I have to get back to Sweden since the Socialist club seems to think that this is the great example of how a mixed economy is the better way…
Excuse my French, but that is ahistorical Socialist agitprop bullshit of the first water. The ‘Swedish Model’ of welfare state developed in the middle of the twentieth century was at first extremely efficient at creating equalized prosperity within the citizenry. However, as of the late sixties the administration needed to maintain this system grew to lumbering gargantuan proportions.
By the end of the seventies the effective tax pressure in Sweden exceeded 80% for a medium to high salary taker, which created an environment where new enterprise and entrepreneurship was virtually impossible. The economic boom in the eighties created a breathing space, but that wasn’t enough. By the late eighties the social welfare system started falling apart under its own weight. The last ten years have seen extreme market economy reform. Hospitals and healthcare in general have been semi privatized. The state has decreased its ownership in industry to near zero levels. The new economy boom created another injection of healthy free economy growth, unfortunately we all know what happened to that in the last two years.
Today Sweden still lags behind many of her sister states in the EU in effective purchase power, the health care system is still very inefficient in comparison to for instance Germany, and a large portion of the population is indirectly or directly dependant of the state for their income, which again inhibits growth and creates a sclerotic environment of enterprise. As a result Sweden has lost much of its big industry, which has either fled the country to for instance Holland, or Belgium (e.g. IKEA) or has been swallowed by foreign interests (e.g. Volvo).
Countries that partially or wholly adopted the ‘Swedish Model’, such as France, have all gone through similar evolution, although their late adoption has made it somewhat easier to shake of the giant Socialist monkey on their back.
Ah, you have to love it when you see statements of that kind from people in Sweden. That’s swallowing the agitprop from the Social Democrat Party to the point of virtual blindness. A deep need to justify the errors of the past, eh?
This myopic view is so terribly wrong that it beggars. Yes, if you compare poverty in Sweden to poverty in the US there is a huge difference to Swedish ‘poor’ people’s advantage – but poverty isn’t exactly rampant in any of the two economies, is it now. On the other hand if you compare the vast majority in the middle class to the US middle class, the Swedes suddenly look comparatively dirt poor. A more just comparison would be to the rest of the EU, but once again we find that the purchase power and relative prosperity of the population is below the big member states like Germany, France and England. Even smaller sisters like Denmark, Holland and Belgium outperform Sweden these days.
This has always been the critical flaw of communism: it postulates industry and technology have reached some optimal point, never to be developed further. Prior to the incredible technological advances of the 20th century, this might have seemed plausible; believing that everything that could be invented had already been invented.
Technological advancement is not simply about creating new toys for a jaded population, of course. At the very least, the advent of refrigeration, large-scale sanitation and immunization (all unknown or in their earliest stages during Marx’s time) have reduced disease and human misery hugely, arguably more than slaughtering the Czars did.
Once we get replicators, transporters and nanotechnology, maybe we can live some kind of Star Trek-like socialist utopia. Capitalism is the best way to get to such a stage, so maybe Marx was just 500 years too early.
Then again, if every individual has a replicator in his house, why should he care about solidarity with others? Screw the others!
I couldn’t have said it better myself: you’ve pretty much expressed my point of view in a nutshell. Thanks. soup du jour (sdj):
You deserve more of a response than I have time for at the moment, unfortunately. Regarding FDIs, if they are what you say they are, then judging from what I know about development economics, they are right out. In all fairness, even the report you’ve produced is equivocal, and admits that they haven’t performed uniformly well in all societies. On the other hand, if Stiglitz is promoting these types of development investments I may have to reevaluate my position.
The article that I quoted from earlier (linked on page 2 of this thread) claims that many of the studies the IMF and World Bank rely upon are skewed because they include China and India in their surveys. The report you’ve linked is not itself an in-depth case study, but contains an attachment at the end that summarizes a number of such studies. I mention this because, if I read these studies correctly, they seem to indicate trends that run directly counter to those commonly accepted in development economics back when I was a student. Are they skewed by including China and India? Can’t tell.
Regarding the relations between capital and labor, about which I could go on for a very long time, I just want to make the point that in today’s economy capital is no longer beholden to a any given national labor pool, which has in its turn weakened labor’s hand significantly. Scylla:
(Regarding my claim that poverty is ”endemic” to the human condition):
*Well, really, isn’t this just a sort of word game? ”Endemic” does not mean ”caused by,” or, at the very least, that was not the sense in which I employed it. If I say that sheep are endemic to New Zealand, does that mean that I’m claiming New Zealand somehow causes sheep?
Alright – maybe that’s a bad example. But you get my point, I hope.
As an economist, I’m sure you’re aware that poverty is the result of a number of causal factors working together. If I were to point to the most important of these causes, historically, I would indicate resource scarcity. However, in a society that produces enough resources to go around, but that nevertheless suffers from poverty, one must consider other factors as well.
I honestly don’t know.
:smack:
I did, already! Remember? Competition, market constraints, downward pressure on wages, rush to the bottom…. You read right through it, extracted a single quote, and told me I was wrong. I’d really like to know why you think that analysis is wrong. Is there something about the way capitalism functions that I missed? Are the empirical studies incorrect? What?
Look, I’ll try it from a different angle. Let us assume a given, closed society that produces a certain amount of wealth. For the sake of the thought experiment, assume that this society produces more wealth than is needed for its members to survive. Let us call all this extra wealth, such as is produced beyond the subsistence needs of the society, its surplus.
