The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality

by Bhaskar Sunkara

Swedish socialists made their stated goal “the fostering and development of intellectual and material culture.” Nationalization, at the time, was their assumed means, but the goal was more open-ended. Unlike MacDonald’s Labour Party, however, they didn’t capitulate to the market as it was but made a radical attempt to change how it operated.

finance minister Ernst Wigforss argued that the concentration of economic power was the problem, not necessarily private ownership. It was another acknowledgment that Sweden’s main issue was underdevelopment, and that it was better for labor to share part of a growing pie with capitalists than to try to capture all of a small one.

a push for nationalization found resistance from a capitalist class that could credibly threaten to withhold investment. That climate, combined with the onset of the Cold War, tempered the SAP, which forsook alliance with the Communists in favor of a new coalition with the Agrarians.

This contradiction would only emerge later. Sweden thrived in the postwar period. It had not been ravaged by the war, and a rebuilding Europe needed the raw materials it exported. What was good for Volvo also seemed to be good for Sweden.

The dream of constructing socialism through nationalizations was abandoned, and as late as 1976, only 5 percent of Swedish industry was under public

International observers like Anthony Crosland drew profound lessons from the Swedish example. The British Labour parliamentarian believed that socialism was compatible with the private ownership of industry. His 1956 book The Future of Socialism criticized the traditional socialist focus on means—the preference for nationalization, for example—instead of the end goal of social equality.