"Farewell to the working class"? The success and failure of social democratic labor politics in Sweden and Britain, 1900s-1980s, in a comparative historical perspective.

Abstract

This dissertaion examines why and how Swedish social democratic labor politics have succeeded while British social democratic labor politics have failed. The dominant interpretations of labor politics centered on the voluntary class struggles of Swedish labor and the structural constraints on British labor. That is, heroic working class struggles produced successful Swedish labor politics, and unsurmountable structural constraints brought about the failure of British labor politics. I examine different historical moments for British success and Swedish failure and find out what was possible. For this I examine and compare specific strategies and politics of the Swedish Social Democrats and British Labour over the century. I argue that varying labor politics are dependent both on political and ideological practices and on the logic of capital. My questions are why and how British Labour's strategies and policies failed to mobilize working class and extend the Labour Party's class base to the white-collar class; and why its policies could not rescue Britain's economic decline. Surely there were historical opportunities to achieve these objectives. Successful Swedish labor politics have been dependent on the Swedish Social Democrats' capability to make coalition with various strata of classes and fulfilling the requirements of capital accumulation and maintaining the balance of class forces.