This scheme was the consequence of radical Swedish politicians, the Socialdemocrats, that tried to take over Kamprad’s own creation by pure theft.
The end goal was to take over companies and be owned by the unions.
This had disastrous consequences for Sweden, many companies left, one was IKEA. It created an hostile climate, instead of the previous decades of consensus between buiness and politics it created an antagonistic atmosphere.
The Social democrats lost their first election in 40 years.
The system was scrapped in the early nineties.
Kamprad got paranoid over the realization that politicians and bureaucrats could take over his life work and thus he moves to Switzerland and then created this non-profit to make sure it always remained in his family.
Kamprad was a fascist that started IKEA with financing from another fascist, and workers did all the work. What exactly do you imagine he contributed?
And why are you misrepresenting the article you linked? The idea to transfer some of the profits from large corporations into union managed funds came from the largest trade union confederation, not "radical Swedish politicians". Social democrats aren't radical, they're reformists, and the reactionary response to the proposal was arguably much more radical than trying to herd it through parliament.
The Wikipedia article, both the Swedish and the English version, is fuzzy about the details how it worked, they took the company’s own money and use that to buy the company’s shares by forcing them to sell by equity issuance. Goal was to take over private companies and create socialism.
Social democrats were reformist but became radicals during the leadership of Olof Palme. This was not the only one radical thing that they did, another was the famous Pomperipossa taxation where some Swedes payed more than 100% in taxes. This led to other Swedes leaving the country, like the famous movie maker and director Ingmar Bergman.
As I wrote in another comment, this had disastrous consequences for Sweden, large companies left and we went from a consensus culture around business and politics (Saltsjöbadsandan) to a something much more antagonistic.
This radicalized the right wing in Sweden to become neoliberal for many decades to come, which led to other negative consequences.
Kamprad was adjacent to Nysvenska rörelsen, a lifelong friend of it's founder Per Engdahl, who also supplied the initial funding for IKEA.
It's insane to claim that Olof Palme caused a shift away from parliamentary reformism.
And no, we've never had anyone pay "more than 100% in taxes". That's a myth, based on Astrid Lindgrens pretty weird propaganda story about it.
The antagonism between labour and capital is inherent, and you either apply force to subdue the exploited party to this conflict, or you negotiate a deal or parliamentary decision. The latter was the core of Saltsjöbadsavtalet, the reformist position represented by the trade union confederation and the Social Democrats. The radical position would be to form militias and engage in militant revolutionary activities, something which the strong reformist movement managed to guard us from.
The right and the fascists didn't think that was enough, however.
It's absurd to blame the victims of fascism for the rise of fascism instead of those who gain from it.
As for the reasoning behind the löntagarfonder, it's quite obviously immoral for people to become rich and powerful by disenfranchising and exploiting other people. Which is how late modern corporations work, you have owners that take the value produced by other people for themselves. The right agrees that this is a correct description, which is why they made sure pensions and wages have been invested in stock markets and investment funds, so every worker is now forced to participate in the casino.
You could disagree with the particular construct of löntagarfonder, but you would need to be very religious to claim that nature or some god made it good and right that the rich get to keep generational wealth and persist in disenfranchisement and exploitation of other people. It's close to the idea of divine right of kings.
It doesn't matter what Kamprad's political opinions was in his youth, using socialism to take over private companies as the Social democrats did is still wrong regardless. Are you going to call the family Rausing (creator of Tetra Pak) for fascist as well because the didn't want union bureaucrats to take over their creation?
In what way would union bureaucrats be better stewards than business owners? We had union bureaucrat recently who ran the country, Stefan Löfven, probably the worst prime minister in history.
Social democrats during the leadership of Olof Palme were definitely radicals. During this era they expanded the government and increased taxation massively, which led to a high currency devaluation, i.e made the Swedes poorer, typical socialism. As Olof Palme's successor Göran Persson said it, something like ~ Social democrats always puts democracy before socialism, Olof Palme did the opposite ~. Fitting end that Palme got murdered like something you hear about from 3rd World Marxist kleptocracies.
