While I understand the people who say #VoteBlueNoMatterWho, the socialists who canvassed for Bernie, the whole "lesser evil" thing, I want everyone to know that there is a real danger for the movement to become deradicalized when you do those things.

My prime example of this is my nationstate oppressor by birth: Sweden. In the late 19th century, a huge and broad socialist worker's movement were growing in Sweden. SAP, the socdem party that would come to dominate Swedish politics in the 20th century, reflected this.

In the beginning, all the socialists worked together in the SAP. Everyone was involved, no matter your ideological stance on elections etc. Remember, during this time, most people didn't have the right to vote. The king still held a considerable amount of power.

In the beginning, the SAP were even the central organisation of the unions, until the "independent" LO was formed in 1898. So in the beginning, almost all leftist political activity took place within the SAP framework. Little by little, this would change.

First to go were, as usual, the anarchists. Making up a big chunk of the youth wing of the party, the so-called Ungsocialisterna, with Hinke Bergegren at the forefront, they were expelled from the party between 1906-1908.

Say what you will about Swedish socdems, but at least they let us live, a courtesy our eastern comrades weren't granted by the bolsheviks a few years later.

Speaking of bolsheviks, the revolutionary marxists that would go on to form the Swedish Communist Party (today's left party) were expelled in 1917. Before this, the failure of the general strike of 1909 had led to halved membership in LO, and critics of LO leadership formed SAC.

SAC was, and is, a syndicalist union organisation, and has been a thorn in the side of the big LO unions and the capitalists ever since, though their actual influence has fluctuated a lot over the years.

Anyways, after winning political victories like increasing the proportion of people allowed to vote in 1909 (as the conservatives preferred that over open revolution), the SAP were still under heavy pressure from the left when WWI started in 1914.

This led to the creation of two longstanding traditions of Swedish parliamentarism: proclaiming neutrality in times of war and putting a halt to interparty conflict (swe: "borgfred").

So, in 1917, the SAP entered a coalition government with the liberals after becoming the largest party in the elections to the second chamber of the parliament (equiv. to house of rep/commons for ya yanks and brits).

This was one of the major points of conflict that would lead to the split between the revolutionary and the reformist wings in SAP, as the communists argued that parliamentarism would only lead to bourgeoisie governments and that it was a mistake to join the government.

As it turned out, both sides would turn out to be both correct and incorrect in their assumptions. In 1921, most men and women were given the vote, yet again at least partly as a strategy to cool down revolutionary currents amongst the public.

In the following elections, the SAP and their policies would come to dominate and shape Sweden for the next 100 years. This was the beginning of the "folkhem", the ambitious social democratic dream of turning a very poor and socially divided monarchy into a egalitarian democracy.

It's impossible to deny the success of this massive social project. It turned Sweden into one of the most equal and prospering nations in the world. But it failed to bring about an end to class society and capitalism. Why?

Well, remember LO and the general strike of 1909? The Swedish labour market kept on being unregulated after that, with different legal frameworks failing to win a majority. But in 1938, in a move likened to "committing suicide because you fear being murdered", LO struck a deal.

Known as Saltsjöbadsavtalet (the Saltsjöbad Agreement), it was an agreement between the LO and the Swedish Employers Association that would foster an environment of cooperation and understanding on the Swedish labour market.

This is the advent of what's known today as "the Swedish model". It's hailed by socdems everywhere as proof of what can be achieved by reformism. The SAP/LO political hegemony effectively shaped Sweden into a nation of class collaboration.

This worked remarkably well for the first 50 years or so, when Sweden could benefit from this political stability coupled with its recent industrialization and the fact that the rest of Europe were in ruins after WWII.

Pacifying the Swedish working class by giving them enough of the riches to make them comfortable and ample opportunity to join the middle class via free education, the SAP and LO would grow complacent and slowly abandon their original dream: that of a truly equal society.

The thing with middleclassifying the working class is that 1) you are just moving part of the proletariat to other, poorer countries, turning your own working class into secondhand capitalists with pension funds invested in large corporations

and 2) that you are eroding the solidarity and class consciousness of your own base of voters. During the 80's, the rise of neoliberalism made the public and the SAP turn right economically in a move surprising absolutely no one.

The last attempt at some kind of socialist policy, the infamous "löntagarfonderna" (employee funds, basically a feeble attempt to increase workers' influence over the means of production by increasing union ownership in companies) were introduced in 1982 and abolished in 1991.

Since the 80's, the SAP has been a party in decline, chasing votes rightwards and failing to come up with any kind of actual political idea beyond "we should govern because we built this country" while inequality has been steadily increasing again.

During the 90's and 00's, Sweden fell victim to some of the most brutal privatisations of the Western world. Our cooperative and understanding culture enabled politicians and capitalists to open huge parts of the commons (schools, healthcare, railroads, etc) to the private sector

We didn't just let them start their own alternatives to staterun facilities. No, we let them bid for it and then gave them taxpayer money to run them, under the assumption that the corporate sector is more effective than the state at, well, everything.

Oh, and that there would be no problems, because Swedish capitalists were, of course, fostered in this environment of cooperation and mutual understanding. They wouldn't just care about getting filthy rich, now would they?

Turns out, they would. And with the globalization of capital, we now have a situation where we pay tax money to companies owned by foreign dictatorships to run some of our schools. And at the same time, the unions are at their weakest since arguably the lost strike of 1909.

LO has turned into an ineffective, self-perpuating bureaucratic colossus, giving in to demand after demand frol the Employers Association while also being in no way at all independent from the SAP (our current Premier came from the LO side of the so-called "workers movement").

The state is turning into something of the same, a gigantic apparatus of bureaucratic oversight and legislation meant to curb the capitalist tendencies of the capitalist corporations we pay to run our schools, public transport and hospitals.

The expected career move for an SAP politician these days, if they quit politics, is to become a lobbyist for some corporate interest and use your contacts within SAP and LO to help those interests get even more of the tax money.

So, that's how the SAP changed from a broad socialist coalition, to a corrupt, rudderless corporate tool, and destroyed the Swedish workers movement while doing it. The capitalists didn't change. They didn't have to. All they had to do was trick us into thinking we were friends.

And then little by little erode the victories won by decades of class struggle while turning their largest foe into a scab, collaborator and traitor.

So these are my morals of the story of Swedish parliamentarism: never trust that any concessions your oppents make are in good faith. Never trust that you won't become corrupted by the power and influence you gain in elections.

Parliamentarism is like opoids: at best a temporary relief, at worst a highly addictive drug that will destroy you and everything you fought for.