A successful socialist economy

[Loren Pechtel]

What a stupid meme! Norway has ~5 million people and produces ~2 Mbbl/d of oil.
I guess if US had oil production of 0.4 bbl/d/person (i.e. about 130 Mbbl/d, much more than world's total), we'd be able to afford Norway levels of largess too.

USA GDP Per Capita 63,543.58 USD (2020)
Norway GDP Per Capita 67,294.48 USD (2020)

Virtually the same.

You miss the point--they have the same GDP per capita (and the comparison is far closer when you look at purchasing power) despite a whole bunch of oil.

 

[steve_bank]

The OP represents what I take to be Freethought. In Freethought one tries to look at issues without looking through a partclar -ism.

In the OP some try to shoehorn a country like Sweden into a dictionary definition of socialism amd the USA in old Marxist terms.

The better approach is to say Sweden is a successful system with attributes a, b, and c that differentiates from say the American system with attributes d,e,f. Therefore Sweden is bettor or worse than the American system for reasons a,b,c.

If we do nor get down to specifics it is a never ending philosophical debate on meaning.

Horse shit. The Nordic Model goes straight back to the Kanslergade Agreement, which was overtly and officially, a compromise package that included the most pressing priorities of several different parties, some of them being socialist. It constitutes a compromise between socialism and capitalism, but socialism was clearly a part of that compromise. To deny this would reflect a stunning ignorance of history.

Kanslergade Agreement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you want to know who to thank for making sure that that compromise happened, you can thank Thorvald Stauning, who remains one of the most effective statesmen in European history. He is a model of statesmanship because he used compromise to create a better system than any of the parties in his government could have created by themselves. He turned his government into a united team, and that team realized that their first responsibility was toward the common people of Denmark, not toward partisan loyalties.

However, that great Danish statesman also happened to be a socialist.

View attachment 38782

If you say so. I fail to see your point other than waving a Nordic flag. I alwys thoght the fernier European was Charles De Gaulle. Silly me.

As I said it should be about specifics not definitions.

Sweden and China may both be stoicalist in some ways, yet they are entirely different social systems. You could not pay me enough to live in China.

I watched a show on Denmark I think it was. On the question of large scale social security and welfare provided by the system one citizen said it is good, but it also leads to a feeling of stagnation. Attributes positive and negative of a system.

 

[Hermit]

...one citizen said...

That clinches the argument.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The OP represents what I take to be Freethought. In Freethought one tries to look at issues without looking through a partclar -ism.

In the OP some try to shoehorn a country like Sweden into a dictionary definition of socialism amd the USA in old Marxist terms.

The better approach is to say Sweden is a successful system with attributes a, b, and c that differentiates from say the American system with attributes d,e,f. Therefore Sweden is bettor or worse than the American system for reasons a,b,c.

If we do nor get down to specifics it is a never ending philosophical debate on meaning.

Horse shit. The Nordic Model goes straight back to the Kanslergade Agreement, which was overtly and officially, a compromise package that included the most pressing priorities of several different parties, some of them being socialist. It constitutes a compromise between socialism and capitalism, but socialism was clearly a part of that compromise. To deny this would reflect a stunning ignorance of history.

Kanslergade Agreement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you want to know who to thank for making sure that that compromise happened, you can thank Thorvald Stauning, who remains one of the most effective statesmen in European history. He is a model of statesmanship because he used compromise to create a better system than any of the parties in his government could have created by themselves. He turned his government into a united team, and that team realized that their first responsibility was toward the common people of Denmark, not toward partisan loyalties.

However, that great Danish statesman also happened to be a socialist.

View attachment 38782

But this was a feature of German socialism as well, and socialism in Eastern Europe. In these countries the unions see themselves as partners with the capitalist and the goal of the union is to enrich both parties. Its still like this in these areas.

In England, USA and France trade unions had an adversarial tradition where the goal was to bleed the capitalist as much as possible. It led to situations where capitalists were forced to enter into agreements making them uncompetitive. The American train union is the most famous example. Ensuring that a guy was hired to shuffle coal, regardless if the train was electric or not. And other craziness.

So I don't think it comes down to a single person and a single agreement.

I think it comes down to if cultures are collectivist or individualist. In collectivist cultures the social norm is to get your nose into other people's business. People naturally are more cooperative and more team players. This will influence how their unions behave.

Overall I think collectivist cultures are worse to live in, because its harder to do your own thing. The social pressure isn't to excel, it's to be good enough and normal. Which is bad for anyone not fitting into norms.

They're just less fun.

