Sweden hardly a ‘socialist nightmare’
As Obama tries to rein in Wall Street and raise taxes on the wealthy, critics say he is trying to turn America into Sweden. Meanwhile, in Sweden, it's full-speed ahead for capitalism.
By Tom Sullivan | Contributor 05.14.09
Stockholm, Sweden – There is a long tradition of using Sweden as a socialist model to highlight social shortcomings in the United States. Recent tax change proposals by the Obama administration, for instance, had conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly asking his viewers, “Do we really want to change America into Sweden?”
Yet if the Scandinavian model were shipped across the Atlantic, the changes would have little to do with socialism, say analysts here. In fact, some believe it should be held up as a bastion of market capitalism.
Last week, the country’s center-right government began selling off state-owned pharmacies, one of the country’s few remaining nationalized companies, as part of an ambitious program of liberal economic reforms started in 2006. In the same week, a study by the Swedish Unemployment Insurance Board revealed that almost half of the country’s jobless lacked full unemployment benefits. Many opted out of the state scheme when the cost of membership was raised last year; others were ineligible.
State pensions, schools, healthcare, public transport, and post offices have been fully or partly privatized over the last decade, making Sweden one of the most free market orientated economies in the world, analysts say.
“Sweden has always been on the side of the market economy. This is not socialism,” says Olle Wästberg, director of the Swedish Institute in Stockholm, and a former Consul General to New York. “In many fields, we have more private ownership compared to other European countries, and to America. About 80 percent of all new schools are privately run, as are the railroads and the subway system.”
Stereotypical images of Sweden as a socialist utopia date back to the 1930s, when a best selling book by Marquis Childs lauded the country as a middle way between capitalism and socialism.
“Eisenhower also helped to propagate a number of myths in the ’60s when he said that Swedes were ‘addicted to sin, socialism, and suicide,’ ” says Brian Palmer, professor of anthropology at Sweden’s Uppsala University (read a past Monitor story on the professor here).
Images of all three Swedish vices were given a good dusting off and a 21st century remake last month on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show (watch the first part of the report here and the second part here). The hilarious “investigation” into the “socialist nightmare” state revealed that, apart from producing famed meatballs and red gummy fish candy, “socialism has left this population ravaged, dispirited, and hauntingly thin.” The last observation was made as the reporter watched beautiful Swedish women walk down the street.
Jokes aside, Professor Palmer, who ran a controversial course on globalization at Harvard University from 2000 to 2004, believes that Sweden has been one step ahead of the US in adopting and extending economic reforms.
“To speak of Sweden as socialist today is pretty far off the mark,” he says. “Neoliberal reforms have gone much further here in some sectors than in the US. Sweden has become a sort of laboratory for privatization in a way that the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute could only dream of.”
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2. ChrisMarks | 05.14.09
The author is correct. The question to ask is why one scoiety is moving in one direction and the other is going the opposite way. Or are they meeting in the middle?
3. Edward McManus | 05.14.09
I am shocked, shocked!, to hear that Bill O’Reilly made a sweeping generalization based on ignorance and bigotry.
Liberal causes and progressive ideas in the United States have no better friends than the folks at Fox “News.”
I beg them to keep talking.
4. Zac in CA | 05.15.09
An indicator of how Sweden is faring, paired with a comparison between it, the US, Spain, and China (the latter two being more “socialistic”, if in different ways), would paint a clearer picture of the situation.
Still, the tone of this article is relatively neutral, which is an improvement on CSM’s coverage of the recession of late.
5. Jarmo | 05.15.09
Reading the part:
, a study by the Swedish Unemployment Insurance Board revealed that almost half of the country’s jobless lacked full unemployment benefits. Many opted out of the state scheme when the cost of membership was raised last year; others were ineligible.
…made me suspect that Sweden is in fact becoming a capitalistic nightmare.
After all while the capitalistic philosophy is against making daily life easier for the populace (as this would be considered socialistic), it is not against making daily life more difficult for the populace.
