“The Nordic Theory of Everything – In Search of a Better Life,” by Anu Partenen, 2016
Finland was just declared the ‘happiest country on earth’
for the 5th time. So
this review is appropriate. I’m part
Finn – my mother’s first name was Ainu, and her family settled on the Minnesota Iron Range along with many other Finns.
I’ve been to Helsinki and enjoyed it.
The author, Anu Partenen, moved to the U.S. from Helsinki to work as a
journalist at a prominent business publication in New York. She came from a middle-class family, as her
mother owns a dental business and her father is something equivalent. Before she came, she naively understood the
U.S. in glowing, entrepreneurial terms through films and TV shows like “Sex and the City and commentators like Thomas
Friedman. Her take on the differences between the socially backward U.S. and
the ‘human’ nature of Finland is colored by this middle-class perspective.
I’ll start with her key ‘theory’ – the “Nordic Theory of
Love.” She borrowed this from a Swedish academic Lars Trägårdh. To introduce it, Partenen heralds how tiny
Finland fought communism and Russia – once in 1919 and again in WWII for
‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ - as if no U.S. readers know Finnish history and will
buy this rhetorical pixie dust. She
ignores the fact that the Bolsheviks gave Finland its national independence in
1917. She skips over the fact that that there was a civil war between capital
and labor or that the White terror after 1919’s Finish civil war led to the
execution of between 8,400 and 14,600 working-class Finns. Many other proletarians lost their jobs,
homes or where otherwise brutalized.
Or that Finland’s government allied with the Nazi regime in
WWII. Ooops! Or that Finland and the rest of the Nordic
countries – Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, etc. – had huge Social Democratic,
Socialist and Communist currents that later created those ‘lovely’ social-democracies
through class struggle. Those parties and
unions still play a role. Responding to typical anti-communism, she denigrates
the word socialism and never mentions social-democracy, unions or capitalism. Even Helsinki’s ruling Green Party is
disappeared. This is why she needs to paper over history with a theory of
‘love.’
The Nordic ‘theory of love’ says that the best way to
enhance individualism, family, happiness, creativity and life is to remove the
dependence of citizens on corporations, and instead insure that every human basic
is pretty-much guaranteed. The emphasis on ‘individualism’ is to rebut rightist
concerns, but also highlight how un-free people actually are who have to worry
about human necessities day in and day out. This is not far different from
Marx’s point that the goal under socialism/communism is to reach the ‘realm of
freedom’ from the realm of impoverished material necessity, which can then lead
to the flowering of all individuals.
Certainly under Nordic social-democratic capitalism this has temporarily
happened in the social realm - though labor exploitation, classes and capital’s
dominance in the workplace remains inside the country. What is going on ‘outside’ is another matter.
Nevertheless the ‘Nordic system’ would be a huge
improvement for the U.S. Partenen calls the
U.S. “living in the past,” “pre-modern,” “backward,” “antiquated,” “old-fashioned,”
“out of date,” “anachronistic” and “archaic” time and time again.
The reason social-democratic tenets will not work in the
U.S. or world-wide I’ve gone into on prior reviews, so I’ll skip it this time. But it revolves around the concepts of
imperialism and environmentalism.
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The
Good Stuff
Partenen describes the large pluses of Nordic
social-democracy … errr, ‘love’ … compared to the backward U.S. She rhapsodies over the wonderful treatment of
individuals within families, unlike the U.S., which in one line she
calls ‘barbaric’ for their treatment of families. Free to very cheap prices for
pregnancy and pre-natal medical care; universal support for early baby and childhood
development; generous parental leave for both parents; inexpensive, widespread and
quality day care; jobs protected after births for long periods – all show a
concern for individuals, family and children far above the ‘you’re on your own, dipshit’ attitude of
U.S. social policy. All these Nordic / Finnish practices are universal, not means tested. This is key in lessening scapegoating, classism and hostility. As she puts it, “Americans” don’t even know
how poorly they have it.
Then we have gender equality, where the Nordic
states always rate in the top 10, while the U.S. comes in the middle to late
20s. The only difference is more ‘super
mom’ CEO’s in the U.S., but re female averages, no contest. Paid paternal leave – even ‘daddy only’ leave
- is offered in Finland and if you don’t take it, you lose it. So most fathers in Finland are heavily
involved in their children’s lives from birth, doing it on their own for at
least 3 months while their wife works.
Partenen cites California as attempting longer maternal leave, along
with some paternal, but their budding parameters are nowhere near Finland.
Then there is education. The egregious primary and secondary U.S.
system is dumbed down, ill-paid and defunded, while it’s ‘theory of education’
has stalled for years around memorization and rote tests. Inequality is rife, poverty and class play
almost determinate roles in outcomes, and the ‘fixes’ make it worse. U.S. colleges, trade schools and other post-high
school programs are extremely expensive.
The U.S. ranks in the 20s and 30s on world-wide education rankings, with
science at #38! This figures in such a
religion-saturated society.
