Guerrilla History - Sweden's Integration into the Imperialist World System ft/ Torkil Lauesen [REMASTERED]

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

This episode is a fully-remastered edition of a Revolutionary Left Radio episode: Riding the Wave: Sweden's Integration into the Imperialist World System" featuring Torkil Lauesen.  We plan on periodically remastering some of our early episodes and re-releasing them as well, and releasing them one every month or two between our regular episodes.  Stay tuned for that! Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory Torkil Lauesen returns to the show, this time to discuss his newest book "Riding the Wave: Sweden's Integration into the Imperialist World Order". Pushing back against the narrative that Nordic countries like Sweden are socialist paradises who don't engage in colonialism and imperialism like other western countries, Torkil dives deep into history to deconstruct this rather naive perspective and offer a historical materialist account of Sweden's actual place in the history of colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism.  Henry Hakamaki from Guerrilla History joins Breht for the interview as well!  Check out the book here: https://www.leftwingbooks.net/book/content/riding-wave-sweden Read more of Torkil's work here: https://anti-imperialist.net/author/lauesen/ Outro Music: "I'm the Echo" by DARKSIDE ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello, guerrilla history listeners, this is Henry, and today we're going to be doing a re-release of sorts for you. This episode is actually an old revolutionary left radio episode, but we are going to be testing out something that we are thinking about doing periodically as we go forward. So what we are considering doing, Adnan Brett and myself had thought that, well, on guerrilla history, we have a pretty extensive back catalog now with over 100, really excellent episodes and many fabulous guests, but particularly for some of those early episodes, Adnan and myself in particular didn't have the best audio equipment, and so our audio quality was not always spectacular, and some of the processing techniques that we were using,

and some of the guests that we had on also, they weren't conducive to having top, top-notch audio quality. You may have noticed that in our more recent episodes of the show, our audio quality is really exceptional. So what we thought would be interesting and useful is for us to look back at our old back catalog. Back from the early days when our audio quality and our processing techniques were not nearly as good as they are now, and finding some of those episodes from when we didn't have as many listeners either, remastering them, making them sound as good as we possibly can, and then periodically releasing some of those older episodes so that our new listenership can hear them and hear them in the way that they deserve to be heard.

Brett suggested that we test out this technique of going back and remastering some of our old episodes and seeing what we can get from it with one of his revolutionary left radio episodes that I also took part on. This episode is titled Riding the Wave, Sweden's Integration into the Imperialist World System, and features one of our favorite guests of Revolutionary Left Radio and somebody that we hope that we're bringing on guerrilla history very soon, Torkel Lawson. When he speaks on the show, the content of his conversations are always absolutely brilliant. His analysis is tremendous.

His audio quality, well, it leaves a little bit to be desired, to put it, frankly. And so we wanted to go back, see what we could do with this episode, and then release it to the guerrilla history audience as an announcement that we are going to be doing this again periodically maybe once every month or two we'll release one of our old episodes is a remastered edition so keep your eyes I guess ears peeled for that be ready we have a lot of those old episodes queued up and ready to be remastered and in the meantime enjoy this episode again a revolutionary left radio episode

featuring Torkel Lawson and myself as a co-host, writing the wave, Sweden's integration into the imperialist world system. Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev. Left Radio. On today's episode, we have back on the program Torkel Lawson to talk about his newest book, Writing the Wave, Sweden's integration into the imperialist world system. It's a fascinating history. of a core country in you know Northern Europe that has a reputation

as its neighboring countries do as well of being this sort of you know almost socialist paradise with every social democrat the world over especially here in the US love to points to not only Europe in Western Europe and Germany and France etc but particularly love to point to the Nordic countries and countries like Sweden

and their robust welfare state as an example of what they themselves want to build here in the U.S. or whatever country doesn't have that advanced of a welfare state yet. And that reputation is often naive, overly simplistic, and separated from Sweden and other Nordic countries, interactions with global imperialism, history of European colonialism, et cetera, even the slave trade. And we discuss all of that. So we understand where these, you know, welfare states, these robust welfare states, where they actually come from and what their geopolitical and economic roots really are. And I think that's really important to understand that history. So we can kind of push back on some of these simplistic narratives that these countries are wholly innocent and their welfare states do not come from, you know, the assistance. of or the direct plundering of countries in the global south and victims of European imperialism and colonialism.

So this conversation will definitely get into that. And the book itself is really, really in-depth, detailed dive into exactly that. And I love it. It's also published by our friends over at Kersvlebadeb, who have published many books that we've had on the show and their wonderful little publishing company. So check them out in their other works as well. But without further ado, here is my episode with Torkel Lawson on his book, Writing the Wave. And I also have my friend and co-host from Guerrilla History, Henry Hakamakian, to help me host this episode.

