Sweden

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Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a bourgeois state located in Scandinavia. Specifically, it was a social democracy during the short twentieth century, but more recently it has been moving towards neoliberalism.[1] In the past it had an empire that included territories in the New World as well as West Africa. Finland was incorporated from the twelfth century and partially settled, maintaining even today a sizeable minority of Swedes, long after Sweden gave up Finland to Russia in 1809.

History

The Kingdom of Sweden has long had a relatively unified and potent working class; concessions such as welfare, accessible healthcare, democratic worksteads, and related benefits have been commonplace. However, it was mostly the threat of Bolshevism that pressured the bourgeois state into finally granting these reforms, and only for the duration of the twentieth century.[2] The Kingdom of Sweden also favored the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War,[3] though their support was primarily humanitarian in nature rather than military.[4]

Before becoming a social democracy, Sweden was a hyper-censitary democracy, from 1865 to 1911 — the number of votes each voter could cast was dependent on that individual's tax payments, property, and income. The richest of voters could cast as many as 54 votes. A quite similar system was in place for municipal elections from 1862 to 1909, but that also a company could vote (with their amount of votes determined by property, profits, etc.), and that in urban municipal elections no one entity could cast more than 100 ballots. In rural municipalities, there was no stop to the amount of ballots allowed to be cast by an individual or company. This led to a good few municipalities being ruled by an individual who controlled more than half of the votes, therefore being a "dictator". In the municipal elections of 1871 this was so in a total 54 municipalities, and in 414 municipalities more than a quarter of ballots were controlled by 1 individual.[5][6]

The Swedish ruling class always remained a reactionary force. For example, since about 1906, the Swedish state forcibly sterilized dozens of thousands of people — most of them women and girls,[7] sometimes on grounds that they were "loose", too poor, had "mental defects", or simply because they were multiracial. The practice declined in the 1970s, but it was not fully abolished until the 2010s; scores of transpeople were pressured into undergoing the process as well.[8] The government has expressed regret for the program and has tried to compensate the surviving victims, but with limited success,[9] and in any case the Kingdom of Sweden remained a "model democracy" for that entire period. In the 1920s (when the famous social democrat, Hjalmar Branting, was still in power) the social democracy established the SIFR, the first "racial science" institute of that decade, which up until World War II published propaganda claiming that the Finns and Sámi were inferior to Swedes. Until the 1950s the social democracy also prohibited Roma from coming to Sweden, and refused them schooling until the late 1960s. In both Norway and Sweden, the Sámi populations have suffered state-sanctioned theft of their resources,[10] forced assimilation, sterilizations, segregation, evictions, denial of advanced education, and other forms of oppression.[11] In recent decades the government has likewise tried to compensate them somewhat, but these compensations have been inadequately enforced as well.[12] From the 1940s to the 1960s, the Swedish social democracy also committed thousands of lobotomies.[13]

World War I

The social democracy was officially neutral throughout World War I, and did not intervene militarily anywhere until the Russian civil war. As the German Reich was assailing the RSFSR in 1917, the Reich's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs renewed its offer to Stockholm for control over the Åland Islands in exchange for iron-ore exports and other support for the war effort.[14] The Swedish ruling class considered this offer, but did not accept it until February 13, 1918, as the capitalist media were printing atrocity stories about the Red Army on the islands. The Swedish ruling class subsequently ordered a military occupation of the islands and assailed the Red garrison.[15] One week later, the German Reich reclaimed the islands per the Finnish Whites’ request, and took the Red garrison prisoner as it was about to depart.[15] The Reich originally wanted the Swedish troops to leave the islands immediately, but eventually they agreed to a joint occupation that would persist until April 25, 1918, when Swedish forces finally withdrew out of respect for Finnish protests.[14] After World War I officially ended in November 1918, Swedish capitalists would proceed to (illegally) rearm Germany.[16]

