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Finland Class Structure
For centuries Finnish society consisted of the
nobility,
clergy, burghers, and peasants. The nineteenth century saw
the
eclipse of the nobility and clergy and, with the coming of
industrialization, the formation of socially significant
entrepreneurial and working classes. The civil war and
subsequent
periods of repression helped to create hostile relations
among
labor, land, and capital, and in the interwar period
Finland was
a country marked by deep social fissures along class and
language
lines. The common national goals of World War II closed
some
wounds, but it was not until the coming of consensus
politics in
the second half of the 1960s that constructive relations
among
competing social groups became possible. An unprecedented
prosperity, widely distributed through incomes agreements
and a
Nordic-style welfare system, served to integrate all
groups into
society; a more open education system, coupled with the
internationally pervasive consumer culture of the postwar
era,
planed away many differences of taste and conduct related
to
class.
Finnish scholars have examined the composition of the
new
consensus society, and their varied findings have prompted
serious discussions of its class makeup. Among many issues
debated have been the definition of the working class, the
extent
to which it has been affected by a process of
"embourgeoisement,"
and the constitution of the ruling elite, if any, that has
steered the country. One noted Finnish sociologist, Matti
Alestalo, familiar with academic studies in these areas,
divided
Finnish society of the 1980s into six classes: farmers,
working
class, petite bourgeoisie, lower middle class, upper
middle
class, and upper class.
For Alestalo, the two most striking changes in
Finland's
class structure after World War II were the steep drop in
the
size of the farming population and the great expansion of
the
lower middle class. During the early 1950s, the number of
those
working in agriculture actually increased, but thereafter
it fell
steadily. By 1980 the sector was about one-quarter of its
size
thirty years earlier, and it consisted almost entirely of
farm
owners and their families because the number of hired
agricultural workers had dwindled. The farmers who
remained
enjoyed a higher standard of living because it was the
smaller
and poorer farms that had been abandoned. Another reason
for
farmers' new prosperity was that they were a highly
organized and
homogeneous class that successfully lobbied for government
policies that benefited them. Farmers differed from other
classes
in that they were, to a far higher degree,
self-recruiting; about
80 percent of farmers were the offspring of farmers. The
rationalization of agriculture made small businessmen out
of most
farmers, but farmers differed from other owners of small
enterprises in that they passed on to their children
something
that was more a way of life than a business.
Alestalo classified as a worker anyone employed for
primarily
manual work, and he included in this class some
white-collar wage
earners whom others judged to belong to the lower middle
class.
According to his calculations, the working class had
accounted
for about 50 percent of the economically active work force
during
the entire postwar period, but the sectors in which it was
employed had changed. The share of workers employed in
agriculture and forestry had dropped from 22 to 4 percent
by
1980, while the share active in manufacturing and services
had
increased to 60 and to 26 percent, respectively. Workers'
living
standards had improved greatly--more than those of other
groups--
since the war, but even in the 1980s workers still had
poorer
health and less job security than other classes. They were
also
housed more poorly, and one of their primary concerns was
to
acquire homes of their own. By the 1980s, Finnish workers
had
become much more integrated into society than they had
been in
the immediate postwar period, but they still identified
strongly
with their labor unions and with the parties that had
traditionally represented them. Although workers no longer
lived
in the isolated enclaves of the interwar period, Alestalo
believed it would be premature to say that they had become
part
of the middle class.
Finland's petite bourgeoisie of shopowners and small
entrepreneurs had never been an economically important
class. It
had declined slowly in size, beginning in the 1950s, until
by
1980 it accounted for only 5 percent of the work force.
Many
small shops operated by this class had closed because of
the
growth of large retail firms. Many small grocery stores,
for
example, had gone out of business. There was little
intergenerational stability in this class because many of
its
members came from outside it.
Alestalo divided the large group engaged in nonmanual,
whitecollar occupations into a lower middle class and an upper
middle
class. Educational level, recruitment criteria, complexity
of
tasks, level of income, and commitment to the organization
were
among the factors that determined to which of these two
classes a
person belonged. Both classes had grown since the war,
doubling
in size between 1960 and 1980, but the lower middle class
share
of the total work force in 1980 amounted to 24 percent,
making it
the second largest class in Finland and dwarfing the 8
percent of
the upper middle class. Both levels of the middle class
had many
members born in other classes, but the lower-middle-class
had
more, one-third having a farming background and another
third
coming from the working class. Women dominated in the
lower
middle class, constituting 60 percent of its membership in
1960
and 70 percent in 1980, an indication of their heavy
employment
in lower-level service-sector positions such as those of
office
workers, elementary school teachers, and nurses.
According to Alestalo, the country's upper class
accounted
for about 1 percent of the economically active population;
it was
made up of the owners, directors, or managers of large
industrial
concerns, banks, and commercial institutions in the
private
sector, as well as the heads of large state companies and
agencies, and senior civil servants in the public sector.
Some
members of the country's upper class inherited their
wealth or
position. In the postwar era, however, most appeared to be
hired
professionals. Much of the membership of the upper class
came
from the upper reaches of Finnish society, but several
factors
resulted in its having a more heterogeneous composition
than
earlier--the coming to power of socialist parties with
leaderships from a various classes, the common practice of
politicizing senior civil service appointments, and the
greater
importance of state institutions.
Data as of December 1988
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