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Twilight of Swedish Social Democracy

Hailed with relief for fear of a bleaker outcome, the SAP’s poor performance in the September 2018 election underlines the malaise afflicting social democracy’s global flagship. Therborn charts the country’s SAP-led neoliberalization—and rise of the far-right Sweden Democrats—against the backdrop of recession and refugee arrivals.

Representing Solidarity: Class, Gender and the Crisis in Social-Democratic Sweden

“The 1991 Swedish election produced the victory of a coalition of four bourgeois parties dedicated to bringing about a ‘system shift’. Their preparedness to break with the Swedish social-democratic model stands in marked contrast to the bourgeois governments of 1976–82. The change can be understood only in relation . . .” read more

Radicalization and Retreat in Swedish Social Democracy

“The policies of Sweden’s Social Democratic Government are often invoked to demonstrate that there exists a viable alternative to Thatcherite neo-liberalism, while for many currents within Europe’s dwindling group of ruling Socialist parties Sweden has come to represent the light beckoning at the end of a long tunnel . . .” read more

Behind and Beyond Social Democracy in Sweden

“As the tide of Eurocommunism has subsided, the evolution of labour movements hegemonized by social democracy has come to assume a more pivotal role for the debate on strategies of transition in the advanced capitalist countries. With good reason, the Swedish case is frequently cited in this context. . . .” read more

Swedish Communism--End of an Interlude

“The Twenty-Second Congress of the Swedish Communist Party—since 1967 called Left Party (Communist) or VPK—on September 19th–21st put an end to a period in the history of the party, hitherto unique in the annals of the international movement. A balance-sheet of this period and of the congress . . .” read more

The Swedish Left

“The general societal setting of contemporary Swedish politics has been analysed elsewhere by the present writer in terms of the combination of—to use Gramscian categories—working-class political dominance with a continuing latent hegemony of the bourgeoisie. This situation has positive implications for left-wing action and thinking. Working-class political dominance . . .” read more

Sweden: Study in Social Democracy (Part 2)

“the swedish class structure has revealed itself as at once idiosyncratic and typical. Income distribution is vastly more even that in other western countries, but social mobility is fully as sluggish, and the lived distances between classes probably as great. On the other hand, violent hostility between . . .” read more

Sweden: Mr.Crosland’s Dreamland (Part 1)

“The first part of a study of the Swedish Model by Perry Anderson” read more