 

[steve_bank]

...one citizen said...

That clinches the argument.

Iadmit my error. Sweden and Denmark must be a murderous paradise where everyone is always happy and contented in the wrm enbaxe of the mother government. There can be no criticism.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

The OP represents what I take to be Freethought. In Freethought one tries to look at issues without looking through a partclar -ism.

In the OP some try to shoehorn a country like Sweden into a dictionary definition of socialism amd the USA in old Marxist terms.

The better approach is to say Sweden is a successful system with attributes a, b, and c that differentiates from say the American system with attributes d,e,f. Therefore Sweden is bettor or worse than the American system for reasons a,b,c.

If we do nor get down to specifics it is a never ending philosophical debate on meaning.

Horse shit. The Nordic Model goes straight back to the Kanslergade Agreement, which was overtly and officially, a compromise package that included the most pressing priorities of several different parties, some of them being socialist. It constitutes a compromise between socialism and capitalism, but socialism was clearly a part of that compromise. To deny this would reflect a stunning ignorance of history.

Kanslergade Agreement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you want to know who to thank for making sure that that compromise happened, you can thank Thorvald Stauning, who remains one of the most effective statesmen in European history. He is a model of statesmanship because he used compromise to create a better system than any of the parties in his government could have created by themselves. He turned his government into a united team, and that team realized that their first responsibility was toward the common people of Denmark, not toward partisan loyalties.

However, that great Danish statesman also happened to be a socialist.

View attachment 38782

But this was a feature of German socialism as well, and socialism in Eastern Europe. In these countries the unions see themselves as partners with the capitalist and the goal of the union is to enrich both parties. Its still like this in these areas.

In England, USA and France trade unions had an adversarial tradition where the goal was to bleed the capitalist as much as possible. It led to situations where capitalists were forced to enter into agreements making them uncompetitive. The American train union is the most famous example. Ensuring that a guy was hired to shuffle coal, regardless if the train was electric or not. And other craziness.

So I don't think it comes down to a single person and a single agreement.

I think it comes down to if cultures are collectivist or individualist. In collectivist cultures the social norm is to get your nose into other people's business. People naturally are more cooperative and more team players. This will influence how their unions behave.

Overall I think collectivist cultures are worse to live in, because its harder to do your own thing. The social pressure isn't to excel, it's to be good enough and normal. Which is bad for anyone not fitting into norms.

They're just less fun.

I am intensely individualistic, but that is one of the reasons why I would join a union if the only jobs available in an economy had viciously authoritarian management involved in them. If I have management that respects me and sees me as an asset that they want to keep, then that is good. I am a very hard worker, and I don't show up to work in order to play. I am very proud of my work ethic. I have had one boss, in my entire life, that wanted to play a domineering role in the relationship and who routinely treated me with bad faith, and whenever he would push me too far, I would push back, resulting in the most amazing shouting matches you ever heard. I always won because if he ever seriously crossed the line, I would just threaten to go home and leave the work to him. He always backed down when it came to that because he knew that he needed me a lot more than I needed him. Eventually, when he expected me to comply with an insanely unreasonable demand, I drove away, and he never saw me again. I'm a very cooperative sort of person, but someone that fucks with me eventually finds out why fucking with me is a bad idea.

Let's put it this way. In a situation where the owners of a firm sent out ruthless strike breakers armed with whips, chains, and clubs to break up a strike, I would be the anarchist that hurled a lit stick of dynamite at the motherfuckers and sent them to Hell.

On the other hand, if I had a good relationship with my employer, which I presently do, then I would not take any shit from a pushy labor union, either. If I felt like it was in my interests to have a direct relationship with my employer, then that is what I would want to preserve.

However, it is going to be up to me if I want to vote union or not, and if my employer started firing people over union advocacy and if people were still whispering about it, let me tell you, I'd side with the union, and I would find a way to make sure we joined.

It's a matter of which party is more likely to give me personal respect. It's not wages, and it's not even working conditions. It's respect. A lack of respect, by an employer, is the only force that would ever compel me to join a union. If an employer wants to keep me out of the union then they had better tell me that I have a right to join if I want to join. Someone that understands that I have rights automatically has a right to my loyalty.

 

[laughing dog]

The OP represents what I take to be Freethought. In Freethought one tries to look at issues without looking through a partclar -ism.

In the OP some try to shoehorn a country like Sweden into a dictionary definition of socialism amd the USA in old Marxist terms.