He loves the book. He wanted to jump on for this one. We'll probably try to release it on both guerrilla history and Revel F's feed to get the conversation out there to more people, kind of see it as a collab. But thank you to Henry for coming on. and helping me with this conversation. He really made great contributions as well. So without any more ado, here's our episode with Torgo-Lostin, writing the wave, Sweden's integration into the imperialist world system.

Enjoy. Hello. Hello again, and thank you for, this invitation to talk about my book on Scandinavia and Sweden in particular, well, who I am. I'm an old ancient activist, activist and researcher, and I live in Copenhagen, in Denmark. That's about it. I think we should start to talk about the book.

absolutely let's do it the book is titled writing the wave sweden's integration into the imperialist world system and i think a good way to start this conversation is just to ask you generally can you please tell us why you decided to write this book kind of what sweden's general reputation is and why you focused on sweden in particular sure well i have noticed that the welfare state of Sweden and Scandinavia in general served as a role model for what a working class can accomplish within the framework of capitalism. And Scandinavia and Sweden is considered progressive countries and the welfare state is kind of a step towards socialism. and Bernie Sanders and the United States have mentioned this, but it's also a very common perception in Scandinavia. There is a strong feeling of complacent in Scandinavia that we have established this super welfare state and democracy.

That's the kind of Scandinavians are very proud of their system. What is left out of this story is that the construction of the welfare state was only possible due to colonialism and imperialism, and it's still running on the exploitation of cheap labor in the global south. The construction of the welfare state was suddenly dawned by the effort of social democrats and trade union struggle, but it was only possible because Scandinavia was part of the imperialist. center. This is due to the success. You can see there's no capitalist welfare state in the global south because they don't have any periphery to exploit. Another reason to write the book

was that, well, there's a lot about German imperialism and English imperialism and the connection to the rise of what we call labor aristocracy, but not very much about Scandinavia. And someone has to write this history, I think, and well, there's not a lot of people who have this position on the left in the Scandinavia. So I think I had to do. And I had through the years collected a lot of interesting small stories about Swedish and non-colonialism and imperialism. And the book consists of a row of these short stories. examples which should illustrate how we have been writing on the grain

of the nature in various powers. Hi, Torquil, picking back up, and as I come in, I just want to thank you for writing this book. Sweden's role in the imperialist system is something that I've talked about on guerrilla history periodically. So having this book out now really does help further my knowledge of this object so I can continue to speak.

So thank you for that. The question that I have for you is that in the book, you say that the Swedish model is the ideal type of capitalist welfare state. And as you mentioned, it's held up and lauded by certain American politicians. Or as you say, it's called the folk helm. What role did trade unions, the Social Democratic Party, and the second international play in its construction? I know that that interaction between the Social Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party and the Second International is a very interesting story that you told in your book as well. Yeah, sure.

A lot of the inspiration for the Swedish folk home, which is, or Hong Kimets, which is the Swedish edition of the Social Democrat wrote as they came from Germany and the, from the Germany social democrats. the last part of the 19th century, Kowski and Bernstein and the so-called Goethe program. But there was also an inspiration from conservative nationalism, also in Germany. Bismarck created curious enough the first step to welfare state. So the inspiration came a lot from Germany, and the idea of the Germany socialist was that, first of all, the struggle for socialism, they left the position of an international struggle. The struggle had to be national because the nation was the political framework, because they didn't believe in.

in revolution anymore, they thought that they could improve the living condition and the wages and the rights of the working class within the capitalist system. So the struggle has to be mainly political and through the parliament. And that meant that the working class began to have national interests, not only class interests, but actually national interests, which resulted in a support for German colonialism and also support for the German national state in the insia imperialist struggle. We all know about the strategy of the First World War, where all the socialist parties voted for the war against their fellow class comrades.

So it was this change from class solidarity to citizenship, which is important. Nationalism instead of class solidarity and cooperation and diversion of power with capital, a kind of team spirit in modern language. and the social democrats talk about the people more than they talk about the class, the working class. To do this thing, they also have to distance themselves from the communist, which was not compatible to this line. So the Swedish social democrats have always been a strong enemy of the communists. Why the communists always have tried to court it, the social democrats, and they still do, but the social democrats have always hated the communists.

I'm just going to briefly follow up here, because one thing that I think is really interesting is how some of these dynamics worked as you laid out in your book. So you write that in the 1890s, the, basically the introduction of industrial capitalism in Sweden created many new jobs. And at around the same time, there was this mass emigration event from Sweden, which drained the reserve army of labor. And that caused wages to double throughout the 1890s. Can you just briefly talk about that? Because I think that many of the listeners of Rev. Left, like me, are interested in the dynamics of some of these interrelated components.

