Epilogue by William Shepherd
The Green Parties proclaim that they are neither left nor right but this claim, seen over a historical perspective, is misleading and if taken at face value will lead to seerious miscalculations on all sides. I do not believe this to be in our best interests.In this essay I have tried to throw light on the forces at work in the rise of the Swedish Green Party. In order to do this it has been neessary to look more broadly at the Swedish political landscape. What this study has revealed in that far from being neither left nor right, the Green Party are part of an emerging New Left which comprises all those parties which seek to use the ballot box for structural change to society.
In Sweden, of the seven parties in contention for representation in the national parliament in September 1988, three were 'Structuralists' and the other four were 'Politicians'. The Politicians parties consisting of the Labour, Conservative, Liberal and Farmers parties are The Old Guard or the Right in Swedish politics while the Structuralist parties comprising the Communists, the Christian Democrats and the Greens are The New Radicals on the Left.
The New Left has one of every ten seats in the Swedish parliament after the 1988 election, but by 1997 the position will be reversed with the Old Guard holding one seat for every nine held by the New Radicals. This at least is how the political matters would be if we continue the political trends of the 1980's through into the 1990's.
After the riots on American campuses in 1969, Ayn Rand published an essay entitled 'The New Left'. Her subtitle for the essay was 'The anti-industrial revolution'. She saw the rebellion as the result of years of hearing nothing but collectivist sophistries and was alarmed at the widespread moral cowardice that resulted in a failure to fight The New Left ideologically on moral-intellectual grounds. It is probably correct to say that her warning did not go unheeded. The result was the Reagan Years a decade later. Great Britain also had its sixties and this too was followed by a radical right a decade later as Thatcherism held sway throughout the 1980s.
The New Left emerging in Sweden bears the same hallmark as the New Left that Ayn Rand could see emerging in the United States. There is therefore every reason to expect that the Old Guard will join forces just as they did in America to launch an ideological counter attack. This will take the form of the Old Guard, both Labour and Conservative, taking up the banners of individualism and privatisation. No sooner have the Structuralists seen off the Politicians than they will be besieged on all sides by the Idealogues. In Sweden, I believe that these will by 1997 have gained the upper hand.
Ideas can only be fought by better ideas. By predicting the demise of Collectivism at the hands of Individualism it is my hope that not only will a 'non-political' solution become unnecessary, but that it might indeed be possible to transcend left and right.
William Shepherd
Canterbury, Kent
18th June 1989