En omdefinerad marknad

Assar Lindbeck och en svensk nyliberalism i 1960-talets välfärdsstat

Abstract

This article examines how the concept of the market is rearticulated in the early writings of Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck during the 1950s and 1960s — a formative period both for Lindbeck’s intellectual development and for the Swedish welfare state. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s notion of governmentality and recent scholarship on neoliberalism, the article argues that Lindbeck’s understanding of the market evolved from a site of economic exchange into a broader epistemic and moral ordering principle. Central to this transformation is the influence of Friedrich Hayek’s theory of the market as an information processor and Gary Becker’s theory of human capital, which Lindbeck employs to address social democratic concerns such as inequality and bureaucratic inefficiency. Rather than promoting laissez-faire, Lindbeck advocates a vision of market governance that depends on active state intervention. He redefines the role of the state as a constructor and guarantor of competitive markets, while positioning the consumer as a rational and sovereign subject whose desires are expressed and fulfilled through acts of consumption. By examining Lindbeck’s articulation of the market in relation to debates on planning, equality, and the New Left, the article shows how neoliberal ideas were translated into a Swedish context, and how Lindbeck served as a discursive bridge between neoliberal epistemology and the social democratic project. Through this analysis, the article contributes to a growing literature on the intellectual history of early neoliberalism in Sweden.