On the other hand Finland has been in the top 6 for math,
science and reading for years… without standardized testing and little homework. It is studied across the world. It has almost
no private schools, no charter schools, no class-stratified school systems, as
nearly all schools in every town and neighborhood perform about the same. The goal is not some phony vision of market-based
‘excellence’ – the goal that transformed the old Finnish school system,
according to Partenen, was … equity. Unequal societies have the lowest educational achievements, so this concept of equity goes beyond the schools in Nordic social-democracies.
Add to that a conception of childhood as ‘a time to play,’
not to be drilled in some skill as a 2 years old, and you get a sense of the
difference. Partenen calls it “free
range” child-rearing. Teaching in Finland is a respected job where every
teacher is required to have an MA, unlike the shabby qualifications in the U.S.
or the non-qualifications for “Teach For America.” There are no
sports teams in local schools, just lots of physical education.
The schools are funded by universal national and local sources, not
property taxes, as the latter reflect unequal cities, suburbs and towns in the
U.S. Results from skills tests in
technology, reading and math on university students show the mediocre U.S. to
rate behind the Nordics, in spite of the small effect of the pampered and elite
Ivy League.
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| Social Democratic Party of Finland |
Then there is health care. The criminal nature of
the U.S. system of market-based, profit-based health care has been belabored
for years, so I won’t go into it too much.
She has a long chapter on the differences. The U.S. has a chaotic mixture of 4 different
types of health care, with businesses and for-profit medical firms totally in charge of
your health for most of your life! Partenen is astonished at
the high deductibles, co-pays, monthly payments and absolutely cock-eyed variety
of variable quality health insurance in the U.S. In Finland it is simple, cheap or free and
universal. This leads to a
much healthier population, which seems to be the real point. In 2011, she cites
91,000 more U.S. citizens dying of treatable conditions compared to the best of
15 other industrialized nations, France. The U.S. ranked last on health and cost metrics in
this study and does on others.
Next is what Partenen calls ‘the well-being state,” as she'd never heard of the term 'welfare state.' She was taxed at around 30% for her white-collar
income. For this she got free or
cheap health care, could get monthly child payments, free quality daycare, quality primary and
secondary education; free university and grad school, along with generous sick
pay, 5-week paid vacations and well-funded parental and disability leaves. She concurs it is a bargain. She thinks the
state in Finland is actually far more modest and low-key than in the U.S.,
unlike rightist clichés. Property taxes
in Finland are nowhere as high as in the U.S.
Finn tax forms are very simple. And on and on.
This fits with her theme that individuals are stronger when basics are
universal.
Partenen believes in meritocracy as a good liberal, so she
has a chapter on ‘opportunity’ – which is higher in Finland and the
Nordics than in the U.S. As has been
obvious for years, class permeability has become much more difficult in the
U.S., while poverty has sky-rocketed.
The mentally ill, drug addicted and homeless don’t roam Finnish
cities. According to Partenen, there are
shelters, public housing and institutions in Finland that take care of these issues. She met rich New Yorkers and trust fund babies
and ‘artists’ in that burg, and realized that New York reminded her of a “19th
century banana republic” due to its extreme class disparities. However she avoids the term class, as she has
been appropriately trained by liberal U.S. culture. She does not discuss gentrification
in the U.S. or housing in Finland, nor anything about agriculture, food or the
environment.
Partenen goes on to cite a long list of Nordic firms that
have become world players in technology, cars, software, furniture, toys, wood
production and design to show it’s not a slouch in the capitalism or innovation
department. She ends with the cultural
equivalent of how Finland tells everyone that ‘they are not special’ – an
unheard of sentiment in the egoist, narcissist and me-driven U.S.
CONCLUSION
This book was praised by the NYT, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, Oprah Magazine, NY Post, Seattle
Times, Robert Reich and Foreign Affairs.
It is mostly an argument to convince Republican and Democratic Party
rightists, centrists and even liberals that ‘love’ is the answer - though she
has no real solutions to U.S. problems except parroting liberal Democratic
Party talking points and policy tweaks. This is because she really doesn’t understand
how the Nordics got the way they did, or even what forces are trying to unravel
them as we speak. It certainly wasn’t through a surfeit of ‘love!’
The Times praises her for puncturing the myth that the Nordics are ‘socialist.’ And yet this book had absolutely no impact on the leadership of the Democratic Party or the profile of social-democracy in the U.S. media. Perhaps it is that while trying to suck up to “American” verities, she made them a laughing-stock. A valuable book for those who are unfamiliar with how a modern social-democracy works, written in a chatty, personal, journalistic style, but which purposely ignores the real class-struggle roots of present Finnish or Nordic societies.
P.S. - Now that Finland is considering to be part of NATO (Don't do it, Finland!), it reveals that Finland is not isolated from war or international issues. This will impact their domestic situation.
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive with these terms: “Viking
Economics – How the Scandinavians Got it Right,” “Puntilla and His Hired Man”
(Brecht); “Lenin in Helsinki, Finland,” “Redbreast,” “Bordertown,” “Red Star”
(Bogdanov), ”Who Killed Olaf Palme?” “Why the U.S. Will Never Be a Social
Democracy,” “Sami Blood,” “Trapped” or the words ‘social democracy’ or ‘social
democrat.’
And I got it at the Library!
Red Frog
March 22, 2022
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