Communist Party of Sweden on election deadlock

It has been several weeks since the parliamentary elections and Sweden does not yet have a government, but the old government is still in place as a transitional government. However, negotiations are ongoing and the games are replacing each other. How should we understand this process? What do the parties' positions actually mean?

War and Peace

Under capitalism, war is inevitable. The struggle of big and small capital for market share and other advantages drives armament and war, because all capitals grow at each other's expense – in order to continue growing, they have to take from each other, and this is ultimately done with the power of arms.

In recent years, we have witnessed several regional conflicts, not least in Syria and Ukraine, but also most recently in Iran, where the fight for the Strait of Hormuz and power in the Middle East is in full swing. In parallel, trade economic measures such as sanctions and tariffs are used to target competitors and strengthen equity.

In order to be able to compete, each country is therefore required to strengthen its military capacity – on the one hand to defend itself against competitors and on the other to strike at them. This is also clearly reflected in the enormous rearmament that is now taking place, especially in Europe and Asia, where both the strongest and the less prominent imperialist powers are strengthening their military capacity.

In Sweden, the Riksdag has unanimously approved an extra 300 billion for defense through 2034, which meant that Sweden increased its military spending by a little more than 15 percent last year, and that Swedish military spending last year amounted to 2.5 percent of GDP - compared to 1.1 percent in 2016.

All parliamentary parties agree on this goal – the major criticism from, for example, the Left Party was not against the rearmament itself, but how it would be financed. Militarization thus has solid support in the Riksdag.

The same applies to Sweden's accession to NATO, where all parties in parliament agree. At the time of entry, both the Left Party and the Green Party voted against entry, but have since changed their minds, and both parties today state that they are not actively pursuing the issue of leaving, but instead use vague language about changing NATO from within.

There is thus total and compact political support for Swedish rearmament and for the fight for the competitive advantages of Swedish large companies on the world market.

Economy

Electricity prices are expected to be higher this year than in a long time and this will hit ordinary families harder than before. Many families have already been on their knees in previous years and the situation will not get any easier now. Already in the first half of 2026 electricity prices were higher than they have been for several years and with winter approaching this will put great pressure on working people.

As if this weren't enough, other factors such as soaring fuel prices, higher loan-to-value ratios, higher rents, and completely insane public transportation prices have placed burden upon burden on working people.

All of this – and more – meant that capital, together with social democracy, was able to push down real wages to levels they were at 10-15 years ago. The result of this development has been that the proportion of people living in poverty in Sweden has doubled in just a few years.

Capitalist development, where more and more has to be spent on the military and where companies constantly demand growth and more capital in order to be able to assert themselves in international competition, is inexorably driving the development towards poverty for the broad masses. The development within capitalism is clear: the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

This development is naturally welcomed by most parties, while other parties are making toothless proposals that scratch the surface. For example, in order to regulate the banking market, which lives by forcing millions of dollars in debt on people, they want to introduce a 50 percent tax on the profits made by the bank that exceed the average profit between the years 2018-2022. This tax could have provided around 10 billion kronor extra per year, which could then have been ploughed into military armaments, while the looting of the banks could have continued. The Left Party's proposal aims for nothing more than to create the illusion that exploitation can be made nice, that capitalist violence can be made acceptable.

School and healthcare

In France, protests have exploded over school conditions and the students have had enough. They have the support of many of their teachers and large sections of the French working class. The situation in our country is not as explosive, but we can see without much effort that this could also be our future – where the number of teachers and doctors has been greatly reduced, where the maintenance of schools and health facilities has deteriorated significantly and where teachers and students, as well as doctors, nurses and patients, are getting tired.

We can see this future because we see the general development within capitalism – we see how military spending increases and how the government, whatever its color, subsidizes the international competitive struggle of Swedish large companies through cutbacks. In this situation, with sharply increasing competition, the state, where the regions and municipalities are also part of the machinery, will have to make severe cutbacks. That is what awaits us – but no one is talking about it.

Instead, the narrow discussions within the school sector about whether or not to allow profit-taking are conducted as if there were a qualitative difference between private and municipal schools in what is taught – we instead emphasize that it is a capitalist school, whether private or not, that prepares Swedish youth for the tasks they have to perform in the interests of Swedish capital in the future. We therefore fight for a school that can guarantee youth all-round development and that can take advantage of youth's development potential.

The same applies to healthcare – we fight for good and efficient healthcare for all working people, while the parliamentary parties strive to shape healthcare based on the needs of capital. The overall need for and the consensus around competitiveness and military buildup mean that healthcare is doomed to cuts and efficiency cuts from the outset.

Conclusions

We see that all system parties – those parties that do not question or fight against the capitalist system – must adapt to the needs of Swedish capital on all issues, when it fights against other capital. There is no other alternative. For the parties that want to administer capitalism, there are no other alternatives than to favor their own capital.

Therefore, the differences between the political parties on the truly important issues are minimal – the differences that do exist only maintain the illusion that there are alternatives within the system. The political game that is now going on will not lead to any real changes, but the trend will continue as before.

For this reason, we also emphasize the system question as the most important: we must confront the entire capitalist system with a completely new system, the socialist system. Only by doing this can we make a real difference for the working people and we see with all the desired clarity that our slogan during the election was correct – don’t throw away your vote, strengthen the communists!

Communist Party of Sweden