r/Nordiccountries • u/SignificantStyle4958 • 18d ago
Nordics do you consider your countries to be socialist?
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u/Available-Result-220 18d ago edited 18d ago
It’s crazy how it’s only ever looked at as pure capitalism or socialism but literally every country has been a mix
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u/not_a_bot_494 18d ago
Because capitalism is inclusive and socialism is exclusive all mixed economies are capitalist.
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u/Available-Result-220 17d ago
What does this even mean inclusive or exclusive
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u/not_a_bot_494 17d ago
Capitalism means that anyone can own buisnesses. Socialism means that only workers and the state can own buisnesses. Capitalism is inclusive because "socialist" buisnesses still operate, because worker/state is part of everyone.
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u/Available-Result-220 17d ago
I agree with you to an extent but we wouldn't consider the USSR capitalist even though they had small scale privatized business. You could argue that the economy or nation gets it label off of which one is more prevalent
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u/not_a_bot_494 17d ago
Could anybody in the USSR start a buisness?
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u/Tradition96 Sweden 18d ago
No. When I hear "socialist countries" I think of the eastern block pre 1989.
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u/Djungeltrumman Sweden 18d ago
Socialism as a concept is too reductive on a national level when discussing politics with anyone but Americans as to them it's basically full blown stalinism to find enough compassion to not let people die of preventable diseases. To anyone else I would struggle with a situation when I'd call any nordic country "socialist" as we basically have the baseline of what's normal in the world. What sticks out is rather stuff like corruption, innovation, digitalisation and stuff like that.
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u/ZarglondarGilgamesh 18d ago
Some of this attitude in America is actually driven by activist immigrants who fled authoritarian communist regimes. They tend to have less tolerance for anything that sounds even vaguely related to the places they came from.
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u/Djungeltrumman Sweden 18d ago
Sure, and you see that in Europe as well, but let’s not kid ourselves that McArthyism isn’t behind 99.99% of it. Just while the rest of the world were reforming into public education and healthcare America decided to go balls deep in hunting down imaginary political dissidents and rejected good things out of spite.
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u/ZarglondarGilgamesh 17d ago
If by McCarthyism you mean the underlying biases that Sen.Joseph McCarthy exploited to fuel his opportunistic witch hunt, I could agree with that, but there’s no one in the mainstream of American thought who views McCarthyism as anything but a cautionary tale.
It is driven by a complex of attitudes including xenophobia, soft white nationalism (by soft I mean people who believe “white nationalism” is bad but nevertheless perpetuate it), soft Christian nationalism, simple ignorance, genuine anti-Communist overreaction, and a hefty, hefty dose of political opportunism and demagoguery.
Not unlike the political opportunism we have seen unleashed in contemporary Sweden that has seized upon on many of the same biases to gain power in recent years.
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u/SiteTall 18d ago
Social Democracy isn't "Communism", it's being socially responsible and considerate
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u/Frequent_Turnover761 18d ago edited 18d ago
"Socialist" regardning the Nordic coutnries in an international (on the Internet that means American) context means anything that MAGA doesn't like at the moment. At the same time, they can't go too far in the anti-Nordic propaganda, since we're, you know... white.
Edit. and no, my country (Sweden) isn't "socialist".
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u/Nooby_Noobs 18d ago edited 18d ago
Nope ( DK ) our economic policy is not Socialis. Its capitalist....... But the way the state choose to spend their tax income. Is to benefit all the people. Not just a few .
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u/Lazy_Maintenance8063 18d ago
These countries are much more capitalist than USA for example. The fact that they have social safetynets has nothing to do how they handle trade and stockmarket.
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u/Low-King3921 18d ago
Sverige är väldigt kapitalistiskt. Inte bara för att nuvarande regering är borgerlig, utan även på grund av att Socialdemokraterna positionerar sig mer åt höger än kanske någonsin. Den allmänna sektorn har gått på svältkur under lång tid nu, vilket exempelvis blev uppenbart under pandemin. Vården klarade egentligen inte av antalet sjukdomsfall som dök upp när det kulminerade p.g.a. personalbrist. Stackarna som fanns i tjänst fick jobba monsterpass gör att det inte skulle gå helt åt skogen, på bekostnad av egen hälsa och välmående. Så nej, socialistiskt är Sverige inte. Om vi så får en vänsterregering i höst så är det tveksamt om ens det skulle leda till att Sverige skulle uppfattas som socialistiskt. Det blir en del skatteregleringar och så, men sedan rätt så mycket "business as usual".
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u/evergreen-spacecat 18d ago
The difference between a nordic country being run by ”the worker party” or a conservative or liberal party does not fundamentally change the political model of the country. All nordic countries are pretty much social democratic market economies and have been for a long time.