Methinks capitalistic nightmare is in fact a worse nightmare than the socialistic one ever was…
6. Barbara Kubiak | 05.15.09
This is addressed to Zac in California:
What do you mean by the comment “…CSM’s coverage of the recession of late,”
implying that articles on the recession have been biased. I read those articles and they are very straight-forward and neutral, not biased one way
or the other.
7. John Robillard | 05.15.09
I have lived in Sweden for the past 29 years and I say that this right-wing government is destroying all that is good with Sweden’s welfare state. Publicly owned hospitals, pharmacies, and liquor stores do not have the profit motive as their raison d’etre, while privately owned industries do. Our state-owned pharmacies do not try to maximise profits, they actively help people find cheaper drugs. The state run liquor stores help people find the right wine for the right food, but they warn about the dangers of alcohol at the same time. The public hospitals have been starved for funds for years in order open up for private solutions for those with enough money. And just last week a little boy died because the private health company running the phone lines had a policy of giving bonuses for keeping telephone calls under three minutes. Private schools were allowed with the thought that small groups of people would start them in places where public schools were being closed, now most new private schools are corporate owned high schools with fewer teachers, they are just selling passing grades. I could go on and on, but hopefully after the next election the swedes will get back to socialism as usual.
John
8. Rami | 05.15.09
Swedish socialism gave Sweden’s richest capitalists total monopoly… isn’t it the same in America, anyway?
9. Mills | 05.15.09
I think there is no very clear board between capitalism and socialism.People should understand what they need:more capitalism or more socialism,what kind of economic structure can benefit people and country most?It’s all depends on the changing conditions.but one thing is necessary:all the policy should based on the benefit and welfare of people.
10. cindy | 05.15.09
sweden is expensive. and beer has only 3% alcohol. taxes are over 50% for the highest earners. young people with degrees have been leaving the country in droves.i am an american attending school there. this article is misleading. this is no capitalist paradise. nor is it what lenin envisioned.
11. Woody Porter | 05.15.09
I join Barbara Kubiak (#6) in wondering what in heaven’s name ‘zac in CA’ (#4) is talking about when he blasts the Monitor’s “biased” coverage of the recession. Specifics, please, zac! — what article are you referring to? what specific fact reported on is not true? which writer made no attempt to include both sides of the story?
Unless and until you supply specifics and particulars, your comment is just another “blame the messenger” cliche — and thoughtful folks have a terrible time taking that sort of stuff seriously.
12. Sandy Beach | 05.15.09
People get hung up on all the wrong things. Taxes don’t matter. Who owns what percentage of what doesn’t matter. Where you get your health care (as long as it is accessible and high-quality) and who pays what to get health care doesn’t matter.
What label you hang on anything doesn’t matter. For example, we are constantly reminded that if we are not vigilant, that we will slide into socialism - and become like Sweden.
When it comes to economics and daily living, what matters is quality-of-life.
Let’s assume that an average American earns more than the average Swede and that the average American pays lower taxes (all taxes, not just income taxes). So what? Whose quality of life is really better? Go to Europe and see which countries’ people can afford to travel - and how much they can travel in a year - and how much money they have left at the end of the year.
By any and all measures, The citizens of Sweden in the mid-to-late-20th century had a quality of life was far, far better than in the US.
Now Sweden is trying to be like America, especially in the areas of privatizing and de-regulating services. Swedes: be careful what you ask for … you might get it.
13. Legend in My own Mind | 05.15.09
If the Swedes could’ve been left to their own devices ,they might have found their Utopian yin / yan .But when decades of goverment programs (cradle to grave) & much too generous assistance to the growing foreign worker population (that did little to assimilate except for learning to say “more” in Swedish) - provoked a marked rise in skinhead violence against those perceived as foreign born, much less non nordic,it expressed a general resentment for having been taken as fools.
14. waltermh | 05.15.09
No country is fully socialist and no country is capitalist at all.
I hate these topics because of the ignorance that conservative propagandists have been ale to push so effectively.
