En omdefinerad marknad

Assar Lindbeck och en svensk nyliberalism i 1960-talets välfärdsstat

Abstract

This article examines how Assar Lindbeck in the 1950s and 1960s employed neoliberal ideas to address key problems of Swedish social democracy. Drawing on Friedrich von Hayek’s notion of the market as a superior information processor and Gary Becker’s theory of human capital, Lindbeck developed a model in which inequality could be managed without redistribution. He integrated a neoliberal conception of the market into the mixed economy, functioning as an epistemic and moral instrument of governance. Here, the economist—rather than the politician—was legitimized as the interpreter of effective societal development. The article argues that neoliberalism should not be understood as “marketization,” but as a qualitative redefinition of the market: from a sphere of exchange to a site of competition, discipline, and subjectivation. Lindbeck’s case demonstrates that neoliberalism did not imply state retreat, butcould be hybridized within the expanding Swedish welfare state while contesting visions based on planning.