潘：我認為中國從來都沒有離開過全球的經濟體系，我是這樣理解的：當改革開放一開始，中國就已經嵌入到全球的資本主義經濟當中去了，到1990年代中後期變成世界工廠，對我來說，中國早就在資本主義的生產體系中，這是毋庸置疑的，我不知道為什麼眼前全世界都在用made in China 的產品時，這個問題還要拿出來辯論。當然雖然中國的產品在全世界流通，真正受益的還不是中國資本也不是中國老百姓。真正受益最大的還是跨國資本，因為所有這些都是跨國品牌。所以大部分份額還是被蘋果、UNIQLO大塊拿走了，小塊讓給中國的資本，利潤其實很低。但我並不認為說中國資本會比跨國資本更值得同情，或者更值得去保護，因為對我來講資本是沒有國界的，它在一個資本的邏輯裏面，這個所謂的種族概念是不是有效，對我來說是無效的。
最早维护性少数人权的：社会主义（倍倍尔在1898年最早公开为同性恋者说话：This January marks the 80th anniversary of a landmark in our struggle: the first political speech ever given for homosexual rights. Bebel so far as we know was the first to speak out in public debate. 列宁和托洛茨基取消压迫同性恋者的法律：1918年，苏联通过了一部完整的《婚姻，家庭和监护法典》，彻底驱散了旧时代父权制的阴云，在法律上赋予了女性独立自由和平等的地位。法典规定民事婚姻中只需夫妻一方要求就允许离婚。结婚登记也被尽可能地简化。法典废除了婚生和非婚生儿童的区别，而过去私生子给母亲带来的只有屈辱和严厉惩罚。法典超时代的进步性在其对待同性恋的态度上更是可见一斑。它废除了所有反对同性恋和两愿的性行为的法律，并尽量对其去污名化。
The neoliberal era started in the eighties as a revolt against the welfare state. It was a reassertion of the fundamentalist belief in market infallibility. It turned out to be a repeat version of history: Essentially it leads to casino capitalism, in the thrall of high finance, just as in the stock exchange crash in 1929. Austerity-like policies to deal with the consequences deepened the crisis, then as now, and ended in a decade-long Great Depression.
The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008 signified the end of that neoliberal era. Once more, this version of unregulated capitalism crashed. It ended in the biggest rescue operation by the state in history. Stimulus packages by the state and quantitative leasing (printing money) by central banks on a massive scale rescued us from a new Great Depression.
Instead, we are now experiencing the Great Recession. What is the difference? A massive bail-out of the financial system by tax-payers. Once again, unregulated capitalism had to be saved from the capitalists – by the state. This has revealed neoliberalism to be what it is: pseudo-science in the service of the super-rich. Just like Soviet communism it is a fundamentalist dogma, which has utterly failed the test of implementation. And in so far as it is in the service of privileged elites and rejects the role of the democratic state in taking care of the public interest it is in essence anti-democratic.
Dying neoliberalism
Underlying the demise of neoliberalism is a financial system out of control. In the years 1980-2014 the financial system grew six times faster than the real economy. The fundamentalist belief driving it is that the sole duty of corporate CEOs is to maximize short-term profits, share prices and dividends. Those perverse incentives are used to justify executive salaries more than 300 times higher than those of average workers; and obscene bonuses.
This is many times more than in any other sectors, although managing money creates no comparable value. As such, this financial system has turned out to be the main conduit for moving streams of income and wealth from the productive sectors of society to the financial elite: from the 99% to the 1%. The share of labor in global GDP has fallen by hundreds of billions annually, while the share of income/wealth enriching the 1% has increased dramatically.
Small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) account for 67% of job creation in our societies, but receive only a fraction of total bank lending. In their single-minded pursuit of short-term profit the banks concentrate their lending on stock exchange speculation and real estate, increasing the nominal value of existing assets – creating bubbles and busts – and further enriching the rich.
This is why inequality has reached exorbitant levels in our societies. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer by the day. This is why long-term unemployment is built into the system. This is why poverty is increasing amidst plenty. This is why social cohesion is dwindling and polarisation growing. Since our leaders seem to be offering no convincing solutions, feelings of disappointment, resentment, anger and distrust are rising. Our democracy is under siege by the plutocratic elite.
Footloose finances and solidarity
This unsustainable financial system is footloose and fickle and prone to panic at the slightest sign of trouble, leaving behind scorched earth: collapsed currencies, bankrupted banks, sovereign defaults and mountains of debt to be paid by others. There is a complete disconnect between freedom and responsibility. After the crash of 2008 the system has been rebuilt on the same model. That means that we are stuck in a prolonged recession, even awaiting a new crisis. The people out there, who are suffering the consequences, are waiting for trustworthy solutions – radical reform.
What is our social democratic response to this existentialist crisis of unregulated capitalism? The basic elements of the Nordic model took shape as a response to the great socio-economic upheavals of the interwar period of the last century. In the West we observed the market failure of unregulated capitalism and the Great Depression. In the East we observed the Soviet experiment with communism: a centralized command economy run by a police state, which enforced the abolition of human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
We rejected both. We decided that we would follow the third way. We recognized the usefulness of a competitive market system, where applicable, to allocate resources and create wealth. But we put markets under strict democratic control to avoid market distortions (monopolies, booms and busts and extreme concentration of wealth). We insisted on public provision of education, healthcare and general utilities (energy, water, public transport, etc).
