Historian Kjell Östberg presents the first comprehensive study of one of the most influential political movements of our time. Swedish Social Democracy was an inspiration to young socialists around the world for generations. But little remains of the Swedish model today.

For almost a century, Social Democracy prevailed in Sweden, which for many appeared to be on the verge of becoming a truly socialist country. What followed instead was a jarring adaptation to a rising neoliberal world order. Large parts of the public sector have now been privatised, social inequality is rapidly worsening, and right-wing populists have come to represent much of the working class.

Östberg discusses the reformist strategy, class organizations and social mobilisation, women’s struggle, and the creation of the Swedish welfare society. It is a history emblematic of the transformations in global politics of the last half century.

I år firar den svenska demokratin hundra år. Många ser detta som slutet på en given utveckling. Kjell Östberg skriver istället levande om hur vår demokrati är ett resultat av att människor sluter sig samman i kamp för att gemensamt skapa förändring, från Sundsvallsstrejken 1879 till Fridays for future idag.

Social democracy has generally been considered one of the most successful political forces of the 1900s. The Nordic model, building on the institutionalized, corporatist collaboration between capital, labour and state and long extolled as a successful compromise between a communist planned economy and free market capitalism, has close links to Nordic social democracy. The organizational home of Nordic social democracy has been the Social Democratic parties; working-class dominated mass parties with deep roots in trade unions and popular movements. In the mid-20th century, to follow the political thread, social democracy formulated an objective that found more mass support than any other leftist idea: to offer citizens protection against the inequalities created by an unregulated market. The broad definition of social democracy is, meanwhile, used in an attempt to single out some central features of a common reformist ideology that Social Democrats tried to translate into political action.

Östberg’s article is discussing the development of a social democratic welfare bureaucracy in Sweden during the twentieth century, for a long time a success story. At an early stage the social democrats’ ability to assume control over the state administration depended on the possibility to find intellectuals sympathetic to the social democratic cause. For the greatly expanding welfare state of the 1960s, a broadening spectrum of well-educated men and women, all clearly sympathetic to the social democratic project of building a welfare state, was available. The party’s long, uninterrupted period of government made it easier for the social democrats to put their stamp on the state bureaucracy. As the social democrats’ reformist ambitions have dwindled, so has the need of a special welfare bureaucracy.

The Swedish Social Democratic welfare state system that peaked during the 1970s was based on a common belief in the existence of strong and potent state with strong tendencies toward a de-commodification. However, with the Palme government in 1982, Social democrats accepted the idea that the welfare state should be reoriented around a prevailing notion of individualization, and be a vehicle in particular for a middle-class strategy of social mobility tightly entangled with consumer preference. In subsequent decades, a complex and multi-motivational process of privatization was carried out as a de facto alliance between Left and Right. In the 2000s, the Party has abandoned control of the welfare state as part of its reformist strategy or “power resource”.

Det första fallet av aids i Sverige diagnostiserades år 1982. Hiv var då ett okänt virus, och aids ett tecken på en snar död. Hiv spreds till en början i redan utsatta grupper som homosexuella män, intravenösa missbrukare, prostituerade och blödarsjuka.

En vanlig reaktion på sjukdomen var rädsla och stigmatisering, inte minst från mediernas sida. Men det bildades också grupper och organisationer som sökte stödja de drabbade, motverka fördomar och arbeta för adekvata behandlingar. Här var bland andra Noaks ark, Venhälsan, Kvinnocirkeln och RFHP (Riksförbundet för hivpositiva) sedermera Hiv-Sverige. Hur arbetade dessa organisationer och vad ville de uppnå? Samtidshistoriska institutet vid Södertörns högskola samlade några av aktivisterna till ett vittneseminarium på temat ”Hivepidemin och rörelserna”.

Hur kommer det sig att den svenska vänstern i en internationell jämförelse har haft en mindre bejakande inställning till droger? Och att 1970-talets radikala musikrörelse ibland ”betedde sig som en nykterhetsloge”?

I denna bok sätts ljuset på Förbundet mot drogers inflytande. I boken skildras förbundets utveckling från en plantskola för makten till en av tidens många inflytelserika aktiviströrelser. Den är därmed också ett bidrag till att fördjupa skildringen av den omfattande radikalisering som kännetecknar svenskt 1960- och 70-tal.