Now, the question is: how should a society divide up, or distribute, this surplus? This is one of the fundamental dilemmas that the society’s economy must resolve.
One possible answer, of course, would be to simply redistribute the extra surplus equally among all the members. This might seem like a fair solution at first glance, but as soup and many others note, it also involves certain problems: some workers, for example, might see no initiative to work, and sit on their dufus all day long, confident that in the end they’ll still get their share. This would put an unfair burden on the other members of the society. Etc.
Another possibility might be to grant a person, or group of persons, control of the entire wealth produced by the society, to dispense with as they see fit. Under a feudal system, for example, the lord had absolute right over everything thing that was produced on his domain, to distribute essentially at his whim. So, he could chose, if he so wished, to keep a large portion of the surplus for himself, and to give away another large portion to his men-at-arms (thus assuring their loyalty) – while leaving the majority of his society at, or even below, the subsistence level. Can you see how we could say that such an economic system ”creates” poverty, in a society which produces, as it were, enough to go around?
I argue that a capitalist system is virtually geared to produce such effects, if not properly regulated. Here we have a society in which a few persons are granted control of the majority of wealth, via the unalienable right of private ownership; but they are also forced into a situation in which they must compete with each other in order to maintain that wealth, lest they themselves be reduced to paupership. This implies that they must constantly find ways to squeeze surplus out of the system. This might be accomplished by means of streamlining production, building factories, or even by pressing the wages of those who work lower and lower, ensuring that they do not get to partake of the surplus produced by the society. No matter what technique the owners employ, however, they do so to extract a surplus for themselves. This isn’t to argue that all capitalists are evil, although some might be; it is merely an institutional analysis. I claim that capitalism as a system entails an internal dynamic that forces this outcome upon society.
You know, I’m not just making this up as I go along. For example, I quoted a standard freshman economics text on the previous page. I’ll reproduce the relevant passage:
Please note the use of the word ”generate” in the passage above. If an economy “generates” a distribution curve such that rich cats get milk, while poor children go without, then I argue that is, in fact, a result of the particular economic system in question, and not merely an outcome of the “human condition.” As I pointed out previously, the authors of the tome quoted above cited the Irish potato famine as factual, historical example of such a situation.
*I’ll have to chew over the implications of that last statement for a while longer, I think, before I respond. flex:
I’ve spent a lot of time in this thread presenting my views as straightforwardly and sincerely as I can. I might be wrong, but I resent the insinuation that I would intentionally mislead anyone here.
Wal-Mart has approximately 1 million employees. It would be completely astounding to learn that they earned more profit than they paid in wages, and I’ve never implied otherwise. But so what? Imagine, if you will, how Wal-Mart might function if, rather than an exploitive capitalist institution, it were an anarcho-syndicalist collective….
According to earlier cites from Chumpsky, we know that WM combed in approximately 6 billion in profits last year. And sales are up. Tracking down the page flex unsuccessfully attempted to cite, we see that net income for the quarter ending July 31, 2002, is around 60 billion. Of that, approximately 2 billion was realized as profits. So, for the sake of argument, let’s just say that over this year, if the trend continues, WM will earn 8 billion in profits.
Where do these earnings go? To the shareholders, of course, who currently receive 46 cents per share, up by 27.8%. That’s about, what, about a buck 50 per share, averaged across the entire year?
If WM were a workers collective, then that extra money – the product of the employees exertion and sweat – would not accrue to stock investors. It would accrue to the employees of WM. They would themselves determine how to utilize the surplus their work had generated. They could, for example, vote for an across-the-board wage increase, which, if my math is correct, would amount to an extra $8000 dollars per year for each employee (8 billion divided by 1 million employees). Or, they could chose to use the money for new investments, for a better health care system, or, well, just about anything.
Yeah – they’re free to go find some other piece-of-shit, low-wage job. WM and other such large corporations set the standards under which all of us must live.
Not that this is particularly relevant, but do you have any support for that claim?
You might want to look up your definition of “subsistence,” chief.
When people don’t receive their subsistence, they have a tendency to die. This means that they’re no longer around to work. Feudal lords gave their workers their subsistence - their workers thus continued to live. And not only did they have enough for themselves, they also had a tiny bit extra, which they used to feed their babys, who soon became workers themselves.
As for the disparity between workers and owners: I think most all of us here are interested in considering ideas to lessen the disparity, but worker ownership is a terrible idea, for more than one reason.
I have zero monetary incentive to come up with better ways to make widgets if I know that the ownership of the Better Widget Company will be stripped from me. So, in your attempt to make the world a better place, you have stifled technological advancement (which you consider to be the real cause of modern wealth, as demonstrated by your statement that industrialization is the cause of modern wealth - industrialization being a form of technological advancement).
And democracy is the least efficient system around when it comes to efficient, timely decision making. You can talk all you want about how wonderful the world would be if workers had a vote, but the success of the company would, in the end, suffer.
What happens when production and distrubution team up to vote for a decrease in the salaries of the office staff? Well, for one thing, the office staff quits. So they have to be replaced. Who does the hiring? A committee? Who’s on the committee? Well, guy, you’ve got the votes of the sales department to be on the committee, if you can convince the other people in marketing to give us a pay increase…
This is how democracy works. We settle for it with government, because it’s better than a Stalin or a Hitler who will kill us all if we disagree. But in the world of business, we have given owners the power, to promote market efficiency.
