The story of socialist democracy in Sweden and the place of the 'Diligent Working Class"

[stockholmer]

Here I attempt to give you some background on why our democratic socialist Swedish 'third-way' model flourishes, and how it was forged. Perhaps some of these ideas can help to institute a similar result (albeit at a local level) in the USA.

Socialist democracy in Sweden has since the very beginning been formed around the idea of community. In its infancy (1880's onward), it was all about the popular movements. Not just the labour movement in the narrow sense but also the temperance movement, the free church movement and the co-operative movement. These contexts created a security that could fill the void of the agricultural society that occurred when people were uprooted from their base at the dawn of industrialized society. Mutual unemployment insurance funds, health care funds and burial funds, etc. created a social safety net in an environment that was quite unforgiving. But at the same time the demands on the individual member was strict and harsh. The mutual systems were not stronger than their weakest link and an ideal of diligence evolved. You should demand your rights, but also do your duty.

In the socialist democracy 'folkhemmet' (people's home) model that evolved later in the post-WW I period the state assumed responsibility for social security systems. The systems became general and more robust. But still, the diligence ideal remained. There was full employment and all were expected to contribute to be able to take part of the social safety nets when in need of them.

The following essay fleshes this history out:

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http://www.skeptron.uu.se/broady/sec/ske-5.htm


The Honest and Diligent Worker

Ronny Ambjörnsson




We are treading water. We get at times so fed up with the problem of alcohol abuse, says Olle Angenäs in an interview in Dagens Nyheter on 3.9 1986. Olle Angenäs is the trade union's social representative for the state-employed workers at the head-quarters of the General Post-Office in Gothenburg. He is tired of continually having to rush out after the event has happened and save people who, in one way or another, have got into difficulties. What are needed, he maintains, are preventative measures. And he is seeking a reconquering of what he calls the working class' way of seeing humanity. "We need a belief, a Utopian dream of a society built on worthier human values... The question is what development we shall have. What shall we live for? What is the meaning of life?"

Here abuse and diligence are coupled to the way of seeing ones fellow man, Utopia and the great questions of humanity. What is the meaning of life? The question was also asked at the beginning of the century by people who wanted to deal with problems of abuse. To abuse alcohol was, for these people, to abuse life. Thus diligence acquired - in the extension of the reasoning around humanity's great questions - a Utopian dimension.

I shall try in the following essay to determine some of the components that are integral parts of the Swedish diligence, as it finds expression in the temperance and workers' movements of the early nineteen hundreds. My material is taken from the sawmill Community of Holmsund which is situated at the mouth of Umeälven river in Bottenviken. The material consists of minutes from ordinary meetings of the Good Templar lodges, Skärgårdsblomman and Skärgårdsklippan, the meetings in the lodges' study-circles, articles from a handwritten newspaper of one of the study-circle members, acquirement and lending journals from the library of one of the lodges, minutes of meetings from two of Holmsund's trade unions, Section 84 of The Sawmill's and Industrial Workers' Union and Section 80 of The Transport Workers' Union (dockworkers) as well as a lesser number of interviews with people who were active in this area during the nineteen twenties and thirties.


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