The Aesthetics of Resistance Volume 2

by Peter Weiss

  The existence of a second Communist Party didn’t worry him, said Rogeby. It made no difference that the Party of Linderot and Sillén, which he had joined in August of nineteen thirty, was small, for it belonged to a movement that encompassed the entire world. For him, the tussle between rich and poor took place on an international scale. Even later, when the German Party had been shattered and the Soviet one left to devour itself, he saw what was emerging in China, in Indochina. Spain had taught him the endurance of proletarian solidarity, and now that Social Democracy was governing together with the bourgeoisie, he was left with his silent activities in the Swedish underground, looking toward the future. In nineteen thirty, he said, the Party was built anew from the ground up. Though many were still clinging to the middle path of the national Communism offered by Flyg and Kilbom, others found their way back to the Comintern Party. Though they managed to win only one percent of the vote at the elections in the fall—in which Kilbom’s Party reached three percent—the rise of fascism in Germany, the formation of national socialist brigades in Sweden, the burgeoning effects of the economic crisis, the special divisions of the secret police for persecuting radical workers, the military attacks on strikers, the growing number of unemployed, the wage cuts and lockouts: all called for a Party capable of organizing resistance. But even in the unions, where almost all the Communist functionaries backed Kilbom, the work had to begin from scratch. The union opposition that had been generated was now being combated both by the reformist leadership and the Communist Party that had remained loyal to the unions. Nevertheless, said Rogeby, we often pulled together for joint campaigns. He thought of the bloodbath in Ådalen. The image flared up alongside the execution of the insurgents of Madrid, alongside Guernica. The brutality took form not in the spectral darkness of Goya or Picasso, which created a unity with the event, but was set against the verdant dawning of a Swedish summer. There was no war raging, no foreign hordes had occupied the land; it was simply that work had been stopped in the sawmills and paper factories in Marma, Graninge, Utansjö, and Sandviken, at the mouth of the Ångerman. And Versteegh, the director of the company, had brought in strikebreakers. At midday on Thursday the fourteenth of May, nineteen thirty-one, eight thousand striking workers—Social Democrats, Communists, all of them union members—gathered together out the front of the workers’ club in Frånö to set off on a protest march. Under the shining sun, the procession began to move toward Lund, where the ships of the strikebreakers were berthed in the harbor. Many of the older members walking in the procession were reminded of the great demonstrations of two, three decades earlier. In their Sunday best, with the flags and standards of their union confederations, led out by a wind orchestra, the workers walked along the dirt road, between the glittering stream and the hills with the red wooden houses of the villages and the blossoming apple trees. Just short of their destination, the cavalry and reservist units that had been hurriedly mobilized by the company management were awaiting them. Industry and army stood in alliance across from the collectivity of the workers, who were unarmed, as always, trusting only in their numbers, and a few dozen rifles had them infinitely outmatched. Shortly after two o’clock, Captain Mesterton had the demonstration procession in sight, the people were pacing forward calmly, it wasn’t revolution they wanted, but their right to work and a living wage; they couldn’t see the rifle barrels that were trained on them. The musical instruments drowned out the command to halt, and the captain gave the order to shoot. Those who were hit fell into the dust of the road, their blood blending with the soil, and it wasn’t until a fraction of a second later that the cracks were heard, tearing apart that peaceful spring day. Five workers had been killed. On the side of legality was the captain, who was tasked with ensuring the maintenance of order. On the side of legality were the military conscripts, who had orders to follow. On the side of legality, with the right to freely carry out their profession, were the strikebreakers. On the side of legality were the factory owners, upon whom it was incumbent to prevent economic disruptions in the interests of the greater good. Identical with legality were the capitalist conditions of production, which claimed the lives of Eira Söderberg, Erik Bergström, Viktor Eriksson, Evert Nygren, and Sture Larsson. Because they were a danger to the rule of law, lengthy prison terms were handed out to the Communist agitators Nordström, Sjödin, and Forssman, and Linderot, the leader of the Communist Party, received the same for calling a protest meeting. The union leadership backed the class justice and criminalized the unauthorized actions of the workers. The outrage within the workplaces, though, could not be smothered, leading to the second major crisis of trust in the union movement. In Ådalen, a general strike was proclaimed; in Stockholm, one hundred fifty thousand workers demonstrated on the day of the funeral of their murdered comrades. Right across the country, trade union associations joined the strike in defiance of the union leadership. At the same time though, said Rogeby, the workers were faced with the necessity of getting the Social Democratic Party back into government. The Social Democratic electoral campaign in the year of thirty-two was not launched under a slogan of going on the offensive against the bourgeoisie—riven as it was by corruption scandals—but rather of defaming the two Communist Parties, who for their parts had nothing better to do than to feud with each other. While Kilbom continued his efforts to secure a coalition with the Social Democrats, Linderot’s Party continued to attack Social Democracy as the number one enemy, which was a waste of energy on both counts; for in the first instance, Hansson’s party was never willing to make concessions, and in the second, it simply drew on all its resources to strike back even