Everybody eats it up. Socialism is any country with public owned operations and capitalism is anywhere where profit is allowed.
Its all false. Most countries are simply part socialist/democratic/representative, and many economic systems mixed.
Being partly socialist is not bad at all. Some things simply should not be private. Anything that is a natural monopoly, such as anything that requires lines be put underground, such as communication.
Becuase unless you want 3-4 companies digging up your lands every few years as new companies try to move in, or they change wiring, i think having 1 wiring is most benefitial to the city. Besides, companies tend to screw over the less dense populations and overprice utilities, even when they didnt have monopolies in the US.
Healthcare is another one where you dont want prodfit motives getting in the way of health.
No country is capitalist though because capitalism is not about making a profit. Its about no regulation market systems. Is sweden ever going to cut all or even most regulations? If no, then its never going towards capitalism. No country will trust markets to take care of themselves as no country should trust them. Human nature is to take advantage of others and not necessarily be most efficient.
15. marylyn ponder | 05.15.09
Thank you Cindy. We have to watch out when we read the Monitor. It tends to lean to the left… a lot.
16. Greg | 05.16.09
Sandy Beach, I agree that what matters is quality of life. However, at least for Americans, the sine qua non of quality is individual choice. When anyone says the quality of life is/has been better in Sweden, they are applying criteria that may be the popular ones, but they are not necessarily mine. I’ll define my own quality, thanks, and I would like to have a lot more than half my income left after taxes to make it happen!
17. Nancy Blake | 05.16.09
Why is ’socialism’ a dirty word? A good family is expected to provide for, and look after its members who are unable to be economically active - children, the elderly, the sick. This is respected as ‘good, old-fashioned family values’. But not everyone has a family. And the minute we say, well maybe the state should look after the children, the elderly, the sick, the same people who go on about ‘family values’ are the ones that start screaming ’socialism’ as though it was a manifestation of evil.
A few years ago, I looked into the difference between the life expectancy of men and of women in different nations. In the most capitalist, the U.S., men lived seven years less than women. In the U.K., more socialist, men’s lives were only five years shorter than womens. In the then USSR, the difference was only three years. Maybe American men should take note, and start campaigning for a bit more socialism, a bit less of having all the responsibility falling on the individual.
19. Mike Fox | 05.17.09
Sweden should take a close look at Argentina and other South American countries before they start privatizing more of their state run industries. Those countries are still suffering and trying to stabilize their economies.
20. Jimbo | 05.19.09
“Camelot! Camelot! Camelot!”
“It’s only a model.”
Monty Python & The Holy Grail
21. Nick | 05.27.09
Greg,
“individual choice”, I take it, is what you take to be the most important criterion when evaluating quality of life. I do not hesitate to agree, in fact, I couldn’t agree more. But even though I, like many other Swedes, feel a sharp pain to the chest every time I read the bottom line of my monthly pay check, I do feel that my freedom of choice is all the better for it.
For although I am not a wealthy person I can choose to go to any University I like in Sweden and many of the better ones in the US as well (I did an exchange year at MIT) and it won’t cost me one single Swedish krona,
and although I don’t have money put away for a rainy day, I don’t have to. I can choose any hospital I want and be as sick as I (don’t) want for as long as I (don’t) want and still get the best care available (e.g. the Karolinska Institute, the university hospital that hosts the nobel prize, is ranked 13 in the world), again not having to pay anything.
And while taking almost a full year off from work (paternity leave) with almost full pay I can do whatever I want: spend time with my family, travel the world and cultivate hobbies. This comes with the added bonus that my wife needn’t be enslaved just because she is a woman with child. You see in Sweden we value the individual choices of woman as well! (By the way, I could have chosen to marry a man if I had wanted to.)
But you are right, that little bit of money that the state takes from me so that I can’t do what I really want, it sure does deprive me of individual freedoms.
Sorry, have to go now, must have time to down my espresso and raspberry smoothie before I pop off to work. It’s tough working a six hour day you know. But luckily I will have my well deserved six week paid vacation soon, so that will be nice.
