Absolutely right. They win on happiness, quality of life, median wealth, you know, just about everything that really matters. Here in America, we win on most weapons of war. How anyone thinks the US is the best country in the world is pure blindness.

imagine if the vatican was #16

Norway is #5 in oil per capita. I don't mean that to take away from the good policies they do have over there, but sorting by raw production volume is not correct either. Either way, it is only a small piece of the puzzle.

so you are saying the term communism is changing in meaning, ok. however if you say mao, stalin and lenin are just so called communists there are no communists of practice.

i think noone wants to use it because no theories exist that confirm revolutionary workers it will work. therfor updating the theory will propably be a big deal.

no marxist can believe that. there is no such thing as a humanistic capitalism as there is no such thing as healthy AIDS. I dont know enough about the scandinavian model to put out good arguments. still searching online for a good analysis

it has to have a reason that can be found in the economy.

Analysis of sweden:

https://www.sozialismus.info/2010/01/13469/

cliffnotes:
-the wonder of sweden has aged, its a neoliberal mess today
-it reasons have been war profits in world war 2 without paying the price. sweden was neutral and made buisness with the nazis, later with the Allies who promised to protect it from stalin.
-it was based on recorces. sweden exported steel, iron ore, lumber between 1950-1970. Also the ship industry was #1 in the world
-although the sweden industry began to stagnate in the 70s welfare state reached its peak. reason for that was a strong worker movement and the fear of the capitalists of socialism, so they decided to make compromises
- in the 80s a major rollback begun. the centralization of capital is a big thing in sweden, everything is owned by families like the Wallenbergs
- nationalisation of industry was in question, but was never realised
- while the workers movement was once extremly strong it is now losing members every year. also the laws against worker unions are extremly strict. the freedom of strike is massively restricted and any infraction will result in high penalties
- the taxation system which was able to fund the big welfare state is widely degraded since the 90s. therfor the welfar state is essential abolished and the rest of it will be cleaned up in the next years
-at the same time workers rights are cut down brutally. things like minimum wage, healtcare, childcare and contract of employment of indefinite duration and also the pension are under steady attack and are degraded systematically

so sweden doesnt seem to be that humanistic paradise like our media tries to present it. its pretty much like all the other countries that have to live under the capitalistic agenda. even though the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index is still the highest in scandinavia, that doesnt need to say that much. Capitalism is basically bad everywhere. Keep in mind that the democracy index is an invention of a capitalistic magazine, they need such a thing as an utopia of capitalism.

Lenin does not = Stalin. Lenin was an internationalist, a socialist, a radical. Stalin was a murderous thug, a petty chauvinist, a reactionary. Stalin was a foot soldier who couldn't think for himself and abused Lenin's reputation after his death. But he was allowed to build power as the revolution died after the civil war. ie Stalin led the counter revolution. He also arranged for Trotsky to have an ice pick lodged in the back of his head - after Trotsky led the red army to success in the civil war. But people just lazily conflate these individuals as it's a convenient way to label communism/socialism as evil.

I agree new theories etc are needed btw, and history can teach important lessons. There needs to be a fresh approach, existing orgnisations that promote historical socialism are tiny, sectarian and dogmatic

however, Lenin himself couldnt think of any capable follower besides Stalin and Trotzki.

I dislike Stalin, but i think as a Marxist you never should blame individuals but systems that generate certain individuals .

So even though it hurts i wont seperate Stalin or Mao from the socialist history. Keep in mind that Stalin had certain archievements. He destroyed Hitler and he industrialized the whole country and broke the peasant reaction which wanted capitalism instead of socialism. His methods were brutal and inhuman. i totaly agree here.

Still you need good ideas and not just moral arguments to create a socialist theory of the future.

Even if we dont want Stalinism, and i certainly dont want to repeat that disaster, we cant just put the blame on one person, but we need to put up the concrete analysis of the concrete situation to get reliable data, which is the foundation of new theories

A danish study finds that its about higher levels of social trust in scandinavin people, similar levels of social trust is found in decendants of scandinavians that emigrated to the US a long time ago.

http://sciencenordic.com/trust-creat...not-vice-versa


Trust creates a welfare state - not vice versa

Trust is a fundamental prerequisite for the welfare state. If we didn’t trust one another, the whole model that the Scandinavian societies are built around would collapse even before it was implemented.

