Gunnar Myrdal: A Theorist of Modernity

Sven Eliæson
Stockholm University, Sweden

ABSTRACT
Gunnar Myrdal’s contribution to social science could be encapsulated in the following
key words: secularization, intellectual migration and trans-Atlantic reciprocity,
objectivity and value-intrusion (-bias), the role of philanthropy, Protestant reform creed,
social engineering, and national styles of research. Myrdal’s central role in the history
of social thought is his part in facilitating the diffusion of Weberian value-orientation,
despite differences in nuances between Myrdal and his neo-Kantian predecessors. His
oeuvre is multi-disciplinary and he could himself be characterized in terms of a number
of antinomies, such as the parochial cosmopolitan, the patriotic internationalist, the
compassionate ’nihilist’. the elitist egalitarian, the social Darwinist anti-racist, the male
chauvinist feminist, the ahistorical ’historicist’, the conservative socialist, etc. He never
hesitated to take a controversial position. Essentially he is a theorist of modernity,
combining ambiguity and antinomies with anti-metaphysics (anti-natural law,
instrumental means-end-analyses).

Sven Eliœson, Box 3340, SE-712 94 Grythyttan, Sweden

© Scandinavian Sociological Association 2000

1. The shaping of a Swedish social engineer
When Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) passed
away I happened to be in the USA and received
a first-hand impression of his omnipresence on
the American scene. The obituaries, for instance
that published in the New York Times, were
impressive, and in one journal he was charac-
terized as possibly the most successful social
scientist of the 20th century. This is both
arguable and debatable, but certainly his impact
has been remarkable - in several disciplines.
The centennial of his birth did not pass
unnoticed. In Finland they had held a sympo-
sium at the Renvall Institute in 1997. It focused
on Myrdal and the Swedish (or rather the
Nordic) model, with Walter Jackson and Orjan
Appelqvist among the participants. Before that.
the 50th anniversary of the publication of An
American Dilemma was celebrated in Dlledallls,
with a thematic issue (Winter 1995). with
contributions by, among others, Myrdal’s
daughter Sissela Bok who, moreover, contrib-
uted to a new 1996 edition of the book. At the
World Conference in Sociology in Montreal
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(Summer 1998) an entire session, which I
arranged, was devoted to ’The Myrdals and
Modernity’.
December 1998 a centennial was
In
arranged by Arbetarrorelsens arkiv (the
archives of the labour movement, where the
Myrdal Nachlafi is deposited) in Stockholm,
resulting in a volume of texts on l~Iyrdal and
commentaries.1
Gunnar Nlyrdal was borne in Skattungbyn
close to Orsa in Dalecarlia. His parents were
from Solvarbo in Gustafs’s parish, but happened
to be visiting Skattungbyn. Gunnar was proud
of his genuine peasant background and, one
might add, that he received a natural national
conservatism and stubbornness with his
mother’s milk, so typical of the landscape of
Dalecarlia. with its mixture of solidarity, nation-
alism and egalitarianism. pride and poverty. In
such a fractured hilly landscape of small isolated
valleys (the meaning of the word ’Dalarna’ or
Dalecariia) feudalism never took the upper
hand: on the contrary, in late Medieval days,
the peasants won when it came to armed
uprisings and military confrontations. This is
332
unique to Sweden and Switzerland - and
perhaps Dietmarschen in Schleswig-Holstein.
In Myrdal’s view. legitimacy was rooted in the
consent of the people and not legalistically
defined - and this idea forms the background of
his vehement criticism of the new Swedish
constitution from 19755 (a criticism which,
incidentally, resulted in changes in some parti-
cularly naive points, e.g. legal Swedish autho-
rities and their role in occupied Swedish
territory). One might sense here an echo of
the national 1 5th century revolutionary hero
Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson (Myrdal 19S?).
Throughout his life Myrdal manifested a
peculiar mixture of patriotism and cosmopoli-
tanism. One of his last books. Hur styrs Landet.
del I [How Sweden is ruled, Part I (Part 2 never
followedl. 19H2], has as a motto ’a book on
Sweden, written in Swedish, by a Swede, for the
Swedes’. Myrdal provides an example of the
argument that patriotism does not necessarily
go hand in hand with hostility towards immi-
grants. Myrdal felt that a homogeneous popula-
tion was an asset to the nation, but at the same
time he accepted open borders, increased
mobility and opposition to virtually all forms
of racism and discrimination. This buttresses yet
another of the antinomian structures in Myr-
dal’s thought. Increased fertility in place of
increased immigration might reduce tensions
before they arise, as a functionalist might put it.
but Myrdal would hardly endorse any notion of
equilibrium. As an analyst of the conditions for
economic development. he pleaded for egali-
tarianism on a global scale.