If you strip owners of their incentive to innovate and their decision-making powers, you will hurt the economy. It’s as simple as that.
I think mandated profit-sharing might be a good idea, so long as the mandate isn’t egregious, but I’m not sure. It would only work part of the time, I think. Owners would hire new workers at a lower wage, so that the new wage plus the profit-sharing bonus would equal the old wage (i.e. the wage-pre-profit-sharing). In companies that have sudden, dramatic increases in profits, the workers would benefit, but otherwise… I just don’t know.
Where in the hell did you ever get the idea that owners of companies come up with ideas?
This exact same argument was used in the 1930’s to bolster support for Fascism in Europe. Roosevelt praised Mussolini (his favorite Fascist), referring to him as “that admirable Italian gentleman” because “he got the trains to run on time.”
At any rate, you are wrong. Worker-owned cooperatives have been spectacularly successful at times, despite the huge disadvantages they suffer under in the capitalist economy. For example, by far the best publishing house in the U.S. is South End Press.
Nothing you have said contradicts my assertion. Sweden DOES have a very healthy society, by objective standards, and it DOES radically violate free-market principles.
You are correct that the 24,000 deaths by starvation per day is not the same today as it was in the past. In fact, the figure has been greatly reduced in the last decade, from about 35,000/day. This has been achieved by some truly heroic efforts of a small number of very dedicated people working with very limited resources. If actual resources were put into it, the number would decrease still further.
Very interesting. You will note that most capitalist ideologues jump at the chance to attribute the 30 million who died in China during the Great Leap Forward to the evil communist system. You will find, in fact, that the policies instituted by the Chinese government did have the effect of creating a healthier society after the transition was made. Of course, it was a horrendous crime, but here is the difference:
The Great Leap Forward was pursued with the goal of increasing the health of the population. On the other hand, U.S. imperialism’s program of Third World starvation is pursued in order to decrease the health of the population. Thus, while the Great Leap Forward was a monstrous crime, the policies U.S. imperialism carries out in order to impoverish most of the world’s population is far worse, both in scale and in the end result.
Furthermore, a feature of Soviet imperialism was, as I pointed out, and which you ignored, was that capital flowed out from the mother country to the colonies. The exact opposite is the case with U.S. imperialism. The U.S. bleeds its colonies dry, and acts to prevent development around the world, pursuing an exactly opposite policy pursued by the USSR, which did, after all, encourage national liberation struggles.
Now, before you begin repeating your catchphrases, note that I am not a “defender of communism.” Reactionaries like yourself love to try to paint any critic of U.S. imperialism as being no different from Stalinists, Maoists, etc. But, I do not at all defend the actions of “communist” states like China, the USSR, etc., except to point out how U.S. imperialism’s foreign policy is much worse than that of these states.
I never argued that Sweden was unhealthy as is. But as for your assertations: cite please! Show us that a) Sweden is healthier than the US and the rest of EU and b) that in the current state of affairs Sweden “radically violates free-market principles.” Some comparative studies about standard of living, wealth per capita, average effective income and purchase power that point in such a direction would be most welcome.
(a) According to the U.N. Human Development Report 2002, Sweden ranks 2nd in the Human Development Index, behind Norway. The U.S. is 6th. http://www.undp.org/hdr2002 (Chapter 1, page 25 has the rankings.) Furthermore, Sweden is number 1 in the Human Poverty Index (HPI), with an HPI less than half that of the U.S.
So the operation was a success but 30 million patients died? Your ability to rationalize is truly impressive. The despot landlords who ruled China prior to the GLP were cruel and evil and needed to be tossed out, but replacing them with cruel and evil Party officials wasn’t really an improvement. Amnesty International describes a modern China that imposes death sentences for nonviolent crimes like pimping and embezzlement. Does this meet your defintion of a healthy society?
Your position makes no sense. Your preposterous 100-million deaths figure is an ad hoc calculation of starvation deaths that you feel could have been prevented by the capitalist countries. How does that compare to mass die-offs by starvation that took place in China and the USSR that were the fault of those countries’ own governments? If it somehow served America’s interest to keep people poor, why has there never been an instance of mass starvation (1 million+) within the U.S.'s own borders? Surely being an American wouldn’t protect a poor person from a ruthless capitalist, even if they were citizens of the same country.
You mean those Soviet actions in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Afghanistan were in support of national liberation and not just brutal invasions? Wow. The U.S. has had its share of brutal foreign adventures (of which Vietnam was the worst, though arguably they were coming to aid an ally; South Vietnam) but pretending the Soviets were well-meaning innocents is a blatant act of pure bullshit-spreading. Are you trying to fool us or just yourself?
While I like Americans (and have cousins who are American), I’ve never hesitated to criticize them on their culture, politics or crime rates. I will, however, jump to their defense when someone makes a criticism of them that is without cause or logic, Your debating tactics are comparable to throwing around buckets of slime and hoping some sticks. You’ll only defend the actions of “communist” states to point how how the Americans are worse? You have not offered one coherent or compelling argument that shows the Americans even approach the casual brutality that was life under Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot.