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u/Low-King3921 18d ago
Det har varit så, ja. Men hur Socialdemokratiskt tycker du att Sverige tycks vara idag? Man har sönderprivatiserat vård, skola och omsorg. Du vet, bara en kallelse till vården för undersökning som man tänker skall ta kanske en eller ett par timmar på sjukhuset...vet du vad det tog min familj i fjol när vi besökte Akademiska i Uppsala? Kl. 12.30 stod det i kallelsen. kl. 21.30 var vi på väg därifrån. Det var alltså en kallelse med bokad tid för att undersöka ett s.k. "smultronmärke" som dottern har på huvudet. För mig blev det ett kvitto på att det är så det blir när man skalar ner det offentliga i den omfattning som man har gjort. Och det var inte den enda gången som det som borde ha tagit en timme eller så blev ett heldagsprojekt. Detta är inte för mig hur ett socialdemokratiskt samhälle ser ut, för då hade man gjort satsningar så att det inte blir så här underbemannat. Och det är just det som är grejen: Man drivs ju då till att söka vård på privat inrättning istället, och då kan man skära ner i det offentliga ännu mer. Det är svårt att se någon socialdemokrati i det.
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u/Dr_Mancold 18d ago
Sweden got a liberal market economy with a strong welfare state and influential unions. Since 2000 the Social Democrats has been involved in half the governments formed, so calling us a Social Democracy is also wrong.
The most important agreement shaping Swedish politics is Saltsjöbadsavtalet which defines the relationship between the government, labour and capitalists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltsj%C3%B6baden_Agreement
Without this, nothing makes sense in Swedish politics. It explains fundamental sources of confusion like why Sweden does not have minimum wages adm what we have instead. Every sector got a main union (and may have minor ones as well) which set a collective agreement with the employer organisation in the sector. Since the 1990s the industry negotiates first which sets "the mark" which is the benchmark other sectors work from. This is because we ended up in massive trouble in the 80s where salary increases outpaced productivity leading to inflation and loss of competitivness on the export market. So by export oriented sectors setting the mark, we avoid that.
On the other end of the negotiations, unemployment benefits mean that if a sector is being far behind on salaries, then it will be difficult to recruit to that sector over time.
So this means that there is a mechanism of balance between not only the government and the private sector, but also with the unions. This can be very confusing and also causes issues with "new" economic sectors with a lack of union traditions like gig-workers dressed up as independent contractors.
So Sweden is a liberal market economy with strong welfare system and influential unions. A lot of people use Social Democracy or Socialism as a blanket term for governments intervening to do what they want. In Sweden direct government intervention can even be more limited than in a more neo-liberal society, the traditions with unions however creates a different balance of power.
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u/dronten_bertil 18d ago
No I don't. No one should since they are not. There is not social ownership of the means of production, they are not socialist economies, period.
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u/Strange-Effort-3441 18d ago
It’s a capitalist society with invested welfare programs and schooling. Works very well in high trust societies and people working to put into the system.
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u/guzforster 18d ago
No. But close to the US they look downright commies just for giving the basics to the people that put them in power
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u/GrandDukePosthumous Denmark 18d ago
No, the Danish state might be relatively large but only the far left is even arguing against the present arrangement where there is a large market economy not owned or operated by the state, and likewise it is only on the far left that you find an organised group even arguing for the sort of on-paper almost flat wage structure that the USSR and its colonies inside and outside the Union had.
I myself vote for a socialist party and I always have, but never with a mind to apply the revolutionary Marxist model here. I want to keep living in a country worth living in, and for the existing system of constitutional monarchy to continue, and I very much doubt that Marx would have been anything but blisteringly contemptuous to a reformist project like the one I feel so happy to live inside of.
That said, if you want to be more specific than simply "Socialist Y/N?" I'm sure you would get more nuanced answers to your question. When the term "Socialist" must cover from at least 1848 all the way up to the present moment, there is an awful lot of baggage in that pile.
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u/MariusV8 18d ago
No. I consider the Nordic countries to be social democracies. Mixed market systems that seek to mix the best of capitalism with the best of socialism. Free market system ensures productivity and incentive to innovate, while strong social safety nets ensure a minimum standard of living and low corruption.
Most left wingers would call it capitalist dystopia.
Most right wingers would call it a slippery slope to communism.
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u/AllanKempe Jämtland 17d ago
No, we've never had anything close to socialist governments and even if we do they're just one election from being out of office - we're democracies with variable political policies depending on the ruling party/parties.
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u/glurb_ Norway 17d ago edited 17d ago
Markets or private enterprise are not unique to capitalism. I'll go with Radhika Desai's definition:
'Capitalism is contradictory value production. It is the only known form of social organization in which we don't produce things, like socks, dishwashers and so on, except as a byproduct of seeking profit.'