The means are familiar. Social insurance (sickness, accident, old age, and unemployment insurance), free access to quality healthcare and education, paid for by progressive taxation; active labour market policy to get rid of unemployment; and provide affordable housing for all. We emphasize equality of the sexes and strong support for families with children. These are redistributive policies aimed at increasing equality and social mobility – as a matter of human rights not as charity.
The result is a society where equality of income and wealth is greater than elsewhere. This means that individual freedom is not a privilege of the few, but a matter of emancipation for the many. Social mobility – the ability to advance in society, if you work hard and play by the rules – is de facto greater in the Nordic countries than elsewhere. The Nordic model has by now replaced the United States of America as the land of opportunity.
This is the only socio-economic model, emerging in the last century, that has withstood the test of time in the era of globalization in the 21st century.
Why the Nordic model works
The neoliberal creed is that the welfare state, with its high progressive taxes and strong public sector, is uncompetitive. State intervention hampers growth and innovation and results in stagnation. The bottom line: owing to its lack of dynamism, the welfare state is said to be unsustainable in the long run. And the proliferation of state bureaucracy is even said to threaten individual freedom and ultimately end in a totalitarian state (Hayek).
Now we know better. The facts speak for themselves. No matter what criteria we apply, the Nordic model is invariably at the top of the league.
This applies no less to economic performance than other criteria: Economic growth, research and developement, technological innovation, productivity per hour of work, job creation, participation in the labour market, (especially women), equality of the sexes, level of education, social mobility, absence of poverty, health and longevity, quality of infrastructure, access to unspoilt nature, the overall quality of life. Less inequality than in most places. And a vibrant democracy. What more do you want?
What tasks lie ahead? An all-out effort against the financial elite to restrain the forces of inequality and to reclaim the power of democracy. An unyielding solidarity with Europe’s youth, who have been left to fend for themselves in the queues of the unemployed, bereft of hope. And take up the fight for the preservation of the environment and our common future on this planet.
There are three major challenges that lie ahead in the immediate and near future:
Sanitise the corrupt financial system and put it back firmly under democratic control
Massive investment in clean and renewable energy to replace fossil fuels as the life-blood of our economies. This is an urgent task which calls for social democrats and environmentalists to work together to save our planet
Start planning now how to tackle the consequences of the technological revolution which is ongoing all around us (IT, digitization and automation)
The prospect of massive and systemic unemployment through automation calls for radical thinking about the distribution of income and the responsibilities of the democratic state in such a society. On the agenda should be proposals for a minimum basic income for all. This is a gigantic task that calls for well-designed redistributive policies in the spirit of social democracy, utterly beyond the capacity of unregulated capitalism to solve.
These three major problems, as well as relevant solutions, are inter-related.. A precondition for success in meeting them is a political alliance between social democrats, trade unions, environmentalists and the radical left among Europe´s neglected youth. The road signs are already there.
Remember the motto of Tage Erlander, the long-time leader of Sweden’s social democrats, and arguably the greatest reformer of the last century. He said: “The market is a useful servant, but an intolerable master”. And the spiritual leader of the Catholic faith, Pope Francis, agreed, when he said:
The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of financial markets, which are faceless and lacking any humane goal. Money has to serve, not rule.
This is an edited version of a speech given at the celebratory 120th anniversary of the Lithuanian Social-Demcorati Party in Vilnius.
The European social model, virtually forgotten since the 2000s, is making a long-overdue comeback as the effects of the 2008 financial crisis continue to damage European society and exacerbate inequality levels. But this welcome change coincides with significant upheavals in the Nordic model, always seen as “best-in-class”. This has elemental consequences for Europe’s trade unions.
We’ve had a spate of reports on Europe’s “social contract” recently. Marine Boisson-Cohen and Bruno Palier argue for three priorities in the face of public spending pressures on the welfare state, persistent macro-economic imbalances in the eurozone and social tensions linked to free movement of labour. These are: adding a social dimension to the single currency, adapting the common rules framework to take account of the new era of worker mobility, and re-establishing the social model’s sustainability.
Jean Pisani-Ferry and Henrik Enderlein, in a report for the French and German economic minsters, urge cross-border investments, labour reforms in France, greater integration of skilled migrant and women workers in Germany, in a bid to avert a “lost decade” for a stagnant EU economy undermined by joblessness.
Now we’ve just had a study on the Nordic model(s) from a team of Nordic researchers who looked at the prospects for renewing the model – or, at worst, witnessing its decline – in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Norway itself up to 2030. It makes for tough reading.
For starters, they show that the crisis is hurting still in terms of increased unemployment – especially among Swedish young people. Second, employment rates have fallen quite dramatically since the 1990s. They were around 80% then and getting back to that level would require 1.3m new jobs between now and 2030 – a tall order. So, a key pillar of the Nordic model is showing symptoms of collapse – and, with rising inequality, its philosophical fundaments are undermined.