Yes. Sweden was not a traditional colonial power. They never got any big colonies, but they certainly became settlers. And I think it's around between 15 and 20% actually of the Swedish population immigrated out of Sweden during the 19th century and up until the first World War. It was 1.2 million Swedes left the country out of, I think, 6 million people. So it's a huge part of the population which left the country. And this was the poor people living in the countryside and also in the cities,

but mainly poor agricultural labor. And they were really poor people. actually there was hunger in Sweden in 18, 1662 really people was dying from hunger so it was very hard

but these people they left for the United States many but also for Canada and also for Denmark actually the situation was much better in Denmark but the main part became settlers

in the United States. Actually, Chicago was the second largest city in Sweden because it posted, I think, more than 100,000 Swedes in 1860. So there was really many Swedes going to the states, and they were integrated in the United States settler community on a very high level because of their ethnic background. And they more or less doubled their income and road back home that their family should follow. But this, of course, also making the conditions for the working class much better in Sweden

because the reserve army have left, and there was actually not enough labor in Sweden during the Industrial Revolution. So they could raise their wage level in Sweden also, and they could easily organize the labels and both in the trade unions and in the social democratic parties. So this settler colonialism has a double benefit for the Swedish working class. Yeah, I think that's incredibly interesting in something that's not thought about a lot or realized. There's this huge influx of Swedish immigrants into the U.S. as settlers. And then that participation in initially British but an American settler colonialism more generally back home has the effect of reducing the amount of workers overall. which puts workers in Sweden in a better position to fight for welfare state, et cetera.

That's a really fascinating aspect of it. And I kind of want to drill down on that point a little bit more and maybe even broaden it to include more of Europe generally. But as any good historical materialist knows, in order to understand the present, we must understand the past. So can you talk a little bit more about the history of Sweden in relation to early European colonialism and even especially the slave trade? Yeah, but I also want to add one more point because claiming that this immigration from Sweden is colonial. It's kind of a provocation on the Swedish wrecks because these immigrants are normally talked about as these poor people who are looking for a better life. The other side of this coin that they became settlers and took away the land of the indigenous population in America and also was integrated in a high level and benefited from the slavery in the United States and the exploitation.

of the lower part of the working class coming from Latin America or China and so on. It's the kind of the provocation, actually. But turning back to other sides of early colonialism, of course, there is the slave trade which was from back in the 16th century and I would say there that Denmark played a much bigger role

because we had Ghana on the west coast of Africa was a Danish colony at the time. We can still find Danish portraits on the coast of Ghana and I think Denmark was the fourth or fifth biggest slave transporting several hundred thousands of slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean and to America. The Swedes didn't participate much in the transportation, but they did in other ways, because at that time, Sweden was a very important producer of iron bars or iron in general

and it was used in several ways in the slave trade. It was used actually as a currency when the slave traders fought slaves in Africa they used iron

as a currency and it was of course also used as fast locking up the slaves and it was used for all kinds of the tools and the Swedes

also had a lot of fishing for herons and this was sorted and also used for food for slaves both in the Caribbean for export but also on the ship so in that way they participated in the slave trade but mainly mainly Sweden

early colonialism was also in In the transport, the Scandinavian countries was a huge maritime power, commercial maritime power in the 16th and 17 centuries. Actually, England was the biggest one. America was number two, and then came the Scandinavian countries, maritime, Greek. It was bigger than both Germany and France and Italy and even the Dutch. around, I think it's around 30% of all the tea and so-called China, where from China was transported on Swedish ships in the 17th century. And later, it was small, mainly to England,

which had a high tax level on China, where I see from the Farons, Actually, Sweden established, as they didn't have colonies, they established so-called the consulates in all major ship ports in the world. They have around, I think, 80 constellates in China or in Rio, in Brazil or Singapore, and everywhere they had this consulates, which was kind of shipping agents for the, merchant fleet and even today the scandinavian merchant fleet is very important that we have in the danis mass which are one of the biggest container transport in companies and they're also trade also in Norway and Scandinavian still plays this role as a as a transport and they could do that in this period because they were often neutral countries and the colonial inter-conolian disputes between England and Holland and France in the period.

So they could benefit from their mutual role. I think I should stop here about this story. Well, I'll take those iron bars on the slave ships and use those to segue us into the next topic. So in addition to the iron bars being used on, The slave ships, iron also tells a little bit of a story in the relation of the far right in Sweden. So going forward to the 1930s, Sweden had some interesting relations with Nazi Germany. As you mentioned in your book, in the late 1930s, about 75% of the exported steel iron from Sweden went directly to the Nazis. And Sweden has a very interesting history of far-right movements within the country,

relations to far-right movements and governments outside of the country, even talk about in the book, something that I found out maybe six months ago, which was that even the founder of IKEA was a fairly prominent member in some of these far-right groups within Sweden, these kind of ultra-nationalist, essentially Nazi groups within Sweden. So can you just tell us a bit about Sweden's relationship to fascist movements, both outside of Sweden, as well as the far-right movements within Sweden? Sure. Well, it has both a historical background and also due to Jewish relations to Germany.