harder. Still unified on the factory floors, even if this unity was nothing more than the spontaneous unity of class, the ability of the workers to articulate a position was hindered by the predominance of the sectarian clashes between the two Communist groupuscules. The obstinacy of the Party leaderships meant that this unity couldn’t be brought to bear. And so the bourgeoisie was able to wield its terror from government over four terms. It wasn’t until September of thirty-two, after the fall of the Kreuger empire, when they failed to cobble together their power with new transactions, that they were forced to step down and hand over the formation of the cabinet to the Social Democrats, who had again managed to secure one hundred four seats thanks to the collective effort of the voters. Even with the two seats of the Comintern Party—corresponding to three percent of the vote—and the six seats of Kilbom’s Party, which had received five percent, the Social Democratic Party was still three seats behind the bourgeois parties in the Second Chamber. In that year one hundred sixty thousand were without work, and as the year of fascist rule in Germany began, the number of unemployed was one hundred eighty-six thousand; with their family members, they formed an army of almost a million needy souls. We had no option, said Ström, but to attempt to balance and maneuver between the demand of the workers for gainful employment and the demands of the company owners for increased profit margins. We were at the mercy of international finance, were threatened by German fascism and by the chauvinist apparitions in our own country, had to subsidize the industries to reduce unemployment and bring the negotiations between the confederation of trade unions and business owners to a conclusion in order to stabilize the markets. Under these conditions, only cautious reforms were possible. Yet the Social Democratic government, he continued, was embodying the wishes of the workers. Hansson, the prime minister, had already become the national father figure that Branting had represented. Sandler, the foreign minister, was known as the founder of the Workers’ Education Association. Vennerström, the minister of defense, Möller, the minister of social services, and Schlyter, the attorney general, were respected as progressive humanists. Sköld, as minister of agriculture, had helped the agricultural workers to improve their living conditions, and Wigforss, minister of finance, represented the rigor of socialist science. Sandler, said Rogeby, immediately sent a circular to all the trade union confederations, calling for Communist repr
esentatives to be purged from all unions, and instead of the schools for future factory managers, instead of the socializations that Wigforss had promised, there was only an expansion of the power of the state. Before we could speak about any kind of workers’ participation, said Ström, we had to create the economic foundations for it, in the form of state and union funds. Through their eternal willingness to compromise, said Rogeby, the Social Democrats had allowed the bourgeois groups to become so strong again that in June of thirty-six they were able to regain control of the government. But only until September, countered Ström, then we won it back, with an absolute majority for the first time, and we’ve retained the leadership to this day. He didn’t attribute any significance to the recent rise of the Comintern Party; the eighteen thousand members that they now numbered evaporated in the face of the hundreds of thousands in the Social Democratic Party. What were their five seats and the six seats of Kilbom’s Party worth, he said, next to the one hundred twelve seats, with which we, all on our own, outnumbered the three bourgeois parties by five seats. The sixteen seats that the conflict-plagued bloc of workers’ parties had over the bourgeois factions didn’t change the economic situation one bit. The means of production were in the hands of the owners of capital, and there they would stay, even if we did manage to reach parity in the First Chamber. Nevertheless, said Ström, with the reforms we had pushed through—the unemployment insurance, the retirement laws, the regulation of working hours for agricultural workers, the child support, the rent relief for large families, the homes for the elderly, the obligatory two weeks of vacation—we were on the way to becoming the model welfare state. In the early thirties, said Rogeby, Hansson’s crisis program had been geared toward tying the working class more tightly to the Social Democratic Party. The complex links between the Social Democratic state apparatus and monopoly capital became evident in December of thirty-eight, when the partnership between the wage laborers and company owners was sealed in Saltsjöbaden. That the state avoided passing legislation did not contradict this bond; rather, the seeming autonomy and equality with which the employers and employees would henceforth sit down together to address any conflicts that might arise emphasized the harmony that was now supposed to prevail. The bourgeois mixed economy of Social Democracy provided a stable backdrop to the quest for industrial peace. Generously, the buyers of labor agreed to give prior notice before layoffs, which had previously taken place without any warning at all, and to refrain from the use of strikebreakers in the event of a strike. In all other matters, as always, they retained sole control over the management and distribution of labor, the expansion or downscaling of production. The ban on strikes for the duration of a collective bargaining agreement—supposedly to protect the rights of a third party, the consumer—benefitted the business owner, since it meant they could rely on a fixed core of workers while restructuring and improving the efficiency of their factories. The path to prosperity had been paved. The employer gave the worker work; the worker took their wage, which was rising gradually, öre by öre, though never keeping pace with the piece quotas. The Social Democratic Party reached its greatest number of votes and now occupied one hundred thirty-four seats in the Second Chamber and seventy-four in the First Chamber, where, with the help of a single Communist seat, it had become as