IAN LAVERY MP says an immediate focus on raising wages and reducing costs must be part of a strategy to show Labour can deliver for workers again
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Scandinavia and imperialism: why are Sweden and Finland now joining Nato?
by Prabhat Patnaik
INTO THE FOLD: Finland’s Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, left, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Ann Linde, right, and Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg attend a media conference after the signature of the Nato accession protocols for Finland and Sweden
Friedrich Merz’s call for a new Plaza Accord ignores how Washington’s 1985 currency ambush destroyed Japan without fixing US deficits — China, a sovereign socialist state with 1.4 billion consumers, cannot be bullied the same way, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
World Peace Council president PALLAB SENGUPTA assesses the challenges facing the international peace movement and sends greetings to the Liberation AGM
KIERA MARSHALL says there is a gulf between the privileged circles in which most politicians move and the lives of working-class youth in left-behind estates – and as a newly elected Senedd member she’s determined to do something about it
ANGUS REID and ANDREW JOHNSTONE report on an initiative that we must take this summer
At last weekend’s International Conference Against War, LINDA PENTZ GUNTER talks to the Palestinian physician and politician about the struggles ahead to achieve a truly free Palestine
SO SCANDINAVIAN countries Sweden and Finland are joining Nato. There are many misconceptions about Scandinavian capitalism.
A common one is the belief that since the Scandinavian countries developed vigorous capitalist economies, without ever having acquired any colonies of their own, they refute the claim that capitalist development necessarily requires imperialism. This is based on a misconception, not just about Scandinavia but above all about imperialism itself.
Indeed, one may say many positive things about the concessions wrung out of capitalism by Scandinavian social democracy (although many of these are under threat in the current epoch of neoliberalism), but it represents a complete misreading of capitalism to say that Scandinavia constitutes an example of non-imperialist capitalism. The Scandinavian countries themselves may not have had colonies, but they have ridden piggy-back on the imperialism of other powers.
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