Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
Kjell Östberg is professor at the Swedish Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn University, Stockholm, and an outstanding expert on 20th century Swedish history. He has written extensively about Social Democracy and new social movements. His works include an acclaimed biography of Olof Palme, a study of Swedish radicalization in the 1960s and 1970s and, most recently, a book on democratization and social movements.This will be the standard international history of the world's most successful social democracy.
- Göran Therborn, author, most recently of <i>Inequality and the Labyrinths of Democracy</i>,
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.
- Andreas Malm,
This volume is perhaps the most comprehensive historical primer on Swedish Social Democracy.
- Joel Nordström, Jacobin
[s]weeping yet succinct...
- Simon Torracinta, Boston Review
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.
1. Origins
2. The Revolutionary Years
3. Social Democracy in the Face of Reality
4. The Crisis of the 1930s and the Social Democratic Breakthrough
5. Harvest Time?
6. The 1960s: The People's Home and Its Fractures
7. The 1970s: A Socialist Sweden?
8. Social Democracy Under Neoliberalism
Conclusion
Index