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- [00:01]
Galen Druck
Can you pronounce your name for me?
- [00:03]
Pele Dragstad
Yeah, in Danish it's Pelit Raustel, but in English you could say Pele Dragstad or something like that. I think that would be the most.
- [00:11]
Galen Druck
Pele Dragstad.
- [00:13]
Pele Dragstad
Yeah.
- [00:14]
Galen Druck
What do you call a member of parliament in Danish? Like, if I was talking to a senator in the United States, I'd be like, oh, welcome, Senator. But what in Danish? Like, how do you refer to members of parliament in.
- [00:27]
Pele Dragstad
You know, we are very informal in Denmark, so we don't have this kind of special ways. You just say. Yeah, you just say my name.
- [00:35]
Galen Druck
Just Pele.
- [00:36]
Pele Dragstad
Yeah, yeah. That would be the normal thing. Yeah.
- [00:39]
Galen Druck
All right, well, then, Pele it is. Hello and welcome to the GD Politics podcast. I'm Galen Druck. The Nordic countries have come to play an outsized role in the American political imagination. Denmark, a country of 6 million people, roughly the size of Wisconsin, is by now used to being called out by both the American left and right as an example of a socialist country. For democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders and aoc, it's an example of an ideal system worth trying to emulate here at home. For Fox News commentators and the Trump administration, it's mentioned alongside Venezuela and been featured in an administration report on the opportunity costs of socialism. There's just one the Nordic countries don't see themselves as socialist. In fact, that $1,000 a month Ozempic prescription that everyone's talking about, that comes courtesy of a Danish company, Novo Nordisk, listed on the Copenhagen and New York stock exchanges. And while its profits are taxed to help fund government programs, if that's socialism, then maybe America is already socialist. For what it's worth, the US corporate tax rate is 21% and the Danish corporate tax rate is 22%. Also, Danish companies can hire and fire at will and there are no minimum wage laws. So today we're going to get a different perspective on the Nordic countries and socialism from an actual Nordic socialist. Pele Dragstad is a member of Danish parliament and the leader of the country's furthest left party in Parliament, the Red Green Alliance. In 2021, he wrote the book Nordic Socialism in part in response to the attention his country's system was getting and as an argument for socialism. And it's now been translated into English. Pele, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:39]
Pele Dragstad
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
- [02:43]
Galen Druck
So I just want to start off by getting your perspective. Why do you think Americans are so obsessed with Denmark?
- [02:49]
Pele Dragstad
Well, for some, I think It's a kind of a good example of that you could organize societies in a different way. You know, I told you before that I'm on vacation now, and as every other Danish citizen, I have the right to five weeks of paid vacation. We have one year of parental leave, also paid by the employer. And of course a vast welfare system where healthcare is free and universal education is free on every level. And they even pay us to go to university or other educations. So you have a salary that you can live from while you're studying. So of course it's a very different system from what you know, from the US and then of course, what the right wing pundits are so scared about is maybe that at the same time, Denmark and other Nordic countries are some of the most wealthy countries in the world, with high ratio of employment among the population. Really productive economies as well. Denmark, I think is a more productive country than the US for example. So it's kind of an example of that you can organize societies and economies in a very different way and still be a thriving economy. So I think that's what makes it so interesting to also discuss the Nordic examples of how to organize societies and economies.
- [04:19]
Galen Druck
When Denmark gets called out as socialist by either the right or the left in the United States. The sense that I get is the public often rejects that because what Denmark has is a capitalistic economy by and large, that uses taxes to fund a really robust welfare state. What's the difference between that and socialism as you see it?