Have you ever actually spoken to a person who’d lived in a communist country? If so (and I have my doubts) I’d be curious about how that conversation went.
gigster gave the original OP: Why did communism die?
Answer: It did never even born. Not anywhere.
It would mean that a country would fill the needs of the people and in the last stage there would not even be need of any money, because everyone has everything. It is an idea You can try to come nearer to, not something You can actually reach.
Even the word “freedom” is an idea, that You can never really reach, but always come nearer (if You try hard enough).
And You and I, we should try harder.
Other answers to some questions in this thread:
USSR and its satellites were never even socialistic. (Well maybe USSR was something in the very early years, but what ever that was, or tried to be, died when Josef Stalin came to power.)
After WWII USSR was a huge military camp, ruled by a dictatorship, a handfull of men (or did You see a woman anytime waving “at the masses” at the Red Square, at the 1st of may parade?
If You speak (falsely) about USSR as a socialistic country and compare it to some other country, You come to one conclusion.
You can compare Bolivia (or put here any of about 150[?] countries in the world) to some idea/country/political system, saying that Bolivia is capitalistic and You will come to another conclusion.
In the latter You are assuming something that is nearer the truth, because, (here taken as an example only), Bolivia is a capitalistic country.
Since it seem that we can here discuss whatever inside all assumed political systems, which I am glad about, I have a question to those who knows the Swedish system(s) and history:
"Which years where the right in power which years where the left in power? (I tried to find it by “search”, but I came always to something else about Sweden).
If people are not just sick and tired, I will comment this thread page by page next night.
I read all the posts and my “fast” view, is if I may simplyfy it:
We are standing in a forest.
We are staring on two trees.
Then we make a conclusion of the whole forest.
We do not think about the facts:
that some big and powerful trees has a root-system far away under the smaller trees root-systems.
that some trees has more light than others, some are just growing on “poor” earth, among rocks etc., some trees has been born where there has been a fire some centuries earlier and so on.
Some trees has big leaves indeed. So big that we can’t see if the stem is defected. Often we see the defects in the core of a hugh tree only when a storm fells it down or a lighting cleve it.
Some trees, as former USSR, a sick tree indeed, tried to hide itself behind a fig leaf.
And we are still speaking about the forest, making conclusions, looking at just a few trees.
If someone want to know how people lived in USSR, good and bad, I can open a OP about that. There are the good things that the left (that part of the left that believed that USSR was left) speaks about, there are the bad things that even the right did not tell, because nobody would have believed.
(My wife can speak about this in 5 hours withouth interuption and it takes me a week to translate ;).
Now Russia is capitalistic. Compare this to almost anything, and You come to the conclusion that capitalism is the worst choice.
Stare at a tree, or its leaves, and You will see what You want to see, but You will be quite blind.
I prefer a system taking the best of each system and IMHO those that are just happy about their system, whatever it is, believing that the status quo is the utmost people can reach, have stopped thinking.
One further question: Can we speak here "optimal systems/blends of systems/The Only Right System/etc. or should someone open a new thread?
Personally I think this is already a “system”-thread.
I’d like to point out that Canada is #3 on that list and while I am filled with a strong swelling of pride, close examination of the table shows that the difference between #1 and #3 is negligible, and the difference between #1 and #6 is merely trivial. I hope you weren’t planning to use this as evidence, since China (in your words a "healthy’ country) is way back at #96. If China is more socialist than Sweden, this doesn’t form a compelling argument for socialism. You’re holding up what you believe is the best example of a socialist country (and ignoring counterclaims) while shrugging off the horrors of other “socialist” nations.
And sure, you called the GLP a “horrendous crime”, but apparantly it’s okay because it made China “healthy” (and allegedly the Americans are worse, but evidence is lacking).
Besides, the table is on page 38, not 25.
As for your HPI figures, the Swedes pay a price for their lower poverty index: higher taxes. Interesting that you don’t see a table for that.
My, my, my – what have we here? Some sort of moderaternas ungdomsförbund dropout?
Well, it’s not your French that bothers me, son, it’s your English. I think you meant to write, ”Excuse my French, but that is ahistorical Socialist agitprop bullshit of the first order.” And please allow me to observe that, for someone who so freely accuses others of spreading agitprop, you certainly seem to toe your party line pretty closely.
Let me open this response by noting that your post, if in opposition to the position taken by Chumpsky and myself, is pretty incoherent. Arguing that the Swedish welfare system did not violate free market principles by listing all the ways in which it did seems just a little self-defeating – dontcha think? But no worries, mate – most of what you’ve posted thus far is little more that standard, right-wing propaganda, Swedish-style, anyway.
*… i.e., it violated free-market principles.
*…i.e., it violated free-market principles.
*…i.e., it violated free-market principles.
…i.e., it didn’t violate free-market principles…
*Uhhh…it violated free-market principles?
But seriously, talk about ahistorical… to start with, it was not the administration of the system that proved to be problematic.
There were, and still are, a host of obstacles to ”new enterprise and entrepreneurship” in the Swedish economy. I spent a couple of years trying to run a small bookshop here myself, and sympathize with a lot of the complaints that emanate from the small-to-medium business sector. And traditionally, among social democrats and other assorted Swedish leftists organizations, starting your own business back in the 60s and 70s was a vaguely suspicious project, I’ve been given to believe. But the 80% tax rate Sparc refers to was an absurd and short-lived event – it doesn’t reflect a general trend in Swedish taxation policy.