strong as the bourgeois factions. Kilbom’s Party, which had called itself the Socialist Party since thirty-four, had already lost ten thousand of its fifteen thousand members when, in early thirty-seven, a rupture occurred between him—who was hoping to return to the Social Democratic Party—and Flyg, whose national Communism became a national socialism financed by Germany. The share of votes of the Communists faithful to the Comintern remained unchanged at around three percent. Faced with this vanishing minority, Ström could look back on his decision with satisfaction. His face good-natured, well-meaning. When he now looked out beyond the borders of his rich country, it was not to catch a glimpse of the vision of socialism, but to look hopefully for signs of life within the French-English bloc. The thought of the possibility of a clash with the countries which would one day rise up from colonial oppression and demand their share of global goods didn’t occur to him. He who had once turned to revolutionary ideas only to then turn back—as the bourgeoisie of nineteen fifteen had correctly guessed—to the forces seeking to protect the structures of society, now stood confidently beside the old guard at the gate of the famous Swedish welfare state. Thus, at Rogeby’s place, in his room on Coldinutrappan, looking out onto the leafless Piper garden, I gained a perspective on the Social Democratic syndrome. At its core was that perseverance at all costs, that terror in the face of fundamental change. Ström would say that this patience had been able to abolish a whole range of social injustices. He would emphasize the democratic freedoms in his land when compared with the Soviet regime. He would credit the humanist traditions of his party with having prevented fascism from further pervading the minds of the people, and he would portray its pacifist stance, which had been subjected to so much pressure, as the guarantee for the endurance of the country’s neutrality. If Rogeby countered that no reforms had eliminated the unequal opportunities of education and occupational choices, then Ström would say that the Party was striving to remedy the lingering bourgeois dominance in the universities. He would speak of the adult education centers, as if they were responses to a transitional situation and not institutions for the retention of class society, and he would mention that numerous writers and artists from proletarian backgrounds had long ago made cultural values into a common good. To the question of the fulfillment of the specific goals of the workers, Ström would respond that the Party had contributed to an expansion of the concept of class. They had managed to draw in a broad spectrum of intellectuals, academics, and functionaries and to convey a new social affiliation to this group which had previously been dependent upon the bourgeoisie. In a certain sense, Rogeby would have agreed with this, for revolutionary changes could no longer be carried out solely by a working class destined to assume a revolutionary role but by all the progressive forces within the populace banding together. But Social Democracy, said Rogeby, had failed to insist upon the right of the workers to participate in decision-making and to play a leadership role in all branches of production. By rooting out radicalism and leaving property relations untouched, they became a conservative force. In the grass roots of the Party, he said, you could find workers with the qualities that had once defined the Social Democratic organizations. But the top was pervaded everywhere by petit-bourgeois aspiration, holding down those who wanted to actively intervene and expand their own research and knowledge. Because such workers could not bring themselves to bear within Social Democracy, which had become a mere employee lobby group, said Rogeby, their place was in the Communist Party. Though here they would also be subjected to a form of constriction that would cut against their personal development. While Social Democracy promoted the depoliticization of their members, the Communist Party held theirs back with outdated dogma. We had replaced the dictatorship of the proletariat with a politics of alliances. Our work in the German underground and in Spain had shown us that the character of a fighting unit could not be judged by its class affiliation but only according to the convictions to which it attests. When we spoke of class consciousness, we meant joining forces with the most oppressed and collectively revolting against the mechanisms of exploitation. With all the insufficiencies and theoretical quarrels, the lack of critical reflection in light of their misjudgment of German fascism, their subservience to the doctrine of the Comintern, said Rogeby, the essential difference between the two parties lay in the fact that the Communists kept historical consciousness alive, while the Social Democrats, by undoing their ties to the class struggle, robbed the workers of all history. What kept Rogeby and other Communists alive, despite their isolation, were the traditions that lived within them. In contrast to those who found their nourishment in the junk products of bourgeois civilization, they clung tight to their tasks. They resi
sted becoming alienated from their work, as capitalism wanted them to, in order to get its hands on a steady supply of malleable stooges. The lack of solidarity among the workers and the crippling of their original intentions could be sensed in every factory. The faces of the people standing at the machines were marked by an expression of numbness and emptiness. While the conversations at Brecht’s house began from the assumption of a culture that had already been liberated, the place I occupied with Rogeby was miles away from what we understood as culture; we had to traverse a path leading through regions that left one lot with burning legs, bones ground to stubs, lungs heaving, so that the others could position themselves around us as outstanding and responsible planners, protectors, and patrons, as well-to-do windbags and friends of the people. We have already come so far, the foremen cried to us, and the upper levels remained diffuse, where the principle of maximum profit demanded the unending existence of enfeebled masses and a powerful few.