So says Christian Bjørnskov, an associate professor at Aarhus University’s Department of Economics and Business.

This argument turns the welfare debate on its head as the common conception has been that the high levels of trust in Scandinavian countries are generated by the welfare state.

“Our research indicates the exact opposite,” says Bjørnson. “We’ve always had a great trust in other people in Scandinavia, and this trust is the cornerstone of our welfare state.”

Together with Andreas Bergh, of Lund University in Sweden, he has just published the article Historical Trust Levels Predict the Current Size of the Welfare State in the economic journal Kyklos.

Trust came before the welfare state
Delving into figures from a long series of international studies about trust levels, the researchers found that both the descendants of people who migrated from Scandinavia 150 years ago and of those who migrated 70 years ago reported a higher degree of trust in others, compared to their new compatriots.

“This indicates that the trust came before the welfare state,” says Bjørnskov. “Descendants of Scandinavians who migrated to the US in the 1930s score as highly on the trust barometer as Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, but their grandparents migrated before the modern welfare state got into motion.”

So the traditional accounts of why Scandinavians have higher levels of trust in other people are inadequate, he argues:

“The traditional view is that the high levels of trust among Scandinavians can be put down to a fair political system and an efficient legal system. But these institutions weren’t implemented until after the first great wave of emigration in the 19th century, yet the descendants of the first emigrants are just as trustful as other people of Scandinavian heritage.”

Great political stability a possible explanation
Facts
The first outlines of the welfare state emerged with Otto von Bismarck’s social reforms in Germany in 1883.

The Nordic welfare model is based on universalism, where all citizens have equal rights to benefits funded by the community through taxation.

The Nordic model is also characterised by a large public sector and many women in the workforce.

Other Western countries have less extensive welfare models.

Bjørnskov believes this trust can be explained with reference to the great internal stability in Denmark and Norway. These two nations have never really had any feuds, civil wars or general disagreements.

“The last time a leading political figure was killed in Denmark was back in 1286. If you tell that to a French or Italian person, they would be shocked,” he says.

In their study, Bjørnskov and Bergh grouped the countries according to the size of their welfare state and the citizens’ reported levels of trust. Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland are completely isolated at the top of this graph.

No welfare state without trust
Bjørnskov argues that since the welfare state involves handing out money to people we don’t know, a general trust in our peers is essential.

“We simply have to trust that the people who receive the money actually need it. That’s why we’re seeing some very strong reactions when people feel that others are receiving money they’re not entitled to.”

The only other countries with the same trust levels are Canada and New Zealand. Bjørnskov thinks it would be impossible to introduce a welfare state in any other countries:

“The welfare state would collapse in a country like Greece, where distrust and corruption are widespread. Countries with low trust levels tend to have more corruption because it’s a very human reaction to take as much as you can if you feel that others are doing the same.”




The study
http://www.academia.edu/1955488/Hist..._welfare_state

what a shady study. this professor should lose his title.

how can you meassure trust, especailly how do you compare trust from diffrent decades/centuries

the welfare state is always the result of the capitalists being fearful of strong worker movements.

edit: the study is almost rascistic. what has a 150 year old immigrant todo with skandinavia? laughable

Yea im going to have to throw you into my filter tbh and i encourage others to do the same. The quality of your posts have been pretty low to say it mildly, possibly even a troll but im not concluding that.

@ aflametotheground

Actually it is an interesting study to me. TIA for the link. From the link:

Quote:

The Scandinavian welfare model cannot be exported to other countries because the fundamental trust required for such a system to function is unique to the Nordic countries.

Agree or disagree? I'll go first, I agree pretty much. The implication is that culturally Scandavavian countries are highly unique.

These posters apparently disagree with the premise I quoted:

adios: Its possible they are right that the trust is a barrier for other countries, im certainly open to that.