In the early 70s the Social Democrats introduced something they called ”marginal taxation.” The idea was that if you earned over a certain amount, your rate of taxation on the extra income would go way, way up. Unfortunately, due to severe miscalculations on the part of the SDs, that rate was structured in such a manner that even us normal folks got slapped if we, for example, went in to work a little overtime. The result was that we could end up paying so much tax on our extra income that, in the end, we lost money overall. Clearly a fucked-up situation. This problem was further exacerbated if a person was ”self-employed,” because on top of taxes and marginal taxes, they had to pay social service fees.
The entire situation came to a head in 1976, when Astrid Lindgren – you know, the lady who invented Pippi Longstockings? – wrote a fable called ”Pomperipossa i Monismanien,” which was published in a nationally syndicated newspaper. In the fable, Pomperipossa, a good little girl who just loves to pay taxes, discovers a shocking fact:
*Etc. Actually, in Swedish, the story is incredibly charming. Poor Pomperispossa discovers that in the end, despite the fact her book sales had earned her approximately 2 million Swedish crowns, after paying all of her taxes she had only 5000 crowns to live on for the entire year (approximately 500 US, by today’s standards – probably a bit more, back then). Need I mention that the fable was really a true story, and that Pomperipossa was really Ms. Lindgren herself?
After this story was published, the Social Democrats made what can only be described as a fateful, dreadful mistake. They launched a snide, rather condescending campaign against the estimable Ms. Lindgren, without doubt Sweden’s most beloved author of children’s books, and a cultural archetype of the first order. When it turned out that she was right about the tax rate system, and they were wrong…well, let’s just say that the Social Democrats consequently lost the next election, their first election loss in over 40 years. And that’s how a humble writer of children’s books felled an entire government, and it’s a true story, to boot. The moral? Dude, never – and I mean never – mess with Dame Astrid (God rest her soul).
So, by the end of the 70s, you see, the Social Dems were out of power, and a coalition of right-wing parties were running the show. So, if you complain about the tax rate during that period, you must in fact blame the right.
(Henry B: In 1936, the Soc Dems came into power via a coalition with Centerpartiet [then called “Bondepartiet,” – i.e., the “Farmers’ Party”]. Aside from the emergency government formed during WWII, the Social Dems ran the country until 1976. After the “ Pomperispossa scandal,” a right-wing coalition took over. Plagued by strong opposition and internal bickering, the right [in various configurations] controlled the government until 1982, when the Social Dems, under Olaf Palme, once again regained a parliamentary majority.)
A modified form of marginal taxation is still in force in Sweden even today, but the extremely high level of taxation paid by the very rich here is not, at least in my opinion, a major obstacle to starting, running, and owning one’s own business. I mean, let’s face it – most people who pay that level of income tax aren’t out starting their own businesses, anyway. It’s your average Joe Swede, with your average income, who’s trying to make a go of it – and he has other sorts of hurdles to leap.
The so-called “eighties boom” you refer to was, actually, a real estate speculation bubble, combined with extremely irresponsible financial policies (and in particular, loaning policies) on the part of Swedish banks. When the real estate market crashed, banks that had made irresponsible loans foundered. (The Swedish government, for example, was forced to purchase Nordbanken (now Nordea), lest it go bankrupt. They bought it from Eric Penser for – get this – one crown [about a dime, US].) The claim that such a speculation bubble provided “breathing room” for the welfare system is, at best, only a partial truth. On the contrary – it nearly destroyed that system. The collapse of the real estate bubble signaled the beginning of the worst economic crisis in Sweden since the end of WWII. I remember reading at one point (I arrived here in 1990, and lived through the worst of it) that industrial production dropped to 25% of its total capacity by 94 or 95 – that is to say, that 75% of the manufacturing capacity of the country was simply standing idly by, waiting for demand to pick up again. The welfare system didn’t collapse “under it own weight,” it collapsed due to the contraction of the Swedish economy.
I don’t know where you get the idea that Swedish hospitals and health care have been “semi-privatized.” Primary health care is still run by the state. I would like to see any evidence you have that connects the “health” of the Swedish economy, such as it is, to privatization. Most of those big, now private companies, are foundering helplessly, or fleeing the country in search of lower levels of taxation and wages, as you’ve pointed out.
In addition, the idea that the Swedish welfare system, or even the general Swedish economic environment, is responsible for the sale of Volvo, is also (if I may borrow your phrase) ahistorical Neo-Liberal agitprop of the first “water.” Volvo, by itself, was simply too small a manufacturing concern to compete on the global automobile market, where cutthroat competition has forced massive mergers over the last decade (right in keeping with Marxist economic predictions, by the way). Volvo had been unsuccessfully flirting with Renault for years, before Leif Johansson and Sören Gyll decided to carve the company up and sell the automotive division to Ford (Volvo trucks is still independent, but struggling). This has absolutely zero to do with the economic situation within Sweden, and in fact, Ford has left the production structure of Volvo fairly intact; it is run pretty much the way Ford runs Rolls Royce in England, and Torslanda here in Gothenburg (the Volvo plant) is running at full capacity.
Turning to these claims:
I really have no idea what you are going on about.
