Re: [Marxism] New Marxists finding their own way

[Joonas Laine <jjonas@xxxxxx>]

Eric Johnson wrote:
> Joonas, I would love to hear about the peculiarities of Finnish
> politics!  would be great if you could give us a short overview of
> the general political scene for starters!  thank you, Comradely, Eric

(Hi Eric and others who are interested, sorry I could get back sooner..)

I could write about a few things that might be of interest.. maybe,
first, though, a sketch of the basic political field.. then, second,
perhaps the internationally most interesting question is Finland's
position as one of the few EU countries that are not members of NATO
(IIRC, Austria, Sweden and Ireland are the others, at least of the "old"
EU-25 countries). Third, there's the several communist groups, their
politics and lineage.

So first, the political set up.

There's three major political parties here, all getting a 22-25 percent
of the vote in parliamentary and municipal elections. First there's the
social democrats (SDP), which I guess is a pretty normal soc.dem party,
like the ones in Western Europe, i.e. the right wing realpolitik tends
to dominate, and the left wing keeps hoping that the "welfare state"
(the highest stage of social democracy) could somehow be maintained.

The second big party is the National Coalition Party, originally founded
as a coalition of different bourgeois groups during the 1st WW with the
aim of making Finland a kingdom under a German king. Nowadays the NCP is
the party of economic liberalism, and as to values, both conservatives
and liberals are represented in their ranks.

The third big party is the Central party, known as the the Rural
people's party up to the 60s. The roots of the party are, then, in the
Finnish countryside, where people still tend to vote for it in great
numbers. I have the idea that the Central party is somewhat of an
anomaly in Europe, where the division is simpler, just between a soc.dem
and a conservative party. Nowadays the Central Party tries to be a
general party for everybody (just like the other two), somewhere between
the SDP and the NCP.

Two of these three big parties form the government, taking two or more
of the smaller parties on board, in order to get the parliamentary
majority. There's the Greens (10%), who are a liberal party;
Vasemmistoliitto (Left Union, 8%), the new incarnation of the
eurocommunists, a left-wing soc.dem party; the Swedish People's Party
(5%), a liberal party supported by much of the Swedish-speaking
population; the True Finns, (4%) a petty-bourgeois nationalist
conservative party.

I don't know how it is elsewhere, but in terms of discourse, here
everybody from left to right claims to defend the "welfare state" (also
by means of further privatization!).

The present government includes The Central party (with Prime Minister),
the NCP (2nd biggest), the Greens, and the Swedish people's party (as a
"house rule", they get a minister in every government). It is a new
phenomenon in post-2WW Finnish history to have a bourgeois coalition;
previously the SDP, the Central party and the Communists were the three
big parties, two of whom formed the government.

Ever since the USSR collapsed, there's been a drive towards "the West",
which in practice means EU and NATO. The urge to prove that Finland has
always really been part of "the West", even during the years when USSR
influence kept the bourgeoisie on their toes, aggravates this tendency.

The EU membership referendum was in 1994, with 57% for, 43% against.
Finland is not a NATO member yet, around 60% of the people are against
it and only some 20% support it. However, most people believe that
Finland is going to join anyway.

And so it seems to me too, I can't see any force in existence at the
moment stopping these developments. Finland has taken many steps towards
NATO integration (with every possible "partnership for peace" etc), even
though every time it's said "This is not a step towards NATO
membership". That was the case, too, when Finland decided to join the
NATO Reaction Force a few weeks ago, and everybody knows what it was a
step towards. There is already some voices who say - and quite
accurately - that Finland is already so close to NATO that it might just
as well apply for membership and be done with the formalities.

Many NATO supporters argue that NATO has changed from a military union
towards a global crisis prevention body, and that's why we should join..
to join the "western value community" etc.

But just as many argue that we need to be members because we might need
military support at some point - we need to join now, because it'll be
too late to join when the shit has hit the fan. The thinking behind this
one is probably of the same kind as with the ex-socialist bloc
countries, most of whom I think have already joined NATO.

The reason is to get protection against Russia.

The Finnish people have a very high "will to defend the country" against
an attacker (=Russia), which has its origins as a nation-wide phenomenon
in the experience of the Winter War (1939-40) and the nationalistic
stories which have been woven around it - before 2WW anti-Russian
nationalism was a thing only of the White Guards that won the civil war
in 1918. Worshipping the few remaining war veterans is part and parcel
of Finnish nationalism, and also of the culture of the Finnish army and
the "defend the country" mentality. What might be interesting is that
also the Continuation War as a Nazi ally (1941-44) is part of this
story, although with the disclaimer "We were fighting our own separate war".

