I’ve been dealing with a fairly aggressive Cold Warrior boomer from the US lately. When I counter their red baiting with criticisms of American liberalism, the person insists that they’re not actually a lib, but rather a Nordic-style socdem.
Does anyone guide me to any good communist criticisms of the Scandinavian capitalist states?
Pic possibly unrelated.
The Imperialism argument is of course good and correct, but it's also worth noting that the social democracy of the Nordic bloc is not just something the government did because they were benevolent and wished to share their wealth, it was a pay off made by a terrified ruling class to buy off an organized communist /labor movement because they didn't want to get revved.
Maybe third worldism is the best approach? Scandinavian social democracy can't exist without enslaving the rest of the planet. Norway is filthy rich thanks to all their oil, for instance. That country seems like just a friendlier version of Saudi Arabia. The suicide rates in Scandinavia are also off the charts. Think about the slave labor Nokia uses to get the rare earth metals in its phones.
I lived in a much more advanced social democracy (South Korea) for years, and so I know from quite a lot of experience that the ideal social democratic world is far from enough. Workers are incredibly unhappy there. They don't have to worry about getting to a doctor or taking a train somewhere, but they still have almost no control over their lives. The work environment there is fascist, and, again, the country's prosperity is powered by the enslavement of the Global South.
edit: plus, you can compare Sweden's dogshit covid rate to China or Vietnam's. I looked at the per capita rate, and China is doing ten times better than South Korea, I believe. Using Vietnam here helps to deflect the inevitable "China bad" sentiment you're going to get. I also benefit from knowing a white liberal colleague who now lives in China. She told me privately that things "went back to normal" months ago there and that she thinks the people are all robots because they love the government. So when people tell me that China is lying about their covid rate, I offer to put them in touch with my colleague so they can find out for themselves. Not a single person has taken me up on the offer. This is because they don't actually want to know the truth. The logical conclusion from knowing the truth is that the system which has benefited them is the disease.
The suicide rates in Scandinavia are also off the charts.
Not really, that is something that was pushed by americans who were opposed to even minor reform, SK is way worse for example. How is SK more advanced btw?
The main thing I'd look at is how most of the current proponents of the "nordic model" are just neolibs who want to dismantle it a bit slower. That or they're ethnonationalists.
Yeah, I do get the impression that the high water mark for welfare and workers’ rights in those societies was the 1970s, and they’ve slowly been eroded since then. Do you know any good introductory resources on this?
I wish I could tell you. My knowledge of South Korea comes more from experience and also from marrying into a Korean family. They're all a bunch of prosperous liberals, but they fucking hate the IMF and the Japanese (during the colonial period but also beyond). The best I can do is to recommend talking with a Korean person, if you can. You'll probably get a lot of lib or even fascist shit, at first, but the IMF and the Japanese really do drive most, if not all of them absolutely up the fucking wall, and that can be a great pathway toward thinking systemically about their country's problems, as well as socialism generally. They have a pretty bad impression of leftwing politics, however, because they look at North Korea as a failed state, something as an annoying Trotskyist I don't totally disagree with.
As I think about it, the best books I've read about Korea are actually both about North Korea. "The Cleanest Race" and "Without You, There Is No Us" are both highly critical of North Korea, but they're a step above most other Korea-related books in English because at least the authors speak Korean and have both spent some time in North Korea itself. Both also do have a lot of information about South Korea, particularly The Cleanest Race—which is about how leftwing politics in Korea can veer into very weird racial nationalism.
The point about nordic suicide came in the endless debates I have with my left-lib dad. His point was that if things are so great there, why does anyone kill themselves? There's some data on this here:
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/0ef32604-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/0ef32604-en#:~:text=Latvia%2C%20Slovenia%2C%20Korea%2C%20Lithuania,lowest%20and%20highest%20suicide%20rates.
I believe I also found that suicide rates in the Soviet Union were actually pretty low until the 1970s, when they started trending upward. Then they of course exploded in places like Russia when the USSR vanished.
His point was that if things are so great there, why does anyone kill themselves?
Of course it's because of a comparatively robust welfare system and protections for workers and NOT due to a culture where men are taught to repress their emotions, a Protestant work ethic, the fact that it's dark and miserable for half the year or any number of other reasons! Americans truly have brains made of putty
🍔s gonna 🍔
One of the points to help is that the Nordics were also similarly known for suicide before welfare policies took effect. Just that it didn't become a popular talking point until the 60's when Anglos started using it as a way to critisize welfare programs and any amount of planned economy, pushed by Dwight Eisenhower and his CIA pals.
Interesting. Yeah, I assume (but am not completely sure) that terrible weather must be a factor in any given country's suicide rates. I know that suicide tends to spike in the early spring here in the USA.
Here are some happy Finns from the late 1800s
Also, here's a poem all about that jolly, carefree Nordic living
Point is, life was kind of ass for the average person until the 20th century and we've had a propensity to be a bit grim way before the Nordic Welfare State became a thing
Thanks for that awesome response! Those are all great points, especially how people have almost no control over the conditions they live their lives under.
Edit: The point that it relies on natural resource extraction that can’t be replicated worldwide is also a great takeaway, thanks!
This person is a self-styled antiauthoritarian, so maybe arguing in favor of Richard Wolff-style worker co-ops might help get the point through to this person, and I supppose that society would be a giant leap past what we have now—even if it’s not as fun as being a tankie :back-to-me-shining:
Yeah, maybe Richard Wolff can be a gateway drug. He explains things in such an incredibly plain manner, and it's pretty hard to disagree with what he says—only with what he doesn't say. I don't think he talks much about the third world, and I'm pretty skeptical that worker co-ops by themselves can overthrow capitalism, since as far as I know that has never actually happened. So when it comes to his critique of capitalism, yes. When it comes to his solutions, no.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lDZaKjfs4E
Direct them to this video, or use its arguments yourself. Western Social Democracies are built upon the backs of the third world.
My conversation piece is that the nordic countries effectively prove the fact that long-term, social democracy is self-defeating.
If you're lucky, (or have access to oil or are otherwise part of a friendly, wealthy trading sphere), you can have decent public services, development, quality of life etc - but only for so many years before even the social democratic parties slide to the right and start dismantling the very things they built. It demonstrates the problem with not going far enough - it is not enough to simply emulate aspects of socialism within a capitalist mode of production - capitalism is like a cancer: if any remnant is left unchecked, it will resurge and reassert itself again and again.The same is true of countries like the UK of course, but there you have a more reluctant and immediately antagonistic relationship with social democracy in which it is not undertaken willfully but rather resentfully - the alternative in the post-war era being communism.
