> In the case of Sweden for instance, the rise of the welfare state can
> be tracked down to the early 1930s. The Social Democrats had been in
> office for a time in the 1920s but were swept out of power by the end
> of that decade. Then Sweden got hit by the Great Depression. As a
> consequence, strikes broke out, civil unrest developed, and for a
> while, the country seemed to be tottering on the brink of civil war.
> Then, a general election was held and the Social Democrats made a big
> comeback. Many of the younger members of the party made no secret of
> the fact that they sought inspiration from the October Revolution. The
> leaders of the Social Democrats, however, were mostly moderates, and
> they were able to broker a compromise with the country's capitalist
> class. In return for promising to keep Sweden's economy in private
> hands, the Social Democrats were pretty much given free reign to
> construct, what over time, was an increasingly generous welfare state.
> The existence and example of the Soviet Union, which was as I said
> before a close neighbor, was lost on no one. Most likely, the kind of
> political compromise that the Social Democrats were able to broker
> with the capitalists would not have been possible without the
> existence of the Soviet Union.
I think the opposite argument could be made.
The potential threat of revolution existed in Sweden before the Bolshevik revolution; it didn't suddenly materialize in October 1917. The year 1917 was not the year of one revolution in Russia, it was a year of many attempted revolutions in Europe, one of which succeeded. Capitalists didn't need to see a successful revolution in Russia to understand that successful revolutions were a threatening possibility in many places, including in Sweden.
On the other hand, the Soviet Union did offer a concrete lesson of what could happen *if* there was a revolution -- i.e. the elimination of democracy, establishment of a dictatorship. This negative example had a real effect on many people on the left, especially in countries like Sweden where the left was deeply attached to democratic freedoms, making them *more* hesitant to support revolutionary action.
SA