Denmark - ys13.en

A teaser to the political situation in Denmark

Denmark is a small country north off germany, with around 5 mill. people. There is a welfare state with a relatively big public sector. There is no minimum wage decided by law, so the salary and other workers rights is decided by a form off class cooperation. This is between the national united tradeunion, which organizes around 80%, and a interest organization for the bourgeoisie.

For the past two years Denmark has had a socialdemocrat governement together with a small reformist socialist party and a social liberal party. They came into power after around 10 years with a liberal government supporter by and extreme right wing party (The Danish peoples party). It was a broad campaign by the unions and other peoples organisation such as the student organsiations that kept a firm critical line towards the right wing government, that shifted the mentality. The campaign was supported by a political alliance between the socialdemocrat and the reformist party. They made a lot of progressiv economical promises that where popular. At the same time they have almost adopted the right wing immigrant policies.

Since the leftist government took power the broad anticapitalist party The Red/Green Alliance (where the national section of the fourth is a founder and still active) has been the supporting party and has voted for the state budgets both years. The revolutionary left is a factor in the student unions, but is very weakly organizer and coordinated due to disillusion on how to work in unions and some political resistance against coordinating between the young revolutionaries. The reformist party earlier has been very organized within the student movement, but the most educated bureaucrats have left the reformist party to join the socialdemocrats.

The unions and the studentmasses have both been attacked by the government’s politics. Concrete there has been student protest against cut backs on student payment, where SUF (Socialist youth front) have been hugely involved. The other major attack have been on the teachers where the government supported the cut backs and ended in a 4 week long lockout, where the teachers lost.

The lack of organization in the movement has left the hopes that where a big political factor and had much potentiel is starting to get burned out due to the betrayal of the govenrment they brought to power. The Red Green Alliance who are suppose to give answers and keep the momentum up are very focused on maximizing the parliamentary influence this means that they in practise have supported attacks on unemployeds rights to not vote against the national budgets and thereby trigger an election.

In the red/green alliance, the question on how to vote on the national budget has been a big question. The section supported voting for the budget the first time, but where against it last time. After summer it will again be a question. Another big discussion within the party is that there have been opened off a debate on the political program off the party.

The youth off the section is organized in SUF. Here the resent political focus have been the economical crisis and international solidarity. The section is quite good represented in the youth. The period off time SUF will be campaigning on the struggles off the youth.