*Well, this is about half right, anyway, which is better than anything else you’ve managed to post so far. Poverty in Sweden is certainly not a major problem. In the US., on the other hand, poverty is a very major problem, with 9% of the population – that is, about 1 in 10 – living at or below the poverty line (somewhere around 27 million people – three times the entire Swedish population).
*Bullshit. But this isn’t about who has the greatest purchasing power, anyway. Of course, since Swedes pay a lot more in taxes, as you go up the scale, they have less to live on than their American counterparts. But they still get by just fine, believe me. And the purchasing power of the US middle class has a price as well – it consigns 27 million US persons to a life of economic misery.
I see that Chumpsky has beat me to the punch by citing UN Human Development Report. Moderates don’t like that report, however, and prefer to pretend like it either doesn’t exist, or is irrelevant. Instead, when discussing quality of life, they prefer to focus on factors like – in Sparc’s words – “wealth per capita, average effective income and purchase power,” as if these were the only relevant measures of life quality in a society. So they prefer to quote the latest OECD report instead, where Sweden has fallen to 17th place on the scale – thus proving that Sweden is a worse society than, say, America. But Swedes are given to much bellyaching, if you want my own American opinion, and criticisms of the system, though in some ways justifiable, tend to overexaggeration. Really, considering the economic catastrophe Sweden recently weathered, the fact that it still ranks so high on the UN scale – two steps above the ever-so-successful US – is a tribute to the resilience of its welfare system and economic policies.
Finally, I just have to respond to this, posted by Brian:
*:smack:
Sweden has a higher tax rate? Really?
No shit, Sherlock. That’s the entire point of this discussion. The UN report indicates that a higher tax rate, coupled with effective redistributive mechanisms, leads to a higher quality of life, as measured by various indicators as infant mortality rates, longevity, and so forth. Thus, the wealthy have less money, but the poor are better off. Chumpsky and I have been arguing that such a system promotes a better society, even though it violates free-market principles.
So, Mr. Svinlesha, You are an American who has emigrated to Sweden to Gothenburg? I myself lived near Masthugget some 30 years ago.
I am interested if You had “a shock” when You first came to Sweden?
A shock, in line of this thread; “high taxes - high social security”. And did You get free teaching in the Swedish language?
I mean were You first critical “to the system”, or how fast did You grasp the essence of the “folkhemmet” (peoples home).
Let me just add that I was myself quite critical, but have softened my tone a lot in recent years.
Just to emigrate to Russia, will, I think, put anyone re-thinking.
No taxes - no roads - no nothing, even the militzia is robbing people because of small wages. Just bandit-capitalism in its purest form (I have seen).
So folks, I am not asking for Mr. Svinlesha’s personal life, just to compare systems where he has lived in. I think it will be Ok in a thread that is that broad as it de facto is.
I agree with Mr. Svinlesha at most points.
We have to give the Swedes a credit for creating a quite human system, where all have somekind of chance to give and get.
They begun from scratch, even if it was a little bit easier for them, keeping themselves wisely out of the WWII.
That they made mistakes, that is obvious, but the mistakes where not coming down and not corrected.
The bankrupcy of the social system was in Sweden bankrupted (as also in Finland) just as Mr. Svinlesha describes. By the right wing.
I have never voted for the social democrats though, but they had one very good point:
In high conjuncture they paid loans and spared money as much as possible. In low conjucture they spended the money on building the infrastructure (giving people jobs even in hard times), even lending as much as possible to keep everything afloat until the next high conjucture begins.
Usually it ment that when the business begun to grow again, the infrastructure was top-trimmed and Sweden went ahead of countries that only was awaking from the head-ache that the low-conjuncture had caused.
But then came the right in power, the real anarchists, loosening the money so that everyone and everything was based on debts, everyone was eating the tomorrow bread with a low conjuncture in the horizon.
And finally some ten years later these right-wing-anarcho-guys in nice suits point a finger on the ruins, saying: “We knew that it would not work!!!”
Where in the hell did you ever get the idea that owners of companies don’t come up with ideas?
Let’s try this again…
Some people have ideas that can lead to a successful business enterprise. Many times in the past, these people have started up their own companies and sold their idea for a tidy profit (Thomas Edison ring a bell?).
This, of course, does not mean that all owners come up with ideas, but, if you remember, I never said that all owners come up with ideas.
And creators, by the way, don’t necessary have to start a company. They own their idea, and if they want, they can simply sell their idea. And who are they going to sell it to? To the owners of businesses, who have the means to buy such ideas.
Again, if you strip these people of their financial incentive to create, you slow technological progress and hurt the economy.
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This comment has no relevance. I’m not arguing the truth of it, but it’s simply not an issue. Yes, the inefficiences of democracy were used to support fascism, but so what? Democracy is still inefficient. As I said before, as you should remember, we settle for democracy because under totalitarian rule, it’s very easy for a Hitler or a Stalin to kill off large portions of the population. Think back to Churchill - Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.
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By far the best publishing house? By what criteria? Because they publish books that agree with you?
That would obviously be a bit biased, so let’s look at something else. How about the number of books they sell every year? How is this not an objective measure of a publisher? That publisher is best, which sells the most books. That publisher is best, whose books the people most want to buy.
If collectively-run business are so spectacularly successful, as you claim, then they should have no problem outcompeting owner-controlled businesses. But this simply isn’t the case.
I’m not arguing that South End isn’t a good publishing house. It is, as is proven by its continued success.
