Denmark appreciation thread

The problem is eventually nations like this begin to erode and capitulate to the interests of Capital over time.

Wow a well informed and differentiated post by a nazbol. That shit is rare to see.

forgot shitposting flag

No, not a good thing. Kill yourself, social fascist.

kys back to Holla Forums

It's still operating exploitative class relationships, even if objectively people are less assraped. Socdem countries, and especially nordic ones, are dependent on capitalism for most of their food and consumer products, so they're really riding on the same capitalist exploitation the rest of the world is.

They do have some of the best urban planning in the world, I must say.

Kulak scum detected.

oh look, some people managed to distill the acid from the trickling down piss and flog it so they had enough money to only vaguely worry about paying rent.

WOW IM A SOCDEM NOW

Nope, the cost of living is far higher there than in the US, so it works out about the same.

Pretty much this.
I've witnessed the decline of the wellfare state since I was born. Without the threat of any serious communist movement, capitalists are just grabbing left and right.
For the past 30 or so years we've pretty much only witnessed cuts to education, healthcare, social security etc.

Denmark is a nice place, but it will not last.

Correct. These remaining, apperently functioning pockets of Social Democracy only work because they are totally interlodged with the global capitalist system. Denmark for example, has almost no fertile ground or resources (there is a reason the vikings settled in England) and is only well-off because of their access to the highly exploitive labor and consumer market of the EU. Take meat for example: It's produced under horrible conditions for both men and animal in Romania, then gets processed in Bulgaria, is shipped to the Netherlands for packaging and then appears in a German Supermarket for 1,50€ with the label "Made in the Netherlands".

Non-EU countries can have Social Democracy only when they have oil exports, such as Norway. Face it: You can't have capitalism unless somebody somewhere is somehow getting really fucked over. It's not salvageable.

What the fuck are you talking about? Denmark is just as fertile as most of the north-western european mudflats.
Yea they had a fuckton of kids and the romans fucked off out of england, leaving it defenceless.
Countries on the mudflats have a net export of meat in general. Stop talking bullshit.
Pics related. First pic per 1000 tonnes of carcass weight, second by millions animals. Pigs and cows is pretty much the only shit you can reasonably farm here.

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This, in fact I'd say it's even worse. People seem pretty damn depressed too.

t. did a year in Denmark

Do you not realize first-world countries "work" because they exploit the rest of the planet? Social democracy can't work on a global level.

fuck off dipshit

they should let in more refuges then

Not at all, the soil in Denmark has really low nutritional value for crops. They use a fuckton of fertilizers - what do you think happens if they couldn't import them anymore? Well, have a look at Cuba or the DPRK in the 90s.

So the fact that England is comparatively well-suited for agriculture and settlement due to its open land and mild climate has nothing to do with this?

Also I was using meat as an example for how fucked up the consumer market is in the EU, I didn't mean to say that you can't have lifestock in Denmark

Dane here: Denmark is still shit. The socdems are neoliberals, the right-wingers are neoliberals, and they're both determined to destroy every gain made in the last 50 years. The socialists are still weak here, and they're mostly limited to idpol bullshit and stopping the socdems from fucking everything up, while the labour movement is completely integrated with capital (and has been for decades). It's better than Anglostan, but it's declining and there's barely a socialist movement.
Though this is bullshit. Denmark has a positive trade balance, we export more than we import (though the goods we import are cheap as shit due to 3rd world slave labour so take it with a grain of salt), and food is one of our biggest industries (good farm- and pastureland are pretty much our only natural resources, that and oil from the North Sea).

So does the netherlands but we still have a net export of phosphorous stuff.

Denmark has the same fucking climate and the land is flat as fuck and open too.

Also, that health insurance chart isn't accounting for the tens of millions of americans who have garbage insurance and would still go bankrupt if any serious health complications pop up

Yes that's cool and all but when are you gonna apologize for the killing of Rosa?

guess capitalism is pretty based then

We already know that the US is a hellhole. You didn't adress his point about the living cost. I know that wages are quite high in Australia as well but living cost is really high.

