Dominic Mealy is a PhD candidate in economic history at Lund University and member of the Vänsterpartiet, currently based between Berlin and Malmö.
Sweden’s Social Democrat-led government is in crisis after its defeat in Monday’s no-confidence vote. It lost its left-wing support after it moved to abandon rent controls — showing how the neoliberalized wing of social democracy is undermining its own past achievements.
Despite the obvious parallels with coronavirus shutdowns, states still show little determination to put in place the measures we’ll need to deal with the climate emergency. For Andreas Malm, we need to stop seeing climate change as a problem for the future — and use state power now to impose a drastic reordering of our economies.
Liberals like to paint mass performance as totalitarian and repressive. But the festivals of revolutionary France gave the people a sense of its own power.