Faces of
« Finlandization »
•by Pekka Haapakoski A in Finland in late May; in the aftermath of this "hot tumultuous two month long strike. wave came to an end spring" a popular front government, the third since the mid1960s, was formed on the initiative of President Kekkonen, These two contradictory phenomena (symbols of class struggle and class cooperation) well illustrate the paradoxical character of Finnish politics during the past decade, which can only be understood as a combined reflection of two groups of factors. On the one hand Finland is a typical peripheral imperialist country with a relatively one-sided and vulnerable economy; it is politically unstable and a radical tradition exists among the working class (reflected in the strength of the Communist party). On the other hand Finland's special political-geographical status between capitalist Europe and the Soviet Union has had deep influence on the forms of political superstructure and consciousness. The first factor results in frequent government crisis, relatively deep class-polarization on the rank-and-file level, and many militant economic strikes. The latter factor deeply distorts the effects the basic trends and relationship of social forces have on the government, which in the 1970s has been increasingly dominated by a special variety of presidential bonapartism and the hiding of reality behind the curtain of an official "interclass" ideology. This curtain is upheld by all the important parties, from the conservatives to the minority communists, * even though hard reality has more and more often penetrated it recently. To understand this combination we have to take a closer look at the trends of Finnish class society during recent years, as well as the ideological mystifications which are likewise a part of the reality influencing these trends. The dilemma of Finnish capitalism Since the beginning of the international capitalist recession in 1974 it has become ever clearer to the Finnish bourgeoisie that the great modernizations of the 1960s and the freetrade accord with Common Market in 1973 did not in any way solve the basic problems. Finnish capitalism is still far too one-sidedly dependent on certain traditional key industries which are very vulnerable to conjunctural cycles. The productivity of industry also lags far behind the other Scandinavian countries, which constantly weakens the competitive position of Finnish capitalism and stimulates the high rate of inflation (15%). The massive dependence on imported raw materials and energy is an additional millstone around the neck of industry and creates chronic balance of payments difficulties for the economy as a whole. The result of these combined weaknesses was that the 197475 international recession hit Finland somewhat late but very drastically, and if is only since the end of 1976 that the first signs of a recovery have become visible. Gross national product stagnated throughout 1976 and the beginning of the upturn has been uneven in different sectors. While the prospects of the wood and paper industries and those of some industries exporting to to the USSR have been improving for some time, the metal, chemical, construction, and (in general) consumer goods industries are still deep in recession. Unemployment has even worsened during the early months of 1977; in April it stood at an all-time record: 160,000, or about 7% of the work force (to which must be added those who have emigrated to Sweden). *A minority of the CP began to function as a de facto public faction after the statements made by the party majority concerning the invasion in Czechoslovakia in 1968. A formal split, however, never occurred; there is still a common Central Committee, but each faction has a parallel leadership. They participate in parliamentary and trade-union elections under common slates, but have separate factions for daily work. The minority has the majority in the common youth organization.