One thing I like about Denmark though, is that they don't really have a nanny state with tons of labor protection laws but strong unions negotiating wages with employers and government (old school SocDem) and that some of their agriculture is cooperatively owned by the workers

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like under any decent leftist governmental system everyone is going to have free healthcare as well. Why are you trying to use that specific thing as a win for social democracy?

I wasn't saying anything different. The reliance of Third World labor doesn't have anything to do with the amount of exports. Germany is almost imperialist with their exports within the EU market.

So, how long before central Europe and the Nordics succumb to austerity, lose their comfy socdem safety nets and become as depraved and unequal as Russia and the Anglophone countries?

the problem of the southern euro countries super high debt load was never taken care of. I think one of the oddest things I've ever seen in this life was how the media did hundreds of reports a week about the debt crisis in Greece but at some moment all stopped when the problem was never fixed or worked on.

Read the posts I was replying to. Reactionary parasites like you, who think because a system isn't a perfect representation of your ideology then they are just as bad as the US, are a cancer

20 years

Do you enjoy your time reading r/latestagecapitalism?

Just because capitalism is done more humanely in one country versus another doesn't somehow mean that Capitalism actually is cool lol

It's gonna take sometime as austerity is pretty slow in Sweden atleast. The neoliberal socdems here aren't really supportative of austerity but rather just extreme status quo while having their political power secured by the unions which all serve capital at this point. However whenever the right wing neoliberals get into power they push for a bunch of austerity and then when the socdems get back in they go "Oh, i guess this is just how things are now" and keep them all.

Spoken like true middle class liberals who have never gone through hardship in their lives.

I would nuke the south if it meant we could have free college, universal healthcare, massively lower levels of poverty and an actual social safety net when you're out of a job

Don't get too comfortable in that armchair of yours kiddo

wow denmark used their exploitation of the third world to fund their healthcare system for a few decades.

Guess Marx didn't know what he was talking about !!!

you'd kill people to protect a capitalist political system?
We kind of knew that when you lot shot Rosa.

t. armchairista

keep waiting for your perfect revolution while right wingers stay in power for your entire generation lmao

Except we would be capable of sustaining that industry ourselves without lowering the standard of living (in fact it would increase it). Those goods are being sold way above cost. Third World labour is being exploited to increase the profit margins of capitalists, not because production is impossible at Danish wages. The exporting of productive industries to the Third World hurts both people in the First World and the Third World.

A fucking rose

Fucking this.

i claim from my armchair as republicans hold power in every level of government and are working to further disenfranchise, suppress and impoverish the proletariat

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oh were you With Her? I can see why a socdem would love having Clinton a President. Just think of the trade deals that could have happened.

Gee, really makes ya think

we really need a final solution for socdem

Why would I be with a right wing parasite whose husband destroyed the american welfare system and wouldn't even support something as basic as single payer hc?

don't worry, the republicans are doing everything they can to fuck this country beyond belief. your armchair middle class lifestyle won't be sustainable for long, you kulak scum.

I live in Vietnam so I don't really care about what the republicans are doing

nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Denmark/United-States/Cost-of-living
YAY DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM

Countries like Denmark and Norway have big differences compared to Sweden thou

Socdem, maybe you should take a trip to Denmark. See how amazing it is. Maybe I should take you to a trip around our rapidly gentrifying cities and decaying villages. Capitalism is a cancer wherever it is, and it's everywhere.

Third World exploitation happens indirectly usually. One of the biggest amounts of imports of Denmark comes from China, and China gets their raw materials from Africa. To think that you sustain all these imports by yourself without Third World exploitation is quite unbelievable to me. I mean looking where the raw materials from rubber and plastic come from, I have a hard time believing that a Social Democracy like Denmark or Norway would not end up like Venezuela light with empty stores if they were put unter the same amount of sanctions.

