Francis Sejersted - The Age of Social Democracy

THE AGE OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

THE AGE OF
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

Norway and Sweden in the Twentieth Century

Francis Sejersted

Translated by Richard Daly with editing by Madeleine B. Adams

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright 2011 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,

Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

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All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sejersted, Francis, 1936

[Sosialdemokratiets tidsalder. English]

The age of social democracy : Norway and Sweden in the twentieth century /

Francis Sejersted ; translated by Richard Daly ; with editing by Madeleine B. Adams.

p.cm.

Translation of v. 2 of revised version of: Norge og Sverige gjennom 200 r /

Bo Strth. Oslo : Pax, 2005.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-14774-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. SwedenPolitics and government19051950. 2. SwedenPolitics and government19501973.

3. NorwayPolitics and government1905. 4. SocialismSweden

History20th century. 5. SocialismNorwayHistory20th century. 6. Sweden

Social policy. 7. NorwaySocial policy. 8. DemocracySwedenHistory20th century.

9. DemocracyNorwayHistory20th century. I. Adams, Madeleine B. II. Title.

DL861.S45 2011

948.104dc22 2010031673

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

eISBN: 978-1-400-83912-4

R0

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is a thoroughly revised version of a book with the same title published in Norwegian and Swedish in 2005 as the second volume in a two-volume work written to commemorate the dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian union in 1905. The first volume, written by Bo Strth, covered the history of the two countries during the time of the union from 1814 to 1905, and the second volume the period after the dissolution. It was a natural choice to concentrate the history of the twentieth century on the parallel development of Social Democracy in the two countries.

The present volume has profited enormously from numerous discussions with friends and colleagues and from presentations of aspects of the book in lectures and seminars in Norway and Sweden through many years. I can but mention some of the many to whom I am indebted. A close contact with my friend and colleague Rune Slagstad has been a continuous inspiration. My interest in and knowledge of Swedish history has been developed by the close friendship with my Swedish colleague Gran B. Nilsson. The manuscript of the early version was read and commented on by Torbjrn Nilsson, Thorsten Nybom, and Bo Strth. Single chapters have been read and commented on by Erling Annaniassen, Ole Berg, Grete Brochmann, Jon Erik Dlvik, Anne Lise Ellingster, and Klas mark. I have benefited from reviews of the early version, in particular reviews by Jan Heiret and Knut Kjeldstadli. Three expert readers chosen by Princeton University Press have written invaluable comments, not least the only non-anonymous of the three, Bo Rothstein. I also want to thank all those who helped prepare the book for publication, in particular Ian Malcolm of Princeton University Press, who took interest in the book, and Madeleine Adams for her thorough editing of the English text.

Throughout the many years I have worked on the book, the Institute for Social Research in Oslo has provided me office space in an extremely stimulating milieu. The directors of the institute, Fredrik Engelstad and Ann-Helen Bay, the librarians Sven Lindblad and Jon Hustad, and all their staff have given me the impression that what they most wanted was to help me in every possible way. Last but most important a sincere thanks to my wife Hilde for support and stimulation, a sine qua non for whatever I have achieved throughout our nearly half-century-long companionship.

Francis Sejersted
Oslo, March 2010

THE AGE OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

INTRODUCTION

In the 1930s the Social Democratic parties of Sweden and Norway came to power and formed governments in their respective countries. This marked the beginning of a stable period of Social Democratic hegemony. These parties had taken root at the beginning of the twentieth century as revolutionary Marxist parties. They gradually shook off their Marxism, and by the beginning of their period of hegemony they had managed to wrest the great modernization project from the non-Socialist parties and put their own stamp on it. The result is what we might call the Social Democratic orderalso called the Scandinavian model, or simply the Swedish or Nordic model. The Social Democratic order reached its zenith in the 1960s; thereafter it declined. This book presents an account of the development of this order in Sweden and Norway.

Sweden was one of the European great powers during the seventeenth century. By the beginning of the twentieth century this status was only a distant memory, but a more modern ambition was taking shape, a new, forward-looking and benign great power dream: the vision of Sweden as a cutting-edge industrial and economic world power. Something that is more unique to Scandinaviaand particularly to Norwayis the very central place that democratization occupies in the conception of modernization. Modernization is a vague concept that tends to dissolve when one focuses on the concrete historical process, but its comprehensiveness makes it a useful starting point.

Four key aspects of the modernization project should be noted. First, modernization revolves around a liberation project, a liberation from oppressive structures both of the people by democratic institutions and of the individual by the idea of human rights. Liberation is closely linked to scientific rationality, or the demythologizing of the world. This rationality has nourished instrumentalist modes of thought and new ambitions for society building. In other words, in the wake of the Enlightenment the Western world developed an ambitious project to build a free modern society. Consequently, freedom has not come to be associated with dismantling or liquidating but with the building and expanding of society.

There is a paradox, however, in the idea of modernization, a dilemma that springs out of these great ambitions. The struggle to build the ideal society can pose a threat to freedom. All modern societies are faced with the need to find a balance between policies that are democratic, tolerant, and inclusive and those that seek to mold individuals to fit the new society. The contrasts among modern societies are partly due to the different ways in which they have balanced these aims. Hitlers Germany and Stalins Soviet Union are extreme examples of how the modernization project and its ambition of liberation can be perverted to totalitarianism.

Second, modernization stands for economic development through technological progress. This is part of the liberation project: technological development should release people from poverty and from the oppressiveness of work. Here we encounter another dilemma analogous to the first: how to build institutions to serve as the foundation for this technological and economic progress. The many approaches to balancing the objectives of freedom and targeted development have varied from capitalist market solutions to East European command economies.