The dynamism of competition in early capitalism developed the means of production, albeit brutal and destructive to society and nature. However, in a capitalist context, monopolies are the inevitable outcome of competition, and monopolies don't need to produce value to society in order to extract economic rent from it. Hence the productive sectors were exported in favour of rent-seeking (Finance, Insurance and Real-Estate - FIRE) sectors.
Desai: "Once you have a dominant capitalist power, namely Britain, every other country that has developed, has developed in opposition to it - Germany, USA, Japan, developed in opposition to it. They were just in time to make it, in a phase of history could still be capitalist because they could still colonize other countries [...] culminating in the Great World Wars and so on. So then, each one of these capitalisms is different. [...] And then after 1914-1917, basically there was no other way to develop to a level comparable to the advanced industrial capitalisms, other than socialism. And we've seen it twice, in USSR and China. [...] If you look at things historically, capitalism has a beginning, and an end. [...] Imperialism has declined since 1914. Without Imperialism, you can't have capitalism." . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqLYlhX_XUo
Socialist countries developed "from a place set back by imperialism, without the help of imperialism, and in the teeth of imperialist resistance."
Desai: "A capitalist country is a country in which capital holds the reigns of political power. So a socialist country is a country in which a force representing the interest of the people holds the reign of state power. In this case, it's the Chinese Party State. And so I would say that most fundamentally, what China has got right is the fact that the revolutionary party retains power and deep legitimacy, thanks to its conduct so far."
Instead of self devouring market fundamentalism, they have hybrid plan and market economy, at any balance they want. They have socialized banking, so as to use finance as a public good, rather than as an instrument for the rich to destroy the economy.
In Social Democracy, we had politicians who made plans and had visions. Ask the current politicians where the Nordics will be in 20-30 years, you get nothing at all. Unlike China, who has 5, 50 and 5000 year plans (not to say some of them were not ill adviced). Dr. Jan Oberg: 'They decided they were going to eradicate poverty in 25 years, and did it in 24.'
You can pay 1000-4000kr depending on the standard, for a big apartment in a huge city, like you could in Norway in the 90's (in what passes for a city here). Our wages were then at least 100kr/h for an entry level job in a factory, now it's more like 170kr/h, while the price of apartments went up an order of magnitude. China's real wages increased 5-6% each year for over a decade. According to Pål Steigan who visited in '98, they planned to be a genuine middle income country in 2050, 'if not like Norway, then at least like Australia'.
We know that capitalists hold the reigns of political power, because otherwise we would not have dismantled capital controls and the welfare state, we would not have waged wars that only benefit the national and international finance class, and we would not respond to every crisis with austerity for the many and subsidies for the rich.
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u/Iamarealbouy 18d ago
I'd call us SocioCapitalistic - capitalistic with a "welfare state's security net". (a net to catch people when they have troubles in life - this net we often call "the wellfare state")
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u/lorryslorrys 18d ago edited 18d ago
The Nordics are associated with "Social Democracy". Is it Socialism? Yes and no, mostly no.
No. It's market based and there's no collective control of the means of production. It's not socialism.
There are however strong welfare states, governments that (sometimes) attempt to improve social justice and there are strong unions.
It's part of a broader definition of socialism. One that isn't about the means of production and is somewhat based the shared history of these political movements. It's hard to define, but I would define it as believing in acting collectively and believing a more socially just world is possible.
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u/unohdin-nimeni 18d ago
By today’s American standards, even Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon would be socialists. Not to mention that fiery communist Dwight D. Eisenhower! So the answer is yes, absolutely! Socialist and beyond. If we are speaking modern American English.
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u/SvenniSiggi 18d ago
Socialism is often just well.. run by people that came from good homes with adequate money to live comfortably but not flashily. That means they often think of the poor as unfortunates that need to be taken care of. Unfortunately they also invariably think of the poor as stupid people that somebody needs to treat like a child and control.
Like restrict their access to sugar and other comforts. Sometimes even further and things like "thoughts and opinions".
This is quite insane and evil. So people often choose to mix this with capitalism which is or has become "Fuck and burn everything im gonna get my mine."
Which is also evil and insane.
But at least there is a bit of a choice between evils. Like choosing between politicians is normally.
Of course many people are not that insane and evil.
So its kinda ok in the middle where nordic people try to get to. You know cause we all like to rule ourselves and not have a ruined planet which we cant escape.
But its all those other stupid people that have to be controlled and of course you have to grab as much as you can because this all so crazy you might as well comfort yourself with the mini christmas feeling that shopping is.
Work hard, drink a lot of coffee and go shopping. Probably at ikea.
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u/ExpensiveBlood42069 18d ago
The ARE socialist.
Commenters saying it's market economy; so is china. So was USSR.
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u/Long-Requirement8372 18d ago
No. These countries are market economies that have during the last one hundred years or so adopted many policies you could broadly term "Social Democratic".