Nordic model

The Nordic model is not socialist as the countries operating under that system do not have common ownership of the means of production – as democratic as some workplaces may be, and as equal as these countries are, there is still a capitalist ruling class and a working class, though with more reform than usual for capitalist nations. The proper designation for such countries is social democracy, and not socialism.

Neo-imperialism is not restricted to aggressive powers like the United States, the United Kingdom, France, or Germany – the Nordics are also agents in neo-imperialism and so profit from it, however progressive the policies won by their historically strong labor movement may be. In 2008, Norwegian communications multinational Telenor, which is partly owned by the state, was exposed in a documentary to have been partnering with a Bangladeshi supplier that employed child labor in horrendous conditions. It was further divulged that children were made to handle chemical substances without any protection, and one of the workers has even died after falling into a pool of acid. On top of negligent labor conditions, the company also ruined the crops of farmers in the surrounding areas with the waste from the plant. Of course, when confronted with this information, Telenor, like its other neo-imperialist counterparts, has denied knowledge about such practices. Statoil, another partially state-owned Norwegian company, which deals in oil and gas, has also been involved in numerous corruption cases around the world, particularly in underdeveloped countries. There they have bribed state companies and government officials in order to obtain licenses for extraction.

Such attitudes are not limited to economic factors but also military ones, suiting the Nordics as fully-fledged imperialist nations. Norway, for one, has dropped hundreds of bombs on Libya for the benefit of Statoil, which has since started joint extraction operations worth millions in the country. And it is not even Norway that is limited to these ventures – Swedish technology firms like Saab, BAE systems, and Bofors compete with the United States and Israel to develop weapons systems sold in billion-dollar deals, helping the developed nations to suppress the less developed ones. There is then the Swedish clothing giant H&M, which retails products in the developed world for a huge profit because it exploits and underpays workers in nations such as Bangladesh. In Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century, it is pointed out that only 0.95 euros of the final sale price of an H&M t-shirt remains in Bangladesh to cover the cost of the factory, workers, suppliers, and government. The remaining 3.54 euros goes for taxes and transportation in the market country, the bulk going to the retailer. Western nations capture most of the profit, though it is the impoverished workers and nations that have done most of the input in terms of labor and resources.

The Danish-British firm G4S is the world's largest security company infamous for its controversies. They have supplied services to Israeli prisons and checkpoints and have been repeatedly accused of mistreatment of immigrants in detention centers, on top of having a huge role in protecting Western imperialist interests such as the oil refineries and the territory around the Dakota Access pipeline. Though much of the blame is shifted on the British portion, it is in fact the Danish component that has founded and mostly developed the company.

With this, both Norway and Denmark are in NATO, an imperialist organization, and have been involved in such conflicts as the Bosnian and Kosovo War in former Yugoslavia, on top of intervening in Afghanistan and Libya.

The Nobel Peace Prize itself, founded in Sweden and based in Norway, has given known warmongers such as Barack Obama and Manuel Santos, moves that have been described as highly political. Sweden itself is the number one arms exporter per capita. However, because they don't send their own people overseas to do the dirty work, people think they are peaceful.

The “Nordic model” of course, is in its underworkings, not as glamorous as it appears to the world, or even to its own people. It is to a large extent predicated on the exploitation of undeveloped parts of the world to make a profit for itself like just about any other Western nation, and were this component taken out the Nordic economies would have their legs swept as any other imperialist nation. Least of all these nations participate in the capitalist system with no socialist recourse, and thereby increase the demand for capital while seeking a cozy existence for them and their in-group, the fellow imperialists.