As well, Swedish anticommunists would assist the Whites in the Finnish civil war in various ways. They founded the ‘Finlands vänner’ (Friends of Finland) society in January 1918 with financing from their business sector to provide more recruits and other support for the Whites. Approximately 1,100 Swedes volunteered for the Whites and about 500 of them saw combat. Some volunteers were officers of the Swedish army.[17] Social-democratic or otherwise liberal politicians such as Hjalmar Branting and Johannes Hellner inevitably sympathized with the Whites, too. Few Swedes volunteered for the Reds, and they had little support for them until late in the war, when reports of mistreatment against Bolshevist prisoners in the Finnish Civil War prison camps prompted calls in Politiken (a left-wing newspaper) to rescue them.[18]

The largest group of Swedish volunteers that served with the Whites was the ‘Swedish Brigade’, which was about 350-strong.[17] Kept in reserve for most of World War I, the ruling class finally deployed it at the decisive battle of Tampere.[19][20] The Swedish Brigade suffered its first casualty (an anticommunist historian[21] by the name of Olof Palme) there, and suffered serious casualties in attempting to capture the city.[22] The Swedish Brigade ultimately suffered 34 casualties and 50 wounded.[21] The social democracy also supplied six aeroplanes to provide valuable intelligence for the Finnish Whites.[23] Swedish support for the Whites also included financial support from business interests, and military munitions which were delivered by Swedish warships. They also supplied the anticommunists with medical and veterinary support.[17]

World War II

During the 1940s, Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson (quoted in 1924 saying "Sweden for Swedes! Swedes for Sweden!"[24]) and other Swedish social democrats forcibly imprisoned thousands of communists, other antifascists, and certain foreigners in internment camps.[25] The Swedish ruling class also built their wealth on supplying the Third Reich’s war effort with scarce essential resources[26] (such as ball bearings[27] and iron ore[28][29][30][31][32]) for weapons, possibly prolonging World War II by one year.[33] While commerce between the social democracy and the Empire of Japan was modest and constituted only a minor fraction of the overall Imperial Japanese trade with Europe, Swedish export of strategic products, such as steel, ball bearings and different sorts of advanced machinery, proved important for the Imperial economy. Sandviken, a Swedish engineering company, also supplied the Imperialists with piano wire for their machine-guns, and the social democracy exported pulp, newsprint and certain superior qualities of paper to the Imperialists. The paper tycoon Fujiwara Ginjirō of Ōji Seishi (Oji Paper Manufacturing Co.) in particular often went on study visits to Scandinavia and played a significant role in the Japan–Sweden Society that capitalists founded in Tokyo in 1929, with Prince Chichibu as its official patron.[34]

Berlin also awarded the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, General Olof Thörnell, the Order of the German Eagle for his pro-Reich policies.[35] From April 1940 to August 1943, scores of thousands of railroad cars had transported 1,004,158 military personnel on leave to the German Reich and 1,037,158 to Norway through Sweden, in violation of Sweden’s own neutrality policy.[36] From 1941 to 1945,[37] several hundred[38] mainland Scandinavians (at least 100 of whom were Swedish[37]) volunteered to serve in the Waffen-SS under the command of Fascist officers[39][40][41] in Axis formations such as the 5th SS Panzer Division “Wiking”,[42] the 11th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division Nordland, and Sveaborg.[43] Some were enrolled in the SS-Junker Schools;[37] many were confirmed members of a fascist party.[44] They were complicit in atrocities that other anticommunists committed on the Eastern Front.[45][46] Over one hundred Axis collaborators from the Baltics took refuge in the Kingdom of Sweden and were never subject to either extradition or prosecution despite the government's knowledge and its vows to the Soviet Union. Likewise, the Axis collaborators who returned to their homes in Sweden never faced prosecution either, not even after the short twentieth century.[47]

Economy

Although the Kingdom of Sweden commenced a disarmament program in the mid-1920s, and would offer relatively little in terms of private rents for armaments firms, military expenditures would remain significant and some disarmament goals would remain unmet regardless. The Federation of Swedish Industries and its members considered political monopoly rents an important complement to their commercial activities, and many Swedish capitalists successfully pressured their government to protect their interests in the international armaments market. The social democracy's need to compromise with other political parties and with the industrialists would ensure that some industries would remain unnationalized, and the little collusion between agents occurred only within the various parliamentary committees.[48]

