Sweden

on the World Today

SWEDEN, which lies in the same latitudes as Alaska, is somewhat larger than the United Kingdom and about twice the size of the state of Minnesota, One thousand miles long from the north of Lapland, well within the Arctic Circle, to the small port of Ystad on the southern tip of Skåne, yet averaging only 150 miles in width between the Norwegian border and the Baltic Sea, Sweden, it. is said in jest, is like some of its male inhabitants: long and gangling, all bone and no fat.

The fertile golden wheat-plains of Skåne in the south soon give way to the upland pasture and woodlands of central Sweden before the austere Nordic pattern of forests, rivers, lakes, and rock outcrop asserts itself. For every acre of arable land them are one of water and six of forest. The spine of mountains which forms the frontier with Norway is the only visible portion of the mass of rock which lies just below the surface soil of Sweden.

The industrious Swedes

From this seemingly unpromising material 7 million industrious Swedes have created an enviable prosperity which has given them the highest standard of living in Europe. The Swedes themselves are modest ahout their progress, though in conversation with visitors from abroad they do say, and with some pride, that there are no longer any poor people in Sweden.

The progressive Sweden of today is a complete contrast to the poverty-stricken Sweden of sixty to seventy years ago. During the half century prior to World War I about a million Swedes emigrated to America. In the 1880s, a decade of agricultural failure, no less than 347,000 left the old country, with a peak of some 100,000 in 1887—88. In most cases it was sheer desperation which drove the Swedes to America, and the great Swedish sculptor Carl Milles symbolically depicted this in a monument showing poor Swedes emigrating on the back of a whale.

Industrialization, which came late to Sweden because of the almost complete absence of coal deposits within the country, together with the commercial exploitation of forests and iron ore started to change the picture at the turn of the century. But it is only in the last two decades that there has been a rapid shift in population. As late as 1938 more people were engaged in agriculture than in industry. Then a drift, away from the land set in at an alarming rate, and the rapid influx of people into the cities and towns has brought about a housing shortage which will not be satisfactorily solved for years.

Today, out of the economically active population of more than 3 million, about 600,000 workers are engaged in agriculture. Nevertheless Swedish farms not only provide sufficient food to feed the country but even have a surplus for export. This has been accomplished through mechanization, which has improved agricultural productivity by approximately 80 per cent during the post-war decade; there are now 100,000 modern tractors in use, five times the pre-war number.

Oil shortage

The one snag in this seemingly perfect position is that Sweden must import all its fuel oil, except for 100,000 metric tons produced annually from the shale deposits at Kvarnstorp in the central section of the country. Last year the entire Swedish economy needed 8.6 million metric tons of oil, but was able to buy only 6 million tons as a result of the blocking of the Suez Canal. As Sweden had converted to oil for domestic purposes as well as industrial purposes, the hygiene-minded Swedes found themselves without hot water throughout the month of December.

The Swedish government has been obliged to ban weekend motoring indefinitely, and has sent 3500 men to join the UN forces in the Middle East. In these circumstances the Swedish lack of enthusiasm for power politics is quite understandable.

Sweden’s lakes, waterfalls, and swift-flowing rivers provide a means of transport for the millions of logs felled in its forests and a source of hydroelectric power for its industries and homes. If this great potential could be fully utilized, Sweden would have enough electric power to dispense with imported fuels. By the end of 1954 only one third of the potential had been harnessed. But at the present rate of development all available resources should be utilized by 1980.

Of Sweden’s 970 hydroelectric power stations, the two largest are underground—Harsprånget on the Luleälven, a river in Lapland, with generators second in size to Grand Coulee in the U.S.A., and Kilforsen on the Fjällsjöälven. These two power stations could continue production in the midst of the heaviest; air attack. British atomic scientists arc now working with the Swedes so that atomic power will be readily available when Sweden runs out of waterfalls.

