has its origins in the social division of labour.
The popular support for the strikes is comprehensive as well as the popular support for the collective welfare in the public sector.
This conflict is not only an issue for the members of the trade union federations involved, but must be seen and understood in a broader context. It is the provisional culmination of several years of confrontation on welfare. The public employees are not only fighting their own wages and working conditions. They are fighting for the public sector's future and the collective welfare.
4.1 On the welfare state
This struggle for welfare is the essential struggle in contemporary Denmark. The establishment of universal, collective social rights, referred to as the welfare state, was the strategy of the bourgeoisie using the Social Democracy as a way to comply with the socialist systems developed in the USSR and in Eastern Europe by giving concessions to the working class and its organisations in Denmark in order to prevent a social uprising.
The socialist systems in Europe have vanished now and the monopoly capitalist Europe, the neo-liberal EU has been created through the Maastricht-treaty and is about to be enforced qualitatively through the treaty of Lisbon, which we known better as the Lisbon Constitution. The bourgeoisie have changed their strategy and launched a fierce offensive against the working class all over Europe. The interest in upholding state run welfare-systems that fulfilled collective social rights is gone and so is the objective basis for the so-called welfare state.
As a result of the EU a systematic dismantling of the welfare system has begun. Social security is being eroded by private insurances. The public health care is being starved, while the private hospitals are increasing their market shares. The public school systems and higher educations are put on a diet and increasingly commercialised, while the private schools are becoming increasingly common. The elder care is privatised. The national pension is overtaken by the private pension savings, and so on and son.
In short, the public welfare systems financed collectively through the taxes are put under pressure. Instead we are introduced to a society where the collective welfare is replaced by the ever expanding hunt for profits by private and monopoly companies and corporations. The consequences are increased inequality, poverty and social confrontations.
Since the objective criteria for the welfare state no longer exists, the alternative to this new neo-liberal regime is not the re-installation of the welfare state. The demands of the working class and the fulfilment of the collective welfare as universal rights can only be obtained through socialism. This is the perspective for the Danish Communist Party. The many public employees currently mobilised on demands of better conditions in the public sector in order to ensure collective welfare, must share this perspective if they wish to be victorious on the long range.
5. The strategic crisis of Social Democracy
The political life and parliamentary reality is now completely dominated by neo-liberalism. The reformism that has marked the working class through the impact of the Social Democracy is practically eradicated, at least at the political level.
The leadership of the Social Democracy has abandoned the policy, which previously appeared as an alternative to bourgeois policies for big parts of the population. This political and ideological shift has occurred at the same time as the social democratic leadership alongside with some leaders within the trade union movement have surrendered themselves completely to neo-liberalism and the EU – in contrast to the vast majority of its traditional adherents.
In spite of this development there is a political and ideological struggle between neo-liberalism and classical reformism within the ranks of the Social Democracy and the social democratic trade unions and federations, with a large number of intermediate positions between these two wings. The reformist idea that capitalism can manage and reform, thus survive in parts of the socialist movement.
The Socialists are experiencing a strategic crisis. They have not been able to provide an independent political project, in which they differ themselves from the right wing government on fundamental issues. It has not even presented itself as supporters of the current strikes in the public sector. The strategic crisis of the Social Democracy will continue until they realise that the mission they need to attend is not the issue of the Social Democracy but that of the working class. And that while neo-liberalism is hostile towards the working class the objective criteria for reformism does not exist anymore. Hence they have only the choice of either radicalisation or eradication.
6. The Danish Communist Party in the ongoing conflict
The are active in the ongoing conflict on various levels: 1) Those of our who are in the conflicting sectors are active in the strike and in their trade unions, 2) other members participate in demonstrations and solidarity events bringing party material, 3) members agitate for solidarity with the strike in their own trade unions and other spheres and 4) we have an intense an comprehensive coverage of the strike in our daily paper "The Worker" (Arbejderen).
The Danish Communist Party is actively promoting the demands from the striking public workers and from the struggling working class in both the public and private sectors. We seek to construct a political platform on the basis of these demands. A political platform that includes all forces active both in the current conflict and in the general struggle for welfare. An extra-parliamentarian movement that can apply pressure on the oppositional parties in the Danish Parliament so they will defend the interests of the working class and become part of the political platform by adopting these demands as their own. The struggle is not simple about changing government, but about changing government policy.
A victorious strike movement against the right wing government would have enormous positive impact on the confidence and awareness of the working class. Even a non-victorious strike could have this impact if it produces concrete results such a new social-political movement.
Under the current conditions in Denmark it is only through the construction of such a political platform with a bottom-up perspective directly on the working class will it be possible to mobilise the working class and thereby accumulate enough power to break with the neo-liberal agenda and in a wider perspective to break with the capitalist system.
In order to fulfil these aims we not only need a strong and politically performing trade union movement. We also need a revolutionary party of the working class, the communist party. The Danish Communist Party strives to complete this role and is therefore alongside participating in the daily class struggle, dedicated to the construction and strengthening of our organisation, politics and ideology, so that we can take the historic responsibility that is on the working class and fulfil the mission we have put on ourselves, to lead the working class and the struggle further into even more radical phases of the struggle.
Danish Communist Party
Jens Henneberg Andersen
International Department
Address: Ryesgade 3F, DK-2200 Copenhagen
E-mail: info@kommunister.dk
Websites (in Danish):
Party: www.kompa.dk
Daily Paper "The Worker": www.arbejderen.dk