Editor’s Note:
Note the first sentence in the following article: There should be little disagreement that Sweden has offered the world the premier example of successful socialism. Even more to the point, though, is that Sweden also offers an extraordinary example of successful democracy, successful economics, and successful humanity. They are a shining beacon that offers the world a model of civility and decency, a model we should all think to emulate. No doubt they have faults … but not much when compared with the rest of us.
For the United States, it is worth keeping in mind Sweden as mid-term elections approach. My own country, likely to be facing elections again within the next twelve months, should take a good hard look … a few decades ago, this is the model we thought we admired and we should be asking ourselves where we went wrong.
Paul Richard Harris
Editor
The most successful socialist society on earth goes to the polls on Sunday.
It is not the socialism of Lenin, and certainly not of Mao. Nor, at the other extreme, is it the New Labour type of Tony Blair.
It is the socialism that the dreamers, thinkers and writers from Voltaire to George Bernard Shaw always imagined - a successful mix of human endeavor with human compassion, where the doors of a classless education are open to everyone, where it is not too difficult to get ahead, where you can make money, but you have to share it - with those who do not have it so good today and with yourself at some future age when you might be ill, infirm, lonely and unemployed.
Why then is the coalition of four opposition parties running so close to the incumbent Social Democrats?
It's partly because they've changed their message. In the last election, they were trounced after campaigning on the idea that Sweden was overtaxed. But the Swedes know that in this well-administered state you get what you pay for. Tax cuts would mean hospital cuts, and cuts for one's ailing mother in the nursing home.
The conservative/liberal opposition this time has decided it can't overthrow Swedish socialism - it can just say it will make it run better.
Indeed, there are no great issues in this election. The economy? It's hard to knock when Sweden has the highest growth rate per capita of any major country in the industrialized world, when inflation and interest rates are low, where productivity is high and unemployment is falling.
The European Union? Sweden voted not to adopt the euro and with the country's successful growth rate only a few want to see another plebiscite. As for Europe's "big" issues - the admission of Turkey into the EU, the rewriting of the EU constitution, free movement of labor for new members - it's all a yawn and barely discussed.
Membership in NATO? Sweden has long been against it while always secretly cooperating with the United States, from the days of the Cold War when it asserted (falsely) it was being monitored by Soviet submarines to cooperation with the recent program of rendition.
The United Nations? Sweden will always play its part.
Immigration? Let them come. The Swedes pride themselves on not being like Denmark with its anti-immigrant movement. The doors are wide open to all Europeans. Poles are happily filling jobs at half the wage of other Swedes, and they are not here to put down roots - they can be home in 90 minutes, courtesy of a low-cost airline.
So perhaps we are left with the narcissism of small differences - like making an issue out of Prime Minister Goran Persson's new grand house.
Old-time Socialists don't like material ostentation and they will punish the Social Democrats by staying home on polling day. Nor do many voters like the way Persson gives the impression that, as Heidi Avellan, the editor of the daily, Sydsvenskan, puts it, "being prime minister is simply a law of nature."
Still, there are lots of smaller issues. Conversations among the politicians and academics of this high- tech, university city where 55 percent of the voters have a degree, gives a good feel for what they are.
Professor Cecelia Henning asks, "Why should the state subsidize jobs to get unemployment down. Better to encourage entrepreneurship by cutting the taxes on small businesses."
Even in Lund, youth unemployment is an issue and voters like the opposition's idea of cutting taxes for the low paid and halving payroll taxes for firms that take on chronically unemployed youths.
"The trouble with the Social Democrats," says Tove Klette, one of the leaders of Lund's opposition Liberals, "is that they play on Swedish arrogance and ignorance - that we are simply the best in the world, even if the streets are dirty and many of the schools are going downhill.
"We don't even look at our neighbor Finland, even though they have the best schools in Europe. We don't think about Iraq. The Social Democrats have bought the people off. We've stopped thinking. If a Swede meets a tiger in the woods he is not frightened because he thinks if it is allowed in the woods it must be all right!"
Jonathan Power writes on foreign affairs.
Original URL here.