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FINLAND Inflation continued at an annual rate of 15% throughout the recession and there is no slowdown in sight. The devaluation of the Finnish mark in tandem with the Swedish crown may even accelerate this rate during coming months. Up to now the only positive note for the bourgeoisie has been the shrinking of balance of payments deficits to "tolerable" levels as a result of the extreme crisis policy of Bank of Finland, but it is hard to see how this gain can be preserved after the return to normal policy. The cold fact is that despite the momentary easing of the situation Finnish capitalism is suffering a structural crisis which is at least as grave as that of other "weak links" of the imperialist world (Britain, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, etc). This crisis can be resolved only by an aggressive reconquest of lost markets or by finding completely new outlays. In practice both solutions overlap and require basically the same type of measures: strong concentration, new state-financed investments, drastic "rationalization" of the existing apparatus of production and qualitative heightening of the rate of surplus value through various "stabilizing" and repressive measures against labor. Bourgeois strategy during the recession Since 1974 bourgeois strategy has more and more clearly been based on "pruning" industry though a selective tight money policy, cutting down of consumer demand, drastic reduction in social spending in the state budget, and "recycling" of these resources through selected subsidies to industry (mainly export industry). This has been combined with a buildup of a massive machinery for an incomes policy and various "sanction" systems supporting it. A qualitative new aspect in the enforcing of the incomes policy has been systematic coordination of the policies of the government, the Bank of Finland, the employers' organizations, and practically all the mass media (including radio and television) before every round of collective bargaining. This mighty coalition has been standing more aggressive and united against the working class every year. A big weakness in this Friedman-style policy of the bourgeoisie has been that in addition to the will and strength of the subjects it also requires the consent (or crushing) of the objects. Both requirements have been lacking because of extreme government instability and the strong resistance of the workers. The bourgeois response to this dilemma has been twofold. On the one hand there has been a rise in the use of the sharpest repressive weapons, such as organized strikebreaking, police violence, extremely high fines and antistrike laws. The general goal of a "strong state" has come to the foreground in daily discussions. Under Finnish conditions this march toward the strong state takes the form primarily of a presidential bonapartism personified by Kekkonen. His influence in Finnish politics has been very great for twenty years, but it has clearly risen to a new level during the 1970s. Since 1974 he has acted on a daily basis as a sovereign supreme judge in Finnish politics, dictating the composition, main decisions, and fall of governments, breaking important strikes with his personal authority, and paternalistically regulating the often bitter quarrels of the major political parties. 12
On the other hand the bourgeoisie has not put all its eggs in the basket of sharpened repression. The carrot of integration has been used simultaneously, and here again the role of Kekkonen has been quite decisive. In the midst of a strong class polarization and a withering away of the margin for reforms, the bourgeoisie, under the leadership of Kekkonen, has been able to make maximum use of the workers leaderships, to use the Social Democratic and Communist party bureaucracies as levers for weakening the collective strength of the working class and eroding the gains it has won in struggle. The key to understanding this puzzle is nothing other than the "special relationship" of Finland to the Soviet bureaucracy and the unchallenged authority of Kekkonen in the Kremlin. During the two decades of his presidency Kekkonen has made maximum use of this authority to make the workers parties his prisoners. In the case of the CP this is based simply on the fact that the Kremlin's word is still law for both wings and in the case of SP on the frustrating experience of internal split and long political isolation during its strongly prowestern and anticommunist period (1957-66). After these experiences the Social Democratic and Stalinist bureaucrats have recognized that it is impossible to participate in governing Finnish capitalism without the consent of both the Soviet bureaucracy and Kekkonen. This has led to their full participation in building a massive cult around him as a "progressive" politician standing above classes, in increasing his judicial, and actual powers year after year; and in repeatedly supporting his candidacy. Thus, Kekkonen's bonapartism is a focal point where the repressive and the integrative strategies of the Finnish bourgeoisie come together. A revealing expression of this is the coming presidential election of 1978, in which all the large political parties, from the conservatives to the CP-minority, stand for giving Kekkonen a six-year mandate. The government crisis and social struggles But if the stability of the presidency has been exceptional, the governments of recent years have been anything but stable. Crises have broken out one after the other and the political coloration of the cabinets has varied strongly. The fall of the popular front government in 1971 was followed by a four-year period of weak and quarrelling coalitions of Social Democrats and bourgeois center parties. This coalition broke up in spring 1975 and was followed by a short-lived "non-political" government. At the end of 1975 Kekkonen issued an executive order to form another popular front government, and all parties from the center to the CP complied (even though the CP-minority remained in partial opposition). This coalition divided internally during the spring 1976 strike wave; it lasted into autumn only because Kekkonen would not let it go. Thereafter both the workers parties remained in opposition for a while and a minority center bourgeois government was formed. In autumn it was de facto widened into a bourgeois coalition government as the conservatives pledged themselves to support it from outside. From the very beginning the bourgeois government took a hard line both in its economic solutions and in various