What i have been thinking about in the past is to carefully expand the welfare state but do it in a super transparrent way so you put legitimacy above everything. For examle people that need help will get services but there will be very strong systems and processes around the whole thing so we can be sure that nobody that is undeserving recveives anything. I think that migt be a way to work around the trust barrier.

For example around here we have handed out money to criminals that are in escape from the police for decades just because they for some reason had a right to receive certain benefits. That was ended recently, but its kind of funny how long we have been paying out money to people month after month that the police are chasing. This is an example of something that probably most people view as highly illegit way of using tax payers money, and things like this will erode trust in the gouvernment.

This is an extreme case, but lets say for example that whenever you are proposing new gouvernment social programs you also spend alot of money to create transparancy, hire investigators to investigate potential cheaters, maybe even monthly releases of cheating statistics online etc. Even to the point where its getting costly relative to the service itself.

Thats what i think of the matter, the problem people have with big gouvernment has alot to do with perceived cheating. So i dont really care if peoples perception of cheating is accurate or not, i think you just accept thats how people work, and a almost overblown focus on legitimacy is the way we go around it.

And let me also say that in the US social trust isnt the only thing hindering a bigger welfare state, money in politics is a big factor, im sure you would be elsewhere today if it werent for big money and citizens united for instance.

So even if you cant reach the scandinavian level i still think there are significant paths forward for the US on the welfare front.

@aflametotheground - thanks for the thoughtful reply. If I am quoting you out of context let me know please.

Quote:

What i have been thinking about in the past is to carefully expand the welfare state but do it in a super transparrent way so you put legitimacy above everything. For examle people that need help will get services but there will be very strong systems and processes around the whole thing so we can be sure that nobody that is undeserving recveives anything. I think that migt be a way to work around the trust barrier.

Ok you disagree basically because you feel it is possible to build trust in government and its citizens. Fair enough.

Quote:

For example around here we have handed out money to criminals that are in escape from the police for decades just because they for some reason had a right to receive certain benefits. That was ended recently, but its kind of funny how long we have been paying out money to people month after month that the police are chasing. This is an example of something that probably most people view as highly illegit way of using tax payers money, and things like this will erode trust in the gouvernment.

This is an extreme case, but lets say for example that whenever you are proposing new gouvernment social programs you also spend alot of money to create transparancy, hire investigators to investigate potential cheaters, maybe even monthly releases of cheating statistics online etc. Even to the point where its getting costly relative to the service itself.

One example which is fine btw of how building trust could/should work. Again, fair enough

Quote:

Thats what i think of the matter, the problem people have with big gouvernment has alot to do with perceived cheating. So i dont really care to what extend that is a accurate picture, i think a almost overblown focus on legitimacy is the way you do it.

Ok opposing political parties that tend to put their spin on issues that disparage the viewpoints of their opposition is not effective in building trust. Would you agree?

Quote:

And let me also say that in the US social trust isnt the only thing hindering a bigger welfare state, money in politics is a big factor, im sure you would be elsewhere today if it werent for big money and citizens united for instance.

So even if you cant reach the scandinavian level i still think there are significant paths forward for the US on the welfare front.

Ok it is beneficial to work on building trust in your view because it has a lot of societal benefits. Again fair enough.

From your first link:

Quote:

Other Western countries have less extensive welfare models.
Bjørnskov believes this trust can be explained with reference to the great internal stability in Denmark and Norway. These two nations have never really had any feuds, civil wars or general disagreements.

“The last time a leading political figure was killed in Denmark was back in 1286. If you tell that to a French or Italian person, they would be shocked,” he says.

In their study, Bjørnskov and Bergh grouped the countries according to the size of their welfare state and the citizens’ reported levels of trust. Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland are completely isolated at the top of this graph.

No welfare state without trust
Bjørnskov argues that since the welfare state involves handing out money to people we don’t know, a general trust in our peers is essential.

“We simply have to trust that the people who receive the money actually need it. That’s why we’re seeing some very strong reactions when people feel that others are receiving money they’re not entitled to.”

