Swedish Society, together to be apart

Interesting documentary on the Swedish model, which shows how despite often being held up as the ultimate welfare state, and hence presumably left wing Swedish society is at root almost more individualistic than even some conservatives in other countries would like. The point seems to be that they are prepared to have (and pay for) a large and intrusive state, because it actually thereby enables individuals to operate more freely and competitively.

BBC - BBC Radio 4 Programmes - Analysis, Cameron's Swede Dreams

Related articles with some extracts:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18432841

• Sweden is number one in Europe for competitiveness. Its economy last year grew six times faster than the UK's - and the deficit is at zero.
• Yet in the 1990s, Sweden was even worse off than we are now. The economy came crashing down when a housing bubble burst. Interest rates hit 500%; debt and unemployment reached crisis levels.
• "Oddly, Sweden - which is regarded by many as the most socialistic country in Europe - has managed to do things that right-wingers in Britain think would be impossible in their own country: too pro-market, too right-wing for even British consumption," he says. 
• The fact is there is mutual trust between Swedish unions and employers and Scandinavian countries rank highest in the world when it comes to social trust - 70% of Swedes say they trust one another; just 35% of Brits feel the same way. 
• The welfare state was designed to do away with dependency of all kinds: whether on charity - or even on family members. Professor Tragardh calls it a "Swedish theory of love". It says that love can exist only when neither party is dependent on the other. The state is seen as the vehicle for achieving this autonomy, hence the Swedish model aims to get women into the workforce, provide a good education to equip children to fend for themselves, and take on the burden of caring for elderly people. In other words, according to Lars Tragardh, "the state is there to provide fundamental resources that allow individuals to operate freely and competitively in the free society, including the market society." Not so much the land of free love, as of the free market.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/13/world/europe/13iht-swedes.3512334.html

• A recently published and widely discussed book, provocatively titled "Is the Swede a Human Being?" ("Ar svensken manniska?"), contends that Swedes are the opposite of collectivists: they are deeply individualistic.
• "The main purpose of the Swedish system has been to maximize the individual's independence," Tragardh, who has spent most of his life in the United States, said in an interview. "The picture of a collectivist animal is completely wrong; the modern Swede is a hyperindividualist."
• [The shyness of Swedes] is at heart the expression of a fundamental longing for individual autonomy and a desire not to depend on or be indebted to anyone, particularly not in intimate relationships - what the authors call "the Swedish theory of love."

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/01/britain_and_nordic_world_0 

• At the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, the five Nordic governments are to present a really interesting paper on "The Nordic Way", which sets out to challenge what it calls the "half-truth" that Nordic voters are simply rather left-wing and wedded to a big, intrusive and conformist state. Nordic voters like the state but are also exceptionally individualistic, the paper asserts. The circle is squared because Nordic voters believe that the state (which usually works pretty well in countries like Sweden) is the best referee and guarantor of their individual freedoms.
• "The Nordic Way" cites a paper that compares Sweden to Germany and the United States, when considering the triangle formed by reverence for the Family, the State and the Individual. Americans favour a Family-Individual axis, this suggests, suspecting the state as a threat to liberty. Germans revere an axis connecting the family and the state, with a smaller role for individual autonomy. In the Nordic countries, they argue, the state and the individual form the dominant alliance. The paper cited, by the way, is entitled: "Pippi Longstocking: The Autonomous Child and the Moral Logic of the Swedish Welfare State". It hails Pippi (the strongest girl in the world and an anarchic individualist who lives without parents in her own house, with only a monkey, horse, a bag of gold and a strong moral compass for company) as a Nordic archetype.
• You do not hear much about the Big Society in Sweden, it is true. But it is a mistake to see only the state. The phrase "statist-individualism" is an ugly one, but it seems a pretty apt description of these societies that Mr Cameron seems to admire sincerely. The British are too grumpy and too mistrustful of their state to buy into anything as intrusive. But is there still a link between the Big Society and the Nordic Big State? Maybe it is this: in the Nordics, the state is the final guarantor of equal access to good things for autonomous individuals. In the Big Society, perhaps the hope is for the state to act as a catalyst for access to good things. There is one final difference, of course; we have already seen that the Nordic model works.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/10/swedish-model-big-society-david-cameron

transcript of Analsysis program :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/programmes/analysis/transcripts/18_06_12..pdf 

• In a way it can be sad as well because if you get this feeling that you pay your tax, then you don?t have to be part of society in other ways, you know civil society will be much weaker, the family will be much weaker. I mean if you feel that you know I pay my tax, then I won?t give away money if you meet a beggar in the street because you feel like well I pay high taxes, this is you know not my problem; it?s the social welfare state who has to take care for this.