The Swedish state have been very militarized, and there's a Swedish king, Carl the 12th who was called the soldier king back in the 17th century. So the military have always had a strong influence in

the Swedish state and it have been I think a more authoritarian state than the Danish and the Norwegian states a little bit like the Prussian state

in Germany and Sweden is sometimes called the Trojan of Scandinavia and Sweden's integration into the imperialist system has very much

been riding on the wave of the Germany while Denmark was riding on the wave of English imperialism because Denmark was an agricultural country and we sold meat and butter and bacon and corn to England, and this was one of the main factors in the

breakthrough of capitalism in Denmark. It was different in Sweden. They were exporting iron and timber and copper, and mainly to Germany. And this was the breakthrough of Swedish industrial and it's true that they supported Germany with steel and machines especially what was called

ball bearings what the Swedish specialty and ball bearings was a very important complement in all machines and running stuff it was kind of the microchip

of machines in the search. So this was a very important path and Sweden continued actually with exporting machine and cars to Germany up until I think it's January 45 that means just a few months before the ending of the world

so they were very stopping in there. It's court to Germany, which was paid by in gold, actually. So it was hard currency for Sweden.

And that is one of the reasons that Sweden continued to have a strong passage and white wing influence in its country which started back

in the 20s. and the 30s and it was not only in the military and in the police it was also in culture and in sport

and in the school system it was much more raw than than in Denmark and Norway even even the king was suspected

to have so of the Nazis sympathies and it It continued after the Second World War. Actually, it was Swedish white-wing fascists who organized, reorganized the fascist movement after the Second World War. And if you follow the person and the organizations, you can see that there is a continuity right up to present-day right-wing. population in Sweden.

It's the same persons and the same organizations which just are shifting names. And in that way, there is a strong connection between Swedish fascism

and Sweden's right thing at the moment. And it's correct that one of the main persons in the Swedish movement is it's a person called Pierre Ingdale. He was a close strength to Inva Kamrat, who was the owner and founder of the IKEA company.

So in that way, Sweden is different from Denmark and Norway. Yeah, that's incredibly interesting. And clearly, both, as you mentioned, both Sweden and Germany have, you know, still a rising, if you far right issue to deal with in both of those countries and to understand that history is fascinating. Also the connection between large legacy corporations and how they trace back to World War II and in America we have some big energy companies that trace back to helping the fascist side in the Spanish Civil War, etc. You can think of Volkswagen, but IKEA is one that people don't think about as much. But I'm interested in moving into this post-World War II era

Because after World War II with Germany defeated, Sweden did pivot, as you point on in your book, toward the rest of Europe and toward the U.S. in particular. So can you kind of talk about this move in broadly Sweden's relationship to 20th century imperialism, more broadly? What happened after the World War was that, of course, Sweden was in a very good position because it had its industrial. completely intact while most of Europe was doing so. The Sweden industrial sex are together very, very quickly after the war. And Sweden is a lot of huge companies, transnational companies in this. period, both in car in terms of

car manufacturing, in terms of machinery, in terms of household, stock, freezers, washing machines, cooling equipment and all kinds of shoes and machinery was developed

in Sweden. So they had a very lucrative period also. And they also became transnational in many ways and and the vast European cooperation with the U.S. companies which I mentioned is

Lanko, which is a company which produced iron ore in Liberia on the West African coast, which was one of the biggest iron ore producers in the 60s. And a very high quality of iron was produced there, and this was in the cooperation with the U.S. And actually, Sweden, Norway and Denmark went into the NATO alliance, but Sweden stayed out of the alliance, but only on the surface because they're undercover, they were.

closely related to American military. They cooperated around the Baltic Sea where the Swedes was surveying what was going on on the Soviet side. And the Americans helped also with developing their submarines and their missile systems and there are all kinds of listening equipment and surveillance equipment. So, under cover, they cooperated very closely and exchanged intelligence with the U.S. or only saying out of the NATO alliance. I'm glad you mentioned LAMCO, because that's something that is related to the next topic that I want to talk about. So LAMCO, as you mentioned, was very involved with.

in Africa, and for listeners who want to have some supplemental viewing, I recommend the documentary concerning violence, which is a Swedish documentary about national liberation struggles. In Africa, the name is based off of the chapter from Wretched Up the Earth by France Fanon, and they use quotations from it throughout. Very good documentary, highly recommended. But Lamcoe, being the Swedish company, had a very pernicious. role in Africa. But at the same time, Sweden had a very interesting role to play in the National Liberation struggles of the 60s and 70s. Can you talk about that? Yes. You can say

one of the, I think, mostly interesting thing is that the prime minister of Sweden or Palme actually was the first Western Prime Minister to recognize North Vietnam. And actually he demonstrated, Palme demonstrated with the North Vietnam ambassador in Stockholm in 70, I think, against the Vietnam War. And Sweden also was very supportive to the African liberation movement, especially the ANC in South Africa and Swarco. And I think it has to do with that. There's several aspects in it. Of course, at that time in the 60s and the 70s, I think Sweden saw a potential. of being close to all those new liberated countries.