The better approach is to say Sweden is a successful system with attributes a, b, and c that differentiates from say the American system with attributes d,e,f. Therefore Sweden is bettor or worse than the American system for reasons a,b,c.

If we do nor get down to specifics it is a never ending philosophical debate on meaning.

Horse shit. The Nordic Model goes straight back to the Kanslergade Agreement, which was overtly and officially, a compromise package that included the most pressing priorities of several different parties, some of them being socialist. It constitutes a compromise between socialism and capitalism, but socialism was clearly a part of that compromise. To deny this would reflect a stunning ignorance of history.

Kanslergade Agreement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you want to know who to thank for making sure that that compromise happened, you can thank Thorvald Stauning, who remains one of the most effective statesmen in European history. He is a model of statesmanship because he used compromise to create a better system than any of the parties in his government could have created by themselves. He turned his government into a united team, and that team realized that their first responsibility was toward the common people of Denmark, not toward partisan loyalties.

However, that great Danish statesman also happened to be a socialist.

View attachment 38782

But this was a feature of German socialism as well, and socialism in Eastern Europe. In these countries the unions see themselves as partners with the capitalist and the goal of the union is to enrich both parties. Its still like this in these areas.

In England, USA and France trade unions had an adversarial tradition where the goal was to bleed the capitalist as much as possible. It led to situations where capitalists were forced to enter into agreements making them uncompetitive. The American train union is the most famous example. Ensuring that a guy was hired to shuffle coal, regardless if the train was electric or not. And other craziness.

Trade unions were adversarial in the USA because the owners were adversarial at first (and many still are). Hell, the GOP is anti-union still.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The OP represents what I take to be Freethought. In Freethought one tries to look at issues without looking through a partclar -ism.

In the OP some try to shoehorn a country like Sweden into a dictionary definition of socialism amd the USA in old Marxist terms.

The better approach is to say Sweden is a successful system with attributes a, b, and c that differentiates from say the American system with attributes d,e,f. Therefore Sweden is bettor or worse than the American system for reasons a,b,c.

If we do nor get down to specifics it is a never ending philosophical debate on meaning.

Horse shit. The Nordic Model goes straight back to the Kanslergade Agreement, which was overtly and officially, a compromise package that included the most pressing priorities of several different parties, some of them being socialist. It constitutes a compromise between socialism and capitalism, but socialism was clearly a part of that compromise. To deny this would reflect a stunning ignorance of history.

Kanslergade Agreement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you want to know who to thank for making sure that that compromise happened, you can thank Thorvald Stauning, who remains one of the most effective statesmen in European history. He is a model of statesmanship because he used compromise to create a better system than any of the parties in his government could have created by themselves. He turned his government into a united team, and that team realized that their first responsibility was toward the common people of Denmark, not toward partisan loyalties.

However, that great Danish statesman also happened to be a socialist.

View attachment 38782

But this was a feature of German socialism as well, and socialism in Eastern Europe. In these countries the unions see themselves as partners with the capitalist and the goal of the union is to enrich both parties. Its still like this in these areas.

In England, USA and France trade unions had an adversarial tradition where the goal was to bleed the capitalist as much as possible. It led to situations where capitalists were forced to enter into agreements making them uncompetitive. The American train union is the most famous example. Ensuring that a guy was hired to shuffle coal, regardless if the train was electric or not. And other craziness.

Trade unions were adversarial in the USA because the owners were adversarial at first (and many still are). Hell, the GOP is anti-union still.

I think capitalists have always been adversarial to labourunions. In Scandinavia they only cooperate with the unions because they have to.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

The OP represents what I take to be Freethought. In Freethought one tries to look at issues without looking through a partclar -ism.

In the OP some try to shoehorn a country like Sweden into a dictionary definition of socialism amd the USA in old Marxist terms.

The better approach is to say Sweden is a successful system with attributes a, b, and c that differentiates from say the American system with attributes d,e,f. Therefore Sweden is bettor or worse than the American system for reasons a,b,c.

If we do nor get down to specifics it is a never ending philosophical debate on meaning.

Horse shit. The Nordic Model goes straight back to the Kanslergade Agreement, which was overtly and officially, a compromise package that included the most pressing priorities of several different parties, some of them being socialist. It constitutes a compromise between socialism and capitalism, but socialism was clearly a part of that compromise. To deny this would reflect a stunning ignorance of history.

Kanslergade Agreement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you want to know who to thank for making sure that that compromise happened, you can thank Thorvald Stauning, who remains one of the most effective statesmen in European history. He is a model of statesmanship because he used compromise to create a better system than any of the parties in his government could have created by themselves. He turned his government into a united team, and that team realized that their first responsibility was toward the common people of Denmark, not toward partisan loyalties.

