Friends,
We have to take advantage and make sure the elite are no
longer in control. Obviously, they have the money to resist us, but we
have the power of the people. No more empire, healthcare as a human
right, income equality, the abolition of the nuclear arsenal, sustainability,
the downing of the killer drones, and tax dollars for social services and the
infrastructure and bake sales for the Pentagon. Kagiso, Max
As coronavirus opens
the door to big changes, the left’s most attractive vision faces pushback
For many Americans, it’s time for a system change along the lines
of the Nordic model. This has the political establishment deeply worried.
George Lakey March
25, 2020
Emergencies
have a way of shaking up old, limiting beliefs. The coronavirus pandemic is
pushing people back to the drawing board.
In the
United States, many are noticing the institutional failures forced on us in
recent decades, during what billionaire Warren Buffett calls the “class
warfare” waged by the economic elite. The health crisis opens the door to
bolder thinking. Even establishment politicians today consider moves that cost
trillions, but their motivation is to save the existing system, not to
transition to a better one.
For
many Americans, however, it’s time for a system change. Fortunately, we don’t
have to start from scratch. The American left in recent years has been shaking
off its vision-aversion that began in the Reagan presidency.
· 
In
2016 the Movement for Black Lives took the initiative with its vision: measures needed to make racial and
economic justice a reality. Ever since, activists have been waking up to the
need. Grassroots people in Vermont even created a statewide Vision Summit.
This
trend is crucial for all activists, whether or not their favorite thing is to
think about systemic change. History suggests that the social movements that
make the most difference are those that project a vision, especially when it
can be expressed in common sense terms.
Vision
now threatens the U.S. political center
Establishment
political leaders, both Democrats and Republicans, are in trouble. The past
four years have not been kind to them, and not only because of the
uncontrollable Trump. In 2016 Bernie Sanders emerged from the margins to gain
political traction with bold alternatives. He proudly identified as a
democratic socialist. He couldn’t be dismissed as an irrelevant left ideologue
because he used the Nordic model as a vision-turned-practical, a brilliant
success in the real world.
His
argument is reinforced at this moment when, during the epidemic, we look across
the Atlantic and find dramatic Nordic initiatives that are made possible by the
advantages of their model.
In
March, the Danes — looking ahead because that’s what democratic socialists do —
realized that after the epidemic the economy will re-start more quickly and
smoothly if people simply return to their previous work. And the way to
guarantee that is to pay their regular wages in the meantime.
Denmark
therefore decided to “freeze” its economy for 13
weeks, maintaining payrolls while safety requires temporary lay-offs of most
workers. Workers will receive their full wages while at home. The employers pay
25 percent of the cost while the government pays 75 percent. The plan means
spending the equivalent in the United States of a $2.5 trillion stimulus!
The American Dream has fled the United States and gone to live in
Scandinavia.
Even
in ordinary times, the Nordic region is where you’ll find the best countries for women, for elders, for raising children, for equality, for environmental performance and even for individual freedom. Black Americans settling
down in Oslo even find relief from most of the racism they
encounter in the United States.
In all
these ways and others, the Nordic countries far out-rank the United States —
which is why this country is now rated as a “flawed democracy.”
The
researchers issuing the World Happiness Report were struck by
finding the Nordics consistently at the top. In the current report they devote
a chapter trying to come up with reasons. They conclude that the Nordics’
superior performance has nothing to do with their size, or even historic
homogeneity. (In recent years Nordic governments have welcomed migrants,
diversified and still managed to hold their place in the top tier.)
· 
What
many Americans forget is that a century ago the Nordic countries were a mess.
Poverty, inequality, lack of freedom drove millions to emigrate to Canada and
the United States. Now the situation is reversed. Even by measures of social
mobility, the American Dream has fled the United States and gone to live in
Scandinavia. In my book “Viking Economics” I tell the dramatic story of how
Sweden and Norway made their big turn-arounds.
All
these facts cause worry among American political centrists, who may want some
limited reforms here but nothing like the dramatic changes made by the Nordics
— especially not the power shift within those countries that made possible
their new model.
Ignoring
the Nordics is proving impossible
For
decades the American establishment counted on a simple strategy: ignore them!
Academia used to conform. While criss-crossing the United States on book tours
I’ve asked economics majors, both undergrads and graduate students, what they
were being taught about the Nordic model. The answer was almost always
“nothing.”
“Not
even in comparative economics?” I asked.