In the late 1920s Gunnar Myrdal found it
natural to help his father, who was a building
contractor and conservative local politician, to
write letters to the editors in local daily news-
papers. It is also well documented that Rudolf
Kjell6ii, a professor in political science but also
an energetic participant in the public debate,
was a formative influence on the young Myrdal
during his high school years, complementing
the ideas of the very conservative Bishop J. A.
Eklund in Karlstad. Kjellen is probably the
internationally most Well-ICIlOWIl Swedish poli-
tical scientist of the 20th century, the scholar
who launched such concepts as geopolitics,’ the
people’s home ~I’’OI~IIt’111111t’t] and national soci-
alism (which, in its actual context, should lead
our associations much more in the direction of
the Christian reformist Friedrich Naumann
than in being identified with Hitler, in order to
avoid ’chronological imperialism’ and ’guilt by
association’, although there are rather complex
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matters of interpretation involved). There is a
current renaissance for Kjell6ii’s ideas - a
phenomenon that has to do with the failure of
socialism and the lack of any credible alter-
natives, as well as a growing insight into the
complex and varying roots of the so-called
Swedish model. This. in turn, has fostered an
interest in uncovering what features are com-
mon to both conservatism and socialism, e.g.
solidarity, organicist (’collectivist’)thought and
anti-liberalism (in the classical sense of that
word), and - consequently - a certain revival of
populist anti-capitalism (anti-market. since
market is anti-tradition). Internationally the
whole communitarian movement thrives on
these older and reborn affinities. opting as a
basis for a remedy. The modern welfare state
was. in fact, an innovation of Bismarck, carried
out in the interests of national unity and
integration, but it has complex roots and
many sources of inspiration (like British Fabian-
ism), and Gunnar Nlyrdal incorporated this
complex legacy into his ideas about social
engineering.
However, the ambition of young Myrdal
was to understand society as a dynamic entity.
conceived to operate like a machine, an image
in the techno-spirit of Enlightenment reason
and rationalism. The young Myrdal appeared
more as an elitist than a populist. There are
other seemingly paradoxical structures in his
thought.
Gunnar’s encounter with - under some-
what romantic circumstances - and engage-
ment to Alva Reimer, four years younger than
himself, added other formative and more radical
influences. The Reimer family had a back-
ground similar to the Myrdals’ but with a
stronger attachment to popular movements,
such as the temperance movement and various
branches of the labour movement. Alva brought
socialism into Gunnar’s life, although he later
remarked that they both became politically
awakened and committed social democrats
following their sojourn in the United States as
Rockefeller scholars in 19?O-3(). That Alva in
any case exercised a radicalizing socialist
influence on Gunnar is clear enough, but she
also gave him the incentive to become an
economist. Their marriage produced three
children, all still alive and all having written
books about their famous parents and childhood
experiences.
Gunnar had begun his academic studies in
jurisprudence because he felt that understand-
ing the law and its functions was basic to

comprehending the mechanism ot society and
the social fabric. However, he became dissatis-
fied with what he had learned and even became
depressed and disorientated - in a state of
existential anxiety. Alva ’saved’ him by putting a
copy of Gustav Cassel’s TIIC’Oi’PtISCIIe Sozialökollo-
rlio into his hands. Gunnar switched to
economics (Nationalekonomi. 17t)lksti,it-tsc,litifts-
lellrcj, although still within the faculty of law. He
took his Jur. dr degree in 1927 and became a
Docent (took his Hahilitation) in the same year.
Gunnar would later go on to become Cassel’s
successor, holding the latter’s chair in political
economy in Stockholm.
Gunnar was the leader of the Twentieth
Century Fund’s investigation of the South East
Asian economy, 19 5 7-H i . He held a personal
chair in international economics at Stockholm
between 196~ and 1967 and chaired the
recently established Stockholm peace research
institute (SIPRI), as well as the LAI (Latin
America Institute)in Stockholm, etc.
Gunnar followed Alva to India when she
was appointed the Swedish Ambassador to New
Delhi. He worked for a decade on his tlsinrr
Drama, a gigantic work not quite as successful
as All Aiiiet-i(,iiii Dilemma ( 19~~) - but, on the
other hand, probably not yet fully received
within the scholarly community. He founded the
Institute of International Economy in Stock-
holm (1961). He was a member of several
foreign academies of science and received some
30 honorary Doctor’s degrees at various uni-
versities.
