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”Remember those people dying at home by sending them some money.” This is joke by Finnish language, one comedian had added two extra letters and changed the meaning of this advice. The original idea was, that you should send money to your family. The Photo is from 1957 during the great unemployment time when the unemployed were moved to work far from their homes.

Baltic Circle 13.11.2015 Päivi Uljas

A Breakthrough of Welfare State

● In comparison with the Nordic countries Finland was the most economically under-developed country after the Second World War. The share of agriculture in the working population in the 1950s was the same as what it had been in Denmark, Sweden and Norway in the early 1900s.

● In a broader European perspective Finland was even more late, urbanization happened very quickly during about twenty years.

● Finland can thus offer good conditions to research the birth of a welfare state.

● On the basis of the Finnish case something relevant can be perhaps found about the relations between the structure, politics and grassroots people.

Items

The unusually rapid and powerful structural change; the non-parliamentary civic movements of 1956–1963; and the left majority in the Finnish parliament between 1958–1962 all took place as the Finnish welfare state started to develop.

I shall try to analyse the inter-relationships of these processes and describe the way the former semi self-sufficient, semi-proletarian and labour-intensive form of production – a simple and discriminatory system in itself – made it possible for the majority of the population to survive through hard work. For some it even provided a possibility to prosper.

The weakening vitality of semi self-sufficiency and small-scale agriculture triggered a political ferment and started a period of searching for something new.

3 %15 %

18 %

34 %

30 %Kaikki ostettiin

Mökkiläisyys ilman eläimiä

Mökkiläisyys eläimillä

Omavarainen

Puoliproletaarisen elämänmuodon kartta

The model of semiproletarian Finnish life, survey on the basis of the memories of about 900 retired building- and foodworkers. (made 2008)

In their childhood3 % lived near to present urban life

15 % bought their milk, potatoes, meat, fueling wood, practically everything

18 % had own their potatoes and vegetables, partly fueling wood, fish, berries and so on

34 %, in addition, had animals, a cow, a pig...

30 % bought only sugar, coffee, petrol and sometimes wheat.

More about the survey

Did you have a feeling that your duty was to economically help your parents and siblings after you moved away from home

Yes 182 22,0 %

When needed 345 41,6 %

No 302 36,4 %

There was a very strong correlation, near 70 %, between trade union activism and the sense of duty to help families.

Two great land reforms were formed in Finland, one in 1918 and the other in 1945-1962. The own small-scale farm was considered the most important basis for social security. This semiproletarian model formed mainly of the family taking care of each other and growing their own potatoes and picking wood from waste lands, milkig ones own cow and havig a pig. Children worked with adults and the exchange of products and services gave possibities for living conditions. In difficult winters poor people ate only milk and potatoes.

The old semiproletarian model degenerates

Profitability of small-scale farms remained weak and they were not able to get modern agricultural technology.

When the post-war reconstruction was over, new settlement - villages, roads, schools, post offices, stables and houses were built, carpenters and masons no longer had enough work, especially in the eastern and northern regions. The forest industry no longer needed the work of farmers in the same extend as the earlier. Unemployment increased.

Food self-sufficiency had been achieved, and livestock-production already reached surplus levels.

The hegemony of small-scale farming began to be questioned, as well by researchers and politicians. This led to conflicts within political parties and between parties.

The Agriculture Committee's report of 1962 stated that during the period between 19451961, 313000 hectares of new arable land had been cleared from forests and swamps. The Committee bluntly summed up that by 1970 the 350 000 hectares of arable land would be an excess to the consumption needs of the country. ”Throughout the postwar period the transforming and working of forests and swamps into arable land was proving to be futile.”

And people had to move in search of livelihood to cities

Finnish austerity

A majority of nearly all parties accepted the idea on returning to the so called night-watchman economic policies, in the years 1952-1959.

● In my research I found, in Helsingin Sanomat alone, that in the year 1956 more than a 100, and in 1957 more than one hundred and fifty articles, calling for a return to the pre-war economic policy and social spending and fiscal contracts.

● The public sector was considered as socialism, and demands were made to decrease it

Starting moments, ”mad years”Coincidence?

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ALKUTUO TANNO N TYÖ LLISYYSO SUUS TYÖ LLISYYS PRO S

JALO STUKSEN TYÖ LLISYYSO SUUS TYÖ LLISYYS PRO S

PALVELUJEN TYÖ LLISYYSO SUUS TYÖ LLISYYS PRO S

Percentage in Finnish industrial structure

Services

Processing

Primary production

Mothers´movement 1957

Government tried to move paying child benefits. Those fees were exceptionally important to farming mothers and other poor families. Mothers became angry and sent hundreds of letters to Parliament and demonstrated all over Finland.