PS Seriously, most people don’t pay 50 percent tax, you’d have to make quite a lot of money before those rates kick in. Me, I only pay 29 percent, and I make approx 500k SEK per year which is equivalent to approx 70k USD per year.
22. Lennart Regebro | 05.28.09
Yes, the fact that Sweden is not socialist is what makes the debate about socialist Sweden so hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSAu_aV9SuE
And the parts of Sweden that *is* socialist (mainly the health care system) isn’t working as great as they should.
23. David | 06.01.09
Nick,
Do not pretend you only pay local income tax, you have to remember the payroll tax and the state income tax. With your income you pay around 48% in taxes.
Many Swedish universities are substandard and before you can get specialist care you have to stand in lines resembling those to the bread shops in Soviet Russia.
Sweden may not be as socialist as it once was in the 1970s, and the country is going in the right direction, but much of the welfare sclerosis remains.
24. SwedeUS | 06.02.09
So many stupid comments. I have lived half my life in Sweden and the other half in US(Illinois, Mass and Cal). The fact is that Sweden is and has always been the most American nation in the world, even more so than the US.
While it is true that until about 20 years people paid very high taxes, the income tax today is quite modest and substituted by a high value-added-tax. There are no people in Sweden. Anyone can afford a house, a summer house and travel abroad. There is a school voucer system (although tuitions in private schools are very low) and a dual medical system (public and private). Health care is of very good standard and the Swedes live much longer than US citizens and much fewer babies die. 100% of Swedes have passports (10% in the US) and almost everybody palys golf on the golf courses that are in abundance. I like the US, especially California (the weather is many 100% better than in Sweden) but I also like Sweden. My daughter prefers Sweden (although she grew upo in the US) but son prefers to live in the Silicon Valley and work 100 hours per week.
To sum up with an old phrase: In America we live to work, in Sweden you work to live. And the FOX is a shame!
25. Colleen | 06.07.09
I have lived in Sweden for almost 23 years. I pay my taxes gladly because I know I get value for my money. An example of this is that I and/or my husband can lose both our jobs, and our son can continue at Stockholm University without any problem. I know that a single mother can have regular checkups for her children and not be held back from doing so because of a weak financial situation. The future of our children is not dependent on their parents´ income. I call that real freedom.
26. Ken | 06.09.09
Nick,
“I, like many other Swedes, feel a sharp pain to the chest every time I read the bottom line of my monthly pay check…I can choose to go to any University I like in Sweden and many of the better ones in the US as well (I did an exchange year at MIT) and it won’t cost me one single Swedish krona…I can choose any hospital I want and be as sick as I (don’t) want for as long as I (don’t) want and still get the best care available (e.g. the Karolinska Institute, the university hospital that hosts the nobel prize, is ranked 13 in the world), again not having to pay anything.”
These things do cost you more than a single Swedish Krona, look at the bottom line of your paycheck.
27. Warbi | 08.04.09
NORWAY-
Would be a better example than Sweden these days.
Acording to the United nations, it’s the best country to live in..
so la di da..
28. Emily R. | 09.04.09
Cindy (Comment 10) has totally missed the point. For what you pay in taxes you get back in services and quality of life. As for beer, yes, you can only get light beer in the grocery store, but if you go to the Systembolaget liquor store you can get higher alcohol-percentage beer. Those shops are everywhere.
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1. jeremiah foster | 05.14.09
While largely true, there are some half-truths in this article. There are a lot of public - private partnerships in Sweden, and the government is still heavily invested in a lot of industries even if they are not majority owners. For example, they still own a huge amount of stock in Telia Sonera who has a monopoly on copper telephone lines in Sweden. There is many a broadband company that would like to get at that. All liquor stores are state run, the government owns a lot of the power generating utilities, public roads are also a private - public partnership as is most transportation.
Still, there is no doubt that Sweden is a capitalist state. And there is also no doubt that Americans no very little about it.