This is the price of freedom.

Woah easy there Sven that's a lot of implications you're making there. Go back to bed, your boyfriend Muhammad is worried sick about you.

read Brave New World

Yes there is, you fucking capitalist.

Scandinavia consists of the three best nations in the world, yes, but it's all bad vibes.

read marx faggots

You are the worst poster on this board tbh. I wish you would read some communist theory.

They are unironic tankies

The history of the unions and the coops is something to be proud of as a Dane, I think. But as a another poster said they are mostly serving capital now and aren't really that political.
It's really nice to live here, but we will never ever reach socialism or anything close to it. People are just too comfortable.
Also, people fail to take the high costs of living into consideration when comparing Denmark and the US.
Plus, it literally illegal to beg for money in the streets here.

Do they mean median or is this completely meaningless?

But the situation is similar in Africa as it is in China, the difference is what is exported. Capitalists also extract large profit margins for the sale of, say, copper, by exploiting African workers and paying them shit (this is also ignoring that stuff like copper and aluminium is sold by every country that has them, they're not just taken from Africa). This is then compounded by the production in China, where the costs of materials and labour are small compared to the selling price. The exploitation of 3rd world labour and resources isn't done to give us regular people cheap shit, it's done to increase the profit margins of capitalists.
This kind of third-worldist argument really annoys me because it puts the blame on the first-worlder ("oh you're only so well-off because children in Africa are digging up copper with their bare hands for a starvation wage, you monster"), when the truth is we're worse off for it. Imperialism isn't for the benefit of the common worker, it's for the benefit of the capitalist.

I have, what's your point? Porky gonna douse us with drugs? Read Island, you nigger.

read Engels you piece of shit

THIS ENTIRE POST.

Fucking retard socdems and first worlders think just because they export products "made" in their countries (only in the final steps, or just branded as such) that they're not importing shitton of components and raw materials extracted from other nations under extremely exploitative conditions, and that they could be independent of the rest of the capitalist system of global corporate neocolonialism and not descend into a hellhole of deprivation. Fuck.

If you literally try to build socialism in one (tiny) country and minimize trade (or get blockaded) with other lands you end up like Cuba or North Korea. Both of those suffered heavy food/material shortages and had to do large sacrificies and ended up technologically stagnant and were/are heavily dependent on their big benefactors like USSR/China who actually had enough natural wealth to attempt self-sufficiency that could stand up to technological capitalist empires.

In fact conditions in Nordic countries would be worse than Venezuela because at least Venezuela has truly fertile land and weather for food production, not long, dark, shit ass winters where you can only eat potatoes and fish and cheese and you would freeze to death in the streets if there was a serious disruption to the economic system. Its not accidental that northern Europe (and northern Asia and Canada) is barely inhabited and for centuries was little more than semi-nomadic tribes while southern latitudes developed advanced civilizations. Most of those tribes were also raiders, like the Vikings or the Mongols had to move out to better lands like China or the Mediterranean and steal the wealth and knowledge because they couldn't into agriculture and trade and industry and philosophy.

We need world revolution.

Is this true? can any other dane confirm?

Do you guys not see what a complete shithole america is? why are people supporting conservatives over there? is it all about immigration?

I bet you as much endogenous money as the Bank of Scotland can conjure up that Denmark is social-neoliberal, not social democratic.
(For reference this comes alongside the general case that Sweden abandoned social democracy in the 80s/90s, and I don't believe that Denmark somehow magically resisted that historical movement.)

Guess we can't have cotton clothing without literal slaves guys, pack it in.

I have my doubts. The US is insanely shitty. I thought that for the dismal state of public services there, they'd at least have lower taxes - but since the UK has a much larger tax-free band (you pay no tax below £10000 earnings.) you actually wind up better off even as you narrowly get into the top rate of income tax.

kys.
Social Democracy is a mid-term palliative, not an end goal in itself. (Well, it's an end goal for many lives, but the long-term outlook should be to aspire to something better.)

