The Temperance Internationale—Social Democrats against the Liquor Machine in Sweden and Belgium

Abstract

Chapter 3 pivots to European social democracy and the role that the “liquor question” played in its evolution, both in Sweden and Belgium. In Sweden, the so-called Gothenburg system of disinterested management and municipal dispensary became the foremost alternative to prohibitionism. By entrusting the liquor trade to local civic leaders conducting the business on temperance principles, the profit motive was removed, and with it, the negative externalities of the unregulated liquor trade. The chapter charts the evolution of the liquor question in Sweden through the rise of social democratic leader Hjalmar Branting: from imprisoned journalist to Nobel Peace Prize winner and the first ever social democratic head of state. Similar developments are tracked in Belgium, with socialist minister Emile Vandervelde championing the downtrodden Belgian worker, while also opposing the murderous, capitalist-imperialist liquor exploitation of the Congo by its own sovereign, King Leopold II.