Model or Utopia?: the Meidner plan and Sweden in Italy's political and trade unionist debate (1975–1984)

Abstract

Between 1975 and 1983 the Swedish labour movement discussed a proposal to establish wage earner funds that would gradually shift the ownership in medium to large companies from employers to workers. This article starts by shedding light on the genesis of the proposal in the 1960s and 1970s and the reactions it provoked in Swedish society. Focus then switches to how the Meidner plan was understood in Italy in a time of pronounced social conflict marked, on one hand, by the redefinition of the relationship between trade unions and politics and, on the other hand, by soaring opposition among the various trade unions and the growing distance between the two major leftist parties. These divisions reverberated on the ways the wage earner funds – in their various versions – were understood by the organizations of the Italian labour movement; the assessment of the plan's feasibility and its applicability to the Italian case came to reflect conflicting views on industrial and economic democracy and on the relationship between Nordic social-democracies and Italian reformism.