(From Stuart Wilks's "Class Compromise and the International Economy: The Rise and Fall of Swedish Social Democracy" in the Spring 1996 Capital and Class. He makes an important point here that I don't think has been grasped by a left that continues to see Sanders and Obama before him (much less so obviously) as latter-day FDR's. Although the article is about Sweden, it can just as easily apply to the USA. Basically, the 1930s were a period in which economic nationalism persisted and thus created conditions for working class resistance such as the Flint sit-down strikes, etc. Post 1973, the workers have much less leverage and thus are in no position to provide that "pressure from below" that the Nation Magazine, Progressives for Obama et al banked on.)
Wilks: To understand the full extent of change in contemporary Swedish politics it is therefore necessary to consider how recent events have undermined the historical foundations of the Swedish social democratic model. In this sense, social democracy can only be understood in terms of its relationship to capitalism and the Swedish social democratic model is regarded here as a system related to a period of history bounded by two major crises of global capitalism. The first of these crises, in the 1930s, established social democratic class compromise as a national response to the threat posed by global economic uncertainty. By contrast, the second of these crises, from 1973 to the present day, necessitated an unravelling of this national class compromise as a response to the globalization of international capitalism. Whereas in the 1930s, the conditions of the economic crisis benefited social democrats (Garrett 1993) and created a compromise favourable to the labour movement, the undermining of this compromise during the more recent crisis has resulted primarily from a shift of power to capital which has occurred as part of the process of globalization. The demise of the terms of agreement of this class compromise represents the most fundamental challenge to social democracy in Sweden today. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