Bigger and better

Thanks to cheap hydroelectric power Sweden’s modern, efficient industries are expanding and their productivity is steadily increasing. A decade after the end of World War II, Western Europe was producing 60 per cent more goods than before the war; whereas for Sweden the increase was 87 per cent. True, some countries can show greater expansion, but even before the war the output of Sweden’s industries was relatively high.

Timber pulp, paper, and special quality steels are the traditional Swedish industries. Lately the engineering industry has expanded considerably, and its share of Sweden’s exports has risen from a pre-war 15 per cent to almost 25 per cent. Sweden is the third largest European provider of ships, machinery, tools, and office equipment, ranking next to the I’nited Kingdom and Germany; and its power plant and specialized machinery (as widely divergent, ns rock drills and dairy machinery) have helped to put post-war Europe on its feet.

Since the war, real national income has increased on an average 3 ½ per cent each year, and the rise in real wages for industrial workers has been approximately 70 per cent since 1939.

The improvement m individual living standards is reflected in a number of ways. Swedish homes are well equipped and well furnished, often in the tasteful but expensive modern Swedish style which has become highly fashionable in both England and America. Sweden leads Europe in numbers per capita of cars, telephones, and radios, and Stockholm is reported to have more movie theaters in proportion to its population of three quarters of a million than any other city.

The welfare state

Political power is held by the Social Democrats headed by the Socialist intellectual Tage Erlander, who succeeded to the premiership when the well-loved Per Allan Hansson died in office in 1946. Per Hansson guided Sweden throughout the war, when one slip would have resulted in a Nazi invasion.

The Social Democrats regularly poll nearly half the total votes and have governed the country, either alone or in coalition, since 1932. They closely resemble the British Labor Party, and under their aegis the Swedish social welfare state has matured.

The development of social welfare in Sweden has been more gradual than has generally been supposed. It was only last year that the state began to pay citizens’ doctors bills, and then not the full amount. The Swedish scheme does not even touch dental treatment — a provision which Aneurin Bevan wrote into the British Health Service eight years ago.

Perhaps because the Swedish welfare state is taken so much for granted, and undoubtedly because of the increasing number of technocrats swelling the middle class in Sweden, the Social Democrats have lost the absolute majority they had in the Riksdag in 1944 and have been obliged to form a coalition government with the bourgeois Farmers’ Party.

For a number of complicated domestic reasons the Farmers’ Party did rather badly in the general election and the Conservatives gained ten seats at its expense, but as the longheralded Liberal Party revival once again failed to materialize and the Socialists maintained their position, the coalition still had a definite and workable majority.

The election result was forcefully summed up by the Stockholm correspondent of an English journal as follows: “Despite a lot of wishful thinking by the Swedish center and right-wing parties, Swedish voters once again denied the mandate to govern the country to an untried, untrained, undisciplined, unwieldy and, as it turned out to be, unbelievable coalition of the Swedish Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, and have stuck to the strange but workable coalition of Social Democrats and bourgeois Farmers’ Party.”

How much privateenter prise?

Although the Social Democrats have been in power for two decades, the vast bulk of the economy is in private hands. As in the rest of Europe, the post office, the telegraph, the telephone, and the railways are state industries, but they were made state industries by the Conservatives long before the Socialists ever became a force in Swedish politics, since this was accepted as the appropriate way of running these industries.

The present government’s intention to nationalize LuossavaaraKiirunavaara AB (popularly known as LKAB), the company which works the rich iron-ore deposits in Arctic Lapland, is a business as well as a political decision, and the government’s right to act dates back to the financial agreement made with the company by a Conservative government in 1907.

Private enterprise produces 93 per cent of the total Swedish value of output and has the services of 91 percent of the workers in paid employment, but it does not have the out-and-out, dominant position which private enterprise has in the United States. Sweden’s economy is a Keynesian compromise with a strong Swedish accent. Control of investment without stifling initiative is its means; full employment is its end, leaving as large a scope for the individual as almost anyone could wish.

