With the recent turnover in the Finnish government, a coalition of left and center-left parties has secured a solid hold on the nation’s government, lead by the world’s youngest prime minister, Sanna Marin. This is the kind of Nordic nation that the right in the United States loves to excoriate as “socialist” because of their strong commitment to public services and progressive taxation. It’s certainly true that, by the political standards of the world at large, all the Nordic countries are what can properly be termed “social democracies” (the new prime minister is herself a member of the Social Democrats) because of their social safety-net services and their extensive parliamentary system of government. This is the type of system that a lot of us on the progressive left here in America would love to see in our own country. But a new opinion piece in the New York Times points out something that is also highly relevant to American politics and culture...Finland is as capitalist a society as you’re likely to find anywhere.
This concept shouldn’t really surprise us. All the Nordic countries have strong capitalist economies that do very well in international trade, finance, production, etc. They have plenty of millionaires and even billionaires as well, people who have built themselves fortunes which, while they may pale in comparison to a Gates or Buffet or Koch, are nonetheless extensive accumulations of wealth. In this, they are no different than our home-grown American capitalists. But the key difference comes in what the overall social order is like in the two countries and the place of the wealthy and businesses in that structure. In their article “Finland is a Capitalist Paradise”, Anu Partanen (born Finnish) and Trevor Corson (born American) demonstrate this difference by describing the results of moving their young family from Brooklyn to Helsinki with a side of Finnish history to help Americans understand why Finland is the way it is.
After describing their less-than-ideal situation in the U.S., they discuss their decision to emigrate to Finland and the context of that move:
Finland, of course, is one of those Nordic countries that we hear some Americans, including President Trump, describe as unsustainable and oppressive — “socialist nanny states.” As we considered settling there, we canvassed Trevor’s family — he was raised in Arlington, Va. — and our American friends. They didn’t seem to think we’d be moving to a Soviet-style autocracy. In fact, many of them encouraged us to go. Even a venture capitalist we knew in Silicon Valley who has three children sounded envious: “I’d move to Finland in a heartbeat.”
So we went.
We’ve now been living in Finland for more than a year. The difference between our lives here and in the States has been tremendous, but perhaps not in the way many Americans might imagine. What we’ve experienced is an increase in personal freedom. Our lives are just much more manageable.
It’s an interesting take on the move, to be sure. They then go on to describe the many ways in which their lives are made more manageable by what the Finnish system affords all residents. The extensive social support system, the high-quality education from pre-school through college, the universal healthcare system, plus the resulting overall happiness of the population. It’s an impressive list and pretty much a progressive wish-list for the U.S. But it’s what come after this litany of advantages that makes this article so compelling and important. It makes the point that this has all been done within a system that is strongly committed to capitalist economics in a way that the U.S. should envy:
But under its current system, Finland has become one of the world’s wealthiest societies, and like the other Nordic countries, it is home to many hugely successful global companies.
In fact, a recent report by the chairman of market and investment strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset Management came to a surprising conclusion: The Nordic region is not only “just as business-friendly as the U.S.” but also better on key free-market indexes, including greater protection of private property, less impact on competition from government controls and more openness to trade and capital flows.
The bulk of the piece discusses why this is the case with a look back at Finnish history, but the main take-away for us as progressives is that this is a country that has solved many of the problems that we have in dealing with capitalism. It is, in effect, capitalism done right. And it rests on an interesting idea that may run counter to what many progressives might assume, but actually makes a great deal of sense when you consider it. Partanen and Corson lay it out in one of the final paragraphs of the article, after discussing what some American capitalists are finally starting to do to advance a more responsible form of capitalism:
If these titans of industry are serious about finding a more sustainable approach, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. They can simply consult their Nordic counterparts. If they do, they might realize that the success of Nordic capitalism is not due to businesses doing more to help communities. In a way, it’s the opposite: Nordic capitalists do less. What Nordic businesses do is focus on business — including good-faith negotiations with their unions — while letting citizens vote for politicians who use government to deliver a set of robust universal public services.
To be sure, those businesses and their owners pay far more of what they make in taxes, but the results are to their advantage as much as to the advantage of their less-wealthy compatriots. This is the ideal that we need here in our own capitalist system. I know that many here will be skeptical at best or even downright opposed to the idea that we need to preserve a capitalist system. The experience of American capitalism has soured us on the entire idea, since we’ve been exposed to some of its worst abuses and excesses. But give this article a proper read before you dismiss it. If used properly, as the Nordic countries have managed to do, capitalism can be the tool that gives us the good, clean, free, and equal society we as progressives would wish to see. All that remains is finding the will and the way to remake American capitalism in the image of what it should be: an economic engine to increase the happiness, security, and freedom of all Americans, not just the wealthy few.