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To make sense of the viciously polarized political climate of contemporary Sweden, with the centre-right coalition dramatically dubbed "The Alliance" governing, and the Greens, Social Democrats and the Left in opposition, it is necessary to consider the remarkable social and economic makeover the country underwent during the 20th century.
At the turn of the last century, Sweden was reaping the fruits of rapid industrialization, and was in the process of transforming itself from a poor agrarian economy into a wealthy manufacturing nation. The development of large scale manufacturing plants had generally been the result of lassiez-faire industrial policies at the end of the 19th century, and as a consequence both wealth and an urbanized workforce emerged to replace the hitherto dominant rural farming class.
The unions worked in close collaboration with the upcoming Social Democratic movement to institutionalize workers rights and improve working conditions. Initiated during the 1920's and 30's, an ambitious experiment in social engineering was undertaken with the outspoken aim of establishing a cradle-to-grave governing system dubbed "The Peoples Home". This was a large-scale socialistic project relying on planned economy, with a marginal tax eventually pushing well into the eighty-percent strata - legislation implemented to eradicate private wealth and foster a unified and equalized people.
Operating supply-side economics would at this point have strangled economic growth, had it not been for the passive stance taken visavi the aggressive German NSDAP which engaged in massive trade on the Swedish mineral ore market during the war.
As World War II came to an end, with Europe scrambling to rebuild, Sweden was the only remaining highly industrialized manufacturing economy, and was over the coming 20 years thus propelled from a wealthy nation into a super-rich nation-state. By the mid-sixties, Sweden clocked in as the per-capita wealthiest nation in the world.
As this wealth flowing through the Swedish economy was associated with the success of the Social Democratic leadership (a myth deftly propagated by the party and it's affiliate union-organisations) it came to establish itself as the dominant political force for the coming half-century.
As Europe rebuilt itself, and the heavy-handed labour-tax reduced competitiveness and saw ever-dwindling manufacturing returns, the cost of the ambitious well-fare reforms quickly became unsustainable. The first cracks in "The Peoples Home" became visible during the 1970's oil crisis, in which the isolated and depreciating Swedish currency saw energy costs soar, prompting a brief shift in goverment. As the Social Democratic hegemony continued, the oil crisis and the ensuing fragility of Swedens isolationistic economic model was felt, the blame could effectively be put on the opposition which remained out of power for more than a decade after.
In order to maintain the expansive well-fare programs of The Peoples Home under a dwindling GDP, the retirement funds set aside during the golden years of Nazi funding was mortgaged. Thus, straddled with an unsustainable economy, and an escalating future retirement-defeceit, the cracks in the system eventually became so severe that the currency stagnated. In the early 1990's this prompted another government shift, the Swedish Krona was put into flotation and immediately depreciated close to 30 percent.
Again, this dire state of the economy was played on the daddeling centre-right coalition, who were in power through support by the unsavory populists in "New Democracy" - a now-defunct political one-hit-xenophobic-wonder of the 1990's. Even as the Social Democrats regained power, the People's home was coming apart at the seams.
The economy was by necessity progressively liberalized, and in 1995 Sweden became a member of the European Union. As results of the gradual liberalization of the economy propagated through the system, the ideological mythos that it was the sudden onslaught of private enterprise that had killed the morally superior and solidaric model of The People's Home was fostered. Bent on reminiscing about the Glorious Years of the 1960's and early 70's, while deploying a social-conservative agenda under prime minister Göran Persson, the Social Democratic party became increasingly irrelevant for both it's own base who were demanding the financially impossible reinstatement of the Peoples Home, and the opposition who thought them fiscally naive and backwards. The Social Democrats lost power altogether in 2006.
At this stage, a generation had grown up in the last days of the people's home, and reached maturity in a pan-european market economy. This dual experience made the upholding of the Social Democratic cosmogony increasingly difficult, to the point of bringing about a country-wide cutural shift away from socialism altogether.
By the time Sweden held it's last general election in September 2010, the Social Democrats had been so weakened that they had to pin their hopes of regaining power on a coalition with the Left party and the Greens. Wary of faltering big-government projects, many speculate that partnering with the Left party - a fringe movement with its roots in Communism - drove additional voters to abandon the Social Democrats in favor of the centre-right Alliance.
After an humiliating obliteration in the election with a worst-ever result, the Social Democrats were scrambling to reinvent and rejuvenate themselves. Dragging their feet in a bungled and archaic closed-doors intra-party selection process, a new party leader nominee - the face of rejuvenation - was finally presented: Håkan Juholt.
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| The face of rejuvenation |
Juholt is the long-term and left-leaning small-town Social Democrat now tasked with making his party relevant again. Some speculate this will be a tough challenge indeed, as moving the party further to the right would fashion them nothing more than a light-alternative to the centre-right coalition, and going further left might alienate more of their working base.
The erratic flip-flopping of Juholt during the early stages of the NATO-led intervention in Libya further damaged the credibility of a potential Juholt-led administration, which at the moment of writing generally is interpreted by the media as a government that could end up anywhere politically. A lack of media training has seen Juholt's bumbling shadow exchequer Tommy Waiderlich deliver gaffe after gaffe eagerly pounced on by scandal-thirsty tabloids - in stark contrast to the grave and professionally presented sitting exchequer Anders Borg. As the greens has initiated a process of distancing themselves from the Social democrats, Juholt will need to find new friends very quickly indeed in order to deliver an electable platform in time for the next election.
Recognising the democratic value of a well-organised opposition, many have expressed concerns that the Moderates, the dominant party within the Alliance-coalition, might become lodged and identified with the state in the same way as the Social Democrats were before them.
Being reduced to representing chiefly immigrants, the undereducated and unemployed, one might argue that reminiscing about the golden years of the People's home might strengthen the Social Democrats hold of their dwindling base - but one may be entitled to ask by what standard it is appropriate to consider financially unhinged nostalgia as reinvention - and if this really is the right kind of rejuvenation when Juholt bashes Twitter as an irrelevant fad?
Interestingly, Sweden's largest daily just ran a story that corroborates my point. The first link is to the Swedish original text, the second is an English Google translated version which is intelligible and hilarious in parts. If anything requires explaining in English, please use the comments section and I will do my best to oblige!
http://www.dn.se/ledare/signerat/socialdemokraterna-cirkus-juholts-nya-forestallning
English version
UPDATE:
Here is another article on the same topic:
http://www.dn.se/ledare/huvudledare/klasskamp-utan-segrare
Hi
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post. I'm an English speaker who once lived in Sweden and was for the most part buried deep in learning the language, deciphering the culture and the people, trying to make friends and see the country.
Politics was a distant thing to me, I still hadn't begun to understand double meaning and jokes. let alone something like this..
So thanks for this brief history.