The Swedish welfare system has become unrecognizable, writes Niklas Altermark in <\/span>Fronesis<\/span><\/i>. Once based on solidarity between the working and middle classes, recent decades of government have fragmented the once progressive system. <\/span><\/p>\n \u2018The result of this transformation is a welfare system designed to serve the interests of the economic elite,\u2019 Altermark argues.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The rot set in during the 1990s, when the Social Democratic government began prioritizing the reduction of national debt, in the name of \u2018sanitizing\u2019 this economy. In the 2000s, the political offensive against social security fraud paved the way for the liberal-conservative government\u2019s punitive clampdown on unemployment, whilst cutting wealth tax.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The forces that built the Swedish welfare state considered the population as an integrated body and aimed to make unemployment bearable for all. \u2018Vulnerability is not just a fundamental condition in human life, but to a large extent denotes what separates us from each other,\u2019 writes Altermark.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n With less public spending, the quality of healthcare has worsened. The solution has been to marketize healthcare to historic levels \u2013 one example of how inter-class solidarity is undermined. As the economic elite enforcing market solutions forges a new alliance with the middle class, the idea of shared responsibility for social vulnerability is gradually disappearing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Jesper Vestermark K\u00f8ber writes on the rise of liberal conservativism in Denmark at the end of the 20th century. At the centre of this development were three thinkers: S\u00f8ren Krarup, Bertel Haarder and Henning Fonsmark. All shared the goal of limiting the scope of government and reducing social dependency, and all saw themselves as anti-elitist, rejecting social democratic governance as the \u2018cultural upper class\u2019 that owned the political narrative. Their portrayal of the left as authoritarian resulted in a conservative renaissance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But what characterized Krarup, Haarder and Fonsmark was not only their anti-establishment stance, but also their criticism of post-war democracy. In 1977, Haarder wrote: \u2018In our spiritless age, democracy has become a substitute religion, a fetish, a mantra, an oppressive ideology that does not settle for democratic rules and votes but demands the submission of the soul.\u2019 According to Vestermark K\u00f8ber, \u2018the liberal-conservative renaissance must be understood as a struggle against the left\u2019s desire to change society, including a specific critique of the view of democracy that characterized the post-war social debate\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In 1977, the socialist thinkers Barbara and John Ehrenreich coined the concept of the \u2018professional and managerial class\u2019 (PMC), a group that worked with their heads rather than their bodies, and that exercised power over the work of others without themselves owning the means of production. Lovisa Brostr\u00f6m revisits the concept, describing the emergence of the \u2018professional and managerial group\u2019 today, its social status and role in the political landscape.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Fronesis-1024x767.jpeg\")
Limits of democracy\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\nRevisiting the PMC<\/h2>\n