Much better that a democrat holds power with a republican congress and works to further disenfranchise, suppress and impoverish the proletariat.

Fam. Also get your history right (and geography). Scandinavia isn't a frozen hellhole, and Denmark definitely isn't. The viking raids actually started alongside a population boom which meant a lot of young men who didn't have a lot of land, so they sailed out around the world and raided/traded/settled. Denmark (Zealand especially) is very fertile, and the climate is about the same as England's

The right populist party, DF (Danish People's Party - sounds commie, it's not), took a pretty after a brief stint in a coalition government with the other right-wing parties. The party also split between right-wing populists who (pretend to) like pensions and healthcare (DF), and right-wing populists whose economic policies would make the GOP blush (NB, literally New Bourgeois). Don't know what he means by SD.

*took a pretty big hit after a brief stint in a coalition government
The party couldn't get along with the other right-wingers because the other right-wingers are liberals who want to cut spending and give tax cuts to the rich - who also don't mind the immigrants and are mostly just bashing them for extra votes (the socdems also do this, BTW) - while DF are mild socdems.

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Yes. Although, as usual, nationalistic parties winning, doesn't change anything (look at Trump). The largest right-wing party will never change from being succdem light, unless if profit margins are starting to suffer drastically. While the "libertarians" if you can call them that, are a joke and extremely small.
I would probably blame this on following:
Large influence by American media, both MSM and internet.
The idea that SuccDem+ are literal commies
Not recovering after 2008 financial crisis
"Middle class" being scared regarding lazy Muslims leeching of welfare state until it breaks
Nothing will change until the Law of Value causes our economy to naturally decay. Denmark has been SuccDem since the 1930's, and the red scare didn't change that.

Brormand, I was a conservative when DF won a few years ago. Danmag needs gommunism

Sverige Demokraterna, an ex-nazi party that reshaped themselves as "social conservatives" at the turn of the century. Jimmie Åkesson, the party leader, joined the party when they were still nazis.

We got through nazi occupation. I think we might get through a refugee crisis. Although I am disgusted by the reactionary spirit in Scandinavia: the arson of refugee homes in Sweden (which the fascists blame on the refugees themselves), the attemping ban of mosques in Roskilde, and so on.

My bad, didn't think of Sweden
TBH, I kinda doubt they'll grow enough to accomplish much. They're too left for the right, and the left won't touch them with a ten-foot bargepole (except the socdems, fuck the socdems). Unless something really extreme happens, we're not gonna see a radical change left or right. What's probably gonna happen, IMO, is that all the "centrist" parties are gonna continue to co-opt DF's anti-immigrant policies, bashing all the muslims and the slavs and the gypsies, while capitalism continues to decline until everything collapses, and then something interesting might finally happen.

The fundamental point being made by OP is correct in so far as social democracy has the ability to afford these kind of concessions to the working class.

The post-war period and into the 1990s saw the most stable and positive period of capitalism's history. Reforms and concessions, benefits and social services, were granted to the working class in order to quell and pacify movements, because they were affordable - this is not the case during a capitalist decline, as we are in today.

Of course each economy, each country, will feel the effects of capitalist decline at a different rate, at a different pace. But it is happening, undeniable. Capitalism is in a long and slow slump, and has been since 2008. And the political landscape is changing to reflect that.

In this period of decline, social democratic parties find that they are forced by the hand of capital to carry out the same cuts to public services and workers' rights that any right wing party would implement. We can see it happening all over Europe day, where social democratic parties still carry weight in political scenes.

To put it simply: social democracy only works when there are enough scraps from the table to throw to the workers. This is the real crux of reformism; it is a political ideology that can only work when capitalism is in boom.

This. You summed it up well.