Between 1950-1960 over 500 000 people in Finland left agriculture and forestry, as well as the farm economy. Specially people from small-scale farms less than five hectares decreased by more than 40 %. People from farms of less than two hectares decreaced more than 60 per cent. They were mainly the rural young generation.

Great demonstrations against austerity between 1957-1963 were organized by the grassroot trade-union organizations of buildingworkers, metalworkers and foodworkers, and others

Within the survey of those pensioned before, only 7-8 % were born in Helsinki. They were the victims of the destruction of old rural worlds.

Was the the work, you did during your childhood, economically important for your family?

Yes, asnwered 85 % of those pensioned building- and foodworkers

They were the victims of the destruction of theold rural world .

● General strike in 1956

● Mothers movements in 1957

● Great demonstrations in 1957-1963

● Left parties majority in Parliament during 1958-1962 and 1966-1970

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25

30

35

40

45

50




● New unemployment fee system in 1960

● A third week for vacation in 1960

● New pension system in 1962

● New health care system and fees in 1963

● Gradually towards 40 hours working week in 1964

● And much more

20

25

30

35

40

45

50




1956 Urho Kekkonen was elected President with a majority of one vote.

1957 Social Democratic Party split up

1958 Farmers Party split up

1961 Both Folk Parties split up in President election

1962 1962 Urho Kekkonen was elected President for the second time. Only then the Conservative Party began to accept new ideas.

A new balance was born after enormous scandals, after several trials and splitup political parties.

The support of the welfare state had won in all parties by 1966

20

25

30

35

40

45

50




The support of welfare state won in parties until 1966

The share of progressive income tax of all personal taxes

05

101520253035404550

Progressiivisen tuloveron osuus kaikista henkilöveroista

The Phaze of InterregnumThe process of change was so intense that it broke up most of the parties and tore down the old consensus that was based on the power of economic and political elite.

The most crucial battle of the great transformation was waged over the nature of the state: Should we build a welfare state and construct social security systems, or should we revert to the old night watchman state and, for example, cancel the modest forms of redistribution of income carried out in the 1950’s?

The people joining the civic movements were either cottagers of the impoverishing countryside or, quite often, people who had come from the countryside and thus had grown up under conditions of some form of solidarity that included taking care of one’s own family.

The Finnish social insurance developed in the midst of a change in the structure of production of the society, and it became a compromise to satisfy the needs of both the weakening society of small scale agriculture and the rising proletarian society based on wage labour.

The hodgepodge of political schemes and use of power became a battle between different notions of the economy and the state; the distribution of national income; and the position of Finland in the international context.

This battle created a shape of an interregnum – a period of transformation including two notions of society, two alternative paths for the future and the logic of a correctional move. The transformation of Finland from a poor developing country into a prosperous society has been praised as a success story.

In 1956–1959, when the old form of governance based on the interests of small scale agriculture and wood processing industry was in decay, and when the future seemed uncertain, the projects to reduce social benefits and efforts to distribute national income even more unequally than before led to a powerful counter-movement by citizens and started an hegemonic change and a more equal social development.

The Future was open in 1958

” One Should be a Smith of One's Own Happiness” – Ideology of semiproletarian system?

The question of state in a new situation, where the former halfway self-sufficient life is no longer enough, this issue becomes actual. The process has been going on globally and historicallly only for a cuple of hundred years and everywhere it is necessary to to solve similar problems.

The social security provided by the family is no longer enough. The developments of transportation, medical care or, for example, the information society are constantly demanding more complex systems and running the infrastructure of a new society increasingly demands higher levels of education. The systems are more expensive and more difficult to manage. Everything requires trust between people, who do not know each other.

The organization and financing of this life models are debated and fought in every corner of the globe. National traditions and visions vary and consciousness are all changing● Low pay and the rapid growth of the semiproletarian countries create a

competitive situation and may encourage thoughts of seeing the future similar to what was our past, 50 – 60 years ago

Specifics of the Finnish mode

Poor people in different – urban or rural – groups were of the same nationality, and even related to each other

– Traditions of a strong state

– The threat and challenges posed by the Soviet Union and the socialist world camp

The loss of the rightwing politics in the Second World War and relations with Nazi Germany

Strong polarizations and politics of taking sides after the 1918 civil war

– and generalizations

In the processes of industrialization and urbanization some forms of social insurances have been built almost universally. (remember Bismarck)● Globally we are near the mystic 60% of urbanization

The Nordic models are superior in almost all comparisons between different countries in dealing with systems

Class relations, tradition and religions, a well as interrelations of people living in poverty define how each society answers the challenges of urbanization and new tehnology.

Rethinking the welfarestates

Asian next revolutions

Countries across the continent are building welfare states—with a chance to learn from the West’s mistakes

The Economist Sep 8th 2012 | from the print edition

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