Liberty and freedom according to Responsible liberals and SocialDemocrats, a difference of opinion

In the US we are now seeing the debate that Sweden had in the 1970’s. Should you have a Big Government, statist state or should you keep the system as it is but put into place legislative frameworks for the citizens to make their own choices within these frameworks?

I am extremely disturbed that the US seems to be going the way of Sweden in the 1970’s. It led to disaster both from the point of economic power and prosperity but also from the point of personal liberty.

Up until 1970 the political opposition in Sweden, mainly Folkpartiet, the Responsible Liberal Party, had been in fierce opposition to socializing polices. However the SocialDemocrats change tactics and abandoned pure socialism to what Nobel Laureate and party leader Bertil Ohlin called "central directive and regulation socialism", in the US it is called Statism.

Because of 1968 all parties en Sweden became radicalized and the opposition stopped. Sweden’s decline started, taxes were raised by 50 % overnight and the Public Sector tripled in size.

Sweden was in 1970 the world’s third strongest economy and we declined to the 17th, our welfare system could not be sustained any longer in the 90’s and small and medium sized business owners had been eradicated, Sweden has the fewest small and medium sized business owners in all of the developed countries

Do not go there!

Libertarian Paternalist, a responsible classic liberal


From Bertil Ohlin’s Memoirs “Socialistisk skordetid kom bort”("The Socialists crop was never harvested") 1940-1951 Bonniers 1975.

Bertil Ohlin was not only a party leader but also a professor of Economics as well as Nobel Laureate. He was the founder of The Stockholm School of Economics.

In particular, responsible liberalism saw it as a danger to the liberty of its citizens the development of the growth of an increasingly centralized political power. The SocialDemocrats [Swedish Big Government statists,] were always adherents of such practices that increased the political influence.

Only when a very strong case could be presented could we in Folkpartiet [Swedish Responsible liberal party] agree to such measures. We preferred makings laws that put a framework in place and with full freedom within this framework. The SocialDemocrats always wanted to increase what they called “the Societies influence” and minimized the individual’s right to self-determination both in private as well as in business life. Instead of the old "nationalization policy, pure socialism" we now saw on the horizon the beginnings of a new "central directive and regulation socialism" [In the US called Statism] emerging which, however - it must be stressed – was strongly opposed by us and the other parties in opposition and only developed very slowly after 1948.