I would add some caveats (despite their high number and relative length I find myself more in agreement with disagreement particularly historically speaking):
#1 Is that the crisis of social democracy was in the 1970s and 80s, by the 90s it was already dead.
#2 Is that at least where public services are provided, large spending increases occurred in many countries after the mid-90s and into the 2000s, but this was usually misdirected or otherwise used concurrently with undesirable elements of neoliberalism (like union regulation) such that it didn't represent any sort of restoration. While these were often notionally social democratic parties - like labour - their overall aims were well off the mark. It would therefore seem viable to argue that it's as much a problem of power as of spending.
#3 Would be that Keynesianism in the simplest form - closely associated with social democracy - attempts to attenuate slumps and moderate booms. It is worth noting the greater stability of capitalism in the postwar-1970s period, for example. While there's a strong argument on one side that it's the greater instability of capitalism that caused Keynesianism to fall out of fashion, I would argue that the precise depth of our crisis is amplified by the way we responded, quickly turning to Austerity and so on. So in this sense social democracy doesn't merely depend on booms. (The job of equally, attenuating slumps by holding up demand, etc, would seem in many ways more important. Still in power terms as opposed to cost terms, capitalists must think they can afford those concessions.)

Actually the more interesting question would now appear to be whether neoliberalism can survive the present-and-coming crisis of capitalism, and what will come next.

Lenin drinking tea poster again. I think that point 3 is your strongest point; but to respond to it, the political ideology of "austerity" is precisely the environment that the previous period of social democracy created. Look at the death of the Labour Party - look at Blairism. Where did that come from? It came from social democracy, stable in periods of capitalist boom, granted the reforms that Blair undeniably did to the working class, and with the other hand giving capital all the power it wanted to create the next mess.

Neoliberalism is dead. The neoliberal ruling class is confused and scared and being forced into all kinds of positions it doesn't want to be in. Trump in the White House. May with her pathetic minority Tory Party. Brexit happening. Russia flexing its muscles on the international scene. Surges of support for should-be-joke political candidates. The neoliberal class of the previous period is in disarray. This is what the death of a ruling class looks like.

Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats) were more popular than Vänsterpartiet (Left Party, they used to be Soviet loyalists but nowadays they're shitty idpol obsessed socdems) among immigrant women in some recent poll, which was fucking funny. SD has been the largest party overall in some polls too. We have an election 2018 and it wouldn't surprise me if SD becomes the biggest party. I don't think it's because swedes have become more right wing generally, they just hate seeing so much money and resources being spent on immigrants while schools, health care, etc. is going to absolute shit.

Would highly dispute this. (Actually there's a good set of essays about this I read a while ago in pdf related. The case for considering Blair a SocDem is considered weak even by these presumably relatively conventional academics.)
I mean, other than the minimum wage that wasn't linked to inflation, I'm really struggling to think of any. Most of it was fluff from a technocratic standpoint that never worked out as intended. While spending certainly did increase, unreasonable amounts were outright wasted, sent down the wrong channels, etc. Privatisation continued unhindered despite there being no overriding financial need. An actual social democratic government could have done more with the same political power. (It would undoubtedly have fallen short of expectations regardless, given the international and internal pressures - but Blair pathologically avoided taking open-goals for social democracy because he wasn't a social democrat and had no interest in doing so.)

The term social neoliberal is quite useful for left-neoliberalism, although I'd push further and say that Blair was merely neoliberal, with the SNP falling into the social-neoliberal category with policies such as free tuition, for example.

It's quite fun to watch, although I'm not quite secure in the idea they're dead yet. It pays to be paranoid, even if people write about how awful you were because muh Anastasia years later.

Im screen-shotting this. Thank you.

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good post.
t. Another Dane

The only real Social Democrats in Sweden are the Swedish Democrats.

Marx and Engels supported participation in bourgeois parliamentarianism?

No, but it would be pretty convenient for the Succdem narrative if they did.

Norway and it's massive unions are better, but basically any modern country is better than the US at this point.

The statistic also doesn't take into account that my fellow Americans never seek treatment for hardly anything even "real" medical causes because they cant afford it and they rationalize away the need for doctor visits and treatment rather than face the problem that they know medical services might put them in debt.

