> Sweden is indeed a capitalist state where the rights
> of private proverty are upheld -- though to a far
> lesser degree than in the US , since the existence of
> rights is a matter of degree. It is also a welfare
> state where the workers have won extraordinarily
> extensive concessions from capital such that the main
> advantages to them of a shift to socialism, understood
> as full public and democratic control of production
> and investment, would be mainly theoretical.
>
> A Swedish Communist once told me that it was as hard
> to be a Communist in his country as in the US, but for
> the rather different reason that it was hard to
> explain what concrete benefits Communism would offer
> that Swedes do not already have.
How long ago was this? I may be wrong, but there seems to be little awareness in this disussion of the political changes Sweden has gone through over the past 20 years. Reading this, you'd think nothing has happened since the 1960s.
Johan (from Sweden)