The left in the 21st century – the revolutionary and socialist perspective.
Socialism in the 21st century

Introduction

The situation for the revolutionaries in the 21st century is different from the 20th century, but also there are many similarities.
The working people are still the main revolutionary force. In the rich countries we see that educated groups get proletarianized and increased economic differences between rich and poor. Globally we see a development of division of work between north and south, production is in the south.

Feminization of the working class

Women are a big part of the working class, like they always have been. Now they also are a big part of the employed working class. When the service sector is growing, typical jobs for women like nursing and cleaning and working in stores are growing in number. The big factories with a majority of male workers are disappearing from the countries in the North, but still there are big places of work, like hospitals and other service institutions. The revolutionary left has to consider this when we make our strategies for mobilization of the working class.
In Norway we have good experiences with alliances between labour unions with a majority of women and feminist organisations. This front is called "Women across divides" and includes annual national conferences, local conferences, and different other initiatives. "Women across divides" is a way to strengthen the knowledge and solidarity between female workers, and to develop a strategy for the struggle.
We have developed the slogan: male chauvinism is class cooperation. This is because we see that diminishing women is to weaken our strength. We need to have female cadres in the women dominated professions, and male chauvinism is destroying this. Demands like shorter working day, better and cheaper day-care for children, reproductive rights like the right to abortion and higher salaries for women are important class demands.

Anti-imperialism

Anti-imperialism is crucial to defeat capitalism. There is no way today to be anti-capitalist and not anti-imperialist. Solidarity with the fighting people in Iraq, Palestine, Nepal and all the other important struggles is important. We meet a lot of suspicion and even criminalization of the solidarity movement. This is because the imperialists need the people of the north to not cooperate with and be inspired by the victories of the south. The campaign against Moslems in Europe is an example of this policy. In Norway we have seen that supporters of the Iraqi resistance have been monitored by the Police Security Agency, in Denmark they closed down web-pages that support so called terrorists, i.e. PFLP and FARC.
The punishment of the Palestinian people for their choice of Hamas in the 2006 parliamentary elections is also an example of this policy. When different European organisations invited representatives from Hamas in April and May 2006 the Norwegian government broke some of the isolation of the Palestinian government by granting at least one of the representatives Shengen-visa, but still they don’t want to meet the representatives on a political level. This shows the importance of a strong solidarity movement that can push the government.
We have seen that the anti-war movement has mobilized a lot of people, but also that the movement has become smaller and smaller. In Norway we experienced that after a change in government, from the center-right government we had until autumn 2005, to the so called red green alliance with a so called social democrat and a so called socialist party, the anti-war movement has been even more toothless. It is important for us to show that it is not only US that are waging imperialist wars; Norway is also supporting these wars. The demonstration in March against 3 years of American occupation of Iraq was an example of this; the anti-war-coalition changed their leaflets, from attacking the Norwegian involvement in the war against Iraq, to only focus on the US.

The European Union

The fight to not join the EU, exit the EU and to limit the EU is an important anti-imperialist fight.
The bourgeoisie in Europe is developing new policies for increased exploitation. Policies are being developed that will undermine the legal possibilities for the struggle of the working class and the peoples of Europe. This process presupposes an undermining of the nation-states and subjecting them to supra-national state forms. The multinationals are developing EU into a prison of nations, under the hegemony of the strongest imperialist states in the EU. This is happening parallel with the process that even the smaller states -like Norway- are developing their own imperialist activities.
The EU institutions are being strengthened in accordance with these aims, and the largest imperialist powers in the EU will strengthen their positions. It's becoming increasingly clear that a strategy for the anti-imperialist forces to struggle within the EU system is increasingly difficult. The only way to go forward is to raise the struggle to withdraw from EU and to cooperate in a struggle to have the EU dissolved. For a non-member like Norway this means getting out of the suffocating grip of the European Economic Area. When the progressive forces back away from stating the parole of getting out of the EU, they leave this arena open for the extreme right, who seizes the national question and perverts it, in the same way Hitler did in the 1930s.
The AKP considers that a socialist strategy must involve the liberation of the nations of Europe from supra-national state forms like the EU. A future socialist Europe must build on multilateral agreements based on voluntariness on the part of all nations. Just like the national socialist state cannot be built on the bourgeoisie state, it is futile to think that the EU can be turned into a socialist Europe.
Some try to picture the EU as a better alternative than the US, a more peaceful world power. It is important to unmask this argument, and to show that the EU is a project made for the capitalists and not for the people. It is possible for the fighting people in the word to exploit contradictions between the great powers, but that does not mean that the EU is progressive. Because of this the EU can never be used as a tool to unite the European working class and the projects for a European left party is therefore a way to fool the working class in Europe if it doesn’t take clear stand against EU.

Reformism

The role of reformism is evident in all these cases. It is important to build fronts on minimum platforms to ally more people. But these fronts will not function progressively if the demands are not progressive. Therefore we have to fight for progressive minimum platform fronts, and make alternatives when this is not possible. This is a concrete decision to be made from case to case. For instance in Norway we have a very broad front against entering EU, but needed to make a Free Iraq Committee because the anti-war movement did not support the resistance.

So in my view, a socialist strategy for the 21st century has to build on:
women’s liberation
rejection of EU
anti-imperialism
fight against reformism
After the fall of the Soviet Union many of the differences between the left-wing parties and organisations are not important anymore. I hope that this situation makes it easier for the revolutionary parties to cooperate and exchange information about our work.