The Liberals’ to be or not to be
For
anyone who has bothered to follow the Swedish election campaign this
summer, it has not gone unnoticed that the Liberals are struggling.
Party leader Simona Mohamsson now has just over a month to double her
party’s voter support to prevent it from being voted out of the Riksdag.
The Liberals’ crisis, however, is not an isolated drop in the polls,
but a reflection of a deeper systemic shift.
The
liberal project, which once underpinned the institutional framework of
Swedish bourgeois democracy and instilled a sense of loyalty to the
parliamentary system in generations of citizens, has lost its foothold
among the groups it once spoke to. The progressive bourgeoisie
(progressive in the sense that it was anti-feudal in the early 20th
century) no longer exists, and its modern social base—the
petty-bourgeois so-called “middle class,” small business owners, highly
educated white-collar workers, and academics—the voters who formed the
backbone of liberalism—is now turning to other alternatives or staying
home.
The
fact that the Liberals are fighting for their survival in Parliament is
therefore not a temporary shift in public opinion, but a sign that the
promises of reform made by the center-right democratic parties no longer
hold any sway. When one of the Riksdag’s oldest parties—with a
century-long history of defending the rule of law and the market
economy—is reduced to a battle for four percent of the vote, something
fundamental is laid bare: Parliament is losing its function as a
meaningful arena for channeling public discontent.
It’s
not just that the Liberals are bad at bourgeois politics, but also that
no one believes their policies matter anymore. In a situation where
voter turnout is falling, trust in political parties is at an all-time
low, and the real decisions are made far beyond the walls of the
Riksdag, the Liberals’ existential crisis is not just a party’s fate but
a symptom of the entire parliamentary model losing its legitimacy.
The
question, then, is no longer whether the Liberals will clear the
electoral threshold, but whether anyone still believes it matters who
sits in the Riksdag, when the institution itself has proven incapable of
resolving the crises emerging outside its corridors. The
bourgeois-liberal alternative is shrinking, and the political class that
once upheld the legitimacy of bourgeois parliamentarism is rendering
itself increasingly superfluous. What is interesting for a Marxist
analysis of the Liberals’ situation is what is emerging to fill the void
they leave behind.
Who are Liberalerna?
The
Liberals’ roots lie in the 19th-century liberal movement, which emerged
among the bourgeoisie during the final years of the Estates Parliament,
when many liberals organized themselves into various discussion clubs,
including the Bondeska and Friensiska clubs (These are named after Carl
Carlson Bonde and Sixten von Friesen, and we can immediately see here
that some of the earliest advocates of bourgeois liberalism were
themselves members of the nobility—nobles who saw the world changing and
acted accordingly.) Through these discussion clubs, reform-minded
members of the Riksdag gathered to challenge the nobility’s political
dominance. However, the conflict was primarily about which social class
should hold power, not about granting power to the entire people. The
Swedish liberals’ struggle was therefore primarily a struggle for the
interests of the emerging bourgeoisie against the classes and strata
that derived their livelihood from the old feudal institutions.
These
early liberals advocated for economic freedom, free trade, and a more
modern form of government, which helped pave the way for the development
of capitalism in Sweden. This meant that the old feudal upper class was
gradually replaced by a new economic elite. As the nobility lost
influence, the industrial bourgeoisie’s power over the economy and
politics grew.
Although
the electoral reform adopted in 1866 abolished the Estates Parliament,
the new bicameral parliament was still based on high income and wealth
requirements. Workers, smallholders, and women remained excluded from
political influence. Therefore, the reform can be viewed as a shift in
power within the ruling class rather than a genuine democratization.
Today’s
party, known as the Liberals, has its origins in the Liberal Unity
Party, which was formed in 1902, and in the People’s Party, which was
founded in 1934. Although the party has since endorsed universal
suffrage and the Swedish welfare state, it has at the same time
consistently defended the “market economy” and private ownership. This
means that, historically, the party has prioritized the interests of
private capital and the petty bourgeoisie over a more sweeping state
monopoly under the guise of “economic equality” and “greater influence
for the working class,” as social democracy did.
During
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, there were periods
when liberals and the labor movement cooperated against the conservative
right—which consisted of that segment of the upper class allied with
the old feudal order and the monarchy—even though they had different
long-term goals. Let us cite a few examples:
a)
The Struggle for Parliamentarism and Suffrage: Liberals and Social
Democrats often worked together to expand suffrage and limit the power
of the king and the First Chamber. They both viewed the conservative
right and the monarchy as obstacles to democratization.
b)
The dissolution of the Union in 1905: Many liberals, especially under
Karl Staaff, opposed a military solution to the conflict with Norway.
