How Scandinavian Design and Social Democracy are Linked

I found myself thinking about Scandinavia again on my walk today. Specifically, I thought about the architecture, and the design more generally, and the way we've fetishized it here in the US for several decades. And then I wondered whether that interest in Scandinavian design and architecture is connected to the progressive love for Scandinavian social democratic politics.

A google search for the furniture chain here in the Bay Area also turns up a showroom in New York that closed in 2014, but effectively they date back to the 1950s and 1960s, when Americans were apparently crazy for stuff from Europe, as it smacked of sophistication (per Bill Bryson and his book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid). My memory of the retail chain here in the Bay Area is of my parents shopping for furniture there (and it being super expensive).

Somewhere along the line clean, functional lines and blond wood became catnip for people who vote progressive. My theory is that this love for Scandinavian design is what came first, but that as the right wing here in the US became more nativist and xenophobic the left held up its love of Scandinavia as the perfect photo-negative to stand in opposition.

This isn't at all scientific, of course, or a ground-breaking idea. But I think the fact that the love for Scandinavian design came first might be. And moreover, the eye-rolling that it prompts among people on the right or even among the more bien-pensant types is clearly a reaction to generations of lefties telling us how everything would be great if we were just more like Sweden, Norway and Denmark. And let's throw in Finland, even though as a Finno-Ugric speaking country we have to expand our designation to "Nordic" to include it.

I have my own love-hate relationship with this type of thinking. On the one hand I can't get enough of books where some foreigner moves to the Nordics and gets all dewy-eyed at the social democracy and supposed happiness. On the other, I get a little frustrated how I and my fellow lefties just invoke Danish or Finnish family leave policies without understanding how they work or what kind of infrastructure is involved with delivering them. Both are likely the reasons why I devour the type of book referenced above: I want to live in that kind of (seemingly) effortless simplicity and I want to understand how they've actually implemented it.

It also doesn't help when the books explaining that implementation are so self-satisfied. A book that's affected my thinking quite heavily in the last year or so is The Nordic Theory of Everything, by Finnish journalist Anu Partanen, in which she explains her culture shock at moving to the US to be with her new husband, and how backward we are in things like delivering healthcare and providing education.

I'm on-board with arguments like that, but given how frustrated I was with her didactic tone, I find myself having to dole out arguments based on her book very carefully, lest I turn off the people I'm trying to persuade.

But what does this have to do with my original thesis, about Scandinavian design? The point that probably a lot of my fellow lefties miss (or forget) is that the best examples of this design are intended to be democratic and available to everyone. A womb chair from Saarinen designs may run you to over a thousand dollars online, but the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto designed housing for veterans returning from the Winter War in the 1940s and for workers at various companies and factories throughout Finland.

This is perhaps a roundabout way of saying that if we want to valorize these ideas from Scandinavia, we need to emphasize how they benefit everyone, without taking for granted that normal voters will just automatically see the benefits of single-payer healthcare or generous family leave. Americans have been abused (for instance) by the corporate and Byzantine healthcare system for so long that they're mistrustful of any change that potentially makes it more difficult for them to get healthcare.

Add to that the constant drumbeat of "socialism = evil" and "Europe = socialist", and it's easy to see why even supposed progressives like Pete Buttigieg evince a sort of Stockholm syndrome for our existing system (btw, do you see what I did there?).

If we agree with Le Corbusier's argument that a house is a machine for living, then you could say that Scandinavian architecture and design are machines that just work, no fuss and no muss. If we want to take it a step further and import their healthcare systems and general organization of society, we need to emphasize that simplicity first and foremost. Then maybe we'll have a chance to sell more Americans on the concept.