This can seem like a paradox. “Defending” the welfare state from “outside” abuse in principle should make it possible to maintain the existing or higher levels of welfare for native citizens. But instead, we see a general retrenchment affecting all recipients.[...]
In power from 2011-2015, S implemented cuts in educational support and the lowest social benefit for the unemployed. In essence, all those who were singled out as unproductive and a “burden” for the state were prone to cutbacks. This can be regarded as the Danish version of austerity policies and logically follows on from the introduction of workfare in the mid-1990s.[...]
Corydon framed neoliberal policies as “the politics of necessity,” according to which technocratic decisions are the only possible ones. The government’s cutbacks on unemployment benefits or the continuous privatization as the sale of shares of Dong Energy to American investors, among others Goldman Sachs, showed this broad orientation. [...]
In 2017, 3,500 people applied for asylum in Denmark. At that time, S was also supporting the temporary stop for refugees arriving under UN quotas, again invoking the need to deal with the challenges we have before we can accept any new refugees. The two first months of 2018 had shown similarly low numbers of asylum-seekers, with less than 300 people arriving each month. At the peak of the “refugee crisis,” the Ministry of Finance estimated that the total costs of receiving refugees in 2016 amounted to 11 billion DKK (€1.47 billion). This corresponded to 0.6 percent of GDP; about 1 percent of the total public budget of 1100 billion DKK. It is difficult to see how this expenditure could undermine the welfare state. [...]
This plan is part of the “cultural” or “values” struggle initiated by the Liberal Party and DF in the early 2000s. However, there is also a strong class component in the plan. The proposals also include the possibility of demolishing buildings, of removing inhabitants (e.g. people without employment) to secure a “better” composition of residents, and of privatizing council estates. Hence, although the plan is racialized, the target group is not only ethnic minorities but poor people in general.[...]
For the Social Democrats, too, in order to receive, people first have to contribute. Solidarity is thus not articulated around oppression, inequality or the reshaping of class. but around belonging to Denmark and the Danish way of living and contributing. Abandoning an alliance that unites working people on a class basis, S thus instead produces a misplaced alliance based primarily on nationality, with the main intention of recovering the space left in recent years to the far right.
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