Pelle Dragsted is at it again, penning another love letter to the social democratic welfare state. His fantasy of reforming our way to socialism is a cozy mirage for conflict-averse Scandinavians, promoting a socialism where class analysis and class struggle has been replaced by the fairy tales about democracy we were told in social studies class in school.
First order of business: There is no such thing as Nordic socialism in the real world. The Nordic countries are all bourgeois capitalist states in which a class compromise gives workers some comforts without challenging the fundamental ownership of the means of production.
He ignores that the Nordic model’s comforts were won through struggle that was only possible because the October Revolution had put the fear of Jesus in the hearts of the corridor and that the relatively high standard of living is funded by imperialist superprofits extracted from the periphery. His myopic focus on the national realm refuses to confront this parasitic relationship.
Worse, his premise is naively idealist. It assumes the bourgeoisie, upon seeing his “shards of socialism,” will simply surrender their power. History screams otherwise. What happened to Allende? What happened to the Indonesian communists? The moment capital feels threatened, it abandons democratic pretense for violent reaction. The bourgeois state is not a neutral tool; it is structurally designed to protect the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
But Dragsted would never get far enough to become a Nordic Allende. At best he would be another Corbyn and get destroyed by the character assassination of the reactionary press.
Dragsted’s gradualist plan of sovereign wealth funds and co-ops is dependent on maintaining electoral success for decades and is useless as a realistic response to a capital strike. Also, it offers no answer to the physical violence any socialist project will face from the bourgeoisie.
The old syndicalist Christian Christensen once wrote:
Parliament is like the wastebin at a slaughterhouse, full of rotten chunks of meat. Do you think they go fresh again by throwing a piece of good meat in there, or do you think it is them who poison the fresh?
Dragsted used to punch Nazis when he was younger. Back then he understood that some enemies can’t be appeased but must be defeated. But now, after having been pickled in the wastebin for decades, he has turned into a completely harmless round, fluffy social democrat.
Whitewash selling fuel on a massive scale by hyping up environment friendly narrative?
OP’s post is about a Danish author. Your video is about Norway where democratic socialism existed before the north sea oil boom of the 1960’s.
Social democracy, kinda. Not democratic socialism.
You can tell from the private ownership of 65% of industry and the
FUCKING MONARCHY
Parliamentarianism has been the prevalent rule since 1884.
American presidents demand significantly more governing power and authority.
Yeah, I’ll agree that recently privatization has become commonplace.
Still weird to use Norwegian economics as evidence for why the Danish author is bad. Charitably you’re completely ignoring Sweden, Finland, and Iceland if you want to consider the larger cultural-economic group.
IMO a broader argument is that the scandinavian system still runs on the same capitalist structures as the rest of the world, and therefore is bound by the same faults as capitalist countries everywhere. Namely unsustainable growth relying on borders to extract from the global south while simultaneously developing artificial scarcity locally to boost the upwardness of a trend line in our collective delusion.
I didn’t say the author was bad, I said they don’t know what the words they’re using mean.
fair, bad was poor word choice.