other legislative measures. It also prepared for the round of collective bargaining in spring 1977 and tightly closed ranks once again with the employers, the Bank of Finland, and the mass media. The main architect of the Finnish incomes policy, Keijo Liinamaa, prepared a proposal for a common agreement covering all wages as well as agricultural prices. It offered two-year accords, nominal wage increases half the size of the inflation rate, and no escalator clauses. A massive propaganda war was launched against all "rebels" who dared to present demands going beyond the Liinamaa proposal and the employers were gathering much sharper weapons for the most obstinate. But the bourgeois government was not the strong government it pretended to be. The pressure in the ranks forced most unions to turn down the Liinamaa proposal. A new hot spring began and the bourgeoisie once again had to turn to Kekkonen - and the workers leaderships - for help. The hot spring ... When the central trade-unions federation (SAK) and the other union federations turned down Liinamaa's "wholesale solution, " the employers and the government opted for a salami tactic: signing the agreements with the most willing unions and battling the others one by one. It is very revealing for the policy of SAK leaders that at no stage did they even seriously consider a united front of the unions to fight for new contracts, nor did they try to really mobilize their membership for the coming battles. Thus, a big part of the Finnish working class moved into battle with divided ranks, modest goals, and under a leadership that did not really want to fight but had to do so only because of the intransigent attitude of the employers. Despite all this, the workers were able to develop a massive two-month wave of struggle which toward the end developed into a genuine test of strength and showed that the massive unemployment and the propaganda war had not broken the back of the class. The strike movement was opened in the beginning of March by the union of rubber and leather workers (the only union controlled by the CP-minority). Soon the power plant technicians, the bus and truck drivers, the travel office employees, the restaurant and hotel workers, the telephone technicians, and many smaller groups followed the example. Even the largest single union, the metalworkers union, which is controlled by Social Democrats, had to make a strike decision, from which it drew back after the employers eased their intransigent positions. But the hardest and most militant struggle of the spring was the two month strike of the union of technicians. It began in the power plants and gradually widened, finally halting all air and sea traffic and many industries. In the end, all 50,000 members of the union were on strike. The employers used extremely provocative methods, beginning with systematic use of strikebreakers (members of a rival union), and turned "general public opinion" against the strikes through various dirty tricks. But this did not succeed in crushing the strike. When both the technicians and the other key striking unions were still out toward the end of April, it became clear that something more than positional warfare was needed.
Arvo Aalto (left) Secretary of Finland Communist Party The "second front" was opened by Kekkonen, who invited himself to the festival celebrating the seventieth anniversary of the SAK and launched a demagogic attack on the striking workers in particular and the right to strike in general, while the union leaders listened quietly. Kekkonen's attack was based mainly on the supposedly privileged status of the strikers and the supposedly old-fashioned character of striking, but in his speech he also called for certain concessions which could not leave the union bureaucrats unmoved. First he demanded rapid realization of the much debated "workshop democracy" (participation) and implicitly called on the workers parties to come back into the government to realize it. Second, he painted a rosy picture of the increasing employment opportunities which the planned common work projects and trade agreements with Soviet Union would bring ... if only the Finnish workers would help in upholding the competitive strength of "their" industries. Soon after this, there was a turning point in the strike situation. At the end of April and the beginning of May the striking unions, including the technicians, signed agreements which guaranteed higher wage increases than those of the Liinamaa proposal for some categories of workers but left most on this low level and also tied the unions to two-year agreements without any escalator clauses. The struggle thus ended in a kind of stalemate. Most strikers did not win their demands, but on the other hand the employers were unable to maintain their intransigent position all along the line and did not succeed in definitively defeating the striking unions. In this stalemate situation Kekkonen made his next move. He forced the bourgeois government out, pressured the center to take a compromising attitude toward the Social Democrats, and invited the workers parties into the government. In a surprise for practically everyone, not only the Social Dem-