In fact, there are so many obvious variations as well as similarities in the Nordic model that it’s better to talk of a “family”. Finland, a Eurozone member, and Denmark, a de facto member if not de jure, have both shown negative growth between 2008 and 2014 – around minus 4% accumulatively. But both Norway (up 4%) and Sweden (up 6%) have done well relatively – and they’re not members.
The Nordic Model is runnig into trouble as union membership is falling across Scandinavia.
This group of countries has, however, shared common experiences – and lessons. One is how the political landscape has become fragmented and fractured, with its domination by social democratic parties – the glue holding the Nordic social pact together – at an end. Parties of the far right and right-wing populist groupings have been scoring between 12 and 20% of votes in recent elections, securing a solid base within that landscape. Even so, the welfare state remains intact and continues to enjoy the support of these right-wing and populist parties – although there is evidence that social generosity is being eroded.
But the second shared experience is more worrying from a trade union point of view. Nordic countries traditionally enjoy high rates of union density – up to 80%. These remain pretty high by European standards but are down to around 65% on average. If this continues, only half the labour force will be unionised by 2030. Indeed, if the Norwegian trend is followed generally, membership among wage- and salary-earners would be down to 45% and the unions would have lost a collective 2.1m members.
What’s especially alarming is that it will be an uphill struggle to recoup those membership levels. Young people are turning away from unions in their droves; joining a union is no longer axiomatic on getting a job. Not surprisingly, then, Nordic unions are focussing their efforts on recruitment. At the same time, northern Europe – especially Norway and Sweden – is proving more and more attractive to migrant labour.
One effect of this increased immigration is that there are large numbers of low-skilled workers on the fringes of the labour market or employed in sectors with low unionisation levels, creating a kind of two-tier labour market hitherto unknown in these countries.
One might conclude that the Scandinavian countries may retain some genuine advantages but are no longer quite so exceptional in European terms. But this equalisation with other European countries may bring a small consolation. We and they may now be able to learn from each other in a much richer vein than was possible when the Nordic model was viewed from afar as an unreachable Holy Grail.
Societies are usually founded on a set of values and beliefs while holding a vision of the type of future they wish to create. These basic premises, to a large extent, determine the world in which they live. So with our focus on the Nordic Model, what may we learn from the ‘happiest people on earth?’
No one lives in Scandinavia for the weather or the tax system; however, if one wants a safe, reliable, healthy and sustainable life it presents an excellent option.
The Nordic Model is the Scandinavian countries unique model for organizing society. This model combines free market capitalism with a comprehensive welfare state and collective bargaining at the national level.
The countries are small, everyone closely connected and thus interpersonal trust is high. Everyone is perceived as equal and society is non-heretical so, one might easily meet the minister of foreign affairs while bicycling through the streets of Copenhagen.
Wealth is more evenly distributed, with a factor 40 differential between high and low incomes, compared to a factor 300 in America. When a progressive tax is applied, the difference between rich and poor is the difference between driving a Kia or a BMW.
The government model functions well and is largely trusted by the citizens. Childcare, infrastructure and educational systems are excellent, which attracts international businesses and multinational corporations such as Microsoft, Apple and IBM.
Citizens have an unusually high-risk willingness and even more important are unusually comfortable with ambiguity. This makes them excellent business people and entrepreneurs and both Stockholm and Copenhagen have become rising startup ecosystems that have resulted in six Unicorns.
So, where did the Nordic Model come from and how did it develop? The short answer is through the nasty Viking habit of raping, pillaging and plundering, along with wars, international travel and commerce. Although the Vikings may have developed an infamous reputation during their extensive travels throughout the world, to their credit, they were also fine tradesmen and great collaborators.
They engaged in extensive trading networks throughout the known world to the benefit of economic development in Europe. In fact, Scandinavia’s economic position in the world today would not have been the same without the seafaring Viking’s influence, since eighteen percent of all the world’s goods and oil is still transported on Danish ships.
Interestingly enough, the makeup of a modern day Viking starts with the educational system, collaborative problem solving, critical reasoning, and the international perspectives that characterize the Nordic Model of Education.
Their fundamental belief is that, “It is better to stand on each other’s shoulders than to step on each other’s toes.” This means that collaboration is better than competition and this belief has been incorporated into the Nordic Model of Education. It seeds project-based education where groups of students solve a problem by applying theories obtained in the classroom and it strengthens the student’s critical reasoning because only strong arguments count. International perspectives are also incorporated into everyday Nordic teachings and challenges are seen from a broader perspective.
These fundamentals make up the strong cocktail known as the Nordic Model of Education that is now being expanded outside the boundaries of Scandinavia. Recently, Niels Brock, a hundred and thirty year old business school in Copenhagen, acquired the California International Business University (CIBU) a non-profit, private university in San Diego, California, known for its culturally diverse student body. In addition to applying the Nordic Model of Education, it will leverage Scandinavian Design, as well as innovation and entrepreneurship with a Scandinavian twist providing a unique hybrid model to a business education. In other words, the Vikings have once again returned to the New World.