More than 100% in taxes is 100% true, here you can read all about it
https://timbro.se/smedjan/den-sanna-sagan-om-pomperipossa-i-...
That is why the Government reacted and made a change to the tax legislation within two months, why would they if it wasn't over 100%? Even the most radical couldn't defend this absurdity.
Saltsjöbadsavtalet was not about parliamentary decision, it was about consensus between employers and employees, which led to the Golden years. A consensus that the Social democrats broke when they passed LAS in the seventies. (Also Social democrats is again abandoning the Swedish model by accepting that EU can pass minimal wage legislation)
Without Kamprad there would be no IKEA, thus nowhere for workers to work. That is the thing to understand, Kamprad was one in a billion, radicals exists in the thousands, useless of course because they don't create anything of value.
Why everything is tied up around the stock market is because of neoliberalism, a consequence of the right wing's radicalization as I described earlier, typical for neoliberalism and marxism is that they both believe in printing money out of thin air and then speculate with it. Who benefits? Not the poor of course, it is the receivers of that printed money, for neoliberalism that would be bankers and capitalists and in marxism that would be bureaucrats and politicians, as it was in the Soviet union.
It made a solid impression on IKEA as a company. It's why unions have never been able to form there, it's why the company 'culture' has a distinctly parasocial 'family'-character, it's why the trust invests heavily in keeping refugees in desert camps, it's why Kamprad was disgusted by the idea to pay taxes, it's why IKEA does its sourcing in countries like Russia, Romania and so on, and avoids ecological destruction in Sweden.
Your link confirms what I wrote earlier. Maybe you know someone who could help you translate it?
You're using radical in some highly personal sense, in common parlance it means you're trying to cause social and political change through means like civil disobedience, direct action, mutual aid, militant revolution, rather than parliamentary deliberation and compromise.
Palme was likely murdered by the fascist Gladio/Stay Behind network. So yes, it's how the political hegemony you support usually does it. Either buy the mafia and make money from drugs, or hire upper class murderers that are already financed by their exploitation of workers.
Kamprad had some luck and Engdahl had some money. He wasn't special, Sweden has been lenient with fascists and oligarchs during all of modernity.
It is of course fine to question IKEA's business practices, myself is critical of many, personally I'm all in favour of unions as a union member myself, what is not okay is for bolsjeviks to steal companies by using the force of the government and undermine the entire economic model of society in a similar fashion what happened to the kulaks.
> Your link confirms what I wrote earlier.
No, read again, it confirms that Astrid Lindgren payed 101.06% in taxes. And Astrid Lindgren was not the only one affected by this extreme taxation.
Confirmed by this report https://cms.ratio.se/app/uploads/2014/11/den_svenska_modelle...
Marginalskatten var runt mitten av 1970-talet mycket hög (se figur 4); den högsta
marginalskatten var i mitten av 1970-talet runt 87 procent. Beaktades även
förmögenhetsskatten kunde marginalskatten överstiga 100 procent för kapitalinkomster
och för rörelsekapital kunde marginalskatten också överstiga 100 procent om hänsyn
togs till både inkomstskatt och egenavgifter (Grosskopf & Rabe, 1991).
Detta uppmärksammades av Astrid Lindgren och föranledde henne att skriva en saga om
Pomperipossa (Pomperipossa i Monismanien, 1976) som levde i ett
fantasiland (Monismanien), framställt som en idyll i mångt och mycket men
där Pomperipossa tvingades att betala mer i skatt än vad hon tjänade (102 procent).
Astrid Lindgren beskrev på ett målande sätt Sverige och sin egen situation vilket
ledde till ett skatteuppror i Sverige och att den 100 procentliga marginalskatten
ganska snart justerades nedåt (Grosskopf & Rabe, 1991) även om marginalskatten
på rörelsekapital fortfarande kunde uppgå till 90 procent.