The only other countries with the same trust levels are Canada and New Zealand. Bjørnskov thinks it would be impossible to introduce a welfare state in any other countries:

Would you agree that disparaging your political opposition with such things as "deplorables" or "libtards" is counter productive in building that kind of trust you are referring to? I could go on and about the over-the-top rhetoric that is used constantly in US politics. You get idea I'm sure though.

100%. And im not sure if you are aware of this but i have been in a huge disagreement over this exact thing on this forum about a week ago.

Im calling for democratic values and norms, and stop trying to win every point type of mentality. Thats going to be very hard for people it seems, but thats where im at.

Cool. Thanks for engaging me.

Man makes history - but not in conditions of his own choosing. The post civil war conditions and the failure of the German revolution or spread of revolution to other countries were the conditions which allowed stalinism to develop - socialism in one country, which in a country like Russia this means competing economically with great Western industrial powers, so they needed brutal exploitation to develop industry. What it shows is that state central planning is a real alternative to a private property model, China demonstrates this too ofc. Ironically the post war boom, new deal years etc the west borrowed heavily from 'socialist' models to rebuild post war. And ofc we owe the Russian revolution for many of the social gains made in the west ie welfare states etc.

If in doubt, return to Marx - the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class. Do the workers, peasants and the oppressed run the system? Are they 'in the saddle' as Orwell said of the catalans in the civil war? What we saw in the Soviet system was an empire of dictatorial regimes. Monarchies replaced and mirrored by bureaucracies.

Understanding the Cuban revolution would be an interesting lesson for today I think. There you had a small revolutionary army carrying out revolution on behalf of the workers, but this model was a disaster, for example the absence of democratic organisation allowed bigotry to flourish - che himself was a homophobe - people can change ofc, but this is only through the process of organised struggle, self organised groups within the wider movement and so on.

It's very weird right now in the UK because you can say in public you are a socialist without going red with embarrassment, it's acceptable now and I think that shows something but the general understanding of what this means needs a lot of development, and to go way beyond competing in elections which alone stunts political development of new forces - the young, the casual worker etc.

We reject the notion that "trust" is an immutable quality of people within a given geographical area.

This is a classic example of a false-dichotomy. Communism (aka Marxism) is not the opposite of capitalism.

In fact, as practiced IRL, Communism isn't a whole lot different -vs- capitalism at all. There even is a term for that: 'State Capitalism'. Today in the USA, Saudi Arabia under Sharia, Cuba, and yesterday in the USSR, war time Germany, and pre-revolutionary New Jersey peeps suffered the wage system, rent, and loans at interest.

Note that the conversation ITT so far takes the wage system, rent, loans at interest, violent governmental enforcement of the above, and what is called a "mixed economy" all as givens. Under those givens, the only bone of contention is the relative degree of "mixing". Less (or more, it's all so arbitrary) "mixing" is characterized as more 'capitalist' -vs- more "mixing" being characterized as more "Communistic" on some kinda continuum.

This broken-and-braindead us-vs-them continuum-thinking has (and will, given history) always been useful as a staple of the capitalist's propaganda, and has (historically, and it seems still today given this OP) been useful for the Communist's propaganda too, starting with Marx personally in regard to the 1st & 2nd Internationals, and later for the USSR and other Communist dictatorships.

By 2018 however, this broken-and-braindead way of thinking has largely been abandoned and discredited by most rank-n-file anti-capitalists. Communism... while it's not going to go away completely... is not ever making a large scale comeback.

i agree with you for the most part, however the question remains open how to run the state if you abbandon democracy as part of the capitalistic model. Is it possible to maintain democracy in socialism? Lenin says no.


the question remains unanswered how to replace the "broken-and-braindead" system with something else than TINA (there is no alternative). Unless you have something else to say than TINA, the question of communism remains actual for me at least, as the flaws in the capitalistic economy are still the same as they were at Marx times.

cite please?