Among his youthful experiences, a term as
acting mayor of Mariefred ought to be men-
tioned. During the early 1930s he was for a
short period professor at the Institute Universi-
taire de Hautes Etudes Internationales in
Geneva. In 19 33 he was appointed to the Lars
Hierta chair in economics and finance at
Stockholm. Myrdal’s early writings focused on
monetary topics. He was, among other things,
the faculty opponent on Dag Hammarskjöld’s
dissertation. He also wrote on housing and
agricultural policy and he was much in demand
for state-agency promoted investigations, activ-
ities that resulted in combining his academic
career with one in public affairs and social
policy.
It isworthy of note that several ol’ Cunnar’s
early sources of inspiration were written in
German, for whatever relevance this might have
for interpreting national styles of research,
reciprocity between discursive milieus, etc.
Kjell~ii was even a participant in the German
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333
debate, so to speak, on equal terms, being one of
the men of the ideas of 1914 in (lermany,
together with Werner Sombart and others.
Knutt Wicksell’s Finanstheoretische U ntersllch-
urlgen laid the basis for the so-called Stock-
holm school in economics, which Cassel founded
and to which Myrdal belonged (together with
such scholars as Dag Hammarskjold and
Bertil Ohlin 1. Axel Hagerstrom, the ’nihilist’ phil-
osopher in Uppsala, also wrote several of his
principle scholarly works in German.
Myrdal himself explicitly acknowledges
both Axel H5gerstr6ni and Max Weber as
formative influences on his own position in
value philosophy and objectivity (see Myrdal on
Weber in EkOl10rr11Sk TI(~Skr’I/t 1931: also Huri~
styrs I,andot. 19 8 2:2 5 8), which is a theme with
which Myrdal wrestles most of his life.’ The
mature Myrdal, however, claimed that he had
reached his positions independently, playing
down the Weber link (in a letter-exchange
with Herman Wold in the early 19 i ()s, available
from Arbetarrorelsens arkiv in Stockholm).
The German link is partly a lost legacy,
since there were few translations (everyone in
Swedish academia read German as fluently as
Swedish, several of them having obtained their
PhDs from such German universities as Hum-
boldt in Berlin or Rostock; Cassel, for instance,
was a pupil of both Gustav Schmoller and
Adolph Wagner in Berlin)and the Second World
War resulted in English replacing German as
the liiiiiiia franca of international scholarship.
However, Myrdal visited Germany before he
went to the USA and spent much time at
Delltsche Bi’ic,ii(,t-ei in Leipzig. What might well be
his major methodological work, on The Political
Eletizt,tit ... 1199()), in which he traced ideolo-
gical or rather metaphysical (often in the form
of lingering natural law) elements in alleged
scientific thought in economic doctrine,
appeared in German two decades before it
appeared in English, translated into German
from Swedish by Nlyrdal’s friend Mackenroth - a
friendship which ended when. in the 19 3()s.
Mackenroth accommodated himself to the
National Socialist rule. They reconnected after
the war when Mackenroth needed support
during the German starvation years of 1945-
49.
Nlyrdal’s patriotism was strong throughout
his life. One example is his return from the USA
to Sweden after the German occupation of
Norway and Denmark in 1940, interrupting
his work on An A 11lfriC£lII Dilemma. It is
noteworthy, however, how Gunnar Myrdal
334
phrased his preparedness to resist a German
penetration of Swedish independence. He said
he would not accommodate himself to a
situation in which Sweden would find itself at
rest. transformed into a sort of Gro(L‘-Mecl:len-
burg within the greater Germanic community.
There is no contradiction between the
German influences and the supplementary and
also very formative American ones. The Ger-
man university system provided at the time a
model for the whole world: the University of
Chicago was moulded to conform to Humboldt
in Berlin. The University of Chicago was also the
university where the Myrdals spent much time
during their first American sojourn and there
they made many friends, including W. I. Tho-
mas and his wife. Moreover, such sociological
pioneers as Small and Park. of the Chicago
school, had obtained their PhD degrees from
German universities,They were thus under the
influence of German Kntlu~dorso;.inlisrnus within
thei~rein fiir So:ialpolitik, pioneering early
empirical social research and ’theorizing’ over
the public sector, like Lujo Brentano and Adolph
Wagner. The legacy of historicism motivates the
quotation marks around ’theorizing’ - an ice-
berg-problem we shall leave aside at the
moment.