However, that great Danish statesman also happened to be a socialist.

View attachment 38782

But this was a feature of German socialism as well, and socialism in Eastern Europe. In these countries the unions see themselves as partners with the capitalist and the goal of the union is to enrich both parties. Its still like this in these areas.

In England, USA and France trade unions had an adversarial tradition where the goal was to bleed the capitalist as much as possible. It led to situations where capitalists were forced to enter into agreements making them uncompetitive. The American train union is the most famous example. Ensuring that a guy was hired to shuffle coal, regardless if the train was electric or not. And other craziness.

Trade unions were adversarial in the USA because the owners were adversarial at first (and many still are). Hell, the GOP is anti-union still.

I think capitalists have always been adversarial to labourunions. In Scandinavia they only cooperate with the unions because they have to.

In Scandinavia, they have a tradition of honoring the compromise agreement that made peace between the owners of capital and labor. This is a very important part of their history, and it would be a fool that overlooked its significance. These partly symbolic political victories have a tremendous long-term impact that outlives their immediate significance.

The Scandinavian states are good places to do business precisely because the trade unions have traditionally been on the side of helping the businesses they work for prosper as long as the pay and working conditions are reasonable.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

25 Best Countries in the World to Start a Business

Thinking of starting a company? Here's where you should go.

www.inc.com

There. Three of the best places in the world to do business are Nordic states, and Iceland, another Nordic state, comes in at 11th place with 91% of their labor unionized. 2nd place goes to Germany, where 80% of labor is unionized. Both the United Kingdom and Ireland have higher rates of unionization than the United States, both of them being around 20-something percent, and I believe that statistic for unionization in Israel are similar.

Which Countries Have The Highest Levels Of Labor Union Membership? [Infographic]

Across most developed nations, labor union membership is getting rarer. Back in 1985, 30 percent of workers in OECD countries were labor union members and that has now fallen to just 17 percent. Which countries have the highest and lowest levels of membership today?

www.forbes.com

The idea that unionization is inherently bad for business is a baldfaced fucking lie. However, I think that unionization works best when the unions themselves have a pro-business philosophy. I think that the Kanslergade Agreement played a very strong historical role in this being the norm in the Scandinavian economy. This is the only way that a 91% unionized economy could work at all: when the unions understand that it's also business that butters their bread, the unions are ultimately a boon to the overall economy.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

Oh, and another thing. The rate of union representation, in the United States, generally has a direct relationship with that state's general level of habitability. The least unionized state in the US is South Carolina. I have lived near there my entire life, and it's a piss-pot. North Carolina barely has a breathable atmosphere outside the Research Triangle Park area, and I have been promoting secession from the rest of the state. The other states at the bottom of the list are also garbage places to live.

Union affiliation by U.S. state - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Face it, anti-socialists: unionization is one aspect of socialism that actually does some good. Swallow the truth.

Admit it, or shame on you for telling yourself a lie.

The most ideal case is that case where there is no need for a company to unionize because the owners of that company happen to genuinely care. That is possible. Unfortunately, the primary reasons why companies do not unionize is that the employees are afraid of being persecuted for attempting to promote their own interests. As long as the absence of a union is due to the tyranny of a company's shareholders and management, every decent and reasonable person should support unions.

 

[steve_bank]

Unions came about because the capitalism of the day was authoritarian. Ford ran his company like a dictator.

The documentary qbout 'Bloody Haan County' may be online. It is about the battle between coal miners unionizing and and the owner in Han County Kentucky. Owners had armed thugs to supress protest and unionizing, they were shooting encounters. Miners lived in copany towns. In the old days mines paid miners who spent money in compamy stores and payed rent for company housing. Once yiu had a family yu were stuck in the situation.

And of course Black Lung Disease.

Harlan County, USA - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Or Jimmy Hoffa. Before the Teanstrs life for long haul truckers was brutal.

Conditions today are benign compared to those times.

Boing is unionized in Washgton includng engneers.

You coud say unions foretasted improved benefits in non union business. In order to keep unions out companies began offering simiar benifit

Some states have right to work laws. A union shop can not exclude non union workers. In a ste without right to work laws if take a job in a union shop you are forced to pay dues.

Right-to-work law - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In the context of labor law in the United States, the term "right-to-work laws" refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions. Under these laws, employees in unionized workplaces are banned from negotiating contracts which require employees who are not union members to contribute to the costs of union representation.[1] Right-to-work laws do not aim to provide general guarantee of employment to people seeking work.