The Social Democrats, under Hjalmar Branting, also advocated a peaceful
approach. Both opposed the nationalist and conservative sentiment that
sought to demonstrate military strength.
c)
The Borggård crisis of 1914: This is perhaps the clearest example. When
King Gustaf V delivered his Borggård speech in support of the right
wing’s demands for a major military buildup, he went against the Liberal
government led by Karl Staaff. Liberals and Social Democrats criticized
the king’s actions as a violation of the principles of parliamentarism.
Staaff resigned after the crisis, but in the long run, the incident
strengthened the demand that the government—not the king—be accountable
to the Riksdag.
d)
Arms buildup and the issue of war: There was both cooperation and
conflict on this issue. The Social Democrats were generally more
critical of arms buildup than the Liberals. The Liberals were divided:
so-called “Staaff liberalism” advocated a limited defense and opposed
the right wing’s extensive arms program, but the party was not
anti-militarist in the same way as parts of the labor movement.
This
front constituted a democratic alliance against the conservative power
elite, consisting of the royal family, the nobility, and the economic
upper class. However, the alliance was based on certain shared goals
regarding parliamentary government and suffrage, not on a common
economic outlook. Once bourgeois parliamentary democracy was firmly
established, the contradictions between liberalism and socialism became
clearer once again, particularly on issues of property rights, the labor
market, and welfare.
It
should be made clear here that there is, in fact, a qualitative
difference between what constituted the left and the right in the
Riksdag in the early 20th century and the “left” and “right” we see
today, when the democratic space has almost completely dried up. Today’s
political parties serve solely as expressions of either different
interests within the upper class or of populism and electoral pandering.
There is no ideological difference between representing a private
monopoly or a state monopoly, and the Center Party, for example, talks
about LGBTQ issues to win votes, not because they are “left-wing.”
After
the breakthrough of democratization, the Liberal Party established
itself as the leading liberal party in Swedish politics. For much of the
20th century, the party was the Social Democrats’ main bourgeois
opponent and, at times, the largest opposition party. Due to the
public’s positive attitude toward social democracy, the Liberal Party
positioned itself as a social-liberal alternative that accepted the
welfare state but defended the market economy and private ownership.
This meant that the party helped stabilize the capitalist system and
maintain the social peace between capital and reformism.
Starting
in the 1970s, the center-right political landscape began to change. The
Moderate Party gradually grew and took over as the dominant
center-right party, while the Liberal Party lost support; despite a
temporary uptick in the 2002 election, the party’s long-term decline
continued. The party has recently struggled to establish a clear
political profile, and the fact that it changed its name to the Liberals
in 2015 (oddly enough!) didn’t even serve as a lifeline.
Today,
the Liberals are the smallest party in the Riksdag and have hovered
near the 4 percent threshold in several elections. Furthermore, the
party’s decision to join a governing coalition with the Sweden Democrats
has led many of its own voters to perceive the party as having
abandoned parts of its former self-image as a ”liberal” and
“progressive” alternative.
The
party has thus now fulfilled its historical role. During the 19th
century, the party’s predecessors represented the emerging bourgeoisie’s
struggle against the privileges of the nobility and the influence of
the monarchy. Once these goals were achieved, the party’s role
increasingly became one of defending the prevailing economic order. As
the Moderates have assumed the role of the leading bourgeois party and
other parties have taken up many of the Liberals’ signature issues, the
party’s political relevance has diminished. Having once been a driving
force behind bourgeois reforms, the Liberals are today a party without a
clear historical mission or a vision of society of their own.
Numbers and statistics
We
will now quickly go through the basic statistics of the party in order
to show the impossibility of their staying in bourgeois parliament as an
empirical backdrop to the main ideological analysis of this article. In
the 2022 parliamentary election:
• the number of eligible voters was 7,775,390
• voter turnout was 84.21% (or 6,547,801 people)
• percentage of voters who cast a vote for a specific candidate: 22.49%
• percentage of voters who voted early in Sweden: 48.16% (or 3,153,628 people)
• the number of people who voted at embassies and consulates: 41,139
• the number of mail-in ballots received from abroad: 34,731.
In
the 2022 parliamentary election, the Liberals received 298,542 votes,
which represented 4.61% of the valid votes. The party thus cleared the
parliamentary threshold and won 16 seats in the Riksdag.
If
we use the same figures as for the 2022 parliamentary election—that is,
the same voter turnout and number of eligible voters—the 4% threshold
corresponds to approximately 260,000 votes. The latest opinion polls
place the Liberals at 1.7%, and to go from 2% to 4%, they would
therefore need approximately 260,000 − 130,000 = 130,000 new votes. In
practice, the figure may be slightly different in 2026, as the number of
votes and voter turnout may change.
