Troels Skadhauge is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern Denmark. He is currently completing a book on the ideological transformation of Swedish social democracy from Marxism to neoliberalism.
Fifty years ago, Sweden attempted the most ambitious democratic transition to socialism ever. Its architect, a Jewish economist who witnessed the rise of Nazi Germany firsthand, was motivated by the imperative to never repeat the horrors of fascism.
In 1975, Swedish socialists and unions devised a program to democratically seize the means of production, but terrified elites dismantled it. Fifty years on, the Meidner Plan still offers a blueprint for a socialist transition today.