The 1947 federal Taft–Hartley Act governing private sector employment prohibits the "closed shop" in which employees are required to be members of a union as a condition of employment, but allows the union shop or "agency shop" in which employees pay a fee for the cost of representation without joining the union.[2] Individual U.S. states set their own policies for state and local government employees (i.e., public sector employees). Twenty-seven states have right-to-work policies (either by statutes or by constitutional provision).[3][4] In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that agency shop arrangements for public sector employees were unconstitutional in the case Janus v. AFSCME.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

Unions came about because the capitalism of the day was authoritarian. Ford ran his company like a dictator.

The documentary qbout 'Bloody Haan County' may be online. It is about the battle between coal miners unionizing and and the owner in Han County Kentucky. Owners had armed thugs to supress protest and unionizing, they were shooting encounters. Miners lived in copany towns. In the old days mines paid miners who spent money in compamy stores and payed rent for company housing. Once yiu had a family yu were stuck in the situation.

And of course Black Lung Disease.

Harlan County, USA - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Or Jimmy Hoffa. Before the Teanstrs life for long haul truckers was brutal.

Conditions today are benign compared to those times.

Boing is unionized in Washgton includng engneers.

You coud say unions foretasted improved benefits in non union business. In order to keep unions out companies began offering simiar benifit

Some states have right to work laws. A union shop can not exclude non union workers. In a ste without right to work laws if take a job in a union shop you are forced to pay dues.

Right-to-work law - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In the context of labor law in the United States, the term "right-to-work laws" refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions. Under these laws, employees in unionized workplaces are banned from negotiating contracts which require employees who are not union members to contribute to the costs of union representation.[1] Right-to-work laws do not aim to provide general guarantee of employment to people seeking work.

The 1947 federal Taft–Hartley Act governing private sector employment prohibits the "closed shop" in which employees are required to be members of a union as a condition of employment, but allows the union shop or "agency shop" in which employees pay a fee for the cost of representation without joining the union.[2] Individual U.S. states set their own policies for state and local government employees (i.e., public sector employees). Twenty-seven states have right-to-work policies (either by statutes or by constitutional provision).[3][4] In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that agency shop arrangements for public sector employees were unconstitutional in the case Janus v. AFSCME.

If you are going to work at a firm, then you also have to follow the rules that are set by management. It is very strange if someone accepts the authority of management, yet they object to the authority of a union.

The difference between the authority of management and the authority of a union is that at least you get to vote in the union.

I prefer no authoritarianism at all, but if the management at my place of work is authoritarian, then I would prefer the authority of a union where I get to vote on which jerk I have to listen to.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The OP represents what I take to be Freethought. In Freethought one tries to look at issues without looking through a partclar -ism.

In the OP some try to shoehorn a country like Sweden into a dictionary definition of socialism amd the USA in old Marxist terms.

The better approach is to say Sweden is a successful system with attributes a, b, and c that differentiates from say the American system with attributes d,e,f. Therefore Sweden is bettor or worse than the American system for reasons a,b,c.

If we do nor get down to specifics it is a never ending philosophical debate on meaning.

Horse shit. The Nordic Model goes straight back to the Kanslergade Agreement, which was overtly and officially, a compromise package that included the most pressing priorities of several different parties, some of them being socialist. It constitutes a compromise between socialism and capitalism, but socialism was clearly a part of that compromise. To deny this would reflect a stunning ignorance of history.

Kanslergade Agreement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you want to know who to thank for making sure that that compromise happened, you can thank Thorvald Stauning, who remains one of the most effective statesmen in European history. He is a model of statesmanship because he used compromise to create a better system than any of the parties in his government could have created by themselves. He turned his government into a united team, and that team realized that their first responsibility was toward the common people of Denmark, not toward partisan loyalties.

However, that great Danish statesman also happened to be a socialist.

View attachment 38782

But this was a feature of German socialism as well, and socialism in Eastern Europe. In these countries the unions see themselves as partners with the capitalist and the goal of the union is to enrich both parties. Its still like this in these areas.

In England, USA and France trade unions had an adversarial tradition where the goal was to bleed the capitalist as much as possible. It led to situations where capitalists were forced to enter into agreements making them uncompetitive. The American train union is the most famous example. Ensuring that a guy was hired to shuffle coal, regardless if the train was electric or not. And other craziness.

Trade unions were adversarial in the USA because the owners were adversarial at first (and many still are). Hell, the GOP is anti-union still.