Furthermore, the powerful consumer coöperative movement Kooperativa Förbundet, which engages in extensive production, can curb the excesses of private enterprise should they arise. In one famous ease the KF went into the production of rubber overshoes (a necessity in Sweden, where snow is on the ground for three to four months of the year) and brought the price down by two kronor (38c) a pair. More recently the KF has established its own chocolate factory. Even the hint that the KF might outer the field has boon known to bring down the price’s of certain commodities.

Despite the creeping inflation and the uncomfortably large deficit in the budget presented at the opening of the Riksdag in January, the Swede’s have no real cause for alarm, for their internal economy is sound. Inflation is general throughout the world, and the Swedish krona has fared no worse than the American dollar or British sterling in recent years. Sweden’s present boom looks more assured than the rest of Europe’s, and there seems to be no foreseeable threat to the high Swedish standard of living except perhaps an American recession.

This makes Sweden a very attractive export market. The United States supplies 10 per cent of Sweden’s imports but takes only 6 per cent of Swedish exports. European countries compete very keenly for the Swedish market, and Swedish buyers have become very choosy, as certain British auto manufacturers have been dismayed to discover. Despite Sweden’s proximity to the U.S.S.R. and the Soviet bloc, 95 per cent of Sweden’s trade is with the West, but after a steady decline in trade in recent, years Eastern Europe’s prospects of increasing its trade with Sweden are now considerably brighter.

Another indication of the high Swedish standard of living is the fact that Swedes spend 7 per cent of their income on foreign travel — the largest proportion in Europe. They are also bringing many tourists to Sweden. Svenska Turisttralikfbrbundet, officially translated as the Swedish Tourist Traffic Association, has with the infinitesimal funds at its disposal done a remarkable job in bringing increasing numbers of foreign visitors to Sweden.

Stockholm is undoubtedly one of the world’s most beautiful cities, and the Swedish countryside has a charm of its own; Sweden should thus prove attractive for the tourist willing to venture beyond the conventional routes. Since English is almost a second language to the Swedes, language difficulties are less than in some other European countries.

Sweden’s neutrality

Defense expenditure amounts to $425 million annually and accounts for one quarter of the budget and 5 percent of Swedish national income. Without this burden the Swedish Standard of living would rise even higher. Tho Swedes are well aware that war is the one thing which would bring a sudden end to the present prosperity.

The Swedish attempt to negotiate a Scandinavian defense pact was torpedoed in 1949 by the U.S. refusal to supply armaments unless the countries joined NATO. (This requirement, did bring Denmark and Norway into NATO, but was instrumental in enabling the Soviets to sign a fifty-year friendship pact with Finland.)

Except for one solitary newspaper and a certain section of military brass, the government’s neutralist, alliance-free policy now commands the complete support of the nation. In a world divided by the struggle between two power blocs, Sweden, situated right between the blocs, is determined to go it alone.

Sweden’s neutrality is no mere passive affair. The Royal Swedish Air Force, which ranks with China’s as the world’s fourth largest, is a remarkably efficient deterrent to any aggressor with its front-line strength of 1200 fighters and lighter bombers (Sweden Inis no heavy bombers), most of which —including the new “Lance,”a heavy jet capable of breaking the sound barrier — are of Swedish design and production.

In the event of a war between the East and West power blocs, either side might consider invading the Scandinavian peninsula in order to protect its flanks. However, Sweden’s chances of remaining neutral in such a struggle are better than might be supposed at first thought. Sweden has let it be known that it will meet any invasion, whether from the west or the east, with armed force. Though it cannot defend itself alone indefinitely, it could inflict sufficient damage to make any aggressor very seriously consider whether the attempt would be worth the cost.

Sweden is paying quite a high material price for the neutrality in which it so earnestly believes; and if Swedes are not hearing the cost cheerfully, at least it must be said that they are bearing it, and bearing it alone.