- [04:44]
Pele Dragstad
Well, one of the main claims of my book on the more theoretical level is that you should try to stop to see socialism and capitalism as total systems or all encompassing economical systems. And that most economies in fact are mixed economies. That you have both capitalist and socialist features in the economies. And what makes the Nordic countries special are that they are more socialist than most of the rest countries in the world. In the sense that a great part of our economy is under kind of democratic governance and control. You know, about 20 to 25% of our GDP, our national wealth is created in our public sector. One in every three worker is employed in this democratically governed non profit sector. And then we also, besides that, have a vast private democratically governed sectors. In our cooperative sector, for example, in Denmark, almost all utilities, water, heating, electricity is owned cooperatively. If you look at our housing sector, one in every five housing unit is owned cooperatively. Even in our financial sector we have a strong presence of cooperative. Our biggest mortgage institution is owned by the customers. So we have a long tradition for democratically Organized ownership. And that's really what also make the Nordic countries stand out. In Norway, for example, you know that all natural resources are oil and gas are owned by the state and is kind of important factor in financing their welfare state. In Sweden you have also important state owned enterprises in foresting, in mining, in finance. So what makes our countries different is not only that we have a welfare state, tax financed welfare state, but also that ownership has been broadened out to bigger parts of the population. That doesn't mean that we are a socialist country. And that's not my claim. My claim is that, yeah, as I said, that all societies are kind of hybrids and we don't have to choose between a kind of total capitalist system, that would be impossible in my eyes, or a totally socialist system. But my claim in the book is that we could learn from the Nordic experience and build upon that to create a more equal, a more fair economy than the one we have in Denmark today and even more the one that you have in the United States. So yeah, my point of departure, of course, is that capitalism, at least capitalism left to its own, is not a viable solution for the future. We see that capitalism creates this enormous concentration of wealth. And this is not only unfair to the majority who are taking part in creating this wealth, but it's also, as we see it mostly right now in the United States, at some times this concentration of wealth will undermine the foundation of democracy by creating a kind of oligarchic power that trumps democratic power and influence. And therefore we have to find an alternative to this way of organizing the economy. And what I try to do in the book is to get some suggestions, some first steps in creating that other alternative.
- [08:13]
Galen Druck
You don't hear democratic socialists in America talk all that much about companies eventually being owned by employees or, you know, the means of production basically going to the people. When democratic socialists in the US argue for changes, oftentimes they want to create the world that you are already living in. You know, one in which we increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy and provide universal public health care, tuition free college, highly subsidized or free childcare and the like. You know, it seems to me like aoc, Bernie Sanders or Anamdadi want to create that world, but actually you're already living in that world. And what you're saying in your book is it's no utopia. There are a lot of problems with this world too. And you even call out that Denmark has experienced the second largest increase in, in income inequality in the 21st century, second only to the United States and the third largest increase in wealth inequality in the 21st century. So American democratic socialists look at your country and see a utopia. You look at your country and you see a lot of things that are wrong. Where are the democratic socialists in America wrong for seeing Denmark as a sort of utopia?
- [09:33]
Pele Dragstad
No, I think it's, it's a, it's a good point to, to point to the Nordic countries, but I would. And still, even after kind of three decades of neoliberal attacks on this democratic socialist experience, we are still countries very different from, for example, the United States. We have more redistribution of wealth, we have more rights as citizens to some of the most important needs like health care, education, childcare, elderly care. It's not something that we are dependent on our wealth to be able to access our rights as citizens. So in that way, from a US Perspective, I think that the Nordic countries are some kind of utopia seen from at least normal working families in the US. But what I point to in the book is that the problem is that if you don't challenge ownership, then you don't get rid kind of the root causes of. There's a tendency towards oligarchic power because power rests in ownership. And I think it's important to understand that the welfare system that we have today was created during a time where the correlation of forces was different and where you had much less oligarchic power than you have today in Denmark and the Nordic countries, where the working class was in government and where the union was even stronger. We still have really strong unions in the Nordic countries, a high unionization. That's another important point of our models. But what we have experienced the last couple of decades is an attack of all these gains that we made. And that attack stems from the fact that we still have the main parts of our economy, mainly industry, banks and so on, in the hands of, of a tiny lead. So my claim is that in order to make viable and long lasting model, you need to address the issue of ownership. And in fact we have done that in the Nordic countries, where I am here in northern Jutland, the nearest town where the spot where the first consumer cooperative was founded. In Denmark being