Wallenberg Dynasty

In shipbuilding it was Gothenberg and Malmö that were the driving forces...Eriksberg, Götaverken, Lindholmen and Kockums. In automobiles, Volvo, Saab and Scania-Vabis were the big names. But otherwise the story of the Swedish Model's industrial strength is the history of just one Swedish family...the Wallenbergs.

In electrical engineering, Ericsson, Asea, Electrolux and Luxor were all members of the Wallenberg family firm. In mechanical engineering Atlas Copco, Alpha-Laval, SKF, Aga and Facit took their orders from the family's holding company Investor and went to the family's private commercial bank Enskilda Banken for their credit facilities.

So it was fortunate for the Swedish Social Democratic Party...in power throughout the golden age of the Swedish Model...that the Wallenbergs were Swedish patriots and not foot-loose cosmopolitan bankers happy to get up and move out whenever the mood took them. Perhaps too Sweden's first family was mindful of the bale-outs that the founder of the dynasty A.O.Wallenberg had arranged for his Enskilda Bank in 1857 and 1878 with his old friend Johan Gripenstedt. Sweden's Minister of Finance.

The Left has argued that the importance of the Wallenberg firms to the Swedish Model is over-rated. In the 1960s the Left focussed its attention on 'the 15 families' and looked upon the Wallenberg family as one among many. Their argument was that the fifteen families may have accounted for 300 000 Swedish jobs in the 1960s but that this was only 7% of the workforce.

The nineteen families usually included in 'the 15 families' were Wallenberg, Söderberg, Wehtje, Bonnier, Johnson, Sachs, Kempe, Åhléns, Klingspor, Throne-Holst, Jacobsson, Åselius, Schwartz, Jeansson-Högberg-Hain, Roos, Dunker, Hammarskjöld, Broström and Wenner-Gren. The predominance of German rather than Swedish names was frequently noted. However though all the families may have been equal in the left...in industrial wealth-creating terms one was clearly more equal than the others.

The left's analysis led them to accuse the social democrats of a 'sell-out', attributing it to a conspiracy between the labour unions, the paymasters of the Social Democrats, and the Wallenbergs to divide up the spoils among themselves with high wages for unionised labour and high profits for the Wallenberg firms...at the expense of the Swedish working classes.

Some evidence to support the left's view comes from Lennart Erixon in 'The Golden Age of The Swedish Model' who points out the significant role played by Wallenberg firms throughout the 1950s and 1960s as 'wage-setters' for the rest of Swedish industry.