They hope to play a big role they are both politically and also economy. And it also has to do with the Swedish self-perception of being particular progressive and humanists. and they wanted to take advances of this position, I think. But at the same time, at the same time, they don't see the connection between this role and the exploitation of the third world. They don't see the connection between the cheap wage of the electronics and textile and coffee and so on and in our consumption. Even if you can break down the different parts of the price in a cell phone or T-shirt or a cup of coffee and show very clearly the relation between low-wage and cheap prices for the consumers in any. in Sweden, they don't recognize this connection.

So I think they tried to play this double role. And also I think it was to keep the communist out of influence. But I think I could take an example of this double position. You can take the example of the Volvo at the moment. The Volvo personal car section was sold, I think, around 2010 to China, and all Volvo personal car style or passenger cars are an output based in China. However, Volvo is not only passenger cars. Volvo is one of the leading producers of truck and buses and construction machine.

Actually, in 2016, Volvo was the second largest producer of heavy trucks and buses in the world. And while the headquarters is in Gothenburg, in Sweden, Volvo have production facilities in 18 countries, including China, Brazil, Russia, Poland, Indonesia, India, Thailand, South Africa, Mexico and South Korea. And Volvo has a special status in Sweden. It is interlinked with the building of the Swedish Alcombe, and it's which compromises the close cooperation between capital and trade union, which is blessed by the Swedish state. call it this

Volvo team spirit but if you compare the working conditions and wages in the

different Volvo groups they are very very different for instance if you check the

wage of a Volvo worker in Durban in South Africa they get

around $350 per months while the minimum wage for a Volvo worker in Sweden is around $2,500 for a month. And to this, you had to add that the South African worker don't have the access to the free health care and insurance and social security and pension and so on.

So you can see there's this huge big difference within the Volvo concern. The South African workers is a way qualified, and they work with the same equipment as in Sweden. They have the same productivity, but they received only a sense on the Swedish salaries. One of the counter strategies against transnational companies is often called that we should have trade union solidarity across the borders but this has been very

difficult to make within the Volvo concern. There is some Swedish Reserve researchers which have talked with the Swedish trade unionists at the Volvo

and I have a quote here where they say we have some projects in Latin America and there's a lot of interest there in the Swedish model, but it's difficult to you know how they are there. They don't know a lot of things and they go out on strike and we don't behave like that here in Sweden. And there's another comment here that where they talk about it

if they should support a boggle fight in India and the trade union in Sweden say yes we have talked to them but it's difficult you know they don't speak English and they have

demands that we cannot fulfill they have to fight for their rights for themselves and this is I think typical for the trade unions

in Sweden. You know, there is a very strong cooperation between cancer and the trade union in Sweden. And here in, I think it was in January 2020,

there was even implemented stronger laws that prohibited stripes and that the trade union should uphold peace in the work places. There are very, very few strikes in Sweden and there are always only these strikes. Yeah, that's incredibly interesting and I think really essential to understand that at general history, you did mention an Olaf poem early on in that answer. I'm going to

get to him next because I think it's an interesting figure and a historical event that we should we should focus on. But first, sort of chronologically, I just want to talk about neoliberalism and sort of how that manifested in Sweden. So you know, in the 70s into the 80s, we have the rise of what we now call neoliberalism. Can you just talk about how that rose in Sweden

and how it's shaped Sweden's economic and political system ever since? Yes. You know that the social technocrats had been in Canada and think around since 1920 up to

the up to the late sedentive so it's half a century when

social democrats being a power so it was a

change in in Sweden when the first liberal government came

into power and also because of the structure of the Swedish economy

neoliberalism changed a lot because the economy of Sweden was based on medium and big industries. There's a lot of big industries in Sweden. It should take the Fortune 500 lists on big companies. There's a lot of big companies in Sweden.

