Traditional socialist ideas have often focused on the fight to free – to liberate – various collectives, nationally and internationally, involving the proletariat and working class; peoples who have been occupied and forced to kneel beneath the flags of colonial masters, and peoples who have suffered stifling oppression under innumerable military dictatorships.
Within the labour movement, peace and freedom are still regarded as the direct and logical consequence of liberation of the collective – often described as the people. This is illustrated by the traditional slogan “Freedom for the people, peace to the world”. This was the Social-Democratic 1 May slogan as recently as 2003.
Certainly, liberating the collective is a condition of individual freedom. It is impossible for an individual to achieve freedom if she feels that the collective to which she belongs – let’s say because of her ethnic origin – is oppressed. However, liberating the collective is far from sufficient. Just because the collective – the ethnic group, for example – is liberated from prior burdens and discrimination, it does not entail freedom for all the individuals that indentify themselves as part of the group.
The path to a person’s freedom is longer than this, longer than the people’s.
Allow me to present two examples. The racist apartheid regime in South Africa long oppressed the vast majority of the country’s population through its race laws. The ANC, with Nelson Mandela at its head, organised a powerful resistance movement that garnered significant international support. In 1994, the country was liberated and the first democratic elections were held. Apartheid was abolished and equality before the law was written into the law books. But even if the country was liberated, as were the previously oppressed ethnic groups, it hardly meant freedom for all its citizens. Millions of South Africans still live in poverty and many women live in vulnerable situations. South Africans with Aids and HIV must cope with widespread discrimination.
The second example is Zimbabwe. In 1980, when the country was finally liberated from colonial violence and a racist government, it led to neither national nor individual freedom. Time would show that one dictatorship had been replaced by another; this time under a Black man: Robert Mugabe. Many found this difficult to deal with – both in the African independence movements and European solidarity organisations, as well as within Swedish social-democracy.
This year, South Africa celebrates 15 years of democracy. Zimbabwe cannot celebrate a single one.
What does Sweden’s own path to liberation look like? Have we learnt to take two entirely different political activities into account: liberation and freedom? Have we learnt not to strive for power for power’s sake? Sweden became a democracy in 1921 when the first general, and equal, elections were held. That was when we started on our path. Pensions and schools improved, labour rights were strengthened, as were women’s, and public welfare started to develop. The Swedish labour movement knew a person’s freedom is both freedom from political oppression, and freedom from hunger, cold and ignorance. By joining forces and becoming involved in organisations within the labour movement – political parties, trades unions, residents’ associations, cooperatives and many others – Swedes changed their society and thus their own lives. This experience influences how the Olof Palme International Center works with people and organisations in the world’s poorer countries. We want to contribute to helping more people take control of their lives and communities – in Burma, Moldavia and Colombia.
We are meeting this weekend – international solidarity activists from throughout Sweden and other parts of the world – at the annual Palme Days, in order to discuss exactly this: the path from liberation to freedom. The labour movement has many years of experience of supporting organisations that work to liberate people from oppression, in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. There are many lessons to learn, and the labour movement needs to reflect on both good and bad experiences. What happens when an underground liberation organisation that is controlled from the top down must become a democratic, modern political party? How do we best support today’s liberation movements and what experience should we take with us to our partnerships with movements in Palestine, Western Sahara and Belarus, for example? And what do these partnerships teach us about our own striving for liberation and freedom here at home? Let us learn from history, and learn the difference between the two.
JENS ORBACK