”Socialism Is Not a Utopia — It’s Alive and Thriving”

Pelle Dragsted of Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance in conversation about his new book, Nordic Socialism.

In recent years, renewed interest in socialism has grown across Europe and beyond — often sparked by mounting inequality, climate breakdown, and the failures of neoliberal governance. But what does socialism look like when it already exists in everyday institutions?

Pelle Dragsted, a member of the Danish Folketing for the Red-Green Alliance, believes the answer lies in the Nordic model — and in recognizing the democratic and cooperative elements already embedded within it. In 2021, his book Nordisk Socialisme (Nordic Socialism) sparked both critical acclaim and public debate across his home country, including a ten-part debate series in the newspaper Information. The book was published in Swedish soon afterwards, and now — finally — will be published in English by Wisconsin University Press.

Dragsted’s book utilizes Denmark’s economic and political experiences to analyze and reinterpret Left strategy, leading to some unorthodox conclusions. He argues that the view that societies are entirely colonized by capitalism prevents the Left from successfully building socialist alternatives to capitalism, and obscures the value of institutions such as worker-owned cooperatives and the non-marketized public sector.

Indeed, he insists not only that our societies are hybrids of capitalism and socialism (varying by degree from country to country), but that perspectives seeking to overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism are counterproductive, and get in the way of meaningful radical reforms that could improve the democratic and socialist aspects of society. With this analysis in mind, Dragsted suggests a series of ten reforms to pave the way towards a much more democratized economy.

With Nordic Socialism set to appear in English with the University of Wisconsin Press later this month, Pelle Dragsted is currently on a promotional tour of the United States supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. In between stops, he spoke with Duroyan Fertl about the book, his motivations behind writing it, and the road to a democratic economy in Denmark and beyond.

Your book Nordic Socialism, which has just been published in English, looks at the economic and social history of Denmark and other Nordic countries, including projects seeking greater economic democracy. It also takes up some much larger philosophical and political debates on the Left — issues of freedom and democracy, but also of socialist strategy — and makes concrete proposals for the building of democratic socialism. What was your motivation for writing this book, and what do you hope to achieve with it, especially now it has been published in English?

I wrote the book out of a sense of urgency. It’s becoming more and more evident that we can no longer allow capitalism to dominate our economies. It’s not just unfair, but as we are seeing in the US, it’s undermining the very foundation of democracy. The concentration of wealth inherent to capitalism creates oligarchic power — political influence stemming not from democratic mandates but from control of wealth and the economy. This isn’t a flaw; it’s a feature, an inevitable outcome of capitalistic ownership models.

But here’s the thing: It’s not difficult to argue that capitalism is harmful. The Left has always been good at that. More and more people agree that the way we currently organize the economy is unviable. So why can’t we get a majority behind transforming the economy into a fairer, more democratic model — what we would call socialism?

One reason is that the Left has been excellent at critique and at making broad, sweeping statements about socialist change. However, we’ve been less effective at presenting a viable alternative and answering the tough questions that arise when we talk about democratizing the economy, the workplace, and even parts of the market.

For too long, socialism has been treated as some utopian vision, not embedded in our daily struggles — whether in parliaments, trade unions, or popular movements. So, the motivation for the book was to make socialism more concrete, understandable, and viable. To take it out of the realm of utopia and bring it into the practical work we’re doing today.

Now that the book is available in English, I’m very excited. The timing feels right. The world, more than ever, needs a tangible alternative to both centrist neoliberalism and right-wing populism. Right now, I’m in the US, where the success of Mamdani in the New York primaries has once again put democratic socialism on the agenda. If my book can help democratic socialists around the world argue more effectively for a socialist alternative, that would be a tremendous achievement.

Read the full article at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.