Socialist veteran tours Sweden

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The following is based on remarks by Jake Cooper to the National Committee plenum of Socialist Action, which took place in San Francisco on August 17-19, 1984. Cooper was a leader of the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters' strikes.

I recently visited Sweden for two reasons. First, 1 came to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of that great leader of the socialist movement, Karl Skoglund. I also went with the idea of talking with our cothinkers in the Swedish Socialist Party (Swedish section of the Fourth International) about the American labor movement.

Karl Skoglund was one of many workers from Scandinavia who landed on our shores with a wealth of socialist ideas. His name is engraved in the history of the American labor movement. Skoglund and the Communist League of America-later known as the Socialist Workers Party-led the Teamsters Union to a great victory in Minneapolis in 1934. Karl was constantly teaching and writing. He and the American Trotskyists showed how to build an internationally -minded revolutionary socialist party.

My trip included a visit to Bengstfors, where Karl was born. He lived in the wooded area of western Sweden, which is very much like northern Minnesota. I was able to meet with town officials and members of Skoglund's family. I tried to outline to them the role that Karl played in the U.S. labor movement.

The Socialist Party comrades gave me the king's welcome-or rather, the revolutionary welcome. I was taken to the summer camp that the Socialist Party operates. From eight in the morning to one the following morning there was constant political discussion. One of the questions that they asked me was "How come you don't have a labor party in the United States? We have one in Sweden."

I replied first of all that Sweden has a lot more history than we do. Europe has gone through the history of the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution and other revolutionary situations. "You've learned earlier than we have, I told them. "Now we're learning from you."

I told them to have confidence in the U.S. labor movement. It is the most volatile labor movement in the world. The American capitalist class is carrying out the same kind of policy toward their own working class as they do in foreign policy. They are trying to crush the labor movement. They are trying to drive the standard of living of the U.S. worker down to the level of workers in Korea, Taiwan, or Mexico.

I pointed out that although it's taken a few nosebleeds, the labor movement in this country has never really been defeated. American workers feel that they are the toughest people around, that they've got all kinds of rights, and that no one is going to take away those rights. Basically, they don't have leadership. We in Socialist Action are proposing a revolutionary movement that can give leadership to the working class.

I thanked the Swedish comrades for providing us people like Karl Skoglund, who gave us all kinds of ideas of how to organize a socialist movement. The hand of solidarity is still solid in what we have to give to each other now