Welfare State

The Swedish Model has its roots in social engineering and the rationalisation movement brought across to Europe from America after the Kaiser War. The Swedish unions were sceptical to this new wonder cure for industrial productivity. But their objections were not addressed at the methods themselves...which any ordinary person immediately saw as dehumanising...but at the shift of power embedded in the new methods.

Scientific Management transferred responsibility for 'thinking' to a central planning department. Workers were to return to the dark ages and become once again dumb machines. Nonetheless the influence of the rationalisation movement pervaded society, not just in Sweden, but in Europe and America too.

As late as 1966, for instance, Cambridge University was still including Taylor's 1920s classic 'Scientific Management' in its compulsory course for engineering undergraduates on industrial management...at a time when Volvo was busy experimenting with 'people-oriented' rather than 'task-oriented' work organisation...yet another example of the sound thinking emanating from the home of the Swedish Model.

The Swedish unions lost the argument and as a result the oft-disputed Paragraph 34 was included in the Saltsjöbaden Agreement, reserving for management the right to determine the breakdown of work in the work place. But perhaps more seriously they and the Social Democrats also 'lost the plot'. The horse had bolted...and only a few philosophers had noticed.

Scientific Management still permeates the whole of Swedish society, from the factory to the office to the schoolroom. And in particular it found its way into the Swedish Welfare State. But Sweden was not a special case. The whole of Europe went for a welfare state after the Hitler War and all of them were manifestations of Taylor's scientific management. Some key dates in the build-up of the Swedish Welfare State are:
 

There was only one hitch in the whole process. That was in 1951. The ATP pension scheme was at the heart of the dispute.

The Social Democrats were venturing into forbidden territory. Money and pensions were the domain of the money power. So the tories demanded a private scheme. Who won is anybody's guess. There was even a referendum.

But apart from this little skirmish all went very smoothly and the Social Democrats gave the Swedish people the welfare state they had promised them.

This too is seen as a characteristic of the Swedish Model.