kind of this starting point for vast democratic economy, all agriculture, even secondary products like fertilizers was governed democratically. It still is in a great extent. And this democratic economy spread out through the different sectors of the economy. And then after World War II, we created our welfare state, taking out essential sectors of the economy from the market and converting it to social rights. So the important theoretical Point of the book, as I said, is to say that all societies can't have hybrids or mixed economies. And it's not static. You can move your economy in a more capitalist direction, as we have experienced in the Nordics, I think also in the US during the last three or four decades of kind of neoliberal epoch. But you can also turn the tide and move your country and your economy in a direction of more democratic governance, of more distribution, of more decommodification of important sectors of the economy. So I think the important point here is when you talk about socialism, and I also see that in the U.S. debate, a lot of mostly kind of right wing pundits point also always to kind of totalitarian experience like Soviet Union or Eastern bloc dictatorships. But that misses the point that we have another branch of socialism, the democratic socialism that had kind of its main experience in the Nordic countries throughout the 50s and 60s and 70s of last century, but still really present in our actual economies. So what I try to do with the book is point to that, and that's kind of where I think I have the same frequencies as Senator Sanders and AUC and Soran Mamdani, that being a socialist does not mean that you kind of want to get to Cuba or Soviet Union. In fact, being a democratic socialist is a country that you are want to maintain all kind of liberal rights, all kind of human rights and so on. You want a democracy, but you want to expand the democratic principle into the economic sector, into your workplace. And that's kind of the main idea of socialism.
- [14:22]
Galen Druck
Yeah. So let me lay out what I view as the argument in your book, and you can tell me where I'm right and where I'm wrong, which is that the economy is a spectrum and a spectrum between capitalism and socialism. And you don't even argue in your book for necessarily moving the economy to 100% socialism, but moving the dial towards socialism. You're also very skeptical of government power and bureaucracies and make the argument that if you make everything public, if you make everything run by the government, then bureaucrats will take on the same role as the oligarchy.
- [15:01]
Pele Dragstad
Exactly.
- [15:02]
Galen Druck
And so the argument is instead to increase consumer owned cooperatives, worker owned cooperatives, to transition certain companies, you know, for example, publicly traded companies, you can purchase shares of that company that then rest with the people who work for that company and then they will have some input. I don't know if it's on the board of directors or just as a voting part of the company, but it's actually making More companies owned by the workers as opposed to the actual public sector. Like not turning everything into a public school, but instead turning it into like the grocery store where there we in America have grocery stores that are cooperatives, for example. And you argue for like all different kinds of ways of making people more involved in the running of the economy as opposed to corporations and the wealthy people who own the shares of whatever of those corporations, Is that right?
- [16:03]
Pele Dragstad
Exactly. I think it has been a failure on part of the left historically to have this idea about societal forms being kind of all encompassing, that capitalism is everything. Right now there's nothing outside capitalism. So we live in a capitalist economy, a capitalist state. Even some say that humans are kind of capitalist. So my idea is that as I said, all kind of economies are mixtures, are hybrids. I think it's a kind of liberating also not to aim for a total socialist society. Because what is the problem about small producers owning their own stores on the street or making their own workshops and so on? There's no problem about it. What's the problem about capitalism is, is when power, economic power, get concentrated at a tiny elite. So that's a problem we need to address. And we need to ask ourselves where does this power stem from? And that is why I suggest reforms that could transfer a lot of ownership and ownership rights and influence from a tiny lead of owners today to normal people. And we can do that and we have done that. And that's the important thing. Through different reforms like worker co ops, consumer co ops, small producers co ops, different kind of what I call fund socialism. An example that you have in the US is the Alaska Permanent Fund. That is a kind of, it's a public, but it's kind of owned by every Alaskan citizen. And the revenue from gas and oil goes to this foundation and then the a gain is paid out every year to all citizens in Alaska. Another example of how to organize ownership in a way that contribute to the welfare of all citizens. So my idea is that we should not try to aim for a single model. That's kind of the way socialists during times have had this idea that you had to aim for one single model. Like the state should own everything, but instead building on the experiences that we already have. We it's not like socialism or democratic way of organizing a company or enterprise is not as a pie in the sky, it's a lived experience. Not only in Denmark, as you said, you also have lots of cooperative and worker owned companies in the us, in Canada and in all parts of the world. So instead of trying to dream of some an achievable utopia, the idea is to build on the building blocks that we already have and that we know are functioning in order to make an economy that works for all of us, that brings security and freedom for the majority of the population and counters the development of oligarchic power. Because that is kind of the departing point for me is what is a problem about capitalism and how do we solve this problem?
