Swedish Social Democracy occupies a special place in the political history of the twentieth century. The Swedish model has long stood as a successful model between the communist planned economy and free-market capitalism. Sweden has had a Social Democratic prime minister for more than seventy-five years over the last century. Sweden would be a paradise if only there was a little more sunshine, the bourgeois French president George Pompidou is reputed to have said.

But above all it is socialists of various stripes who have turned to Sweden as the country that has gone the furthest in terms of welfare, equality, social consensus, and gender equality. The focus has been on the Social Democratic Party, whose strong organization, dominant political position, capacity for ideological innovation, and not least ability to implement a program for the strong welfare state has attracted attention and often admiration. The ideologue and minister of finance Ernst Wigforss, the social engineers Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, the trade union economist Rudolf Meidner, and the politician Olof Palme all symbolized, each in their own way, a Social Democracy that appeared a little more radical than others. [. . .]

The party is undoubtedly one of the most powerful political actors of the twentieth century, internationally as well as domestically. Its position within the working class was hegemonic for a hundred years. The Social Democratic–led trade unions organized 80 to 90 percent of the workers, the vast majority of whom voted Social Democrat. Large sections of the middle classes also supported the party’s policies. The broad Social Democratic movement was extraordinarily well organized. It was, to use [Antonio] Gramsci’s phrase, a party with a great capacity to produce and educate its intellectuals itself. The leadership was recruited mainly from the working class, and it soon acquired extensive experience in leading struggles and movements. [. . .]