One reason for the renewed interest in
Myrdal is the need for contextualization of the
era of social engineering and welfare state
design, the era of planning for the citizens.
However, there are several additional reasons.
One is the larger-than-life qualities manifested
in a multiple career in science as well as politics.
In this contribution we focus on Myrdal’s
contributions to social science and accomplish-
ments as a sociologist, but it is nevertheless also
important from that perspective to be aware of
Niyrdal’s praxis-orientation and his concern in
actual politics; one might in the Swedish
academic neo-language say that Myrdal took
the ’third task’ (i.e. in addition to traditional
Humboldtian ideas about the pursuit of Lelrro
111ld F01’S(’llrlrl9. Swedish scholars are supposed to
perform a sort of pedagogic community service,
to popularize their research) very seriously even
before the term was launched. There is a
simplicity and clarity in his scientific work.
This is, moreover, manifested in several popular
books, attempting to reach a wider readership
with his scientifically founded positions in
normative matters. He became very important
in public opinion formation - and in the USA.
his work contributed to public and constitu-
tional law.
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Before scrutinizing Myrdal’s contribution
to modern social science we should note that his
early achievements as an economist in the
1920s qualified him for a Nobel prize in
economics and for the status of a classic author.
This recognition came late in life and removed a
minor irritation, although sharing the prize
with Friedrich von Hayek was no doubt a ’stone
in the shoe’.
It might well be that Gustaf Moller - the
secretary of state for social affairs - had a larger
influence on the design of the modern Swedish
welfare state than did the Myrdals. However.
even if one believes that Myrdal’s Swedish
political career came to a dead end, he was
important and in fact formed a sort of one-man
shadow cabinet within his own party after the
war.’He was a possible candidate to succeed Per
Albin (Sweden’s strong man during the war) as
social democratic party leader but he was not
strong enough among the party cadres. Myrdal
was also the target of a bourgeois press
campaign, in the wake of the still ongoing
controversy over trade credits to the Soviet
union after the Second World War. He also came
under cross-fire in the ideological debate on
central planning versus freedom, but this was
partly unjustified, since his positions were more
nuanced and complex than those rendered in
the vulgar press debate. Yet, his striving for
structural rationalization and an active role for
the state in that process - even his insistence on
the development of reliable statistics - appeared
as a Trojan horse to his bourgeois opponents.
The Myrdals left significant contributions
to the shaping of Swedish family planning,
housing and the new and less class-imprinted
educational system. In all cases we find Ameri-
can influences. They were very receptive to the
progressive side of the American experience.
2. Demography and national social policy
In recent years the Myrdals’ contribution to
family planning has come into a new focus due
to its controversial character and its affinities to
similar social policies in National Socialist
Germany. There is indeed a IiIlk, albeit easily
misinterpreted. The Myrdals had what Sven E.
(Olsson-) Hort would call a ’productive view’ of
the population problem, in which time-typical
elements of biologism, in its extension leading
also to eugenics, were parts. There was a huge
debate about this in late 1997 which was also
noticed in Germany, with some Schadenfreude.

The Germans did not mind if the burden of guilt
with respect to their eugenics policies was
divided and their experiences seen as not
exceptional. The revelation of historical links
between some National Socialist practices and
ideas flourishing in Sweden as well as the L1SA
I whcre the legal practice of enforced sterilization
of the ’feeble-minded’ originated), about man-
datory sterilization of ’inferior elements’, etc.
were not unwelcome .6 It is, however, reasonable
to interpret the Myrdals on the population
matter as anti-racial biology, especially since
they explicitly criticized some of its exaggerated
manifestations. Gunnar Myrdal, moreover,
actively tried to change the character of the
racial biological institute in Uppsala, turning
in a more scientific and less racist direction.
it
I
Yet. in retrospect the rather brutal plea for
sterilization of retarded and handicapped people
might generate vicious and ideologically tainted
criticism, which might in the end contribute to a
better historical and contextual understanding
of the essence of social engineering and the
Utopian ideals of the early social democratic
welfare state. It appears to me to be absurd to
attack Gunnar Myrdal for racism, for it remains
clear that he had what we might today call a
’utilitarian&dquo;’ view of eugenics and an open-
minded attitude towards the scientific virtues of
’socio-biologism’: indeed, perhaps not so distant
in character from Nlax Weber’s complex posi-
tion.’! The slightly paradoxical relation between
the utilitarian element and social orgallicisln is
food for thought.
