Kelly McKowen is a cultural and economic anthropologist currently teaching in the Department of Anthropology at the College of William & Mary.
Under capitalism, being unemployed is usually a hardship, and often a financial and personal disaster. Yet the experience of unemployment in countries with generous welfare states is radically different from what Americans are used to.
The countries with the world’s best welfare states deliver universal benefits that emancipate people from the whims of the labor market. And those welfare states were won through class struggle.
This week’s election in Norway was a major win for the Left — delivering a mandate to both expand the welfare state and take aggressive climate action.
Norway’s Labor Party took a hit in this week’s elections. But the radical left surged — showing that socialist politics are still alive in the Nordic country.