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Wicksell, Myrdal and Swedish Intellectual Thought on Inequality

The ‘Swedish Model’ of the welfare state was born from a confluence of geographic, cultural, political, and economic factors in the immediate post-war period. Its intellectual history, however, lay in a much longer tradition that originated with the economist Knut Wicksell (1851 – 1926). A radical and progressive thinker on issues of inequality, social justice and the role of the state, Wicksell had a profound influence on Swedish economic thought. His concerns carried over to the next generation of Swedish economists, including Gunnar Myrdal (1898 – 1987) – Nobel Prize winning economist, public intellectual, architect of the Swedish welfare state, and technocrat of postwar international economic order. This paper takes Wicksell as its starting point, considering the intellectual history of Myrdal’s views on inequality and the welfare state as a ‘middle way’, a ‘system of social morals.’ Like Wicksell, Myrdal initially conceived of inequality as a national problem. However, Myrdal’s Beyond the Welfare State (1960) extended Swedish intellectual thought on domestic inequality to issues of international economic development. Myrdal argued that contemporary welfare programs were too narrow and irrationally nationalistic, concluding that what was needed was a welfare world, not a welfare state.