- [19:14]
Galen Druck
I want to ask you some maybe more challenging questions about your proposal here. But first, out of curiosity, what are some other aspects of the American economy that you would point to as already being socialist?
- [19:28]
Pele Dragstad
Well, of course you have state owned or regional owned companies like the Tennessee Valley Utility. You have of course, also a public sector, even though it's reduced compared to, for example, the Nordic countries that are organized in democratic ways. You have in different states, of course you have important experience as kind of free school meals in. I think it's Minnesota, I'm not quite sure. So Thomas Hanna wrote a great book on public ownership in the UK and United States, going through a lot of these examples. And the interesting thing is that there's this myth that public ownership is necessarily ineffective, but in fact, when you look the research, public ownership is actually quite effective.
- [20:22]
Galen Druck
Okay, so let's talk about some of the challenges here. Research suggests that people in smaller, more homogenous countries are likelier to support a robust welfare state, in part because of a sense of linked fate, or perhaps camaraderie, as you might put it in socialist terms. On top of that, the economy that you describe, that's filled with cooperatives and involvement from workers in the administration of companies requires actually a lot of work on the part of the public. Right. It's not a passive way of creating an economy. And so it's easier to create that sense of linked fate in a country of 6 million people that's very homogenous, like Denmark. How do you create that in a very large, very diverse society like the United States with 350 million people, in which frankly civic participation has declined dramatically in recent decades?
- [21:23]
Pele Dragstad
No, I think it's two different questions. The first of the idea of a welfare state. I know that's a broad claim that you can't have this kind of redistribution in less homogeneous states? I think that is a myth. If we look to the United States during the the New Deal, you moved close to something resembling a welfare state. And it was not because of your population. I think that went in another direction. It was a kind of a reaction from the economic elite that rolled back this experience. So I think it's totally achievable to redistribute wealth and to create welfare institution also in the US and actually when you look at the past, and I know you are into past, you can see that there's a broad support among American citizens for doing this kind of institution. So that's one. But regarding the issue of how to organize a democratic economy like cooperatives, and of course it is important to stress that being democratic doesn't mean that you as a worker, for example, in a worker on cooperatives engaged in all decision making, you still have a professional leadership board. But this board is answering not only to the interest of the capital owners, but is answering to the interest of workers and of the local communities. But of course it is a question because the easiest thing about capitalism is you leave all decision to other people, to this tiny elite. And that's of course it's more easy. But you also lose your influence on important questions of your life. For example example, if you work in a company, they can take the decision to outsource their production and you don't have a say. Or they can take the decision to pollute your local river where your kids go to swim and you don't have a say. So introducing democracy will give you a say in a lot of important issues in your daily life and in your close life. So we have to find the balance. I think the socialist Oscar Wilde, British socialist, said the problem about socialism is that we have too few evenings to have all the meetings that we will need to have. And of course, if we want everything to be kind of a roundtable discussion, that would be impossible. So we have to leave daily decision making to directors, for example, in a company. But those directors will be responsible to us, to the workers in the company, or to the local community or to the public. In a broader sense, if it's for example, the municipality or the state that owns owns the companies. But it is an intriguing question how to make people. Because if people don't want to be a part of the economy, to have influence, to be co owners of their companies, where they work or where they consume, well, then socialism is not viable. Then we should find another idea. That's the simple answer to your question. It demands organizing from, from the people.
