The results of yesterday's local elections in Denmark are in.
The Red-Green alliance, a well-meaning demsoc party that is the furthest left you get in Danish politics, became the largest party in the city of Copenhagen and on the island of Bornholm. This is the first time the party becomes the largest in a municipality. However their support support for a leftist mayor could not be found in either of the two municipalities but the Red-Greens were part of the coalitions behind a succdem lord mayor in Copenhagen and a conservative mayor in Bornholm. In Copenhagen they managed to get two out of six alderman positions instead of the one they currently have for their support and in Bornholm they got the post of vice mayor the construction of a new city hall stopped and the municipal budget reopened.
The good result for the Red-Greens was offset by the collapse of the green Alternative party which has been destroyed by internal infighting.
The succdems did poorly although not catastrophically. Loosing the position of largest party in their traditional stronghold of Copenhagen was a humiliation for them and might spark internal criticism of the "anti-elitist" and "anti-city" rhetoric they have been using for the last few years. Their bad results are likely influenced by increasing criticism of the during succdem government who has gotten themselves into a public scandal due to culling all minks in the country last year without a legal basis as well as the destruction of evidence incriminating them in the case.
On the far right the fascist with a succdem vibe Danish People's Party had a catastrophic election, losing more than half of their votes. A lot of those were picked up by the fascist with a libertarian vibe New Right party but in total the far right got fewer votes than last time.
The Liberal Party, that traditionally is the largest party on the right wing did poorly last time but managed to prevent further losses. Meanwhile the conservative party, helped by the crisis of the fascists as well as the liberals had a good election although losing control of their traditional stronghold of Frederiksberg in Copenhagen.
The party was founded as a fusion of the maoist Communist Workers Party, the Marxist-Leninist Communist party of Denmark, the trotskyts of the socialist workers party and a marxist split from Socialistisk Folkeparti. I've also read that they don't allow their members of parliament to serve more than two or three elections, because they don't want them to become professional politicians who're alienated from the working class. How did such a project become what you're describing right now?
That's what being recognised as "real" politicians by journalists and other politicians will do to a party. They have become part of the political system and although they have an ideal of being the party of popular movements they focus most of their time and energy on electoralism and parliamentarism.
They used to be more principled and were struggling just to get into parliament. Then they started being more open to be part of parliamentary compromises, they softened their rhetoric and shifted from focusing their campaigning on stuff like unemployment benefits to focusing on stuff like childcare that is also appealing to middle income voters.
It worked fine from them, in the sense that they are now getting a lot more votes. And that is good, they do get important material gains here and now from doing parliamentary politics, however it is becoming increasingly hard to see how they are working towards revolutionary changes.
It's not everybody who likes their more moderate approach. The Free Greens party that arose from the collapse of the Alternative party did so in part as a protest against the de facto totally loyal support that the Red-Greens gives the succdem government. The new party doesn't look to be able to survive the next general elections though.
Do they still call themselves marxists?
Thanks for your detailed response so far btw. If you ever want to know anything about Belgian politics, I'd gladly do the same.
They do. Their party programme is a pretty decent Marxist analysis and speaks about the necessity of revolution and the replacement of the police and military with be organisations based on popular power. They are also free from anti-communism.
However in day to day politics it is mostly about doing parliamentary politics to get social democracy with a human face.