I think capitalists have always been adversarial to labourunions. In Scandinavia they only cooperate with the unions because they have to.

In Scandinavia, they have a tradition of honoring the compromise agreement that made peace between the owners of capital and labor. This is a very important part of their history, and it would be a fool that overlooked its significance. These partly symbolic political victories have a tremendous long-term impact that outlives their immediate significance.

The Scandinavian states are good places to do business precisely because the trade unions have traditionally been on the side of helping the businesses they work for prosper as long as the pay and working conditions are reasonable.

Well, Scandinavians have a history of honouring any agreement. We're often called naive by other people. This goes right through all of society. The mechanics of this is perhaps the hardest thing for non-Scandinavians to understand about Sweden.

In the olden days (1960 and before) if you were rumoured to have broken an agreement the rest of society would conspire to freeze you out and cutting you off from polite society. This can ruin your life. Swedish culture is all about being passive aggressive and leaving those who don't conform in the cold. If you are seen as untrustworthy or worse, not normal, superficially everybody is nice to you. But nobody will do business with you. Or hire you. Or have sex with you.

It's still like this. but it's slowly changing. I think it's due to the recent decades immigration. Non-ethnic Swedes who continually violate agreements with zero repercussion annoy ethnic Swedes. Its hard to bully someone into obedience who doesn't have the social skills to understand they're being bullied. Immigrants. The social rules are complicated, very subtle, absolute and are almost never taught to immigrants.

It's hard to overstate how extreme Swedish culture is. It's bizarre. As a Swede, you don't understand how strange it is until you have lived elsewhere for a bit.

Anyway... this is why capitalists and workers get along so well in Sweden. They are so good at compromising and getting along with each other because because the social cost of being seen as greedy is extremely high.

Especially for rich people. Social pressures are inverted. The higher your status, the less things you can get away with. It's called "the Law of Jante". In Sweden you can tell whose the boss because he's the guy kissing the most ass. The lower your status the more people will be kind to you, and people compete in status by being the most kind to others, and refuse others help. This makes the capitalists extremely unwilling to mistreat their workers.

 

[Swammerdami]

If anyone doubts that labor unions have uplifted the masses, the attached graph found in a Vox article should dissuade.

The one curve is almost the exact inversion of the other, even down to the blips.

Unions came about because the capitalism of the day was authoritarian. Ford ran his company like a dictator.

The documentary qbout 'Bloody Haan County' may be online. It is about the battle between coal miners unionizing and and the owner in Han County Kentucky. Owners had armed thugs to supress protest and unionizing, they were shooting encounters. Miners lived in copany towns. In the old days mines paid miners who spent money in compamy stores and payed rent for company housing. Once yiu had a family yu were stuck in the situation.

And of course Black Lung Disease.

Assuming Haan County and Han County are alternate spellings of Harlan County, let's add some Pete Seeger songs to our playlist:





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EySKZ5fwQ3g

Soon you'll be dreaming that you saw Joe Hill, alive as you and me!

 

[steve_bank]

As I said you can not just say 'successful socialism' without bringing in culture and history.

Denmark is a constitutional monarchy. Its success with a socialist system is probbly more about its culture and history as it is stoicalist economics.

You also have to consider the size of the population and the degree of diversity in thought. Soicialism as in Denkrk and Sweden is near impossible in the USA. We have a democrtoc republic that favors the rights and autonomy of individual states and individuals.

COTUS ruled abortion without federal legislation is up to the states. Social programs vary from state to state.

Monarchy of Denmark - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[SigmatheZeta]

The OP represents what I take to be Freethought. In Freethought one tries to look at issues without looking through a partclar -ism.

In the OP some try to shoehorn a country like Sweden into a dictionary definition of socialism amd the USA in old Marxist terms.

The better approach is to say Sweden is a successful system with attributes a, b, and c that differentiates from say the American system with attributes d,e,f. Therefore Sweden is bettor or worse than the American system for reasons a,b,c.

If we do nor get down to specifics it is a never ending philosophical debate on meaning.

Horse shit. The Nordic Model goes straight back to the Kanslergade Agreement, which was overtly and officially, a compromise package that included the most pressing priorities of several different parties, some of them being socialist. It constitutes a compromise between socialism and capitalism, but socialism was clearly a part of that compromise. To deny this would reflect a stunning ignorance of history.

