Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Disappearing Socialist Sisu

 “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.

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. 

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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