So this wave of outsourcing which rolled over the world on the 80s and the 90s changed and not in Sweden. A lot of workplaces was

outsourced. Ikea was completely outsourced. There's no production of the IKEA at all in Sweden and a lot of other

companies outsourced half of their work basics. as I told you before Volvo passenger cars disappeared completely and yes

so this breakthrough of new initial was a huge different in and a big week of in Sweden

and it changed a lot and there was a lot of hard economic crisis later on in Sweden also financial crisis

in Sweden so it made a lot of cracks in in the people's home and in the World Reserve State but I think

I think that in the mind of people and culturally the people's home is still strong in Sweden and the social

democratic party is still very strong especially in the Swedish population by peeping from I say 50 and not to 70 or 80

in the old population the social democracy is still a very strong path And also I think that there was this last dramatic attempt by the trade unions in the late 60s to not only get a diversion of the profit from the cattle actually tried to take over the ownership of the production facilities. and this was also turned around by the neoliberalism breakthrough, and this also created a lot of tensions in Sweden. I see, I see. We're going to get to sort of where Sweden is currently in a second, but just to follow up on that Olaf Palm point.

Can you tell us who he was, how he governed, and I'm really also interested in your personal opinion on the assassination. nation and what your opinion is on that? Well, Olo Pellner was actually he comes from an esoteric background in the

many social democrats actually do and it has also a relation to actually to an ancient part of his

his family and that's a famous British communist which is also named Parame which is family and I think he was put it in there on the Indian Communist Party during the war

anyway Palme made a very quick career in the social democratic party and he had started in America as a young man

and it had made a great impression in the beginning of the 60s he started in the USA I think he took his master there and he became firstly very strong and succumbing

in the US but he was also impressed by the struggle for the black people's rights also but actually he was recruited by the CIA at the time he was there

because we were a member of many international students organization and and he helped the CIA by giving names of important from the person's within student movement and saying that really good

and so in that way he was in the line and social thing that's been very anti- communist. He was as I said, he was quickly as a young man

and he became a secretary of the prime minister and actually was the right hand of the Jay Lambert was the name of me but prime minister and when he became

Prime Minister himself he was a very strong prime minister he had this problem with the trade unions which wanted to actually get ownership of the means of production

and that was not the Pellinous line. He wanted to have close cooperation between capital and the trade unions but if you could see that you should not try to seize the means

of production because the group was was creating too much tension and too much trouble in this society. So he managed to derail that that proposition action

and and could end to what is called the economic democracy. And Palme was also, you know, I talked about his engagements in the

in the different Vietnam's side. He was criticized the American bombing 5-2-52 over Hanai and we prepared

it to the nasty domino in Spain and he was very hard on one and it was at the time. But on the other hand, he was

cooperating with the United States and military on the sideline and my analysis is that they can think that the American

policy in Vietnam was stucat and it just a mistake but because it was certain

enough through the Chinese Pellner got a lot of any of within Sweden

and and also internationally due to his relations to North Vietnam the Swedish Insignitian

service suspected him to be a spy for the Soviet and then there was a completely

distrust between the prime minister and the insidivings service so the Swedish

social democrats they established their own insinigent service on the sideline because they didn't trust the official intelligence and service

but actually it was social Democrat in Silicon Service was purely occupied made the spine on the left wing and was not spine on the right wing

and it might have been too because it anyone wants to kill or Kelma. It was coming from the rising either the foods of the nature. The murder, there have never been any kind of a good explanation or the food feels for Kelmer. We have been claimed that it has been a deadly criminal and it was a kind of accident and coincident.

There have also been rumors about it, have been people inside the groups or the military. Maybe it have been people from the South African far right because of obvious interfering in the U.A.M. scene. And there have also been rumors about it It should be a cousin from Kurdistan because he was also involved in the Turkish Kurdish but it has never been cleared of the murder. And I have no, I cannot begin with, I don't know the Cape Palme, but it's true that

there are, we have many, many enemies, both within Sweden and outside. And the political climate at the time in Sweden was very hostile in the 80s. So it's, yeah, I come up, I don't know who killed. Very interesting. Nonetheless, I want to transition us towards today and how Sweden's current political positioning is within the world, how Sweden's governing ideology is at this point, particularly with the rise of China, how Sweden is interacting with China on the global stage, the state of right-wing populism within Sweden, and the many crises of global capitalism that are inherent in all of our societies, not least of which including Sweden.

Yes. Well, the position of the far right in Sweden is, if you take it in, in, how big the support is. You can see that that I have the figures here that the Swedish social democrats, they get around 20% or 21%

of the votes and the liberals get around 19%. And then the Swedish bar right get around 17%. So it's the third biggest biggest party, and it's very, I think very similar

to alternative for Deutschland because this also has been relation to old time fascism and nationalism. What was peculiar with Sweden, it's the same in Germany that

both the social democrats and the liberals up to now had been keen on keeping the far right out of any influence. No one wants to touch them. And it's very different from

Denmark where the populist far right is mainstream. They are everyone wants to cooperate with them if it's possible they are on television and talk shows and quiz shows and they are completely accepted and mainstream. But in Sweden they are, it's not so. They are They are not touchable.