And why are you denying it? This is what your movement wanted and still wants, that we all should be tax slaves under an anonymous bureaucracy.
In every answer you keep bringing in irrelevant arguments, but that is typical of left wing radicals, they need to create a myth that they are fighting the good fight against all these fascists, so that they can impose a tyranny on all of us.
"Även om den fortfarande är en viktig påminnelse om värdet av låga marginalskatter, visar Timbros chefsekonom Jacob Lundbergs undersökning att hon faktiskt aldrig behövde betala 102 procent i skatt."
'Even if it's still an important reminder of the value of low marginal tax rates, an examination by the chief economist of Timbro [a reactionary propaganda organisation] shows that [Astrid Lindgren] never had to pay 102% in taxes'.
Sweden hasn't had bolsheviks since the war. The communist party dislodged politically from Moscow in the sixties, though they continued to receive funds for another decade or two. You must have a very weird view of how power was transfered from the tsar to the bolsheviks. Do you seriously think that the civil war had nothing to do with it and they did it through parliamentary deliberation, like with the löntagarfonder?
Or are you lying?
Edit: Your buddies at the reactionary think tank has made a neat little graph at the bottom here: https://timbro.se/skattekoll/marginalskatt/
No shit. Talk about desperate argument.
She didn't need to pay the 102% tax in the end because of the Social democrats changed the law (as I already described earlier) because it became too unpopular, if they hadn't she would have. Thus is was not made up, it was a reality. Confirmed by the report from Ratio. Thus if Astrid Lindgren hadn't written that article Social democrats would have been perfectly fine with Swedes paying more than 100% in taxes. That is why Social democrats during this era were radicals. And also even after the change in law you could still pay 90% tax.
> You must have a very weird view of how power was transfered from the tsar to the bolsheviks
It didn't happened that way. It was the Mensheviks that took the power from the Tsar in the February Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks took in turn power from the Mensheviks in the October Revolution of 1917 and then murdered the Tsar and his family who was already in house arrest by the Mensheviks. Thus Bolsheviks did not remove the Tsar from power, a common falsehood by Bolsheviks, because he had already abdicated.
The Russian Civil War was a consequence of the Bolshevik Revolution against the Provisional Government, which was not accepted by many different political groups, everything from social democrats, liberals to monarchists. Somehow Bolsheviks always forgets this important detail. Wonder why.
But anyway, I was correct about Löntagarfonderna, the implementation, the goal and it's consequences.
You don't seem to understand how marginal tax rate works. It's OK, almost no one on the far right does, but almost everyone knows a little about that story about Pomperipossa.
You're like a machine, just ticking away with confidence. I hope I get to see your movement die out during my lifetime.
Swedes rejected your ideas, first in the general election of 1976, were Social democrats got ousted and lost an election for the first time in 40 years, and the second time in of the largest demonstrations ever recorded in Swedish history, the 4th of October demonstration of 1983, against fund socialism.
And if you are old enough you saw your own movement die with the fall of the Berlin wall on the ninth of November 1989. I remember, I saw it on Television.
It's weird to phrase it as "Swedes rejected", when it was the labour buyer's cartel that bused people to the demonstration in Stockholm, and the Social Democrats polled quite high after LAS and the general parental insurance. The string of wildcat strikes at the time didn't affect their polling performance.
It was newspaper scandals that won that election, things like the Pomperipossa story, Ingmar Bergman being investigated for tax fraud and leaving the country, a union leader lounging on the beach in Franco's Spain, things like that. And, of course, mythmaking of the sort you're engaging in here, claiming that reformism is actually bolshevism and whatnot.
It is important to remember that the Social democrats is the political wing to the LO union. It is the union that has permanent seat in the governing board of the Social democrats (Verkställande utskottet), not the other way around. It is the LO union that funds the Social democrats. It is in the union where the real power is (at least back then).
What the union wanted was to get the political wing to implement a legislation so that the union could confiscate private business. This would have been the end of Sweden's pluralistic parliamentarism. Instead an all ruling union with unelected bureaucrats with it's own political wing would have almost total control economically and eventually politically and then later socially.