In 2009 the Swedish state undid many of its concessions to the lower classes,[1] and today it overlooks companies like H&M which still employ child labor in Eurasia.[49] Sweden has been the world's second-largest exporter of weapons in per capita terms since 2009 as well.[50]

From the late twentieth century Sweden has also been rapidly privatizing and deregulating various private services, among the fastest and even deepest of all developed countries. It has opened publicly funded but privately owned schools, and privatized much of the national rail network, with governments all across the political spectrum pursuing this policy.[51] Pension reforms of the 1990s have partially privatized Sweden's social security system, with women and new parents particularly feeling as though they have lost out from this. This is a measure that the United States for its part wouldn't do, with critics of a proposition for such noting that privatizing social security would endanger people's retirement security, placing it at the whims of the markets and their periodic crashes.[52]

Sweden also has one of the most open labor immigration policies of developed western countries, which allows for cheaper labor to come in as well as to pressure native workers with competition, forcing them to accept lesser working conditions.

Culture

In 1979, Sweden became the first state to implement laws against corporal punishment in both educational and domestic settings, and the practice subsequently decreased in popularity over the decades. Instances of corporal punishment despite the ban still exist, but are very rare.[53] As of 2015 the Global Gender Gap Index identifies Sweden as one of the top ten "women-friendly" countries.[54]

Nevertheless, problems persist. In 1999, the Kingdom of Sweden became the first state to specifically criminalize the purchase of sex. Although supposedly intended to reduce exploitation and abuse, there is research in Scandinavia indicating that the law has actually made sex workers more vulnerable to exploitation: police enforcement encourages the industry to move underground, potentially leading to greater risks to sex workers (and clients) as they attempt to avoid state prosecution. The penalization of clients has made sex workers more vulnerable to exploitation, and trafficked victims more reluctant to report their exploitation to the police because of fear of reprisals from traffickers, and because of their inherent mistrust of the authorities. Despite the vending of sex remaining legal, there is also research demonstrating the biased and discriminatory way that the police respond to and deal with those who vend their sexual services; the belief that somebody who vends sexual services cannot be raped was expressed by Swedish police officers in some research.[55] Swedish police have been fining, evicting, and forcibly deporting sex workers, often without warning.[56][57] Since the 2010s, Swedish officials have also been oppressing people infected with HIV.[58]