“No,
why should we learn about what they do in Scandinavia?”
In the Nordic model it’s the people who decide the direction of
the economy. There’s a reason it’s called democratic socialism, or social
democracy.
I
offered a hint. “Because it’s the most successful economic model yet invented.”
Happily,
the academic abdication is changing. I’m getting invitations from colleges and
universities — even a business school — to describe the Nordic model. Bucknell
University gathered all its Econ 101 students in an auditorium for the purpose,
where I met wide-awake students full of questions.
Pundits
come to the rescue of the establishment
Alert
to how dangerously attractive the Nordics are becoming to Americans,
establishment writers like David Brooks, Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman are
coming to the rescue. Some use the rhetorical device reminiscent of George
Orwell’s “1984,” in which a banner proclaims: “War is peace.” Or, as Anu
Partanen and Trevor Corson put it in the New York Times: “Finland Is a Capitalist Paradise.”
Rather
than using the strategy of an earlier generation, warning us of the dangers of
“collectivism,” current establishment writers acknowledge the Nordic success,
then re-brand it as capitalism. The problem for these writers, however, is
explaining how those pesky Nordics became so much more successful than our
country, which is supposed to be capitalism’s shining star.
From
my audiences the answer I hear most often is oil and gas. “The Nordics can
provide all these goodies that we would like to have because they are afloat in
oil.” (They overlook the oil and gas in our own backyard, sometimes literally.)
The
trouble with the oil explanation is that only Norway has a treasure trove of
oil and gas. Denmark has little, and Finland, Iceland and Sweden have none. Yet
those other countries join Norway in the top of the heap on multiple
international ratings.
The Nordic peoples exhibit enormous trust in their governments and
other institutions. That trust pays off in addressing emergencies like the
coronavirus.
What
they do have in common, with some individual differences, is their economic
model.
Actually,
oil doesn’t account for even Norway’s main achievements. The North Sea oil
didn’t come on line until the 1970s, and Norway pretty much got rid of poverty
before that time — as did their Nordic cousins.
The
Norwegian oil story does tip us off, however, to how mistaken it is to call
these countries “capitalist.” When the oil was discovered the people had a
national debate: who will own it, and how will it be handled?
Capitalists
believe the answer to those questions is obvious: private ownership, the same
as with other resources like coal.
In the
Nordic model, on the contrary, it’s the people who decide the direction of the
economy. There’s a reason it’s called democratic socialism, or social
democracy.
After
debating, Norwegians made several decisions. First, oil and gas would be owned
by the people as a whole. Second, the government would set up a nationalized
company to extract, refine and sell it. Third, the company would avoid a
boom-and-bust cycle, protect the integrity of cities near the oil fields,
employ a highly-paid, unionized workforce, and maintain the highest
environmental standards. Further, the proceeds would benefit the people as a
whole, and aside from a small fraction of profits going to fund national
projects, the money would go into a nationally-owned “pension fund” for future
generations.
Does
this approach in any way resemble the capitalist history of United States and
its global exploitation of resources, workers and communities?
Maybe
it’s the culture
In
his New York Times column “This is How the Scandinavians Got Great,” David
Brooks attributes Nordic achievement to the evolution of their education
system. As he says, in mid-19th century Denmark the folk high school movement
began to make a powerful and lasting impact.
The masses of Danes after World War I launched a nonviolent
struggle for economic justice, and then in 1924 became the first of the Nordic
peoples to elect a social democratic prime minister.
Between
harvest and spring planting, farmers could take time to attend the residential
schools and learn in an atmosphere that nurtured inner awareness, cooperation,
innovation and big picture critical thinking. Members of Danish working class
families could come, too. Norwegians adopted the growing movement, and then the
other Nordics.
David
Brooks leaves out the role of folk high schools in building leadership for the
growing cooperative movement, an alternative to capitalism that enabled both
producers and consumers to “eliminate the middleman” and become more
prosperous.
A
bigger problem for Brooks is trying to link the new education to the building
of “social trust.” True, today the Nordic peoples exhibit enormous trust in
their governments and other institutions. That trust pays off in addressing emergencies like the coronavirus.
Also true is that the education movement helped ordinary people build trust in
each other, hence the coop movement.
Brooks
clearly wants education to be able to play that role, given his alarm about
Americans’ present lack of trust in the U.S. establishment. He seems to hope
that, if the battered and starved U.S. educational system could somehow
flourish once again, maybe we Americans, too, could trust each other and our
institutions — and obtain the rewards of the Danish system!
