Rehn–Meidner model

To undermine administrations.

The most famous example is in Sweden in the 1970s and 80s when they proposed the Meidner Plan, which was the most ambitious plan to socialize investment.

Business actively organized to actually thwart what the Swedish unions were trying to do.

Another very famous example is the Allende government in Chile.

But we've seen time and again that when this sort of thing is attempted, capitalists see it happening and bring their considerable wealth and power to bear against it.

The most ambitious Democratic Socialist plan ever attempted was Sweden's Meidner Plan, which I talked about in Star Trek Into Socialism.

The idea was that the government would levy a tax, and with the money from this tax, they would buy stock on the Swedish stock market and give it to a fund managed by a group of trade unions.

This way, the government would gradually give possession of companies directly to the workers.

And, you know, if you're a socialist, you have issues with this.

And so there was-- there's always kind of a question of, so what do you wanna do about it, you know? And like you could say, well, socialism, but, but what, what? Like what, what does that mean? And so, as Sweden had this plan in the seventies called the Meidner Plan, and it was essentially a version of the Social Wealth Fund plan, and they were going to basically require companies to issue shares directly to these wage earner funds.

And over the course of twenty-five or thirty years, the share issuances would Dilute out existing owners, and these funds would come to own like 51% of all the corporations in Sweden.

And so that's like a, it's a thing that, I don't know, seems to looms lo- loom large in a certain sort of market socialist niche, which is great, you know, admittedly kind of a small thing.

But if you're in this world, the Meidner plan, the Meidner plan, the Meidner plan.

Oh, and the failed Meidner plan, and Meidner ended up writing a, an, an article in a journal said why the Meidner plan failed and whatever.

Like it was a whole, like what a l- great hope we once had.

And so the reason I labeled that Norway's triumph is because right before that, I go through Sweden's failure.