Midwinter

While still less snow than in the 1993 post-apocalyptic computer game “Midwinter” when all of the planet gets covered in ice, the last days have truly put my snow shovelling skills to the test. With my childhood friend Gabriel visiting from Warsaw, the timing could not have been better. 

Last night, we went for a drink a Rex, trying to make sense of the political dynamics of Poland and the rest of the continent. It is so sad to see that Poland lacks a social democratic party capable of offering an alternative to reactionary nostalgia or trickle-down economics. But the same is probably true for Sweden, that our social democratic party would never be able to build the welfare state from scratch today, and that it only survives thanks to its historical legacy. What is missing is both a theoretical analysis of contemporary capitalism and a practical ambition to build a more just society.

Even when the political argument should be obvious, as when the Swedish financial minister Magdalena Andersson suggests increasing spending on preschools with a massive 20 billion SEK, there is basically no justification as to WHY this is important or any meaningful vision of where a politics of radical engagement may lead.