Swedish and German Liberalism by Åberg Martin

Author:Åberg, Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nordic Academic Press
Published: 2012-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

The winding road to destruction

During the First World War and the outbreak of the revolution in Russia, food rationing and shortages led to social unrest and political crisis in Sweden. In March 1917, at the same time as the first phase of the revolution culminated and the Tsar abdicated, one conservative cabinet replaced another after fierce opposition from socialists and liberals. On the domestic scene the social democrats had gathered strength during the war, but nonetheless split in May 1917; one faction remained reformist whereas the other, the left-wing faction of the old party, included the core of what later on (1921) became the Swedish Communist Party. As the 1917 general elections approached, demands for the introduction of universal suffrage increased. The elections resulted in victory for the social democrats, but also in a recovery for the liberals, who had declined in the previous, 1914, elections. Consequently, the social democrats and the liberals joined forces and formed a coalition government.

The latter were in for some nasty surprises, though. As the 1920 elections had turned out to be a political parenthesis, the 1921 elections, viz. the first in which universal suffrage for men and women was applied, became the more important. To the liberals–although the Karlstads-tidningen among other newspapers tried to refute this –the immediate threat was that of being cut to pieces in the struggle between the social democrats and the conservatives; thus, the ‘brute clash of interests between class-based parties [simply] was a reflection of the [recent] war between nations’.79 In reality, the onslaught came from within the ranks of their own party.

The main competition for voters came from the social democrats. But the tool with which to match this challenge–the party organization–was slowly crumbling. For one thing, the matter of prohibition continued to put a strain on the efforts to coordinate policies. Teetotalism had culminated in terms of organized members around 1910 (Lundkvist 1977), but within ‘Frisinnade landsföreningen’ itself, teetotallers together with nonconformists continued as a formidable and, as it would prove, subversive lobby. Furthermore, the liberals had suffered from yet other internal conflicts since 1914, one of which was on defence issues and military expenditure. In connection to the elections that year, a right-wing faction actually left and eventually joined the Conservative Party. Finally, Karl Staaff had died in October 1915. With his replacement by Nils Edén, a professor from Uppsala and leader of the liberal deputies in parliament, the party entered a severe leadership crisis. Staaff had guided the party wisely and paid more than lip service to its grass roots in an attempt to maintain a balance (Johansson 1980: 22–25). Although skilful, Edén lacked these qualities. He failed to keep together a movement and an organization which, to follow Rönblom (1929: 96–97), more than anything else was a cross-class coalition of ideas.

Compared to Staaff, Edén was more elitist, in the sense that he was much less prone to let the party conventions and, thus, the grass roots, decide on matters pertaining to the orientation of

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