One might add that if the suggested Nazi
link is combined erroneously with guilt by
association, we should keep in mind that this
link is time-typical rather than exceptional for
the 1920s and 19 3()s. Myrdal contributed more
successfully perhaps than any other white man
in the 20th century to the demise of legal racial
discrimination. Retrospectively attributing to
him a National Socialist connection is erro-
neous. There might be some affinities - espe-
cially since there are always both similarities as
well as differences between any two ralldolnlv
selected phenomena - but it is all time-typical
thoughts we find almost everywhere, although
to put it mildly the Nazis went to the extreme in
implementing nasty radical consequences. That
some of these practices survived Inuch longer in
Sweden than in Germany is not Wyrdal’s fault.
Myrdal (1936) emphasizes reforms in
housing, education, health care and nutrition
as essential to the improvement of the human
capital: consequently, the eventual racial
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335
hygiene aspect appears not to be a major issue
to Myrdal himself: more as an obsession of his
present-day critics.
One might say that Myrdal is of topical
relevance on many of today’s issues, for example
Anthony Giddens’s ’third way’, and matters of
demographic policy and retirement schemes.
For natural reasons Myrdal did not deal with
the problems put on the agenda of recent
political correctness movements but with the
problems of his own days. His principle project
was to create a long-term and viable welfare
state - and perhaps also the people to inhabit it.
The advancement of gene technology and the
experiences of mass totalitarianism make us
frightened than Myrdal had to be.
more
The Catholics were more sensitive to this theme
reason
because of their view on the sacred nature of
life, making them resistant to any element of
eugenics. The ’productive’ view of the popula-
tion issue has a hisorical link to Protestantism
and to the Calvinist belief in predestination.
Being rich and healthy is a sign that one will be
among the saved on Doomsday, as Max Weber
taught us in his famous work about the
Protestant Et~l((’ and tlze Spirit o’f Capitalism.
Such a belief, as Weber knew. has unintended
innerworldly consequences.
One might sense Hermann Orth’s ’Kinder-
gulag in Schweden’ as a follow-up of Nlvrdal’s
Utopianism and HägerstrÖmianism. 1 ()
The
seamy side of H£gerstr6ni’s nihilism is a
vacuum that calls for a substitute in the form
of, for instance, ’public welfare’. Such is the case
of Vilhelm Lundstedt. Hagerstrom’s apostle.
who both as a social democratic senator and a
professor of jurisprudence paved the road for
Swedish ’functional socialism’, with its empha-
sis more on democracy than on ’rights’.
The Myrdals wished to support the family,
although it might be argued that their remedies
against demographic stagnation turned out to
be a toxic cure. State support for the family in
terms of day care, etc. meant dependence and
thus allegedly weakened the family in its role as
a part of civil society, i.e. as an intermediary
structure between the atomized individual and
the central state. In Catholic Europe the family
today is much stronger than in Scandinavia and
provides more civility and cohesiveness, as is
shown by Poland. II It might, on the other hand,
be argued that the family as an institution
hardly promotes the self-realization of women in
working life and that the socialization of some of
the functions of the family is beneficial and
democratic in a J. S. Nlillian sense (the paradox
336
of planning promoting self-realization ). Gender
equality might demand strong democratic (and
in a way ’populist’) institutions: family decline
might appear to many as an affordable prize to
pay, especially since Scandinavia still remains
strong on civility in terms of such civil associa-
tions as voluntary defence organizations, etc.
The Myrdals’ perspective on family policy
remains valuable for comparative welfare
research.
If one asks an ordinary Swede about
Myrdal the Kr-is i he/’olknings/i-m~un (only partly
translated into English) from ~l 9~3-1 probably will
be mentioned. As late as the 1950s wedding
telegrams frequently contained ’indecent’
rhymes on ’and don’t forget what the Myrdals
said’. There was no mass migration in the
19 30s, and the Myrdals pleaded that the Swedes
should produce more children, a theme we
recognize from the retirement scheme-debates
that still take place today. This is a sensitive
theme with overlapping tacit racist connota-
tions : it might, on the one hand, be argued that
a homogeneous population is a domestic
political asset: while, at the same time, the
development of globalization will force us to
accept and embrace diversity, open borders and
multi-culturalism. Gunnar Myrdal apparently
took a clear stand, to judge from his contribu-
tion to the Nationalekonomiska foreningens
(the Swedish association of national economics)
centennial volume in 1976, reprinted in Vn’gvi-
sare. Sweden’s original homogeneity is one
reason for its prosperity and for its generous
immigration policy, in Myrdal’s
phrasing,
’although many... have misbehaved’.’- Populist
hostility against immigrants would not find
any support from Myrdal, whose patriotism
was not defined in terms of ethnic identity. One
might say that nation-building (state forma-
tion) and prejudices against ’the other’ histori-
cally go together, but that is not the case with
Myrdal.
