The Swedish Social Democratic Party (Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Arbetarparti, SAP), founded in 1889, is often considered a quintessential case of social democracy. For a long time, the international literature idealized Swedish social democracy, which, as a state-carrying form of reformist socialism during the post-war age, appeared to have a near hegemonic position.1 In fact it only had a single majority in the election of 1968 and has always needed to construct social alliances to remain in power, although the face of these has changed significantly from the historic compromises around the ‘people’s home’ to today’s minority government and the so-called January deal, which has so far seen social democracy accept yet another batch of privatization and substantial tax relief. Why did SAP achieve this iconic status in global observations of social democracy? It appeared, to observers in both social science and history writing, that the Swedish social democrats had better than others managed to resolve key ideological dilemmas in the relationship between capitalism and socialism, and that the party had found a distinctive ideological approach to the welfare state in reformism. Its welfare statist project was not altogether different from other global variations of organized capitalism, for instance, German Soziale Marktwirtschaft or even French Gaullism, but there remained an idealistic appeal to Swedish social democracy as deeply egalitarian, pragmatic yet principled, and both national in their preoccupation with the Swedish model and rejections of Europe, but also capable of profound expressions of solidarity with the Global South. The party’s economic pragmatism was viewed as a success, an element in a successful ideological strategy of building power resources while also channelling the resources of the growth economy towards the working class.2 At the same time, this pragmatism has paved the route for an embrace of neo-liberalism in more recent decades.3