When Mio Tastas Viktorsson and I argued that the Left should revisit the Meidner Plan last year, we could have hardly expected that a strikingly similar policy would be adopted by British shadow chancellor John McDonnell and the Labour Party at this year’s conference.

The Inclusive Ownership Funds (IOF) proposal — drawing its name and much of its inspiration from a recent report by researchers Matthew Lawrence, Andrew Pendleton, and Sara Mahmoud of the New Economics Foundation — calls for transferring 10 percent of the equity in all British firms with over 250 employees into worker-owned and -controlled funds over the next ten years. The funds would pay out annual dividends up to £500 and retain the remainder as a “social dividend” to buttress public services and reduce inequality.

The proposal, while different in some important respects, is clearly inspired by the Meidner Plan. Yet it shouldn’t be viewed exclusively through the lens of 1970s Sweden, but instead as a key pillar of a growing edifice of radical economic policies designed to shift power, ownership, and control to working-class people. Labour is hoping to push toward socialism not with a single policy, but rather with a broad-based strategy that makes progress on multiple fronts.