References

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  2. Rasmussen, Magnus; Knutsen, Carl (2021-03-09). Reforming to Survive:The Bolshevik Origins of Social Policies (PDF). Cambridge University Press.
  3. Guttman, Jon (2013-07-25). "Why did Sweden support the Viet Cong?". Retrieved 2020-07-20.
  4. History.com Editors (2009-11-16). "Sweden announces support to Viet Cong". A&E Television Networks. Retrieved 2020-07-20. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  5. Piketty, T. (2020). Capital and Ideology (A. Goldhammer, Trans.). Harvard University Press.
  6. Bengtsson, E. (2019, May 27). The Swedish Sonderweg in Question: Democratization and Inequality in Comparative Perspective, c.1750–1920. Past & Present, 244(1), 123–161. https://academic.oup.com/past/article/244/1/123/5498958
  7. James, Steve (1999-03-19). "Social Democrats implemented measures to forcibly sterilise 62,000 people". Retrieved 2020-07-20.
  8. "Sweden: Forcibly sterilised trans people to fight compensation battle". 2013-02-27. Retrieved 2020-07-20.
  9. Gill, Amy (2013-04-01). Noel Byrne (ed.). "Depriving Human Rights to Sweden's Transgender Community: How the Government Refuses to Provide Compensation for Forced Sterilization". Retrieved 2020-07-20.
  10. Crouch, David (2016-02-03). "Sweden's indigenous Sami people win rights battle against state". Retrieved 2020-07-20.
  11. Mahajan, Omkar (2016-10-31). "THE SAMI: A DISAPPEARING INDIGENOUS MINORITY IN SCANDINAVIA". Archived from the original on 2018-01-22. Retrieved 2020-07-20.
  12. Pikkarainen, Heidi; Brodin, Björn (2008). "Discrimination of the Sami – the rights of the Sami from a discrimation perspective" (PDF). Stockholm. ISBN 978-91-973654-7-5.
  13. Szasz, Thomas (2007). "6". Coercion As Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-7658-0379-5. LCCN 2006050465. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |year_published= ignored (help)
  14. 14.0 14.1 Salmon, Patrick (1997). Scandinavia and the Great Powers 1890-1940. Cambridge University Press. pp. 146–147, 162–167. ISBN 0521891027.
  15. 15.0 15.1 Gardberg, Anders (1995). "ÅLAND ISLANDS A Strategic Survey" (PDF). Finnish Defence Studies (8): 10. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
  16. Gilmour, John (14 Mar 2011). Sweden, the Swastika and Stalin. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 127–128. ISBN 978-0748686667. Retrieved 17 September 2019. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  17. 17.0 17.1 17.2 Kuronen, Tuomas; Huhtinen, Aki-Mauri; Vuorinen, Marja (14 December 2016). Regime Changes in 20th Century Europe: Reassessed, Anticipated and in the Making. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 6–8. ISBN 978-1443856133. Retrieved 27 September 2019. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  18. Qvarnström, Sofi (2014). "Sweden". 1914-1918-online. doi:10.15463/ie1418.10150. Retrieved 8 September 2019.
  19. Tillotson, H. M. (1996). Finland at peace and war. Michael Russell. p. 64. ISBN 0859552225. Retrieved 27 September 2019. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  20. Hannula, Joose Olavi (1939). Finland's War of Independence (2 ed.). Faber & Faber. pp. 146–148. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
  21. 21.0 21.1 "Olof Palme (1884 -1918). Mannen som kunde ha blivit en svensk fascistledare". Dagens Nyheter (in svenska). 26 November 1995. Retrieved 28 September 2019.
  22. Lindqvist, Herman (2006). A History of Sweden: From Ice Age to Our Age. Norstedts. p. 653. ISBN 9113014552. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
  23. Anders, Leslie (February 1957). "Personality in War: Mannerheim". Military Review. 36 (11): 56. Retrieved 27 September 2019. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  24. https://petterssonorg.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/per_albin_hansson_19241.png
  25. Berglund, Tobias; Sennerteg, Niclas (2010-07-02). "I". Svenska koncentrationsläger i Tredje rikets skugga. Natur & Kultur. p. 15. ISBN 978-91-27-12791-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  26. Wiklund, Mats (2000-01-26). "Murky truth of how a neutral Sweden covered up its collaboration with Nazis". Archived from the original on 2016-02-07.