Your timeline is completely messed up, jumping years back and forth, probably intentionally to confuse the reader what actually happened. Here is a real timeline with the most important dates
1973 September: Social democrats wins election
1974 : LAS Lag om anställningsskydd (Employment Protection Act)
Abandoning the spirit of Saltsjöbadsavtalet from 1938
1974 : General parental insurance
1975 August : LO union present the idea of Löntagarfonder (Employee funds)
20% of company profits should forcibly be transformed
to equity issuance and handed to the union
No limit on number of shares, i.e eventual union takeover
1975 November : Dictator of Spain Francisco Franco dies
1975 New Years: Union boss Hans Ericson vacations in Spanish Canary Islands
1976 March : Astrid Lindgren writes here famous story about high taxes
in "Pomperipossa i Monismanien"
1976 April : Ingmar Bergman leaves Sweden
1976 May : Reduction of taxes as a response to
Astrid Lindgren critique about high taxes
1976 Summer : LO union decides on supporting Löntagarfonder
1976 Autumn : Right wing opposition attacks the Löntagarfonder,
calling it "Öststatssocialism" (East State Socialism)
1976 September: Social democrats loses election to the Right wing opposition
First pure right wing government since 1936
Coup d'état as a famous social democrat called it
1978 : Pamphlet "Fritt näringsliv eller fondsocialism",
opposition from the Swedish employers' organization SAF
1979 September: Right wing wins election
1982 Februari : Revised version legislation for LAS
(note this is by the right wing government)
1982 September: Social democrats wins election
1982 October : Big Bang, massive devaluation of 16% for the Swedish Krona (SEK)
1983 October : Massive demonstrations against Löntagarfonder
1983 December : Revised and water downed version, because of the massive protests,
of Löntagarfonder implemented
5 different funds
each fund could not own more than 8% of a company (less than 50%)
1985 September: Social democrats wins election
1985 December : Swedish Centralbank (Riksbanken) decided together with the
social democratic finance minister to approve de facto
unlimited loans for commercial bank customers
1986 Februari : Prime minister Olof Palme murdered
1988 September: Social democrats wins election
(probably would have lost if Palme hadn't been murdred)
1989 November : Berlin wall falls
1990 August : Iraq invades Kuwait, increased interest rates follows
1990 October : Investment company Nyckeln cannot pay its debt
speculation on real-estate with massive loans
Begins the Banking, Housing and Financial crisis in Sweden
Banks and real-estate companies goes bankrupt
1991 September: Right wing wins election
First decision of new government is to scrap Löntagarfonder
1992 Autumn : Floating exchange rate for the Swedish Krona (SEK)
after a failed attempt to defend a fixed exchange rate
The era of politicians devaluing the currency is over
1994 September: Social democrats wins
1996 : Finanspolitiska ramverket (Fiscal policy framework)
no more overspending by politicians, end of Keynesian politics
1998 September: Social democrats wins
1999 Januari : Independent Central bank by law
No more money printing by politicians
to bribe the electorate
Today the Social democrats is just an empty shell of its former glory. Just an empty vessel for corruption and greed without any new ideas or reforms.
By marginalizing the Bolsheviks it is likely that this saved Sweden from a bloody civil war, a civil war that our dear neighbors in Finland suffered from. Our modern history could have been very different, Swedes fighting other Swedes in bloody battles, an open wound that could have been present to this day. For saving Sweden and Swedes from this horror, I’m ever grateful.
That is why I rank Hjalmar Branting as the greatest leader of Social democrats, greater than both Hansson and Erlander.
I am of course fully aware about these affairs you mention, what I’m arguing is that Bolsheviks was accepted back into the movement in 70s.
There were many signs of this, not only in the policies that was enacted but also things like the open flirtation with communist dictatorships and letting well known communists back into the movement.
You have clearly not met any of the people involved.