- [24:49]
Galen Druck
And in order to participate in that way, it oftentimes requires quite ideological people, people who strongly believe in socialism, that is not the United States. You know, when you look at polling, for example, of the population, broadly, capitalism is strongly preferred compared with socialism. So in a recent Pew Research poll, 57% had a favorable view of capitalism versus 36% who had a favorable view of socialism. In that sense, would you say that because Americans don't want it, it's not viable? Because it sounds like you're saying it's something that people have to really want?
- [25:31]
Pele Dragstad
Yeah, fortunately those kind of numbers are not static. I think 36% favorable to socialism in the United States is kind of wonderful. I think if you ask the same question maybe 10 or 20 years ago, the numbers would have been much lower. So for me that's really hope giving, that's such a large number is positive towards socialism. But I saw another poll asking people if you could choose among working for a privately owned company or a publicly owned company or a worker owned company where you were part of the ownership and the big majority preferred to work in a worker co op. So I think of course when you use a concept of socialism that many people link maybe to the Soviet Union or other terrible totalitarian experiences, some people will be skeptical because of the concept. But I think the important thing is to ask more closely and that what I'm trying to do in my book is to take that down from this kind of difficult concepts and do it and take it down to earth saying do you want to have influence where I go to work? Would it be nice if you could choose your director instead of some distant shareholders electing the ones who decide what you have to do on your workplace? Would it be nice for you to could access housing, health care, education without being dependent on your employer? Because this is a real question that we need to pose. And I think if you pose this question to most American, at least working families in the U.S. i think they would be very favorable to socialist reforms.
- [27:17]
Galen Druck
And to your point about shifting views, in that same poll, 18 to 29 year olds actually favored socialism over capitalism, 44% to 40%. So not overwhelmingly but slightly. But I want to go back to a point that you made about the New Deal. The New Deal obviously was a response to a century defining crisis. And on top of that, democratic socialists here in America would argue that it was not supportive of the full diversity of America and was more geared towards people who already had privileges and power in the United States. But nonetheless, in Denmark, which is a highly homogenous, very small country, the Red Green alliance, your party has had a lot of difficulty even gaining purchase there. I mean you have nine seats out of a 179 member parliament. And in fact in the most recent election, you lost seats. So if this vision is having difficulty in that kind of environment, how does it have swaying power in an environment like the United States where people are a lot more individualistic?
- [28:31]
Pele Dragstad
Yeah. It's important to remember that we are only one of the left wing parties. Actually we are two parties or three parties to the left of the social democracy in Denmark. And historically with the Social Democrats, we often have a majority. My party, the support from my party is different in different parts of the country. In Copenhagen, our capital, we are the largest party, about 25% of the votes. But in more rural areas, we, as many other left wing and progressive forces, have challenges in having the same kind of support. We're working on that. But just to explain a little bit the demographics of electoral policies in Denmark. So I think in Denmark, at least those areas, a big support for the welfare state, so big that even the right wing parties, the most of them, don't want to challenge the kind of central ideas of the welfare state. No one is talking about that we should pay to get to the hospital or that we should take away the money we pay for students or anything like that. It's kind of hegemonic. And I think that is really important because it shows that even after several decades of neoliberal attack and kind of ideological hegemony, at least on an international scale, we have maintained the most important part of our welfare and redistributive system. Of course there have been setbacks, mostly for example, the idea of how you treat people without a job. There have been kind of these work fair reforms and therefore we have a growing poverty also in Denmark. It's a tiny percentage, but still it is for me totally unacceptable in a welfare state like Denmark that we have poverty among children. Only some decades ago we didn't have that. But I think this is important, that the kind of battle of idea will always keep on. It's not, I think, the idea that you could get to some point of society and then it will be stable. I don't think it is like that. There will always be a different idea challenging each other. And of course the problem is that we also in Denmark are experiencing the growing oligarchic power. We see tendencies not as in the U.S. but for example, the money going to the political parties from major cooperation from families of wealth. And that is really preoccupying. That is really a concern for me, because also not to be too critical towards the United States, but it's kind of a. I think it's an example of how far it can go when, when oligarchic power is allowed to. To grow.
