Young Left (Sweden) - Ideology

Ideology

Young Left is a political youth organization committed to organising young people to work for social change that evolved out of the labour movement, with influences from environmentalism, the peace movement and the feminist movement. Young Left works for social justice and a society characterized by equality, secularism, generous welfare provisions for all citizens, generous immigration policies and respect for the environment. As its mother party the Left Party as well as the Social Democratic Party, Young Left is a strong supporter of the Swedish labour unions and the Swedish model with conditions of work such as wages being regulated in branch-level collective agreements between the unions and the employers rather than on individual basis. Ung Vänster has had various names and political alignments over the years but is continuously characterized by the issues that have been at the centre of its history, such as antifascism, social justice, equality and internationalism. During the past years, the main focus of the organization has been the struggle against growing xenophobia in Sweden (as witnessed by the electoral success of the Sweden Democrats during the national elections of 2010) and criticism of the current center-right government and in particular on its privatizations of welfare services and priorities of tax reductions rather than increased public spending on welfare and investments in infrastructure and renewable energy.