Social Democracy

Sweden's old fashioned conformists

Stig Stromholm With the death of its king, and a constitutional crisis brought about by the dead-heat between the social democrats and the opposition parties in last week's general election, Sweden — since the tear regarded by many as the best model for a prosperous and stable welfare state — suddenly looks unsettled. Professor Stromholm, of Uppsala University, has recently provoked a huge controversy in Sweden with his book Sverige 1972. Here he puts forward the guts of his thesis in a highly original analysis of the Sz,edish situation.

Emerging from the war years without those claims to sympathy and interest which heroism, martrydom, or love of freedom had bestowed on most small European states in her neighbourhood, Sweden managed to develop in the first years of the Cold War a reputation for rationality, and great fertility in subtle compromise instead of political strife, which raised that otherwise uninteresting kingdom, in her own eyes and in those of the milder kind of progressive intellectuals, to a temporary position of the Houyhnhnms of the West. American journalists and French proksseurs agreed to hold that the Swedes had found, somehow, the 'middle way' between socialism and capitalism, that here was a labour market developing without strikes, a planned economy based upon cooperation, a welfare state without either too much red tape or too great sacrifices of liberty, modernism ' (whatever that may be) peacefully co-existing with tradition — in short a nation already basking in the sun of the brave new world and harmoniously moving at a reasonable speed towards an even brayer new world.

Among official and semi-official explanations of the rise of Swedish postwar houyhnhnmdom, one important element is lacking, and must be lacking: the tradition of conformism, Some degree of conformism is, of course, part of the heritage of every nation with a wish and a chance to survive as such, but it seems likely that Sweden gut more of this peace-preserving drug than any other European country, Prussia, in her heyday, mixed Lutherans, Calvinists, and Roman Catholics. The Scandinavian countries are all perfect and closed unities from every relevant and imaginable point of view — race, language, religion, historical past — but it would

seem that in all-pervading conformism Sweden beats Denmark by some inches at least. For present purposes, and with due deference, Finland and Norway may be considered as provincial editions of Denmark and Sweden. Denmark had her own religious revival early enough and on a sufficiently high level to offer, as it were, at least a possible alternative attitude for educated adults (a sort of subdued northern Jansenism); in addition, Denmark always had a large-scale capital and got, fairly early, a vaguely progressive bourgeoisie, which also provided possible alternative attitudes. Sweden never offered serious alternatives: from the early nineteenth century at least, you should conform to a pattern, which admitted a limited selection of variants. If you could, you should be an educated public official leading an aristocratic life. If you could not, you should wait in silence, try a few generations of parsons or schoolmasters, refrain, in particular, from being a journalist, shun being visibly a tradesman, and finally emerge on the desired level. If you insisted on being an intellectual, you should take care to become a bishop, a rector, a professor, in which case minor oddities could be tolerated. If you could not help indulging in business, there was an accepted version; the rural iron works run on manorial scale and in manorial forms. The secret of Swedish conformism was hope: the system was never closed, higher education — completely in the hands of State and Church — was virtually free of charge, and since most public servants were provided, in some cases well into this century, with livings which included houses — certainly no stately homes, in the case of ensigns, curates, bailiffs or tax collectors, yet mysteriously and ummistakably impregnated with gentility — you needed no wealth to ascend to the acknowledged good life. It took less than three generations to become a gentleman. The civil, ecclesiastic, and military bureaucracy had been very large, relatively speaking, from the seventeenth century if not earlier. Complete conformism in matters of faith was severely maintained until the late nineteenth century. Compared with most countries, public education was on a very high level, and the scriptures were on everybody's lips. The farmers had never been serfs; they waited, played the game, had a say in local government, and made an Estate of their own — the fourth — in Parliament from the late middle ages until a modern bicameral Parliament was established in 1866. Towns were small; they also had an Estate — the burghers — but the mayors and aldermen who peopled it were to a considerable extent the university-trained judges of municipal courts and rightly considered themselves as members of the bureaucracy. The second Estate were the clergy of the established Lutheran church, the first — the House of Knights — where every caput-familias of the titled and non-titled nobility had his seat, was dominated by civil and military officials, land-owning or not.

Forest and farming land covered the scene of this winter's tale, which was not without charm. Winters were long, cold and dark. You had to work to survive. Silence prevailed ...

Industrialism came late. It produced little real impact on Swedish life before 1870. It resulted in the rise — but hardly in the concentration en masse — of a class of industrial workers recruited from the less prosperous section of the farming community. The fairly large-scale emigration of the late nineteenth century — with the contacts it initiated with new world sects — and industrialism finally , created a market where, theoretically at least, the pattern just described could be broken by or at least confronted with, radical non-conformism. The official myth is that this is what took place. The arrival of the labour movement, which came in for good in the 'eighties and resulted in solid organisations in the 'nineties, is usually described — and has to be described — as the advent of a new heaven and a new earth. We are told that being radically new it renewed everything around it, and swept away the mists of the old winter's tale.

