The State, Civil Society and Sovereignty:
Sweden
The idea with Swedish folkhemmet (almost untranslatable but it
literally means “people’s home”), was good. From the 1930s onwards the
democratically elected social democrats took responsibility for all citizens
working towards equality and the right for all to a decent living standard,
education, and work through reforms. Thus the Swedish folkhemmet was created, a home for all people of the country.
This is an achievement
that has become known world-wide, for very good reasons. The problem today is
not that equality, qualified as above, would not be desirable today. What has happened
in Sweden is something else, and it is a matter of surprise that this has been
so little discussed lately for example before the recent election. The idea
with folkhemmet must have been to
create a space for people so that they could develop their own kind of life,
own interests, own ideals. One excellent example may be the need for freedom of
religion. Thus it must now be an open question whether you belong to the
traditional church, or opted for another church, like the Pentecostal church or
remained un-churched. However, the traditional church, the Church of Sweden,
for many years remained a state church (a complete contradiction of terms) till
the end of last millennium.
However, in a subtle
way, and here the clinging to the state church system may have played a negative
role, folkhemmet gradually developed
into something more than providing a framework for a life in freedom. We wanted
to control people’s use of alcohol; thus we have for all these years had a
state monopoly called Systembolaget.
The state is now regulating parents’ right to maternal or paternal leave, and
the discussion is about legislating around this leave; the idea is to ensure
that the father will take out as much leave as the mother.
It is then a matter of
no surprise when the main evening TV news programme Aktuellt takes up a request
from a lonely woman whose sambo
(co-habitant) had died suddenly. The woman: “I grieved for weeks and did not go
out, I stayed in bed. I find it completely unacceptable that there is no one to
ask for help. There must be a way for the government to step in.”
Wicked tongues have
called this development into a state that takes care of everything for it
becoming a “sheltered or protected workshop” (skyddad verkstad).
To be honest, behind
this kind of society is a struggle between a socialist and a liberal
standpoint, a struggle between the wish to regulate as much as possible for the
sake of equality (above all in material terms) and the wish to safeguard
liberty based on a deeper conviction of the human being created as a free
agent, but with obligations towards others.
What should be agreed
upon, before the whole thing is muddled up, is the basic and utterly necessary
need for a society built on justice, which automatically means an independent
judiciary. But it is not just about justice of a very crude kind (stealing is
an offence that must be penalized). Justice is also intricately involved in
issues regarding gender. This example shows how difficult this is, for gender
issues are on the one hand outright political, but at the same time utterly
personal.
In that sense it is
far easier to deal with domestic violence as there is widest possible consensus
that this is something that must be curbed and that it is an offence. Much
harder it is to say how this should be curbed. Most of us would still wish our
bedrooms to be kept as part of our private sphere.
So where to draw the
line? For a line must be drawn; if not, we are steadily moving towards not only
increasing state control but also towards a repressive state.
When it comes to
identifying the framework that should be there in any democratic state worth
its name we could be aided by the Dutch Abraham Kuyper, so heavily
misinterpreted and abused by apartheid ideologues in the mid-twentieth century.
Human activities should take place in societal spheres that are quite
independent, sovereign, and here again the church comes in as an ideal such
sphere. With Christian rhetoric one could say that we do pay taxes to Caesar
but we will at all costs avoid “Caesarism”. But here is a tension. But as said,
the state has its sovereignty especially in terms of justice and even has to
see to the individual if she or he is subject to tyranny. So Kuyper says:
“Furthermore, since personal life can be suppressed by the group in which one
lives, the state must protect the individual from the tyranny of his own
circle. This Sovereignty, as Scripture puts it, ‘gives stability to the land by
justice’ (Proverbs 29.4), for without
justice it destroys itself and falls. Thus the sovereignty of the State, as the
power that protects the individual and defines the mutual relationships among
the visible spheres, rises high above
them by its right to command and to compel. But within these spheres that does not obtain. There another authority
rules, an authority that descends directly from God apart from the State. This
authority the State does not confer
but acknowledges.”[1]
In Sweden, I am
worried that these issues now are put under the carpet. The only decent way is
to open a real debate regarding our various socialist and liberal leanings and
try to find a reasonable modus vivendi
that puts justice in the centre when it comes to the state but still safeguards
that desperately needed liberty to take life in one’s own hands and take
responsibility for that. That debate we need now and does not follow simply
drawn party political lines.
[1] Abraham Kuyper. A Centennial Reader,
James D. Bratt, ed. Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1998, page 468.
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