- [31:28]
Galen Druck
The Danish experience is different because you reside in a different party from the Social Democrats, who would be considered more or less the center left and who have the plurality in Parliament. Of course, you're Prime Minister is Mette Friedrichsen. Am I saying her name right?
- [31:45]
Pele Dragstad
Yeah, more or less. Meta Fren.
- [31:48]
Galen Druck
Okay, well, not. Not exactly correct. But do you view your role in Parliament as more of an agitator who can sort of pull the parties that control a plurality or a majority to the left? Or do you actually think that the Red Green alliance will in your lifetime be the plurality or majority party in Denmark? And I asked this in part in comparison to the United States, where of course AOC is a member of the same party as. Pick your person. Bill Clinton. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Barack Obama, Joe Biden. And it's a very different environment where they need to sway an already existing party and push it to the left. And as you saw, Trump was successful in reimagining, recreating the Republican Party probably more easily than it would be for a more marginal party in Denmark to suddenly become the majority party.
- [32:47]
Pele Dragstad
Yeah, I think that of course, many differences between our political systems. In Denmark, we have parliamentarianism, that means that we have an election and then we have a parliament. And then the parliament, the majority points to a Prime minister and the prime minister forms the government. But in fact, my party had been a part of the governing major for several times. So for example, during the last election cycle, after the election, Social Democrats needed our mandates in order to enter the offices of the Prime Minister. So we negotiated an agreement, an agreement that for example, excluded any ideas of giving tax breaks to the rich. The Social Democrats have to promise that they wouldn't make any kind of reforms that attack the Social Security of working people. And we made several important reforms during that period of time. For example, making dental care free for young people. We made important agreement on housing, reducing the rent hikes that a lot of tenants was experiencing. So my party, of course we tried to bring ideas to Parliament. We tried to represent social movements like trade unions, climate movement and so on in Parliament to bring their ideas to the sessions. But we also a party of direct political influence, because the system in Denmark is like that. It's very seldom that we have majority governments. Mostly it's minority governments who are dependent on one or two parties outside government and need to negotiate, for example, in order to get a budget through. So that is our way of getting influence. And of course, when I go to this kind of negotiation for a budget. The ideas of bringing our economies in a more socialist direction is a kind of governing principle for my priorities in these negotiations. But I think the idea of my party becoming the majority party, of course, I think it's difficult to imagine because what happens is when we get stronger like we have done in the last year, right now, the three left wing parties to the left of the Social Democrats are polling around 25% and that's really historical in Denmark. And we are, the three parties together are now bigger in the polls than the Social Democrats themselves. And that's kind of changing a little bit the balance of power between Social Democrats and the left wing. But what happened is when the left gets strong, Social Democrats move to the left in order to take back voters. So in that way you should never say never. But I don't think that it will be in my lifetime that my party will be a majority party. And of course the presidential systems that you have in US or in France are totally different. As we saw in France in last elections, you could have a left wing candidate that in the end are the one challenging the far right and then you can get to power. And the same, I think in the U.S. had you asked some years ago, it would be impossible to imagine what happened with Trump and to the Republican Party. So what will happen to the Democratic Party in the next couple of years is I think, something that all of us are following really with interest. And of course, without taking too much to it. The election in primaries of Sorrow Mamdani was something really hope giving not only in the US but also for the international left. That a self declared democratic socialist could in this kind of, this strong opposition, not only from the Republican Party, but also from the old elites of Democratic party was able to get this victory was really. Yeah, we were really thrilled about that. Also on the Danish left you mentioned.