This touches upon theme in political
a sociologist is based on his huge teamwork, An
theory perennial sinceAristotle and with
obvious links to recent communitarianism,
matters of cohesiveness, civility and consen-
sus-building, and also value philosophy ILokal-
vemwzft as a provisory escape from the problem
of value incommensurability: there is no neces-
sary contradiction between Hagerstromian
value nihilism and communitarian value
Gemeil1scl1aft). How to define demos? Who are
included in the political community? Is the
ethnic aspect an important part of the defini-
tion ?
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It is. moreover, possible to develop a parallel
with the difference between Carl Schmitt (friend
versus foe), Richard Rorty and Jiirgen Haber-
mas (consensus-building through Socratic dis-
course), but we abstain from that here, since the
theme of the demarcation of the demos is merely
a latent issue in Myrdal’s social engineering-
although from a presentist perspective of high-
and increasing relevance, since it might be
argued that there is a contradiction at hand: on
one hand the modern welfare state rests upon
exclusion and protectionism, on the other hand
the acquisition of wealth by the poor (unem-
ployed and marginalized people within the ? / 3-
society and undeveloped states in the third
world in the global system ) will lead assumedly
to a lower standard among those already inside
the welfare system, enjoying its benefits. Evi-
dently. an economic factor is involved: if there is
a need for a larger workforce and if one has a
dynamic congnition of economic life or conceive
of it as a zero-sum-game.
Myrdal’s recommendation as an interna-
tional economist had more to do with trade
than with population policy. He believed that at
an early stage an element of protectionism was
beneficial for economic development. He argues
on the international scene in a way similar to
how Friedrich List once did on the national
level, who felt that protectionism and state
interventionism was more indispensable in
countries already developed
3. An American Dilemma revisited
In Sweden Myrdal is famous for works on family
planning, as an economist of the Stockholm
School, a politician, a piecemeal social engineer
and as an analyst of ’underdevelopment’, as
well as for his public interventions about such
matters as increasing tax evasion, etc. Inter-
nationally, however, Myrdal’s contribution as a
American Dilemma. The Negro Problem cilld
wlodorn Democracy ( Myrdal 1944, with the
assistance of Richard Sterner and Arnold
Rose). This study might well be the most
influential book on Afro-Americans and Ameri-
can civilization in the 20the century.
In 19 38 the Carnegie Corporation initiated
the project which became lavishly funded.
Carnegie’s Keppel looked for a European scholar
who was neither to be considered prejudiced nor
imperialist, who drew attention to Switzerland
and the Scandinavian countries. The young

economist Myrdal, who had already carried out
significant academic work, received the offer
and Beardsley Ruml of the Rockefeller Founda-
tion helped to convince Myrdal to take on the
task. The Myrdals had already visited the L1SA
and made friends with many scholars, among
them pioneers of the Chicago school, and they
also knew Ruml, who was the driving force in
the important Rockefeller-Spellman Founda-
tion.
That
Myrdal was engaged in this expensive
investigation is indicative of something signifi-
cant in recent intellectual history, the formative
role of American philanthropy in funding not
only American but also European social
research, promoting such social surveys as
’Wages in Sweden’ in the 1920s and early
1930s, and generating a reciprocity across the
Atlantic ocean. 14 The Laura Spellman-Rocke-
feller Foundation had not only financed the
University of Chicago from the very beginning
in 1893but also the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
(later known as the Max-Planck-Institute) and
Gosta Bagges’s chair in social policy in Stock-
holm.
Gunnar Myrdal formed a team with several
later-famous collaborators (Arnold Rose, Ralph
Bunche, Samuel Stouffer, Edward Shils) and
initially made journeys through the South
together with Sterner and later Bunche, not
without some everyday life confrontations with
segregation, once having to escape an
warrant in Georgia. Myrdal conducted
interviews. As a senator (for the social demo-
cratsl, professor, as well as a peasant boy Myrdal
had a great talent to ’talk with peasants in
peasants’ manner and with pundits in Latin’, as
a Swedish saying goes.
Myrdal returned to Sweden on a risky flight
with the gigantic task half-finished after the
occupation of Denmark and Norway in spring
1940, since he felt this a patriotic duty in a time
of danger. Sweden, however, now had a broad
coalition government and with no position for
Myrdal to fill, so after ten months he returned to
America, over Soviet and Japanese territory. His
wife Alva joined him in Princeton ; Gunnar
missed her so much that it would have created a
strain on the marriage had she not joined him.
