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zondag 26 mei 2013

(en) Britain, Nordic class struggle by afedscotland

The ?Nordic model? is the name given to the economic and social policies shared by Norway, 
Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland which stress welfare provision, high taxation, and a 
corporatist approach to industrial relations and governance. It has come very much into 
vogue in Scottish political culture as part of the Independence debate, and is said to 
provide a more egalitarian yet achievable example for what an independent Scotland could 
look like, or at least, what it could aim for. There is no doubt that relative to our 
current neoliberal status quo the Nordic countries - and there are important differences 
between them - have a higher quality of life and a smaller gap between rich and poor. 
However, the Nordic example has become to a large extent mythologized and, because it has 
so much significance to the political direction here, especially among the Left, it 
deserves a more critical, class analysis.

This is a big subject so here I only intend to point to a few examples of what has been 
happening recently to give some light to the other side of Nordic society.

So far there have been five nights of rioting in Sweden?s capital city, Stockholm. Many 
cars have been burned and the buildings attacked include schools and a police station. 
This comes after a man was shot dead by police, who said they acted in self-defence. The 
scale of the rioting, with firefighters responding to 90 different incidents on Wednesday 
night, declining to 70 last night, has shocked Swedish society. It has also led many 
people to look at why this could be happening in what is meant to be one of the most 
progressive countries in the world. Those involved in the rioting are said to be young 
and part of the immigrant community. They are angry at rising inequality and 
institutional racism, which they are disproportionately affected by.

?The reason [for the riots] is very simple. Unemployment, the housing situation, 
disrespect from police,? said Rouzbeh Djalaie, editor of the local Norra Sidan newspaper, 
which covers Husby. ?It just takes something to start a riot, and that was the shooting.?

Although Sweden?s quality of life is higher overall than most other countries, according 
to OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) figures, it ?has seen the 
biggest increase in inequality of any developed country over the past 25 years?.

In Denmark, a month-long lockout of teachers has come to an end this month. 50,000 
teachers were stopped from teaching and 556,000 pupils had to stay at home. The teachers? 
union refused to agree to a new collective agreement with the the Local Authorities? 
Association, so the latter stopped their pay from 2nd April 2013. The new agreement was 
ostensibly about giving more power to head teachers to arrange the amount of time spent 
teaching rather than on preparation on a case by case basis with teachers. But, according 
to the Guardian?s reporter, this is really about extending the school day and moving away 
from the current educational approach, which is comparatively much more liberal than here 
in Scotland and gives a significant amount of free time to pupils to create, play and 
learn for themselves. Unfortunately, it looks like this was a massive defeat for the 
teachers and that new conditions have been imposed by the government, paving the way for 
more ?reforms? in the future.

Last month, the threat of a national strike in Norway was stopped by government 
intervention at the last moment. Talks had broken down between the Confederation of Trade 
Unions (LO) and others with the representatives of the employers, and a deal of a slight 
pay rise was agreed through a government mediator. The deal ?will cover 156,000 union 
members and will set the bar for pay negotiations throughout the country? but in fact is 
much lower than previous years and comes at a time when there are demands to lower wages 
to maintain competitiveness.

Over 3,000 power workers were on strike for two weeks, this month, for a new collective 
agreement ?risking blackouts?. On May 16th, the government put a stop to the srtike using 
powers that can end industrial action where it ?it threatens human lives, vital 
infrastructure or national interests?. This seems to be a quite frequent occurence:

Workers have struck regularly over the past year in Norway in order to oppose repeated 
attempts to cut their pay and conditions. Last summer, offshore workers closed large parts 
of the oil sector to demand higher wages. The strike covered eight oil platforms on the 
Norwegian continental shelf, affecting 13 percent of the country?s oil and 4 percent of 
gas exports. [...] The 16-day strike finally ended after the government intervened, 
invoking emergency powers to impose forced arbitration. This came less than a month after 
50,000 public sector workers struck in pursuit of pay increases and in opposition to 
attacks on pensions.

Some of the most interesting stuff has been happening in Iceland. The country has 
received a great deal of coverage worldwide for refusing to bear the tax burden of the 
economic crisis when the main banks went under. The people then replaced the government 
and demanded radical changes with a completely new direction from the days when 
speculative finance was at its height. A major part of that was drawing up a new 
constitution which included using responses gathered online - the ?crowd-sourced 
constitution?. This was really innovative and allowed for more democratic input than 
normal. But according to Laurie Penny:

Here?s what actually happened. Although it is true that the three largest banks ?Glitnir, 
Kaupthing and Landsbanki ? were allowed to go bust in 2008, this was hardly a political 
choice: Iceland could do nothing else, because their debts were ten times the size of its 
GDP. It is also true that popular protest brought about a change in power. Demonstrations 
over the government?s handling of the crisis, particularly its promises to the IMF to 
repay the financial sector?s enormous debts to countries such as the UK and the 
Netherlands, started in 2008. On 20 January 2009, the usually reserved Icelandic people 
turned out on to the streets in their thousands, bashed kitchen utensils and threw fruit 
and yoghurt at the Althingi, the parliament building. They were demanding a change of 
government.

They got one. Referendums were promptly held on whether to repay foreign debts, and the 
state began to draw up a new constitution in consultations with the public that included 
garnering responses on Facebook. But then, the new administration tried to side with the 
IMF over the debts of the online bank Icesave and refused, in effect, to implement the 
constitution Icelanders had been promised. So much for the socialist utopia.

The recent elections in Iceland gave the previous Social Democrat-led government ?the 
worst defeat of any ruling party since independence from Denmark in 1944?, despite serving 
in a coalition with the Left-Green movement that was meant to provide an alternative to 
the old parties who created the country?s economic crisis. In fact, things have now come 
full circle and there is a new coalition of the Independence Party and Progressive Party 
who seem intent on opposing the proposed constitution in its current form, pushing for new 
environmentally-damaging developments and defending the fishing quotas that benefit the 
wealthy elite. People voted for change but became completely disillusioned with the 
parliamentary alternative, and so they ran out of options.

The point in all this isn?t to say that these countries don?t have anything to show us in 
terms of really progressive reforms and of a different approach to the ruthless 
neoliberalism we?re used to. They do absolutely. As just one example, reading about 
Danish education in comparison to the Scottish system is frankly amazing. But it?s now 
under attack. Although they have had a commitment to welfare beyond the rest of Europe 
and especially the UK, these countries are, of course, capitalist . We can see a class 
struggle at work in all of them. International competition and the fallout from the 
economic crisis is hitting hard (although it differs from country to country), and there 
are political forces present that want more neoliberal restructuring and increased 
controls on immigration. In short, reforms that have been won are not permanent but are 
challenged and have to be fought for.

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