Modern markegång för medelklassen

En politisk kontext till etableringen av ett levnadskostnadsindex i 1910-talets Sverige

Abstract

Around 1916–1918, Sweden established an official cost-of-living index. This index was firstly the enabler of a new kind of wage system, one in which salaries would adjust “automatically” to the rising living costs. Perhaps surprisingly, in Sweden such a “sliding-scale” system was often presented not as a modern innovation, but as the resurrection of a pre-modern, in-kind economy. The leading proponent of this wage reform was Joseph Guinchard, director of Stockholm’s municipal bureau of statistics. For him, the cost-of-living index would serve the aim of rescuing “the middle class”, seen as the backbone of society, and preserving the existing class hierarchy. The article highlights the role of social statistics in the early attempts to organize civil servants, and in the renewal of conservative politics at the time of Sweden’s democratization. It also presents Oscar Ljungström’s related but competing proposal for wage reform, which he made a cornerstone for a proto-fascist vision. While relatively obscure, this more radical line of thought may help highlighting certain aspects of the cost-ofliving politics of the 1910s, including its characteristic fascination for in-kind economy. This too stands in contrast to the modern concept of inflation, and to the present role of the consumer price index.