Kanslergade Agreement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you want to know who to thank for making sure that that compromise happened, you can thank Thorvald Stauning, who remains one of the most effective statesmen in European history. He is a model of statesmanship because he used compromise to create a better system than any of the parties in his government could have created by themselves. He turned his government into a united team, and that team realized that their first responsibility was toward the common people of Denmark, not toward partisan loyalties.

However, that great Danish statesman also happened to be a socialist.

View attachment 38782

But this was a feature of German socialism as well, and socialism in Eastern Europe. In these countries the unions see themselves as partners with the capitalist and the goal of the union is to enrich both parties. Its still like this in these areas.

In England, USA and France trade unions had an adversarial tradition where the goal was to bleed the capitalist as much as possible. It led to situations where capitalists were forced to enter into agreements making them uncompetitive. The American train union is the most famous example. Ensuring that a guy was hired to shuffle coal, regardless if the train was electric or not. And other craziness.

Trade unions were adversarial in the USA because the owners were adversarial at first (and many still are). Hell, the GOP is anti-union still.

I think capitalists have always been adversarial to labourunions. In Scandinavia they only cooperate with the unions because they have to.

In Scandinavia, they have a tradition of honoring the compromise agreement that made peace between the owners of capital and labor. This is a very important part of their history, and it would be a fool that overlooked its significance. These partly symbolic political victories have a tremendous long-term impact that outlives their immediate significance.

The Scandinavian states are good places to do business precisely because the trade unions have traditionally been on the side of helping the businesses they work for prosper as long as the pay and working conditions are reasonable.

Well, Scandinavians have a history of honouring any agreement. We're often called naive by other people. This goes right through all of society. The mechanics of this is perhaps the hardest thing for non-Scandinavians to understand about Sweden.

In the olden days (1960 and before) if you were rumoured to have broken an agreement the rest of society would conspire to freeze you out and cutting you off from polite society. This can ruin your life. Swedish culture is all about being passive aggressive and leaving those who don't conform in the cold. If you are seen as untrustworthy or worse, not normal, superficially everybody is nice to you. But nobody will do business with you. Or hire you. Or have sex with you.

It's still like this. but it's slowly changing. I think it's due to the recent decades immigration. Non-ethnic Swedes who continually violate agreements with zero repercussion annoy ethnic Swedes. Its hard to bully someone into obedience who doesn't have the social skills to understand they're being bullied. Immigrants. The social rules are complicated, very subtle, absolute and are almost never taught to immigrants.

It's hard to overstate how extreme Swedish culture is. It's bizarre. As a Swede, you don't understand how strange it is until you have lived elsewhere for a bit.

Anyway... this is why capitalists and workers get along so well in Sweden. They are so good at compromising and getting along with each other because because the social cost of being seen as greedy is extremely high.

Especially for rich people. Social pressures are inverted. The higher your status, the less things you can get away with. It's called "the Law of Jante". In Sweden you can tell whose the boss because he's the guy kissing the most ass. The lower your status the more people will be kind to you, and people compete in status by being the most kind to others, and refuse others help. This makes the capitalists extremely unwilling to mistreat their workers.

I am aware of the Law of Jante. I have met other Scandinavians, and some of them I have met believe that the idea that this is uniquely Scandinavian is at least slightly exaggerated.

We, in English-speaking culture, have a similar concept to the idea that you should keep your agreements. We call it honor. I am not sure that there is a uniquely English concept of honor, but among the English aristocracy, there was a very strong concept of chivalry. A man's adherence to the concept of chivalry was not just a measure of his trustworthiness, but it was a value of his worth as a man...basically, if you said that a person fell short of any of the values in the code of chivalry, you were insinuating that that person may as well be a eunuch.

The code of chivalry goes:

• Thou shalt believe all that the Church teaches and thou shalt observe all its directions.
• Thou shalt defend the Church.
• Thou shalt respect all weaknesses, and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them.
• Thou shalt love the country in which thou wast born.
• Thou shalt not recoil before thine enemy.
• Thou shalt make war against the infidel without cessation and without mercy.
• Thou shalt perform scrupulously thy feudal duties, if they be not contrary to the laws of God.
• Thou shalt never lie, and shalt remain faithful to thy pledged word.
• Thou shalt be generous, and give largesse to everyone.
• Thou shalt be everywhere and always the champion of the Right and the Good against Injustice and Evil.

While the concept was not strictly British, the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table made the British aristocracy obsessed with any value-system that would make them seem to be more the "knight in shining armor." Whether or not it was uniquely British, it caught on.

Therefore, the British, at least, do have as much of a cultural and historical reason why they should value keeping an agreement just as much as any Scandinavian if you want to go that route.

