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The Rise and Fall of Swedish Social Democracy
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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE POSTER CHILD OF EUROPEAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY?
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.
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This will be the standard international history of the world's most successful social democracy.
Of all the experiments in socialism undertaken during the twentieth century, one has often been singled out as the best model for the twenty-first: reformist Sweden. How accurate is that? In this elegant chronicle, the foremost historian of Swedish social democracy punctures the illusions. Whatever was good in Sweden was built by popular movements: but the party ended up destroying it. Reformism is a storehouse of mistakes, from which a left for a future needs to learn, and there is no better introduction than this book.