The
trouble is that the big-picture — critical thinking featured in Nordic
education doesn’t necessarily yield trust. Instead, it gives tools for citizens
to evaluate their social reality. They learn to discern what is — and is not —
worthy of trust.
Danes
educated in this way could both experience the positives of their community and
see that their society in the 1800s was stuck between sentimental loyalty to a
feudal past and dreams of riches in a future of competitive capitalism.
Most
Danes wanted neither their feudal past nor a dog-eat-dog capitalist future.
They were far more inspired by the socialist vision brought to them by the
Social Democrats, which became Denmark’s largest party. Having gained literacy
and confidence, they could read socialist materials and discuss them. Factory
workers could form study groups.
· 
Far
from blessing capitalism, the masses of Danes after World War I launched a
nonviolent struggle for economic justice, and then in 1924 became the first of
the Nordic peoples to elect a social democratic prime minister. Networking with
their socialist comrades in other Scandinavian countries, they laid early
groundwork for what economists now call “the Nordic model.”
I
found while teaching in a Norwegian high school that, even in modern times,
Nordic education supports students to notice that there is such a thing as a
class structure. The name of one of Norway’s government-subsidized daily
newspapers is Klassekampen, or “Class Struggle.”
The
pay-off of Nordic education continues, but not in the way David Brooks
imagines. When in the mid-1980s Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were urging
the view that economies thrive through deregulation, the Danish government
tried to follow the neoliberal example.
In
response, Danish workers declared a general strike and 100,000 surrounded the
parliament building to stop neoliberal legislation from getting through. The
government was forced to back off.
Denmark
thereby avoided a deep recession of the kind that later, in 2008, marked the
United States, United Kingdom and many other countries. The reason we know
Denmark dodged the bullet in the 1980s is that the workers of Norway and Sweden
were not so alert. Their governments went for the Reagan/Thatcher line and
deregulated their banks.
The
bankers went wild, created a bubble, and in the early 1990s most banks
tottered, sending both countries toward the financial cliff.
The U.S. establishment is afraid to describe accurately the Nordic
achievement because its success shows pragmatic Americans that a really
different model is practical.
The
crisis returned Sweden and Norway to their senses. Because their basic social
democratic model was still intact, their governments could seize the largest
banks, fire the senior management, make sure the shareholders didn’t get a
krona and restore the previous regime of heavy regulation.
Norway
learned its lesson so well that it chose public ownership of Norges Bank, the
country’s biggest. By 2015 Norway’s public institutions (co-ops,
municipalities, the state) owned roughly 60 percent of the country’s wealth —
again not exactly what we expect of capitalism!
The
lesson for David Brooks from the Nordics is the opposite of his hoped-for
trust: a good education prepares workers and other thoughtful people to expect
that, even within the Nordic model, class struggle will continue.
Why we
must counter attacks on the Nordic model
In the
next part of this series I’ll respond to more writers in the mainstream media
who mis-characterize the Nordic model. There’s a reason to counter their effort
to co-opt the most attractive vision we have.
The
reason lies in how we win. Successful movements lift up a vision of change that
we can describe in common-sense terms. A vision supports us to move from
protest to change, from reacting to going on the offensive.
A
vision enables us to reach the scale we need to win. It inspires people to
sacrifice and transform their anger into a positive spirit that moves others to
join.
The
U.S. establishment is afraid to describe accurately the Nordic achievement
because its success shows pragmatic Americans that a really different model,
even though technically a hybrid of capitalism and socialism, is practical.
Of
course U.S. radicals may want to go farther than today’s Nordics’ achievement —
Nordic radicals do, too. But our call in the United States to “go farther” will
be credible only when we show we can sustain a mass “movement of movements” to
force major change.
If our
movements cannot generate the power to get what the Nordics have, why would
people join us when we proclaim even loftier goals?
These
are some of the questions alive in this moment of motion and change.
George Lakey has been
active in direct action campaigns for over six decades. Recently retired from
Swarthmore College, he was first arrested in the civil rights movement and most
recently in the climate justice movement. He has facilitated 1,500 workshops on
five continents and led activist projects on local, national and international
levels. His 10 books and many articles reflect his social research into change
on community and societal levels. His newest books are “Viking Economics: How
the Scandinavians got it right and how we can, too” (2016) and “How We Win: A
Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning” (2018.)
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore,
MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go
to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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