David Östlund 

---

Det sociala kriget och kapitalets ansvar

I "DET SOCIALA kriget och kapitalets ansvar: Social ingenjörskonst mellan affärsintresse och samhällsreform i USA och Sverige 1899-1914" undersöker David Östlund begreppet social ingenjörskonst och dess tillämpning i en tid präglad av industriell förändring. Boken analyserar hur arbetsgivare kunde påverka arbetarnas livsvillkor genom olika reformer, samtidigt som den belyser de motsättningar som uppstod mellan kapital och arbete.

Historiskt sett introducerades termen "social engineering" av W. H. Tolman i New York, där den syftade till att hantera de mänskliga aspekterna av industriell verksamhet. Tolmans idéer fick genomslag i både amerikansk och svensk kontext, där social ingenjörskonst blev ett verktyg för att adressera den sociala frågan som följde i kölvattnet av modern industri. Östlund visar hur dessa idéer togs emot och anpassades i Sverige, särskilt genom Centralförbundet för social arbete (CSA).

Boken framhäver skillnaderna mellan de amerikanska och svenska tillvägagångssätten. Medan Tolman ofta ignorerade fackföreningarnas roll, såg CSA dem som en viktig del av lösningen på sociala problem. Den svenska modellen betonade samarbete och ömsesidighet mellan arbetsgivare och arbetstagare, vilket skiljde sig från den mer paternalistiska inställningen i USA.

Östlund diskuterar också hur social ingenjörskonst kunde bidra till att skapa en "social fred" under kapitalismen. Genom att förbättra arbetsvillkoren och säkerheten kunde arbetsgivare potentiellt vinna arbetarnas förtroende. Samtidigt ifrågasätter han om dessa insatser verkligen gynnade arbetarnas autonomi eller om de snarare förstärkte maktstrukturerna.

Avslutningsvis spårar boken utvecklingen av social ingenjörskonst från den progressiva eran i USA till dess återuppvaknande i den svenska välfärdsstaten under 1930- och 1940-talen. Östlunds arbete bidrar till en djupare förståelse av hur ekonomiska intressen och sociala reformer har samverkat genom historien, vilket gör det relevant för studier inom både samhällsvetenskap och historia.

```

David Östlund

fil. kand.

Abstract

By the end of the 19th century the moderate progressive W. H. Tolman in New York introduced the term “social engineering” to denote the task of a new profession, which, according to him, was needed to deal with the human aspects of industrial life. Just as modern capitalists made successful use of technical engineers to deal with dead matter in order to make their businesses efficient and profitable, they needed the assistance of “social” engineers as well. Using Tolman’s innovation in language (which is identified and analysed here, perhaps for the first time) as a point of departure, this thesis deals with the possibilities and problems which social reformers of the early 20th century could see in the prospect of encouraging modern employers to take care of the workers and their families in different ways. With pecuniary resources and daily contact with the working class, employers could play a key role in solving the “social question” which had followed the rise of modern industry. But at the same time Capital was the adversary to Labour in the conflict of interests – the “social war” – which was often paternalism and charity, which challenged the workers’ autonomy and often provoked them. Could managements thus contribute to make social peace by adjusting the living conditions under industrial capitalism (especially of female workers) to the needs of industrial capitalism and to the wishes of the working class? One solution was to emphasize the businesslike character of the task (“it pays”) and to give priority to those “features of industrial betterment” which concerned workplace conditions – safety and hygiene – and only with an ambivalent and ambiguous way, by Tolman. It was also adopted by the liberal “hosts” at the Centralförbundet for social arbete (CSA) in Stockholm, the much more influential sister institution of Tolman’s platform (the American Institute of Social Service). In the Swedish case, though, the appeal to cross interests in efficiency, and the urge for a spirit of “mutuality”, took on a different character. While Tolman (despite connections to more radical reformers) ignored the existence of the trade unions, implicitly regarding them as a part of the ills to be cured by private Sozialpolitik, and published his main text on social engineering (1909) under the aegis of Andrew Carnegie, the liberals in the CSA – an institution which from the start also had an immediate footing in the socialist workers’ movement – were defenders of the unions and collective bargaining. In their view autonomous counter-power among the workers was a part of the solution to the problems which “enlightened egoism” among employers could also help to solve. In the epilogue the term “social engineering” is followed from where it left its original context – during the late Progressive Era in the USA – to the renewed efforts to create a vigorous capitalism with a human face in the social policy of the “People’s Home” in Sweden during the 1930s and 1940s.

Key words: social engineering, the social question, labour relations, paternalism, welfare capitalism, efficiency, workplace conditions, labour protection, social adjustment, mutuality, W. H. Tolman, Centralförbundet for social arbete (CSA), the Swedish model.

Institutionen för litteraturvetenskap och idéhistoria

Stockholms universitet, S-106 91 Stockholm

Stockholm 2003

ISBN 91-7265-597-6

```