- [36:45]
Galen Druck
That as the left gains power, the center left moves to the left. Also as the right gains power, the center left moves to the right sometimes. And I want to touch some, maybe some hot stoves here and talk about some of the difficult points between the left wing and the center left. In Denmark, the socialist parties have long been skeptical of NATO and they've also framed class struggle as international. In a world where threats from Russia are more immediate and electorates across the world have turned against mass migration, what does socialism have to offer the public when it comes to national security and immigration?
- [37:30]
Pele Dragstad
If we start by national security, of course, when Russia crossed the borders to Ukraine, attacking and sovereign and independent nation with the clear goal of ending Ukraine as a free and sovereign nation. Well, the situation of security in Europe totally changed. I was one of those skeptical of that happening until the day before it happened. I said, no, they won't do it. But now we're in a different world actually. And in my party we have had hard discussion on this. We have been really skeptical of NATO mostly because of security during the last decades have meant, you know, going to war with NATO and with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya. And we have been really critical towards this kind of interventions. That hasn't made the world more secure, obviously, but countries have made them world felt less secure. But now we're talking about a totally different story. We're talking about defending sovereign nations in Europe against imperialist attacks from Russia. And at the same time we have a Trump in the White House saying, you can't count on me for any security guarantees. And in that situation we changed our policies and said, okay, we need to invest in our defense, we need to be able to defend ourselves and our allies in this situation. But at the same time we need to avoid to go into this kind of upgoing spiral of rearmament and try to find also peaceful diplomatic solutions to conflicts, but also always in respect of international law. So that has been difficult not only for us in Denmark, but for all European left parties. I think maybe we have after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the new world order, it was kind of of us that we saw as the main imperialist factor in the world attacking other countries. But suddenly the situation have changed and we had to change our policies also. And we have done that. It was difficult, but we needed to when the world changed. You must also change your analysis and your policies regarding immigration. That's a really difficult topic because, you know, in Denmark, Denmark we have a quite harsh politics of migration. And the Social Democrats who historically like us was kind of, I don't know if you call it pro migration, but at least we wanted Denmark to be responsible countries taking care of people who fled from war or fled from oppression. And they have kind of copied the policies of the far right. Actually not only policies, but in fact also the rhetoric. So the way they talk about, for example, Muslims citizens is like you would hear really right wing extremists in the US and other European countries. And we haven't as a left wing be able to stop it. We are not part of this rhetoric. We're not voting for these policies. But our challenge is that a majority of the population supports it. And why I think there are two answers to that. One has to do with, with the left not being able to address the real problems created by immigration. So, for example, a lot of the migrants who came to Denmark, they were given a place to stay in the most marginalized areas in the country. And of course, if you put a lot of people, a lot of them with trauma from war and oppression in the same areas, you will see social problems, you will see crime rates going up. And we have experienced that. So the left kind of didn't want to address these problems and thereby giving the right wing, they were the only ones to turn to if you felt this problem. So that one reason, I think the other one that is more intriguing is that I have a good friend, a Norwegian author called Maunus Maersdale. He wrote a book about where he made a really interesting investigation into the Persian the voters going from the left wing parties and the Social Democrats to the right extreme right wing party, the Framsgritzpatzil in Norway. And he not only did a lot of polling, he also went to live with these families, most in rural areas, who have made this shift. And his main conclusion was that the reason that this kind of cultural war, cultural themes kind of trumped other themes was because people, people couldn't see the difference between left wing and right wing governments when it came to economic, to kind of their everyday life. So if they chose a social Democrat government or a right wing government, they saw the welfare declining, they saw inequality growing, they saw that their children had lesser opportunities, less Social Security than themselves. And in the end, and it didn't make a difference if they voted for the right or the left. And then came this culture war, issues of gender, of crime, of migration, and kind of took the center stage. But his claim is that they could only take the center stage because that the kind of everyday class politics was kind of depoliticized by both kind of big blocks doing the same kind of policy. So he claimed us that but the crime, politics, immigration became the difference that makes a difference for the people. So my claim would be with Magnus Masdal, that if the left succeed in offering a true alternative on the things that really matters to people's daily life, that their children can get an education, that when they lose a job, then they have something to live from when they get old, they don't have to be afraid of not having, be able to paying the rents, et cetera. All these kinds of issues that our Nordic countries are based upon, if we can offer an attractive alternative on These ones, then the issues of, for example, migration wouldn't take the center stage like they have done during the last decades in most Nordic countries.