Finland has a consription army with 80% of the male population serving
for 6-12 months, and the present war-time reserve is 350.000 soldiers.
(My understanding is that it's a lot.) Even though civil service is
possible, ones choosing it are consided dodgers, and only a few percent
choose it.

I think the large conscript army is better than a professional army, but
the mentality of it at present is nothing to cheer for. In my
understanding, the fundamental question during war time for Finland is
how to guarantee that neither Russia/Germany/EU/USA uses our country as
a beachhead against the enemy (whoever that is). That has been _the_
question during the two world wars, and Finland has always chosen "the
West". There's been anglophiles and germanophiles within the ruling
group, but no-one has had any positive thoughts for Russia since
independence (in 1917).

Well now the question would be put a bit differently, as all the
contenders would be imperialist countries, and as part of EU and the
trade flows Finland depends on, the country's position is already quite
compromised. But anyway I think a conscript army is better for Finland
than a professional army.

At the moment Finland has some 1.000 soldiers abroad, in various UN, EU
and Nato Partnership for Peace operations.. 500+ in ex-Jugoslavia,
around a hundred in Afghanistan in the north (not in "hard action" stuff
in the south, as they like to point out!)

Well that's it for military stuff. Next there's the freak show of
Finnish communist groups. The lineage is relatively straightforward, so
I'll go through most of it.

In the beginning - say, in 1944 - there was the newly-legalised
Communist Party (SKP), a pro-Moscow party which was the only game in
town until around 1966, when the party split internally into pro-Moscow
and Eurocom-type "national communism". The party was kept formally
together until the early 80s, when the pro-Moscow minority was expelled.
The expelled minority kept appealing for unity, but a group within them
decided that they had finally had it with Gorbachev, and founded their
own party, The Communist Workers' Party (CWP) in 1988.

In 1990 the SKP majority dissolved SKP and formed Vasemmistoliitto, a
leftist soc.dem party. The old minorityists took hold of the old name
SKP in 1994, and has followed a kind of eurocommunist line (or
something) ever since.

The CWP split in 2002 over principles on cooperation. The people who
were in favour of a more wider interpretation of cooperation were
expelled, and founded The League of Communists. They have now oriented
towards building a popular front against monopolies from scratch with
and have founded a front party for the purpose, Finland's Workers Party.
Everybody apart from the monopoly bourgeoisie is welcome!

What remained of the CWP is 70-80 years old on average, and has taken
to publishing historical articles on Stalin, the Soviet Union and the
Finnish Civil war, among the angry readers' letters quality anonymoys
pieces that make up the whole of their paper. It comes out 15 times a
year or something.

At present SKP has around 3.000 members (and decreasing), around 10% of
whom are active; the League of Communists has probably 100 members, like
the CWP. SKP has a weekly paper which is relatively good, much better
than any of the other left-wing papers around.

And then the youth.

In the 90s when the old democratic youth league was founded again as the
youth section of Vasemmistoliitto, communists formed their own Communist
Youth. After a few years the latter was taken over by people influenced
by SWP-UK style trotskyism, something quite new in Finland. The name was
changed into Socialist League, and they're a member of the IST. They
function in Helsinki, and how many members they have is anybody's guess.
I would say it's around 100 or probably less. They split around 2000 or
so, and a few people formed The Marxist Workers' League that is now a
member of the CRFI.

After the Communist Youth changed their name into Socialist League and
joined the IST, the ones who disapproved of this founded the Communist
Youth League (CYL) in 2000. Some people who had their background in the
CYL, founded The Marxist-Leninist Society in 2005 after being
disillusioned with SKP. In the seminar the society organised last year,
they presented their plans for business activities and other stuff to
raise money for revolutionary activity on a professional basis (instead
relying on 100% voluntary work and time). There was 40-50 people
present, mostly from other groups already mentioned.

It was a hopeful seminar, the leading comrades were all my age (29) or
younger, so even though my impression is that many of them have more
understanding for Stalin than I do, they have the potential to learn a
lot in the process (just like myself), and hopefully I can bring in some
influence from what I've learned about non-sectarianism on this list..
already the starting point of the seminar was good, because it was not
program-centered - programmatic questions were not really dealt with at
all - but instead it was mostly about practical stuff.. what to do next,
to get things going. Instead of trying to tackle every question all over
the country with limited resources, why not try centering on some issues
first. In SKP that wasn't possible, 90% of the membership is just
passive mass that cannot be convinced to have any input.. to the present
line and leadership continues supported by this inertia..

Yeah well maybe this raises a smile.. what to do next, isn't that what
everybody claims to do.. and doesn't everybody believe in what they're
doing, even if it was completely unrealistic and all that.. but I think
i'm still counted among the young and restless, and most of my comrades
here too, so we're allowed to try out things for a while before it's too
late, no matter what you relics here say!

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