FINLAND ocrats but also the Communists (majority) agreed, without any conditions whatsoever. ...and the cool aftermath The latest popular front government has a slight bourgeois majority, but the seat of prime minister and other key economic ministries are in the hands of Social Democrats. while the CP has only three unimportant seats. The program of the government includes only extremely vague phrases and is more or less a copy of the program of the short-lived popular front of 1975-76. Not surprisingly, the change of the social system is not included, but apart from that even the perspective of important reforms is completely lacking. The only exceptions are vague promises of "workshop democracy" and some small changes in the constitution, which, as Prime Minister Sorsa stated, could be added to the program since they do not cost anything. But what kind of solution can this type of government advance for the crisis of Finnish capitalism? Will it be able to last any longer than its predecessors? As for the "solution," there is no question of any basically new line. The government can only continue its fundamentally anti-reform and Treme entire The sos not o, for that it would be only a carbon copy of the former governments without any new aspects. In fact there are some new yent, the even sur at contacture upturn, and the two-year labor contracts have made possible a slight loosening of the monetary policy and the seeking of new international credits. With these means the government probably wants to ease the difficulties in financing some previously "underprivileged" sectors of industry and reduce their resentment, but there is no question of dropping the basic "Friedman-style" policy and returning to some kind of "neo-Keynesianism, " since the balance of payments situation is still extremely fragile and the problems of inflation and of promoting "really competitive" industries are the real keys to the situation. The second new trend is the big offensive toward the eastern market. From the very beginning of the great recession there has been a growing trend among important sections of the Finnish bourgeoisie to compensate for the loss of positions in the West with really important penetration of the market in the USSR. This trend has been especially clear in the metal and construction industries. These hopes in part became a reality when in the middle of May Kekkonen made an official trip to Moscow and signed a fifteen-year commercial and industrial agreement with Soviet leaders. The agreement calls for some very important construction projects and export outlays for Finnish industries, but even these gains are in no way safe if the Finnish bourgeoisie is not able to "put its house in order" by bringing down the inflation rate and rationalizing its structure. Thus, the present government does not represent any basic shift in the strategy of the bourgeoisie. If it can be held 14 together long enough, it can at most bring a certain pause of relief in the class struggle, which the bourgeoisie needs after the social stalemate of spring 1977 and the failure of the "hardline" bourgeois government of 1976-77. Behind this curtain it can make much more effective preparations for coming and more decisive battles, at the latest in spring 1979 when the next round of collective bargaining will start, probably in the midst of an economic downturn. Meanwhile, the ministers of the workers parties act in the goverment as puppets who objectively and/or subjectively help the bourgeoisie in this preparation and disarm the workers economically, politically, and ideologically. Some prospects For the Social Democracy there is nothing new in this sort of role, but for CPs outside Finland the present government can offer many important lessons about what "historical compromises" require of them. This is the fourth time since the second world war and the third time since the mid-1960s that the CP has entered the government. What is new this time is that it did not present any conditions whatsoever for its participation or even pretend to do so. On the contrary, when the government was inaugurated the CP general secretary promised "complete loyalty and a fully constructive attitude. " The old demand for "changing economic policy" was quietly dropped and the general secretary expressed deep satisfaction about the fact that the government would "seriously start reducing unemployment" by increasing state subsidies to industries and cutting company taxes. This unconditional capitulation of the CP was a big surprise for its present partners and for many others as well, for it was in violation not only of all Marxist principles (which were, of course, dropped decades ago), but even of the most elementary "common sense" reformist and electoralist calculations in the present situation. Thus there is only one logical explanation for the behavior of the CP: Its turn must have been a result of direct or indirect pressure from the "fraternal party" of the Soviet Union - probably for safeguarding the stability of Finland, upholding Kekkonen's authority, and ensuring the smooth development of the new economic projects. This assessment is all the more probable since the behavior of the CP minority has also been very unusual. This minority - which has combined a fanatically pro-Kremlin attitude with a certain economist "militancy" and "left" criticism of the participation of the CP majority in earlier goverments -was unusually soft this time. It did not give any ministers to the government and routinely condemned its "bourgeois economic line, " but it clearly avoided an explicit condemnation of the CP majority and did not react in the usual way by threatening a new escalation of the factional struggle. It is thus probable that the minority has been pressured to a careful semi-silence. It will remain outside the government and act as a half-hearted opposition. This will simultaneously be the party's excuse for the most militant workers and will help throw sand in their eyes by boosting the cult of Kekkonen and thus the system he represents. May 20, 1977
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