At first Gunnar isolated himself in the
Robert E. Lee Hotel in Jackson. Nlississippi.
reading the very voluminous reports his colla-
borators had produced - and after an extra-
ordinarily intense period of work the book was
finished in 1942 and finally printed in 1944,
when Myrdal had again returned to Sweden,
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337
leaving the final polishing to his fellow Swede
Richard Sterner and to Arnold Rose. The book
had immense impact and received many
reviews in America but never caught much
attention in Sweden.
Other influences aside, An rlrnc~ricnn
Dilemmu had - and still has - an omnipotence
in the American courtroom as well as for
American public opinion formation. Myrdal
was cited by Chief Justice Earl Warren in
Brown versus Board of Education in Topeka in
19 S4, the decision that in due time ended the
principle of ’separate but equal’ in the American
educational system.
As a parenthesis it might be added that the
Myrdals’ influence on Swedish school reform as
well as housing was also, in various ways,
manifested in proposals designed to countervail
segregation and promote equality of opportu-
nity.
The basic thesis is that the Jim Crow system
(of segregation and patronizing attitudes) in the
South was an anomaly, not consistent with the
American creed as manifested in the Constitu-
tion and which Myrdal located in Enlight-
enment and Protestant Christianity. Although
the Americanization’ of the South was a
significant phenomenon, the way the blacks
were treated was a contradiction in the heart of
liberal Americans, especially traumatic in and
to the South itself. Myrdal regarded the black
arrest population as neither a social class nor a nation
many with a specific identity but as a caste, the
position of which was due more to social and
economic factors than biological differences.
Even the most distinguished and educated black
was ranked lower than the lowest white.
However, Myrdal was optimistic about the
future. The value ranking and prejudices
manifested in white Southern folkwavs were
inverted compared to the preferences of the
blacks, who were more concerned with equal
labour market opportunities (which they were
already gaining in some parts of the North) than
such goods as suffrage and sexual equality. This
gave leeway for a vicious circle to be turned into
a good circle, according to the principle of
cumulative causation. Moreover, the legal dis-
crimination based on race did not match the
position of the L1SA as the leading world power
after the Second World War on the global scene
pleading for universal ideals and rights that
they denied to a substantial part of their own
population.
Myrdal’s work attracted a number of
rejoinders and criticisms. He was an inspiring
88
source to the civil rights movement in the
19~~()s. white many coloured scholars felt that
the book addressed more the conscience of
white liberals than the real issues thev them-
selves were confronting. It has been argued that
Mvrdal tended to see black American culture as
a pathological form of white culture. He also
might have underestimated the role of the black
church in future development. It has also been
remarked that the basic thesis of the book really
is nothing new to what the abolitionists had said
more than one hundred years before. However,
the book 11,()?~ pages, plus notes, etc.: in total
some 1,500 pages, based on a very huge
material of memos and drafts) stands out as a
well-documented monumental study not only
over the ’Negro problem’ but over American
civilization and political culture, equalled only
perhaps by the works of Tocqueville and Bryce.
The book, moreover, addressed perennial
problems within social science, such as cumu-
lative causation (’beneficial’ and ’vicious’
circles; Myrdal was here inspired by the Swe-
dish economist Knut VVicksell), the role of in-
stitutions. and value intrusion and objectivity,
the latter a problem Myrdal addressed through-
out his career. Myrdal accounts at length for
the value departures of the investigation. In his
own Historie1l om An rllnoricnll Dilemma (The
History of an American I)ilemma1 (1987)
Myrdal dissociates himself from chapter 45,
with its metaphysical forecasts in section 6.
Towards the end of his life Myrdal worked on an
updating study but this was never brought to
fruition. It appears as ironic that the content of
chapter 45 appears today as closer to reality
than when 1B~1_vrdal denounced it in the mid-
1980s.
Myrdal. albeit successful, never originated
a school of followers, a situation which he
shares with many great scholars in social
science.
Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist work was
influenced by Myrdal’s parallel between the
position of the American Negro and that of
children and women. The influence, of course.
might appear as somewhat paradoxical, since in
his personal life Gunnar Myrdal was much less
feminist than in his theory. There are elements
in his life that make him vulnerable to criticism
for being a male chauvinist, but he had at least a
Platonic love for feminist novelties and gender
issues. Gunnar was supportive of Alva’s suc-
cessful career. and perhaps the best way to put it
is that he belonged to what gender egalitarians
of today might in retrospect call a lost genera-
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tion, rather hiring a maid than making the
dishes and vacuum cleaning himself. Like so
many big men with obvious charismatic gifts
and larger-than-life qualities, Myrdal was a very
demanding and egocentric person, in family life
as well as in academia. Nevertheless, he was still
popular and much admired.
