The legacy of ’68

There's no doubt that the old youth rebels have managed to leave their mark on the last half-century in every way. New flat management structures and demilitarization sound beautiful to most ears—but in fact, it's a question of whether the youth rebels' project today has ended up in a completely different place.

The individualism that manifested in the student revolt's confrontation with professorial power and established authorities mutated through the '80s and '90s into a neoliberal belief in the free market. Suddenly, it was widely accepted that every person's actions to optimize their own situation would ultimately result in an efficient distribution of society's values and resources as such.

The abstract liberation project was transformed into concrete deregulation, and belief in the individual became pure market liberalism. The fight for everyone's right to pursue their crazy ideas and live out their crazy dreams ended up as a true manifestation of a particular middle-class lifestyle with a villa, Volvo, and dog, which today embraces large groups of wage earners, from industrial employees to public officials.

Things are going well in Denmark—at least for those who are fortunate enough not to be dependent on public benefits or employed in the care or service sector. (Our neoliberal market economy oddly does not reward the people whose warm hands we are all deeply dependent on).

Politically, no one really wants to touch the deductions and exceptions that favor homeowners and summer house owners, or for that matter, take a fundamental stand against detailed legislation and administratively heavy special rules.

It's fine to fight over some symbolic billions in the annual budget negotiations. Classical redistribution politics, which in reality always to some extent is state intervention in individual freedom, is instead considered highly problematic.

Funny—or rather tragic—enough, the true legacy of '68 is thus a deep, deep conservatism, which, disguised as responsible citizenship, tries at all costs to hold on to the world of yesterday.

The Zero-Sum Game

Now that the youth rebels have largely retreated, it is with a generous pension, financed by increases in value of real estate and financial assets, for the most part not (solely, at least) by real, creative work effort.

Various quantitative easings have created inflation in the price of financial assets in the 21st century—exactly as cheap housing loans have created inflation in the property market. The value creation is thus mostly pro forma. The growth in the speculative economy is offset by the indebtedness of both households and businesses, which is why it is actually a zero-sum game, where welfare is diluted rather than strengthened.

At the same time, the distance is increasing between the settled who already have, and whose portfolios of properties and securities are increasing in value, and those—primarily young families—who do not have, but are dependent on labor wages, whose relative value has stagnated for several years (decades). A societal development that, just like the excessive burning of fossil fuels, prioritizes its own immediate needs and sends the bill on to future generations.

Is There a Viable Alternative?

The million-dollar question is, of course, whether there actually is a better way? The so-called alternative of the left wing is in many ways inciting, but most of the proposals for concrete and thorough redistribution will also require enormous administrative resources. If politicians are to overrule the market forces' distribution of values in society, we must necessarily closely monitor both citizens and businesses with a vastly expanded state bureaucracy.

Again, it is thought-provoking that individualism also seems to have permeated the red bloc. Throughout the last concluded election campaign, we have heard Mette Frederiksen speak warmly about individualized pension assessments countless times, and various other redistributive initiatives, whose implementation will almost comically require excessive administrative processing of each individual case.

Instead of using resources on human care and warm hands, we continue to throw money at case processing and desk work.

At the same time, many progressives on the left wing pin their hopes on the introduction of a universal, work-free basic income that will ensure each citizen a steady, continuous stream of purchasing power. But even citizen's salary is ultimately a manifestation of the competitive state's individualizing agenda, where one sees the individual as an actor in a market that needs to be optimized, rather than as part of a social organism, where each of us is dependent on others, and there is actually a need for each of us as something more than just consumers.

If we are to create a viable alternative to the competitive state, where it is again from each according to ability—to each according to need, in my eyes we need to start somewhere completely different: with a fundamental rethinking of the way we create our money, and approach public finances as such.

Keynes' Return

In this context, it is worth bringing John Maynard Keynes out of the drawer. Although expansionary fiscal policy has been a dirty word in Danish mainstream politics for many years now, there is no way around it if we (still, seriously) want to revitalize our society in a green and more sustainable direction.

The money we necessarily need to have in circulation to maintain a modern civil society is, at its core, representative credit. In other words, someone must have something to their credit before the concept of money even makes sense.

Back in the post-war years when the welfare state flourished, the vast majority of the money we had in circulation here at home was created by the state. In step with digitalization, and not least the deregulation of the financial sector, most of our money today is nothing but write-ups of banks' balance sheets: private debt, created out of thin air.

Instead of being a credit that we all make available to each other when the state commits to educating, caring, nursing, and delivering the necessary care and infrastructure, the majority of what we today call money is thus interest-bearing household and business debt.

In other words, the credit has been individualized, and even become a lucrative business (for third parties) in itself.

Today, it seems that vey few people are really advocating for a fundamental reform of money creation, which at the same time opens up completely new possibilities for, for example, a Danish New Green Deal, or other MMT-inspired, expansive, public welfare reforms.

If we are to once and for all break with the legacy of '68; the individualization, and the favoring of those who already have, state money creation is, however, the only viable way forward.

Let that be my pious wish for the left wing, and all you other declared climate fools: a return to Keynes, and Denmark as a pioneering country, where money is something we give each other—not something we borrow at great expense from private banks!