But its system of management would not be efficient for a larger business. Marketing and sales and accounting and management and production would all team up for the interests of their individual sections instead of the interest of the whole. It is human nature, and you are blinded by idealism if you think otherwise.
I am not wrong about this.
A single person can dedicate themself to the betterment of others (or 5 people, as demonstrated by South End), but when people bunch into groups, a great majority will always look after themselves at the expense of others.
The Randists are also blinded by idealism (that people would actually play fair with one another if the government looked the other way), but I have yet to see any Randist opinions.
Mr. Sven has the right of it when he talks about reforms, but, were any such reforms to be implemented, we would have to be careful that we didn’t destroy the wealth making power of free enterprise, or created a welfare system that discouraged work.
But will these sorts of reforms ever take place? I really don’t know. Not for the next two years, certainly. When Republicans hear “reform”, a great many of them begin thinking of more ways to give rich people more money, e.g. the flat tax, in Cecil’s words, the worst idea to come down the line since the pet rock.
I lived for a year or so on Sjömannsgatan, myself. Beautiful neighborhood.*
I was given free, high-quality instruction in Swedish for approximately 7 or 8 months – after that, I was getting pretty fluent. The language classes were a prerequisite for registration at the local unemployment office. After completing the course, I enrolled in a cost-free course for training as a ”health worker” – first step towards becoming a nurse, although I chose a different route afterwards. To be honest, everyone who completed the Swedish course was offered training in one thing or another, and I didn’t fully understand what I had chosen to study until I had been at it for a month or so.
I have never been terribly critical of the ”system.” I didn’t really understand how much I was paying in tax, at first, because of the way paychecks are written in Sweden. Basically, I just had money deposited in my bank account at the end of every month, and was presented with a payment statement in the mail. So, although it might sound strange, I’ve never really felt that I ”paid” taxes, since they were just numbers on a piece of paper. In fact, I often received a nice, fat tax return at the end of the fiscal year, and it felt like Christmas all over again.
I’ve always made a fairly comfortable living doing one thing or another here, and during my occasional bouts of unemployment I always received fine support benefits from my anarcho-syndicalist labor union.
I can’t say that I’ve ever really grasped the ”essence” of ”folkhemmet.” That’s become a rather old-fashioned term here, anyway. But I do remember my total sense of disbelief as I came to understand some of the benefits one is eligible for as a member of Swedish society. My absolute favorite is the by-law-guaranteed five weeks paid vacation a year, regardless of job. I.e., if you work at the Swedish equivalent of a Wal-Mart, you are still guaranteed by law five weeks of paid vacation a year. Five weeks! Paid! Every year! Hallelujah!
I also remember having great difficulties getting my head around the rent and child support programs. For example, when I first came here, if I were to rent an apartment that cost X amount of crowns, but I only earned Y amount of crowns, then the government would come in and help me pay my rent with Z amount of crowns. So a body could live in a pretty snazzy place, even if ya didn’t earn that much, and the difference was paid courtesy folkhemmet. I believe rent support is a bit more difficult to get these days however, and I’ve never qualified for it.
The child support system also completely flabbergasted me in the beginning. Everyone in Sweden, regardless of income, is eligible for child support – as long as they have a child, of course. Mrs. S and I live quite well these days, but we still get 90 bucks a month for our son, Mr. S, Jr.. And excellent, free health care for him. I think we paid something like 100 crowns (10 bucks) in hospital fees for the birth.
So I was going, like, ”Let me get this straight. You mean, if I rent an expensive apartment, and don’t have the money to pay for it, the Swedish government will step in and help me out? And, for every child I have, the Swedish government will pay me 90 bucks a month? How is this possible? Where does all the money come from?” I used to listen to my anarcho-syndicalist buddies gripe about those ”right-wing, fascist social democrats” and think, ”Friends, seriously: you need to get out and experience the real world for a little while.”
Well, we pay high taxes, no doubt. There are especially high (and lucrative) taxes on alcohol, which Swedes consume in great quantities. But only 8% of the taxes go to defense spending: the rest are redirected towards health, education, and welfare. Maybe I’m just getting complacent in my old age, but from my perspective, overall, taking it in isolation, I think the Swedish system has much to recommend it.
So they do not have paid vacations in USA?
I have never been there and never will, but how does people have vacation? Vacation at a knowledge, (I am speaking of not so well off people), of certain bankruptcy in a month is not a vacation. It is a worry-period.
And WTF is a Swedish Anarco-Syndicalist Union? Never heard of such.
We had a syndicalist in Finland in the 50ties as the head guy for the seamen and ports. He had studied his ideas of syndicalism (Some kind of WW-union, if I remember right).
Anyhow, he put the seamen’s on strike if the guys did not get more paid. Once the Union had no money, so he just put the ice-breakers on strike. Every port and ship was standing and the guys had full payment in the port and the ships, except for a hundred guys at the ice-breakers that was on strike.
OK. The guys got again more.
The parliament ordered the ice-breakers to the navy in the spring.
At autumn Niilo Wallari, that was the guys name, asked if the navy had trained enough during the summer? And told that the ports will go on strike until the ice-breakers are given back to the ordinary seamen. It was a risk that the whole country would stand again, because everyone knew that the guys in the ports were 100% behind this guy, so the parliament gave the ice-breakers back. See how revolutionary ideas comes from USA?