- [44:12]
Galen Druck
I'm skeptical that your prime minister would agree with you in many ways because she has moved the Social Democrats both to the left on economic policy and to the right on immigration, but that probably she would not agree that she could just move to the left on the economy and not to the right on immigration and still maintain power and actually expand their power. In the most recent election. And I think a lot of observers have looked at Denmark's experience and seen Social Democrats increasing their power in a world where right wing parties are increasing their power across Europe and point to their moves on immigration as sort of the reason for the left wing party being able to maintain power. Do you think that's true at all?
- [45:06]
Pele Dragstad
No, I think it's far more complicated because if you look to Sweden, for example, where the Social Democrats have not made that move, the Social Democratic Party are polling at around 30, 33% of the votes, while the Danish Social Democrats are polling around 2022. The Norwegian social democracy is also polling in, I think 28, 29, maybe 30. So of course you have a Danish experience for doing this kind of move, accommodating to right wing policies of migration and then moving a little bit left, at least rhetorically in the economic issues. But you also have other. But I admit that this is a difficult question, and it's a question where my party is not in tune with the majority of the population, unfortunately. And I don't have an easy answer to that. I don't have an easy recipe how to change it. It's a long march to try to convince people that the one threatening their Social Security, their daily life is not their colleague from Lebanon or ir. It is Blackstone who are driving up the rent. It is the speculative sectors in the food industries that are driving up prices in the grocery stores, et cetera. So politics is like that. You have to sometimes stick to your central values and then just keep fighting. And that's our answer to that. It.
- [46:46]
Galen Druck
So that's immigration. It sounds like that's not a totally resolved issue for the, for this left parties in Denmark. Let's. Let's touch another hot stove. So Denmark funds its welfare state in large part by taxing private companies and individuals. And so I'm curious how in this socialist future, Denmark manages to sustain funding at the same level that it currently has. And I mentioned Novo Nordisk in the intro. You probably spend a lot of your days thinking about Novo Nordisk and its influence on the Danish economy and Danish society because it is now the most valued company in all of Europe and its valuation is larger than the entirety of the Danish economy. And and that in large part comes from sales in the United States. Right? So the company's revenue last year was 42 billion. Over 70% of that came from American sales. As one example, the company charges $1,000 a month for Ozempic in the US it only charges $125 a month in Denmark. So you have a situation where American poor health and laissez faire approach to capping drug prices in many ways subsidizes the Danish welfare state. In a world, in a socialist world, how do you replace that kind of profit and therefore tax base to fund your welfare state?
- [48:18]
Pele Dragstad
I think Novo Nordig is kind of a special case, and I'm not really.
- [48:22]
Galen Druck
Proud of the all right, and that is the end of today's preview. To hear the full episode, Become a Subscriber at GD Politics we continued the conversation for about another half hour or so. Pele and I talked about, well, prescription drugs, doramdani housing, and more. I don't know if it's perhaps ironic to paywall a conversation about socialism, but I don't know. Here in the US as my own boss, I do still have to pay for my own healthcare at the end of the day. Like I said, head over to GDPolitics.com to become a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes, can join in the paid subscriber chat, and most importantly, keep this podcast going. When you become a subscriber, you can connect your account to wherever you listen to podcasts so you'll never miss an episode. I'll put a link in the show notes explaining how. Again, head over to GDPolitics.com and see you soon.