No one wants to touch them. It is up to now, but it's very difficult because they are growing and growing to keep them out of influence. The social democrats, I think, will for sure not to cooperate with them, but I think that in the near future, I would think that the rebels will make some kind of cooperation

with the fire rights. There is very often a political crisis in Sweden because the governments are very unstated. So it's very fluent if the far right is going to get more influence or if they manage to keep them out. Concerning the more geopolitical situation, I think that Sweden, like the rest of Europe, is squeezed between the pressure from the U.S. to join the U.S. in a Cold War against China and Europe becoming more self-assured in trying to have its own foreign policy, which is not so hostile to China. And we can see that in many ways in Sweden,

but also in the European government in general. They are very hesitating in joining the U.S. in its war against the Cold War, against China the Trump area has certainly made an impact on the

European Union but they can see that America is not a stable alive anymore that there are

that Trump is not just a bump on the road but he has a general follower in the influence

in Indo-Dus they can see that then they For instance, when the Americans left the Afghanistan, they didn't consult with its partners. The Danes was very angry on America because they didn't told them anything, and they would come to them against them.

They just did it, and then the things were there with their, they were left life with no influence on this decision. And so they don't think that America is a very nice party in nature and in Morse. There's a lot of tensions going on on the geopolitical area. But at least Sweden has also joined the position that Chinese G5s telecom equipment is dangerous. and they want to survey what is going on by this network. From that, I think, is because that Sweden themselves are producing a G5 to become equipment and then hopefully sell more than the Chinese.

So I think this is just an overtime's position in that way. And for Denmark, I think it's one of the more loyal. to the U.S. military. You know, we have a colony next year, this is called Brineland, and there have been a lot of cooperation recently between the U.S. military and the things about more military in Greenland, because Finland is becoming more and more important due to climate change. and you can sail north of the agreement now

because the ISIS Navy in the summer and it's much more easier also to sail north of the agreement. And Greenland has become more and more interesting. So the U.S. wants to lose Greenland's harbors more for their battleships and they want to use more Greenland's airport. America have a base already in Greenland called the Tula base,

but they want to expand their military presence there, and they want to continue to fly big drones over Greenland and so on. But this is also due to the code war between the U.S., China, the U.S., but the sub-UChina, it obviously miniaturization of England. Yeah, that's incredibly interesting, and I remember during the Trump presidency, there was that thing he threw out there that he wanted to buy Greenland, and obviously that's not going to happen, but that relationship between the Danes and the Americans, it comes to Greenland as an increasingly important geopolitical position is something certainly to

keep an eye on. And as climate change melts the Arctic, you know, predictions are saying by mid-century, there will be full passage through the Arctic for the first time in human history. And that will and already is becoming a new site of inter-imperialist struggle, geopolitical struggle, economic struggle, etc. I did not know the view of the Danes in regards to the Afghanistan withdrawal and how little coordination there was. So even after Trump leaves office, there's still this, you know, lingering suspicion of the reliability and stability of the American Empire making its allies increasingly nervous. Another thing to keep our eyes on. But I am interested in the status, because you were mentioning the status of the far right in

Sweden, I'm interested in the status of the revolutionary left, those that would consider themselves to the left of the Social Democratic Party even. Do you have any insight into the status of the revolutionary left in Sweden today? No much. There is, if we go to the left of the Social Democrats, there are, you can say, the old 68 left and the old communist,

which, yes, it's called the left-wing party. in Sweden and they have around i think eight percent but they are completely mainstream if we're not revolutionaries focusing on parliamentarian struggle and i think if we go to the non- parliamentarian struggle in in Sweden and they are not very big as far as i know There is a particular thing in Sweden is that there is, what is it called, a syndicalist trade union, which are very progressive, I think, and which are trying all the time to create trade union struggle along the global

production, change, and making a lot of the thought for, or the trade human struggle in the south. One example that's come to my mind is that, you know, in Sweden there is a strange monopoly on selling alcohol. It is the state that has been a minority of selling alcohol, and there are special stores in Sweden with sell alcohol, you could not just buy it in the second one. And they're together with the employees in these stores and the South African workers on wine farms. In the wine production, they are trying to, because there have been terrible working conditions for people on the wine industry. wine farms in South Africa

so there have been pressure from from this workers on the stores with sell wine in Sweden and cooperation here to the workers

in South Africa it's just one example and another example is that they are trying to organize Filipino workers in Sweden and there's a many examples i i think which is a it's a very progressive uh trade and there's also

small uh circles of ancient illness movements especially working with paristhan in in sweden and then there is also this radical environment movement in in the in the sweden of course but they still you know they are very radical but they still appeal to the allowing power to redirect their policy to save the climate. They don't have their own alternative strategy to implement the necessary steps. But I know that my friend Gabriel Kearn is at the moment writing a book on Zerges-Lev, on Bois 7, on Bill Zinichnet, which will be published on P.N. Chris in the spring. Excellent. So the last chapter of your book is titled towards a transnational, anti-systemic movement.

