Word: socialist
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Many people are surprised to hear that Sweden is not a socialist country. Perhaps the confusion is primarily semantic. If people mean that socialism is perhaps a social democratic government and national health insurance, then Sweden is indeed "socialist." The Social Democratic Party has been in power for over 40 years now and has succeeded in establishing an elaborate network of social welfare programs designed to protect the individual from having to bear the full brunt of Acts of God or the Capitalist System. If you catch pneumonia or if you get liver cancer from vinyl chloride gas at work...
...reformist nature of Sweden's socialist labor movement was established early in this century. In 1906, in negotiations with the Employers' Confederation (SAF), the National Confederation of Trade Unions (L.O.) gave up all claims of "managerial prerogatives" such as hiring, firing, and the organization of production in exchange for recognition. Ever since the now infamous "Paragraph 32" of SAF's rules has required that all contracts contain a statement of these prerogatives. However, recognition was much more important than hypothetical bargaining rights when it came to organizing. Furthermore, L.O. has traditionally been wary of entanglement in issues of management...
...increased real wages with equal pay for equal work. By the mid-sixties, it was clear that these goals would no longer serve to unite the movement. This was in part because many of the goals were largely achieved and no longer political issues (none of the non-socialist parties advocates dismantling the welfare state) and partly because the attainment of the other goals created new problems that threatened the movement's cohesion...
...want the land for itself, but does not want Morocco's right-wing monarchy to have it either. Instead, Algiers favors self-determination, assuming that the Sahara's 70,000 or 80,000 nomads would opt for Algerian-style Islamic socialism. Hassan also assumes they would go socialist and fears that his own shaky regime could not survive if it were surrounded by hostile states...
...establishing the just society, Marxists have things backwards. Any radical feminist worth her salt will explain that a truly egalitarian, non-oppressive social order is possible only after male hegemony is overturned--a development that has yet to occur in any country which has been blessed with a socialist revolution...