The Eurovision Song Contest kicked off on 7 May in Malmö, Sweden, at the same time as Israel launched its assault on Rafah, where more than 1.5 million Palestinian refugees are now living. In a powerful show of solidarity, Malmö responded with one of the biggest demonstrations Sweden has seen in decades.

On 27-28 April, 168 communists gathered to found the Revolutionary Communist Party (RKP) in Stockholm. Now we are setting out to find all of Sweden's communists, who want to organise to crush capitalism.

“Blinken was so impatient that he almost snatched the binder out of Kristersson's hands”, is how Swedish bourgeois newspaper Aftonbladetreported on the Prime Minister of Sweden handing over the final NATO signatures to the US Secretary of State. Along with the new Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA), the war hawks in Washington have got all they could ever have hoped for – and more.

A new generation of young people is shedding the illusions of capitalism and moving towards communism. But without organisation we can do nothing. In order to gather the forces of real communism, our Swedish comrades are launching the Revolutionary Communist Party (RKP).

Builders, painters, dockers, factory workers, electricians, postal workers: all are now acting together to win collective agreements for the workers at Tesla, in a battle that has become a decisive showdown. In Denmark, Norway and Finland, dock and truck workers have announced that they will join the fight. 

Mechanics at Tesla's 10 workshops in Sweden have been on strike since 27 October: the first of its kind at the EV giant. The action was taken after the Swedish industrial union IF Metall told its members to down tools in response to the electric car giant refusing to sign a collective bargaining agreement in a move derided by CEO (and world’s richest man) Elon Musk as “insane”. 

“The politicians' smears are not because they are strong... They are afraid that the people, we workers, will realise our own power. Afraid that we workers will unite, organise and threaten their rule." Fredrik, a communist from Revolution (IMT in Sweden), spoke at the 10,000-strong demonstration in Stockholm on Saturday. This is his speech.

Sweden is often presented as a model of class collaboration, stability and a robust welfare state. The truth is that it is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Decades of cuts and privatisations has led to massive discontent, aggravated by one of the highest falls in living standards in Europe in the past two years.

“Those of you who haven’t joined yet – now is the time to do it. Join the struggle to finish capitalism once and for all, to finish the history of class struggle, to finish our prehistory so that we can enter the era of communism.” With these powerful words, Ylva Vinberg ended the congress of Revolution (IMT in Sweden), gathering over 100 enthusiastic Marxists from all over the country. 

Marxism 2022, this year's revolutionary school of the IMT in Sweden, was special. As the working class is reawakening in one European country after another, the relevance of the ideas of Marxism has never been more evident. Sweden is no exception, as proven by the fact that thousands of miners in Kiruna and Malmberget – defying the union bureaucracy – have just raised a radical demand for a 20 percent wage increase.

Sweden’s most racist, nationalistic and out-of-touch election campaign in living memory has produced, appropriately enough, a government with a policy to make life worse for workers, while blaming it on immigrants. But no amount of racist slander can hide the enormous problems facing the Swedish masses. We must prepare for class struggle.

Whilst Sweden is often portrayed internationally as an egalitarian – even a ‘socialist’ country – the reality is that today it is one of the most unequal countries in the world, as demonstrated in the newly published book, ‘Sweden of the Greedy: how the welfare state became a paradise for the super-rich’. Moreover, as the recent sell-out of the Kurds reveals, the Swedish ruling class are vicious imperialists whose concern for ‘human rights’ is sheer hypocrisy.

The Swedish government passed the entry exam to join NATO by promising to help Turkish imperialism drown the Kurdish struggle in blood.

US imperialism is the strongest force on the planet behind continued capitalist exploitation, poverty and misery. Now, the Swedish government has decided that it is in the interests of Swedish imperialism to join the US-led war alliance, NATO. We say: Fight NATO, fight imperialism – long live international working-class solidarity!

Over the weekend, over a hundred Marxists gathered for the national congress of Revolution, the Swedish section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), in preparation for the revolutionary events that lie ahead of us both in Sweden and on a world scale.