Can you summarize your arguments from that last chapter? And can you also tell us how class analysis plays into this? Because I know that there's some people who have read this that have been wondering about the class analysis of your conception of a transnational antisystemic movement. Well, first of all, I think that it's important to revitalize, I think, the international solidarity and international struggle against imperialism. I think that nationalism has been a trojan horse that have divided the global cultured. I think that to avoid this, I think that any national struggle have to be based on a global perspective that production is organized on a global perspective

now in this global production change and commodities are traded in a world market and we have a global economy. So we have to all. organize, of course, globally also. And this global perspective has to entail a clear anti-imperist aspect. I think that any defense of the Swedish welfare state in our imperial mode of living and consumption is not a step towards socialism.

our struggle has to be coordinated and and supported and with the global south I think however I don't think we can make a new international as the as the Konchern was in 19 we don't have the same situation. We don't have this Bolshevik revolution

and the backing of a real state that's actually game World

Revolution at top priority in the 20s and we don't have

this figure of Lenin the socialists and communists and are very

fragmented and divided into a multitude of political lines and the issues a survey.

So I think that a new international cannot be constructed as a master plan from the below. We have to build it slowly from a forward. We have to build it slowly

from below. And that means that we have to have this global perspective up in front in our strategies and develop it in each of our organization and

slowly build this international networks and they can be built up actually if it's possible in trade union and peasant women and indigenous people and anti-inclailists and

climans by many kinds of the struggle and these sub-internals could know merge into a more holistic international's with the time passing and again focusing on the on the common action so I think it should be built

from below and the focus on on action action and it's I don't know what you mean about the class analysis I don't think that that the that the that the majority of the project in the global north they be joining this struggle at the moment. But things can change when the crisis are deep in the global north. And I think that many things are moving very fast now with the U.S. dominance.

It's falling very quickly on the rise of China. I think we can have going in for a very dramatic period in the next decade. Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Torkel. It's always a pleasure to have you on. I always learn an immense amount from both your interviews with us, but also the books themselves.

This book is writing the wave Sweden's integration into the imperialist world system. Before I let you go, can you please let our listeners know where they can find you and your work online? There's a website called the anti-imperilist.net. And a lot of my materials are on that website. And my, yeah, there's also a Danish website, but it's mostly Danish stuff there. But there's also some English there. And the Danish website is called Snurter State in decode.

It's the Parasat state, in the UK. and I have also put up some stuff on the academic webs like academia and research date and what else you are welcome to drop me a mail and white what stuff you are interested in and I'm sending. Yeah, wonderful. And I'll link to as much of that in the show notes as possible. And we've also had you on the show before to discuss your previous book. I'll link to that in the show notes.

so people that like this interview can check that out. You also did a recent interview with our friends over at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. So if you like this discussion and you want to learn more and hear another interview with some great comrades, check out Millennials Are Killing Capitalism and their interview with Torkel. Henry, thank you so much for coming on the show and co-hosting. Do you want to let listeners know where they can find you in your work online? Sure. And just since Torkel mentioned anti-imperialist net, a shout out to my friend and comrade,

Namanya Lukich at Anti-Imperialist Net, who is actually who introduced me to Torkel's work. So thank you, Namanya, for doing so. I've really enjoyed it since I have gotten into it. Listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995. That's H-U-C-1-995. And, of course, you should all be listening to Guerrilla History. You know, obviously you like Brett. You listen to this show.

He's one of the co-hosts on that show as well. And we have excellent guests, everyone from. you know, world-class historians like Gerald Horn to revolutionaries like Hicili-Yami and Joma C-S-S-S-on. We have guerrilla, we have Grev-Left fan favorites like Alex Avenia and Nick Estes. So if you have been to listen to Gorilla History yet, you should subscribe to it wherever you find your podcasts. And follow us on Twitter at Guerrilla underscore pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod. Here, here.

Thank you both so much for coming on the show. I look forward to talking with both of you soon. I'm on stamos and peace make the life I never give it a home

no medicine it's the same of what you're going to know or with a side you never can't have a home so someone's going to kill her

I don't know what I've seen a row, but I've seen you. Yes, I know, I'm saying alone, I'm the echo of the road. go and the road. Rather what I feel like to see you, go to see you, get up to see you, get up. You're finally running a sermon. You're finally not burning a sun. When most labels, and peace new lives.

I never give it our home I've never said It's the same It's the same way you're doing now Oh, all the side We never killed on a home So someone's good learning killer

I'll see you know that I've seen you I saw the world I'm there going to be a corner of the world I don't know. Thank you.