People can doubt some mental illnesses but depression is real and is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain this has been scientifically proven to the extent that anything can be. I'm not big on pills myself and some of their current solutions but I can at least admit reality when I see it.

Denmark can go fuck themselves seriously

I always wondered, is Greenland on the route to independence (however notional) or what?

I don't get why people get so angry about the idea of voting for a social democrat. It's not like anyone will ever let an actual Communist party win an election, so what's wrong with voting myself benefits in the meantime?

I mean when they're an actual social democrat, nothing.
Giving someone like Blair the appearance of a mandate simply for being slightly less shit than the alternative is pretty abhorrent. (Although the Lib-Dems exist as a case study for why even voting for the good guys can sometimes backfire, as they went from affable Charles Kennedy's leadership to the cunt* Nick Clegg.)
*Actually an Orange Booker - basically the third pillar of the Blairite-Cameroon-Clegg cunt-house of similar ideologies, dragging the Lib-Dems from faintly left of Labour to Coalition with the Conservatives.

If faced with a series of undesirable candidates as one often is the best option is indeed to vote for someone with no hope. If you're lucky you'll save the local communist party their deposit paid for standing by getting them enough of the vote, provided your country works like that.

you have to shift the perceived centrism from the middle right to the left. socdem is at least the first step if put in the hands of actually competent leaders. uninformed voters are the most powerful.

Danskjävlar

depends on the country. in US it's pretty much impossible untill the dems stop being "slightly left of the GOP" becasue of the 2 party system. we need to either rally for a new dominant party or destroy the systems of the others. money is made in politicizing everything.

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WORLD IS A FUCK

good workers

snow spic, polar gook, ice beaner detected
Name one thing greenland has contributed to the world let alone to their dane overlords

If you got independence you'd just drink more and probably turn the entire region into shit and kill whales or some shit smh

Här: Danmark, utskitet av kalk och vatten.
Och där: Sverige, hugget i granit.

What comes after socdem has run its course though? Just straight up socialism?

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You morons realize that the cheaper consumer prices brought by offshoring and mass immigration are too small to compensate for the losses in working class incomes, right? You know that when measured relative to consumer prices, 1st-world working class income has been the same or worse? You realize the only people who've gained anything whatsoever from 3rd-world exploitation are porkies in both countries?

Jesus fucking christ,i always lurk on this bored butthis is stupid as shit. You people know nothing about Denmark, their history, or current happenings there.

Flood them with shitskins and see how happy they are

Lel.

It's well known that shitskins will make a European country less happy

Wait a second, are you saying happiness isn't mined in Greenland?

I've never understood why social democracy is so bad except for some historical back stabbing they are responsible for in the early 1900s

I get that it doesn't address any of the contradictions of capitalism like wage labor, competition etc. but is there not super abundance under capitalism. Isn't at least forcing porky to give back enough of his stolen surplus to meet the basic needs of proles better than having them starve in the streets.

If social democracy is so benign to capitalism why does porky lose his shit whenever social democracy policies gain popularity?

The fuck happened to poor Australia?

better than the current shit yes. but there is a lot wrong with it. thats all im gonna say.

because they can afford them, they have a medicare

Social Democracy is fucking shit because it presents only a temporary solution to the problem of class division and a pathetic one at that.
All Social Democracy does is subdue the proles by granting them social reforms so they will feel less of an impulse to revolt against their Capitalist oppressors. Porkie will always gladly support Social Democracy when the alternative is all out class war (See the Great Depression/Germany after WW1). What inevitably happens though is the proles get too comfortable with their current condition and porkie starts to reintroduce austerity to role back on Social Reforms. It's a vicious cycle of SocDemocracy.

begone, workist reactionary

Danes pay the most taxes in the world, Swedes are raped all the time, Norwegians are the most depressed people alive, Fins have one of the highest amounts of alcoholism, and Iceland had an incest problem.