What
percentage of Moderate Party voters would have had to cast a strategic
vote to keep the Liberals in the Riksdag? Let’s run some numbers based
on a hypothetical scenario. Here, we’ll use current poll numbers, with
the Moderate Party at around 16.6% and the Liberals at around 2.0%. At
this level of support, the Moderates would receive approximately
1,080,000 votes. As we mentioned in the example above, the Liberals
would need 130,000 votes—based on current opinion polls—to gain an
additional two percentage points. This means that 12%—or roughly one in
eight Moderate Party voters—would need to cast a strategic vote for the
Liberals to lift them from 2% to 4%.
How
would that affect the Moderates’ seats? If the Moderates lost 130,000
votes, their share of the vote would have dropped from 16.6% to 14.6%,
which would mean about 7 fewer seats. This would have meant that the
Moderates would have gone from 68 seats in the last election down to 58
or 51 seats if they had organized a campaign to direct votes to the
Liberals—something that is not in the financial interests of individual
members of Parliament. They would then have ended up far behind the
Sweden Democrats, which cannot be seen as a desirable strategy for their
leadership.
If
we include the entire Tidö bloc (the Moderates, the Sweden Democrats,
the Christian Democrats, and the Liberals), the calculation becomes more
interesting. If we recalculate a new scenario in which support votes
come from the entire bloc based on the same assumption as before—that
voter turnout is the same as in the 2022 parliamentary election
(84.21%)—then roughly one in twenty Tidö voters would have needed to
cast a support vote for the Liberals.
Of
course, this is a simplified model, and we cannot assume that all
voters are even aware that strategic voting exists, or that—for various
reasons—they are politically aware enough to understand what it means
and decide to cast a strategic vote.
Conclusion
If
the Liberals are indeed polling at around 2% with about a month left
until the election, it is reasonable to conclude that there is a high
risk they will lose their seats in the Riksdag. But the statistics are
merely a symptom, and what really matters is that, from a historical
perspective, the Liberals—as mentioned—no longer have a guaranteed place
in Swedish politics. Their class-based mission—to advocate for the
interests of the bourgeoisie—has long since been taken over by the
Moderates, and their social-liberal profile has been eroded by a decade
of tactical shifts and compromises with parties they once swore to
oppose.
The
party remains without a class to represent and without a vision that
sets it apart from any other party in the Riksdag. In practice, the
Liberals have thus become dead weight for the other parties—a party that
can neither pursue an independent policy nor contribute to the
formation of a stable government, whose sole function in the Riksdag is
to take up seats, debate time, and political capital. That is why it
doesn’t matter whether they clear the threshold in September or not.
Even if a last-minute rescue through strategic voting were to push them
over the 4 percent threshold, it would not solve the party’s deeper
problems: they have nothing to say, no new voters to win over (it is, in
our view, highly doubtful that a free glass of wine at campaign booths
would lead to 130,000 new votes), and no direction to offer.
We should also explore some possible outcomes following the election.
With
the election tour that the Liberals are now undertaking together with
the Moderates, the Christian Democrats, and the Sweden Democrats, there
is a possibility that the Liberals could become a supporting party for
the Sweden Democrats with the sole purpose of legitimizing their
positions. This is a relatively plausible outcome, as the party would
serve to lend a measure of false legitimacy to this butcher of bourgeois
freedoms and rights. At the same time, however, this would require a
certain purge within the party—the tour has sparked a great deal of
internal criticism, as not all party members agree with the
collaboration with the Sweden Democrats.
Another
possibility involves cross-bloc agreements, something Jacob Wallenberg
talks about a great deal. In the perennial issue of energy and the
construction of nuclear power plants, for example, there is a conflict
between Parliament as an institution and the executive power required to
bring about a solution. In this regard, the party would thus have
served as a bridge between the blocs. The leader of the Center Party
(C), Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist, has previously mentioned that her dream
government is a variation of the old Alliance (C, KD, M, L) that also
includes the Social Democrats (S), with S playing a leading role
alongside the Christian Democrats (KD).
Regardless of what happens in the 2026 election, we can, as mentioned, conclude that the Liberals are on their way out, and we view this as a progressive quantitative change: For over a hundred years, they have constituted a major part of the backbone and ideological justification of bourgeois democracy, and the fact that they are disappearing will only lead the masses to shake off even more of their flagging trust in this outdated system. The tides of history always force change, and even capitalism must sometimes cover up its cancerous growths. As communists, we therefore look forward to seeing the Liberals vanish into the dustbin of history and welcome this as a natural part of the constant self-destruction that capitalism’s internal mechanisms inevitably drive.