The Finnish home-commies were just ashamed and tried to explain something, but the truth is that that guy was a master in tactics.
To readers from “not Nordic countries”:
It is forbidden by law that someone is without a home or without food. The community (county or town) has to give shelter first and later a home to everyone. And everyone has to have an income for food. There are some exceptions though: e.g. students.
They have another supporting system.
So if You are alcoholic, they help You first. If You do not help Yourself, they put You in a hospital. (As You can see, there is no freedom).
One more historical comment:
The support for children and the health-care etc. came to Finland partly because Sweden was building it up, but also partly because even if USSR had nothing for the people, they had that.
The left-parties, or some of the members, where gleeing in the parliament like this:
“We know that the capitalistic system is good, but when the commies in the east can afford it, the capitalistic, the better system should also be able to afford it.”
The winter-vacation in many countries in Europe begun when the Finnish metal-workers were on strike for 7 weeks in 1970, and it was given a few days to workers that had worked in a company for more than 25 years.
Then it was reduced to 15 years, and now everyone seem to have a fully paid week of vacation in Finland. And I think this has been also taken up in other European countries.
Nota bene: Also those that are criticizing the “damn leftist workers” goes happily on these vacations!
I myself have been a small business-owner for the last 20 years.
I just want to say one thing what an old commie told me when I was young and working in a metal factory:
“When You have settled the prize of Your work with the capitalist, You work hard if You are a union-man. If You do not working, but idiling around, You are not keeping the contract. We are not contract-breakers, we do not steal the time we once have sold to the capitalist.
We do not steal, we demand. And we demand more bread, when we have done right for our bread!”
If every commie would speak like this old man, I would look to that on my little saw-mill here in Russia would work only commies!
Still: I have often told this story to idle workers. They have been looking at each other in wonder “when the boss begins this funny commie-talk.”
Just to put this in right dimensions; How many of us that defend “the human capitalistic system” and those who are defending the hard anarchy-capitalistic system, even in this thread, are actually writing from work, stealing from the man.
Actually I am one. I am owning my own business, but I am still stealing. Even the boss and owner should work hard, because every spared rubel is in the end a security for continuity.
I was selling my products, pre-sawn products for the furniture industry, to a Swedish guy a year ago. One day he just E-mailed me that I have to stop the work for a month or so, because of market etc.
I phoned him that I can not stop the work and that we have an written contract. But what is the real problem is (was) that 300 men, a whole village is working in the forest, even with only axes, to get this fucking birch out, and that the next about 70 guys (transportation and the saw-mill) goes also without work!
(According to Russian law there is no need to pay anyone if there is no work. Just to tell the workers to go home. A heaven for anarchy-capitalists!)
He told that that is their problem, he can cover me etc. etc. (The story is long, and I got the knowledge later that his market had not gone anywhere, he just needed to finance another, more profitable, as he thought, business for some months. He is totally broke today, and I hope the Swedish social system takes care of him.)
I just made a new contract the next day with another company in Finland.
I just want to point out, how ever much I loath the USSR-system, I loath even more these guys that thinks that the workers are some kind of “units” that can be dismissed when ever for whatever reason.
I am for a human faced capitalism, but as i see it, it can only be created in small scale. When the big business begins to rule, there is no rules at all.
Just funny that IKEA was brought up in a post here. THAT company has a really well known history among small business runners in many countries.
I do not sell to them without bank securities.
Chumpsky - Sorry for the long response time. I’ve spent the last couple days doing a jig regarding the GOP successes of Tuesday. Found a lovely picture of Tom Daschle sitting alone and looking sad that I set as my wallpaper. Anyway…
That’s nice and all, but does nothing to address how one would handle the practicalities of such a system. I could just as easily wish for a perpetual motion machine to handle my car. How would it function? Well, however I designed it to function, of course.
What if, for example, the wise people of this nation decided to set a minimum wage of $50/hour, and declare that everyone would have health plans that guaranteed a personal masseuse on call 24/7. Of course, these decisions would lead to a spectacular failure. What I would like to see from you - from anyone, really - that addresses, specifically, my questions in a real-world situation. Just give a set of answers for my questions that you feel would work. If you believe there are multiple possible answers, that’s fine, just give me any one of them.
As I said before, I steadfastly believe that your system of government-mandated economic collectivism is unworkable in the real world. Seeing something concrete come out of you - something more solid than “Capitalism sucks” - would go a long way in substantiating your beliefs.
Further, even the owners who never come up with a single product- or service-related idea in their lives aren’t worthless. There’s far more to making profit than ideas. I work in an industry where good ideas are commonplace. Hell, I have half a dozen great (IMO) ideas myself. If I wasn’t working here, you know what I could do with my wonderful ideas? Precisely zilch. I need an infrastructure with which to develop my ideas, and the money to do so. My company provides this. The owner of the company provides some ideas, but more importantly, he provides business savvy, the ability to find money, the ability to negotiate with publishers, management skills to coordinate the efforts of those in the company, and so on. This is the role owners frequently play - they handle many of the details that allows a company to function. In the case of my company, the owner earned his right to his money by forging the company out of nothing a decade ago. Our current state (which isn’t too bad) is part of his reward for taking a risk in the first place. Personally, I think he’s more than earned his position in the company. And I would say, based on my experience, that owners like that of my company are in the majority.