Official myths should be treated with great respect, for they would not be official if they were not successful, and success would not have crowned them unless they had something essential to say. The labour movement, like the exotic American revivalist sects, certainly did mean liberation in some sense, and certainly did bring a new hope (and much more immediate than the crofter's expectation that his great-grandson might become a parson). But it can be argued, and the development of the last few decades offers some fairly strong evidence for that argument, that what explains the specific character of Swedish politics, particularly the relative peacefulness of labour relations and the relative spirit of cooperation between socialist and non-socialist parties — those features which are most commonly quoted as expressions of houyhnhnmclom — was to a very large extent the unique strength of a Pattern of disciplined conformism.

The Labour movement could use an Unspoilt capital of discipline (and a habit Of negotiation instead of street-fighting, inherited from parish councils and village greens) because it grew strong, not, as in some countries where the Industrial Revolution had broken out much earlier, in an anonymous urban proletariat, disinherited and isolated for generations, but among people who were the children or at the utmost the grandchildren of a country population, to .a large extent small landowners, who were still deeply influenced by the conformist discipline of the static rural community. Indeed, in a

certain sense, labour organisations could turn that discipline to their immediate profit, stepping as it were into the shoes of the Squire, the parson and the other local worthies and taking over some, or most, of the allegiance they had been able to claim. If this explanation is true, the houyhnhnmlike Peacefulness of Swedish politics would not be due to the excellence of the solutions found by Socialist social engineering; the solutions would be accepted, excellent or not, because Peaceful acceptance was part of the pattern. Swedes, in other words, would behave rationally not because they were exceptionally modern', as many foreign observers have argued (assuming that 'rationality' is 'modern', Without troubling too much with the definition of words), but rather because they were exceptionally old-fashioned. If so, the further development of Swedish public life from those heydays in the 'thirties, forties and 'fifties when it was frequently described by students from abroad as a masterpiece of equilibrium should depend very much upon the way in which the inherited capital of disciplined conformism was treated. Swedes, at that time, gladly accepted the description of themselves as mature, rational and moderate. But they were certainly not prepared to accept the hypothesis put forward here by way of explanation. They wanted to be 'modern'. The idea of caring for a capital of conformist discipline as a part of the national treasure would have been utterly repugnant to them, had it ever been proposed. It was not, and it must be said in fairness that it is very hard to see how, and by whom, a successful Political party of men claiming to be socialist, scorning the past and rejoicing in the future, could be brought to accept the idea that they were successful because they were so oldfashioned. So the capital was systematically dilapidated. Lack of time, rather than lack of ambition, has Prevented socialists, even German socialists ties com from rethinking human communi pl etely; this is particularly true about

Swedish socialists, whom political success and the ensuing practical work have at times deprived of any opportunity to think at all. Wherever original socialist thinking was cking, the normal course was to make use of liberal ideas, denying their origin. Swedish radical liberalism was never a very Widespread or popular movement, but it always had a strong appeal to those few but v,erY audible elements of the community who, oeprived of rank and not invited to the right kind. of dinners, fortified themselves in Brutus-like attitudes under the denomination of intellectuals'. These were the natural allies of Socialism in the early years, and their exciting bYronism never failed to fascinate a movement which, after all, professed a theoretical allegiance to revolution, consPiracy, some kind of liberty in matters not immediately nefarious to party discipline and some degree of toleration where economy was Oot concerned. Needless to say that radical

IL was the enemy of Throne, Church, Sword and all those other symbols of established authority which had unwittingly given socialists so powerful support in their practical work.

Arrived at power, themselves busy in social security and welfare reform, the socialists, who felt they owed their supporters a complete philosophy, filled the blanks in their programme with the tenets of radical beralism. The party 'intellectuals' devoted 1,31,1emselves to the work; they usually had to

e stored away somewhere when elections were nn, but afterwards they emerged to

Make use of the powers granted en bloc to ttheir party on the strength of its doings With he important things in life, such as old age Pensions or collective agreements. The eflucational system, family law, penal law and similar fields not too closely connected with economic welfare were the principal

playgrounds of these intellectuals. The habit of conformism, once contracted, seems to have a propensity to spread, regardless of its actual contents. Where it is sufficiently strong, and where the market is too small to admit opposing conformisms, it becomes all-pervading. In press, radio, television, and increasingly in the completely state-run educational system, the revolutionary tenets of aggressive radicalism became, from the 'forties onwards, the official creed of Sweden with the same complete efficiency as characterises 'rationality' in matters concerning the economic aspects of public life. And this, it would seem, is the present dilemma of Sweden: how can the orthodox creed of houyhnhnmdom in everyday life and in practical decisions be reconciled with the equally orthodox creed of yahooship in the loftier realms of ideas? Can the two conformisms exist together?