but here, alone among the small democracies of Europe, it recruited a following that seriously

weakened the nation when the Second World War struck.

The Socialist Record in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark

In the Scandinavian countries to the north, the interest of foreigners was chiefly aroused by the
experience of Socialist government. Here, as opposed to the major countries of Western
Europe, where interwar socialism produced little but disappointment and failure, democrats of
Socialist sympathies could point to a record of administrative competence - and substantial
success in meeting economic difficulties.
In the 1920s, Socialist parties had attained power for the first time in all these countries
and had become used to the responsibilities of office, but it was not until the Great Depression
that they came to dominate political life. During these years they launched a series of
experiments that gradually fused in the public mind with the wider image of a Scandinavian
way."
In the northern countries, socialism from the beginning had more to build on and was
more congenial to local tradition than was true in the larger nations to the south. For Socialists
everywhere, the crucial dilemma was reconciling collectivist economic philosophy with devotion
to democracy and the rights of the individual. In France or Britain, Germany or Italy, these two
goals frequently seemed opposed. In Scandinavia there was no such conflict of values. The
individualism on which the Norwegians or the Swedes prided themselves had been
accompanied by a strong emphasis on community action. A severe climate, a relatively sparse
population, and a high degree of social homogeneity had encouraged an attitude that combined,
in a fashion that was unique in Europe, a robust sense of personal freedom with a talent for
working in common. The result had been the strongest movement of agricultural and
consumers' cooperatives in the worlda movement that eventually came to include about half
the population of Sweden and more than a quarter of the inhabitants of Norway and Denmark.
In addition, the Socialist parties of these countrieswhich resembled the British Labour
party more than they conformed to any continental patternwere notably undogmatic. They did
not insist in doctrinaire fashion on the nationalization of basic enterprise; they preferred, where
possible, to establish some mixed scheme for joint governmental and private regulation of the
economy. The same was true of the trade unions, Far from confronting capital with uniform
hostility and distrust, labor leaders were accustomed to settling their difficulties with employers
through semiofficial procedures of arbitration and conciliation.
Thus, when the Great Depression struck, the Scandinavian nations were better
prepared than were the nations to the south to deal in coherent fashion with the economic and
social problems it raised. Working from the already existing tradition of common action, the
Socialists substantially enlarged the sphere of government intervention in the economy. The
Swedes, for example, concentrated from the beginning on maintaining purchasing powera
goal that the major nations of the Western world accepted only gradually, as the orthodox
solutions of retrenchment and deflation revealed their inadequacy. The Swedish government
was not afraid to borrow heavily in order to main
208 The Great Depression, 19291935