I don't. I really consider "codes of honor" like the "Law of Jante" or the "Chivalric code" to be of equally dubious significance. I think it is slightly more useful to look at specific events, specific organizations, and specific historical leaders.

By the way, about 24.7% of British labor is unionized. You can thank the Fabian society for that much. The Fabian Society's efforts eventually helped lead to the rise of the British Labour Party, so I do think that they were significant in the history of the British labor movement.

The Fabian Society's views were very simple: ideally, a union should do as little as possible to disrupt business, and they should only use strike actions when they are sure that the sins of a company are grievous enough to warrant "striking hard." They had the view that, if a union could possibly coexist peacefully with the owners of a company, then they should. Major strikes should therefore only be used in cases where it is clear that sympathy for the strike action would be almost universal, and they should have real consequences.

Their philosophy worked reasonably well because the UK has one of the highest rates of union representation in the entire world:

Which Countries Have The Highest Levels Of Labor Union Membership? [Infographic]

Across most developed nations, labor union membership is getting rarer. Back in 1985, 30 percent of workers in OECD countries were labor union members and that has now fallen to just 17 percent. Which countries have the highest and lowest levels of membership today?

www.forbes.com

In any case, you choose to attribute the Kanslergade Agreement to the Law of Jante, and I disagree with you..

I would look into the history of one of the most important political parties that helped to form the Kanslergade Agreement. The Radikale Venstre party was an important centrist party in the history of Swedish politics, and at the time of the Kanslergade Agreement, Staunting was a member of this important kingmaker party.

However, the founding philosophy of the Radikale Venstre party was actually a mixture of both British and American ideas.

*tail-swishes* Yes, Denmark owes part of their awesome to a dirty American. The founding ideas of the Radikale Venstre party were derived from the British statesman John Stuart Mill and the American economist Henry George!

John Stuart Mill was one of the founders of British feminist philosophy and of modern third-way economics. John Stuart Mill actually started off as more "libertarian" (as modern assholes would put it), but over the course of his career, he came to steadily include some socialist ideals into his way of thinking. He always supported free markets, but in the end, he was not a purist. He was open to socialist ideas as long as someone could prove that those socialist ideas did something to genuinely make people's lives better. In other words, he helped to found the modern progressive movement in Anglo-American politics.

Henry George was actually a unique type of socialist. He would not fit in anywhere in 21st Century politics, but I must admit that I find many things about his views to be very attractive. I am attracted more, in principle, to a tax on property than I am to a tax on income. I would need to hear a sound economic argument for the effectiveness of a Georgist taxation scheme in order to endorse it in actual practice, though.

I argue that Radikale Venstre ultimately ended up playing the all-important kingmaker role that led to the Kanslergade Agreement.

While I believe that your "Law of Jante" might or might not have had some kind of an influence, I have met at least as many Swedish people that scoff the idea as Swedish people that endorse it. In my opinion, you might as well say, "Of course, you can trust an Englishman. They live according to a knightly code of chivalry." British people are also no longer settling disputes by dueling with pistols or, alternatively, by engaging in boxing matches. I believe that, in many conversations, these themes are vastly exaggerated beyond their actual influence.

There is no reason why other countries should not be just as capable as the Nordic states of finding a middle-ground. We just need to chart a course that is realistic.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

^Edited the above due to the fact that I was thinking too fast and conflated two countries together. My intellect got ahead of my common sense.

I am going to add, as a separate note, that there is a very natural reason why the Swedish people would be sympathetic to the idea of compromise. They really owe a lot of their country's reputation as a "nation of mediators" to their historic leader Charles XIV John. By the early 20th Century, Sweden still would have understood themselves as "the country that united Russia and Britain to defeat the tyrant Napoleon." It makes a powerful story to tell to kids in order to instruct them on the powers of a good mediator. I think that this would have a much stronger influence than some nebulous "Law of Jante."

And please, do not speak to a transwoman in the southern United States of the subtle art of vicious shunning. Southern "politeness" works like that. People down here smile to your face, and they insult you with compliments. Your country isn't the only place where scum hide behind smiles. It is shameful if some of your countrymen act that way. I am thankful that not all of them are so ignorant.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

Excuse me, that party was an important party in the history of DANISH, not Swedish, politics. Jeez. *head-desks* Why does someone from Sweden have to start talking about Janteloven, anyway?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Socialism means public ownership of means of production. Sweden is not socialist.

Communism means public ownership of means of production. Sweden is not communist.

Communism means public ownership of everything, not just the means of production. Sweden is not Socialist.