Denmark: ‘Many voters want a more left-leaning government’

First published in German in nd.aktuell. Translation from Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.

Albert Scharenberg: Denmark elected a new parliament in March, but it took until June for a new government to be formed. Why was that?

Pelle DragstedL It was the longest time to form a government in Danish history. The simple answer is that it was a complicated election result: Neither the left nor the right won a majority, so a centrist party, the Moderaterne (Moderates) became the kingmakers. They initially refused to join a government cooperating with our party, the Enhedslisten (Unity List), but after some back-and-forth, prime minister Mette Frederiksen and the Moderates agreed to form a minority government with the Socialistik Folkeparti (Socialist People’s Party) and the left-liberal Radikale Venstre. And since this “four-leaf clover” coalition falls short of the 90 seats required to reach a majority, Enhedslisten negotiated an agreement to support the government in exchange for some major concessions.

We’ll come back to that in a minute. But let’s first talk about Mette Frederiksen and the Social Democratic Party. In the past, many pundits saw Frederiksen’s restrictive migration policy as the main reason for her success, and for the decline of the far right. Have the latest results shattered this argument?

Yes, many people defended this strategy because the electoral support for our extreme right party, the Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party) declined from 21 percent in 2015 to 2.6 percent in 2022. But in this election, the party’s vote share jumped to 9.1 percent, while the Social Democrats lost 5.7 percent. This proves our argument right: In the long run, you cannot compete with extremists about who’s more extreme.

Three parties to the left of the Social Democrats are represented in the Folketing: Socialist People’s Party (11.6 percent), Enhedslisten (6.3 percent), and Alternativet (2.6 percent). How are they different from each other?

The Socialist People’s Party split from the Communist Party after the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and later turned to Eurocommunism. In the last decades, it has aligned itself with the Greens internationally. Enhedslisten was formed in 1989 as a merger of a number of small left parties and has become the standard bearer of the Danish radical left. The Alternative is a fairly new party. Its support mainly comes from the creative class, and they do not define themselves as socialists; left wing, but not socialist.

Who is the electoral base of the Socialist People’s Party and Enhedslisten?

The Socialist People’s Party has a strong base among public employees. Enhedslisten enjoys more support among marginalised groups, such as unskilled workers, the unemployed, and students. Our support is geographically highly uneven. While we became the leading party in the Copenhagen region, we’re still weak in areas like rural Jutland.

The three left parties combined won about 20 percent of the vote, the Danish left’s best electoral result ever. That is a clear sign that many voters want a more left-leaning government.

The Socialist People’s Party is part of the minority government, while Enhedslisten is not part of the governing coalition. Why did you enter into a toleration agreement with the coalition, and what concessions were you able to win?

In Denmark we have a long tradition of minority governments. When the Social Democrats wanted to form a government in 2019, we told them that they would need to negotiate an agreement with us. We signed a Memorandum of Understanding that contained a lot of important concessions, such as the first climate law and major improvements in daycare.

This time was similar. We won the biggest concessions in our party’s history. We have always defended the welfare state but now we’re actually taking a big step forward — we’re expanding the welfare state by making dental care free!

We won other concessions too: Public transport will be free for young people under 22, the first time the young experience the government doing something for them! Our demand to reduce the VAT by half and abolish it for produce will become reality, and we also won concessions on social housing, climate policy, and measures to strengthen unions.

In addition, we drew five red lines — and the government agreed to not cross them. They can’t pass policies that increase inequality, attack workers’ rights or social security. They have to follow through on the Paris Agreement and other international conventions. And they can’t cut back the public sector.

Let’s turn to foreign policy. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump’s threats against Greenland, old certainties have vanished. First on Ukraine: How’s your position on the war and on arms shipments to Ukraine?

We have supported the delivery of arms to Ukraine from day one of the invasion. There was some debate in our party about this, but a large majority supported this move. Some of the pacifists opposing it forgot that we have another tradition within the international left — we used to support the Viet Cong, and we’ve supported the armed struggle of the Kurdish people in Rojava. We’ve always defended national sovereignty against imperial domination, and when I look at Ukraine, that’s what this is about.

Of course, we should discuss what was going on in the decades preceding the invasion. Should NATO and the West have behaved differently towards Russia, towards minorities in Ukraine and so forth? Yes. But the day Russian tanks crossed the border, this was history. It is obvious that the Russian attack is about crushing Ukraine’s national sovereignty – many Russians articulated that position, including Wladimir Putin himself, who argued that Ukrainians were not a people but just Russians.

The issue of NATO was more difficult for us. The Danish radical left had always been against NATO membership. Our alternative was a Nordic defence alliance. But when the Russian war of aggression started, Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership. Essentially history overtook our position. We needed a new one, and after intense discussions, we concluded that while we are still no ardent supporters of NATO, we’re accepting it for the time being.

What’s your position on the EU?

Our position on the EU is somewhat similar to our position on NATO: We used to be quite critical and wanted to leave, but with Trump’s threats against Greenland, it was obvious that if Denmark had stood alone in that moment, Greenland would be under US control today. It was the support of European countries that made the difference. That’s why we’re now advocating for a reformed EU centering workers right.

In closing, I want to ask you about your book “Nordic Socialism”. You are among the rare breed of politician who have actually provided a strategy for overcoming capitalism — not just in the abstract, but as a strategy that starts in the here and now. What was your motivation for this book?

I wrote this book because there has been a disconnect between our daily practices in parliament and unions, and our socialist vision. What I try to do in the book is to bridge this divide, to understand our daily struggles and policies as part of a larger strategy for socialist change.

Historically, the left conceived capitalism as a totality — we live in a capitalist society, a capitalist economy, etc., and there’s nothing outside of it. But when I look at real economies, this seems wrong; in reality, they are all mixed economies.

What does the term “Nordic Socialism” mean in this context?

I use the term Nordic Socialism because I think that the Nordic countries are examples of mixed economies with strong socialist elements. For example, in Denmark one of the biggest grocery chains is owned by its two million members. Almost all our utilities — water, electricity, heating, etc. — are either owned by co-ops or publicly. One in five housing units is owned by a system of housing co-ops, and the public sector employs about a third of the workforce.

Calling these sectors “capitalist” is missing the point. Of course, a cooperative in a capitalist economy is not a paradise, but it’s significantly different because it’s not organised to further enrich the wealthy. It’s actually doing the opposite — it is redistributing wealth, for instance through lower prices in consumer co-ops. So it is wrong to claim that it is all just “capitalist.”

Instead, we need to deconstruct capitalism. What is the base of capitalist power? As a Marxist, I would say it is the ownership of the means of production. And when we democratise ownership, we reduce capitalist power.

The balance between democratic and capitalist ownership is not static, and it can go both ways, as we’ve seen with the rise of neoliberalism since the 1980s. That’s why I try to give concrete answers on how to build a more socialist economy. But the end goal remains the same: an economy dominated by socialist relations.

Does your party share this strategy?

It does. Our goal is not just a little bit more money for this, and a little bit more money for that — that’s the traditional social democratic approach. We believe there are things that need structural change, so we need to alter power relations. We need to de-commodify. And that’s exactly what we were able to do with dental care: We converted it into a social right. So making dental care cost-free is not just a good thing, it’s a socialist reform.

We now need to think about what our next socialist demands will be. Should it be a public banking system, a fund for more worker ownership, or de-commodified internet access? We have just started, but we are moving forward towards a democratic Nordic Socialism.