  27. Golson, Eric (2012). "Did Swedish ball bearings keep the Second World War going? Re-evaluating neutral Sweden's role". Scandinavian Economic History Review. Taylor and Francis. 60 (2): 165–182. doi:10.1080/03585522.2012.693259. ISSN 1750-2837. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  28. Salmon, Patrick (2002-04-11). Scandinavia and the Great Powers 1890-1940. Cambridge University Press. p. 322–6. ISBN 978-0-521-89102-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  29. Agius, Christine (2006). The Social Construction of Swedish Neutrality. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. pp. 72, 78. ISBN 978-0-7190-7152-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  30. Norman, Kajsa (2018). Sweden's Dark Soul: The Unravelling of a Utopia. London: C. Hurst & Co. pp. 122–3. ISBN 9781787380097. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  31. Leitz, Christian (2000). "3". Nazi Germany and Neutral Europe During the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 64–72. ISBN 0 7190 5068 5. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  32. "6". Hitler’s Scandinavian Legacy. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. 2013. p. 111. ISBN 978-1-4725-0497-5. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  33. "Was Sweden really neutral in World War Two?". 2017-12-18. Retrieved 2020-07-20.
  34. Ingemar Ottosson. "Trade under protest: Sweden, Japan and the East Asian crisis in the 1930s" (pdf). Lund University. Retrieved 29 January 2015.
  35. Tennant, Peter (1992). Touchlines of War. Hull: University of Hull Press. p. 101. ISBN 9780859586030.
  36. Sveriges militära beredskap 1939–1945 [Swedish Military Preparedness 1939–1945] (in Swedish). Stockholm: Kungl. Militärhögskolan Militärhistoriska avd. 1982. p. 498. ISBN 91-85266-20-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  37. 37.0 37.1 37.2 Schön, Bosse (2016). Hitlers svenska SS-soldater. Fischer & Co. ISBN 9789188243171.
  38. McNab, Chris (2009). The SS: 1923–1945. Amber Books Ltd. p. 95. ISBN 978-1-906626-49-5.
  39. Koehl, Robert (2004). The SS: A History 1919–45. Stroud: Tempus. pp. 213–214. ISBN 978-0-7524-2559-7.
  40. Longerich, Peter (2012). Heinrich Himmler: A Life. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 500, 674. ISBN 978-0-19-959232-6.
  41. Wangel, Carl-Axel (1982). Sveriges militära beredskap 1939-1945 (in Swedish). Stockholm: Militärhistoriska Förlaget. ISBN 978-91-85266-20-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  42. Hale, Christopher (2011). Hitler's Foreign Executioners: Europe's Dirty Secret. The History Press. p. 324. ISBN 978-0-7524-5974-5.
  43. Schön, Bosse (1999). Svenskarna som stred för Hitler. p. 119. ISBN 978-9-1765-7208-5.
  44. Eberan, Barbro (2014-09-23). "Äventyret lockade svenskar till SS" (in Swedish).{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  45. Owetz, Josefine (2014-07-26). ""Svenskar hade en roll i förintelsen"" (in Swedish).{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  46. Westberg, Lennart (2018-04-12). "Svenskarna i Waffen-SS" (in Swedish).{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  47. Cohen, Peter (2013-12-22). "The Capitalist Holocaust". Archived from the original on 2014-01-29. {{cite web}}: |chapter= ignored (help)
  48. Eloranta, Jari (2008). "Rent seeking and collusion in the military allocation decisions of Finland, Sweden, and Great Britain, 1920–38". Economic History Review. 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, United Kingdom and 350 Main Street, Malden, Massachusetts 02148, United States of America: Blackwell Publishing. 62 (1): 23–44. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.2008.00427.x.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  49. Butler, Sarah (2016-08-21). "H&M factories in Myanmar employed 14-year-old workers". Retrieved 2020-07-20.
  50. Minnick, Taylor; Harrison, Curtis (2009-10-22). "Sweden Tops World in Weapons Exports". Retrieved 2020-01-26.
  51. Sweden tops global privatization ranking
  52. Sweden partially privatized its Social Security — here’s how it has worked out
  53. Fredén, Jonas (2013-06-25). "First ban on smacking children".
  54. Magda, Loraine (2016). "8". The Law of Balance: Thrive by Balancing Your Inner Masculine and Feminine. Bloomington: Balboa Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-1-5043-6210-8. LCCN 2016911346. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  55. Kingston, Sarah; Thomas, Terry (2018-10-25). "No model in practice: a 'Nordic model' to respond to prostitution?" (PDF). Crime, La and Social Change (71): 423–439. doi:10.1007/s10611-018-9795-6.
  56. Grant, Melissa (2016-05-26). "Amnesty International Calls for an End to the 'Nordic Model' of Criminalizing Sex Workers". Archived from the original on 2016-06-05.
  57. "The Real Impact of the Swedish Model on Sex Workers" (PDF). Edinburgh: NSWP. {{cite web}}: |chapter= ignored (help)
  58. McCrimmon, Dejah (2013-12-18). Andy Duncan (ed.). "Ongoing Criminal Crackdown on Swedes with HIV". Retrieved 2020-07-20.