Design by Jesse Turri

Einar Gerhardsen, Prime Minister of Norway for most of the period between 1945 and 1965, once claimed there were two principal lessons he had learned from his time in government.

…there will always be conflicts in a democratic society: between workers and employers, between the majority and groups who view themselves as marginalized, or between individuals and groups who simply disagree over how society ought to be organized.

…social democracy is a political project without an ultimate aim. Social democrats will never see their work completed. Instead, new challenges must be faced with the knowledge that there is no Utopia at the end of the road, only the prospect of incremental improvements and gradual reform.

In this, Gerhardsen’s sentiment echoes the words of German political theorist and social democratic politician Eduard Bernstein, who at the close of the nineteenth century famously said that ‘the final destination, whatever is is, is nothing to me, the movement is everything’.

These passages come from the introduction of The Nordic Model of Social Democracy by Nik Brandal, Øivind Bratberg and Dag Einar Thorsen. If one is interested in the type(s) of social democracy found in the Nordic countries, as I am, this book seems like a good resource.

Tags:economicsgovernmentsocial democracythe nordic model