Lenin in 'state and revolution' says

In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy", "cannot be bothered with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.... Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the [Paris] Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

This can ofc be directly applied to the masses of today and our political systems.
Lenin's view is that democracy becomes far more reaching than 'once every 5 years', democracy via the soviets - the workers councils which give economic, ie workplace, democracy and collective control of land and production. The dictatorship of the proletariat refers to the need to ban political parties that represent private capital and use force if necessary. This doesnt equate to absolute dictatorship, on the contrary a flourishing of democracy within the workers, dispossessed and oppressed must take place as they become agents of history.

He goes on

Democracy is of enormous importance to the working class in its struggle against the capitalists for its emancipation. But democracy is by no means a boundary not to be overstepped; it is only one of the stages on the road from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to communism.

Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state. This, in turn, results in the fact that, at a certain stage in the development of democracy, it first welds together the class that wages a revolutionary struggle against capitalism--the proletariat, and enables it to crush, smash to atoms, wipe off the face of the earth the bourgeois, even the republican-bourgeois, state machine, the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy and to substitute for them a more democratic state machine, but a state machine nevertheless, in the shape of armed workers who proceed to form a militia involving the entire population.

And as communism proper is built, the need for democracy becomes less and less significant and the state withers away.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/len...ev/ch05.htm#s2

TINA is that broken-n-dead thinking: the capitalists y Communist claim they are a dichotomy, and the only other side doesn't work... hence TINA. They are not, and never have been, any kinda dichotomy.

Historically, between the 1st & 2nd Internationals, there was a split in the anti-capitalist movement. This was between what could be called the 'authoritarians', personified by Marx, and the 'anti-authoritarians', personified by Bakunin. There were several different tendencies in both the camps. It really wasn't until the Bolsheviks that the Marxist tendency became synonymous with what could be called 'authoritarian anti-capitalism'.

Historically, in the US, what could be called 'anti-authoritarian anti-capitalism' was vastly the predominant form of resistance up through general strikes of the 1930s. May Day came out of the US 8-hour work movement. The Palmer Raids didn't primarily target the CPA, they targeted the IWW.

Contemporaneously, in the US since the 1970s, effectively all anti-capitalist organizing is done along what are the 'anti-authoritarian' models and means. The actual card carrying Communists of this millenium (PSL, ISO, etc) are all dedicated to organizing using those models and means. None of them are organizing toward, and IMO none do any more than give internal facing lips service to, any kinda overarching Communist revolution.

Happiness? They must hide their emotions pretty well then.

That said, Iceland is the ****. Would live in Reykjavik in a heartbeat.

I think this is the 5th or 6th time I've seen trust come up in relation to the Nordic countries. Here's Megan McCardle

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...-without-danes

I do think the the Adios, Megan McCardle, and other like minded right wingers' focus on that does betray some lost ground in neoliberalism though.

20 or 10 years ago trust wouldn't have even come up with regards how the Nordics are doing so well, it would have been taken for granted that they were either going to collapse or stagnate at any time because of their unionization, high taxation, generous welfare state caused the problems we hear that those things cause. But it turned out it didn't, and in fact, their system is looking better than ours. Their growth rate has been lower than the US but only by a bit, and because of the redistribution the bottom 50% of Nordic counties actually have higher wealth and income than the bottom 50% of Americans, plus higher happiness, lower death rate, high health outcomes, etc.

So the fall back position has been, yea, sure, it works really well, but it's something unique to the Nords, it can't be reproduced here. Though oddly the the opposite, that libertarian free market capitalism is culturally dependent and therefor we shouldn't try and export it, never gets made.

In any case the lack of trust isn't some natural phenomenon that springs out of thin air but something that's actively fomented by right wingers

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/05/bu...confesses.html

the obvious, the Southern Strategy to pit whites against minorities, welfare queens, MS 13 etc. So the lamentation about lack of trust is one part analysis, one part sneering chutzpah saying "This is what you need to make this work and we're going to do everything we can do to stop it"

Scandinavian countries are tiny. Like half the population of New Jersey. They don't serve as models for big countries because some things don't scale well.

Also, Finland has gun and suicide problems just like Canada, and these countries are plagued by alcoholism and gender violence.

Oh really, some people having sown distrust is the only reason conservatives have lower levels of trust than liberals then?