4. The mature social scientist
Gunnar Myrdal’s identity as a sociologist is a
matter of interpretation and he is not easy to
typecast in terms of paradigmatic allegiances,
especially as he was fond of revealing hidden
value premises wherever he found them. So
perhaps ’Nordic anti-metaphysics’ would be the
most appropriate label, after all. due to the
affinity with not only Hagerstrom but also his
(once) friend Herbert Tingsten. the political
scientist and news paper editor. In his own view
of himself. Myrdal increasingly became a
sociologist, although there are also some
quotations from him later in life pointing in a
different direction, with a slightly condescend-
ing tone towards the academic discipline of
sociology. It is not documented that he followed
the development of sociological discourse.
Although it would be difficult to connect Myrdal
with any particular sociological school or
paradigm, there are elements of his demo-
graphic work implying a functionalist mode of
analysis while, on the other hand, elements of
his economics point away from such an
inclination. Myrdal’s alleged lack of allegiance
to the sociological tradition is. however, some-
thing he shares with many a prominent
sociologist, for instance Max Weber and Fried-
rich H. Tenbruck. Myrdal was a sociologist
nevertheless, in the Comtean sense of the term.
Myrdal was above all a social scientist, and
disciplinary boundaries did not restrict or
imprint his thinking. ’I ... call for the abolition
of the departments of economics, of sociology, of
anthropology, of political science, of geography,
of history, and their merger into a single
department of the historical social sciences’,
Immanuel Wallerstein writes in his ’Myrdal’s
legacy. IZ~lclS117 and Underdevelopment as Dilem-
mas’ 11 ~~~ 1:1 ()? ). Whether this is Mvrdal’s
crucial core and legacy is both arguable and
debatable. Myrdal himself wrote: ’I have learned
that in reality there are no economic, socio-
logical, psychological etc problems but merely
problems, and that all problems are just as
complex and complicated as reality itself

(198?:lfi). and further: ’The rules for cognitive
inquiry and establishing true knowledge are
basically the same in all social research’
1198?:17). He was not much of an historian,
however, but typically he was future-orientated,
despite the fact that his actual relation to
German historicism is somewhat opaque.
There are links between Myrdal and the
younger historical school, although institution-
alism as such does not really match well the
core elements of historicism. Later in life Myrdal
called for more of a historical dimension.
especially in comparative welfare discourse:
’lifi> hai><’ c’OrlSt1’llc’tPl~ the &dquo;Sm~dish model&dquo;as i/~f
mo (c~ckc~d history and if we mero cilOlle Irl tfle world’
I 19S?:S-1, italics in Myrdal’s text; compare also
p. ?~? 1. This late historicism contrasts with his
early Utopianism and manifests yet another
antinomian structure in Myrdal’s thought. His
rather self-biographical work from 1982 is a
vehement attack on exaggerated large-scale
social solutions, while his early social policy
appears as slightly innocent on this topic
(bureaucratization, ’iron cage’ theme) which.
after all was also already commonplace in the
1920s in literature (Rathenau. Bjerre). The old
Myrdal is like the boy unable to call back to
order the genie let out of the bottle.
Myrdal’s emphasis on problems as a basis
for investigation and his remarks over ’facts
kicking back’ might suggest a high degree of
affinity with Karl Popper’s theory of science:
they also have the idea of piecemeal social
engineering in common.
In 19533 Myrdal delivered the opening
address on science versus politics at the British
sociological conference, a text which is also part
of Myrdal (1958). His speech in Cairo from
I 9 S S about the causes for economic under-
development is thought to have intluenued
Nehru as well as Castro.
Myrdal’s Asian Drama has left a lasting
imprint on later studies in economics and
political science, due to the metaphor of the
soft state. It might well be that his contribution
to developmental studies and consequently
world system analyses is more important than
:;
rellected in this very essay of mine. 1
Late in life Myrdal spent several semesters
as a visiting professor at various American
universities. He his second
regarded the USA as
homeland and in several books tried continu-
ously to increase understanding of America in
Sweden Ihmltakt I1lcd .~Irllrikct. cowritten with
Alva during the war, is a good example¡.
Sweden displays a strange mixture of anti-
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339
Americanism and Americanization. From this
perspective Myrdal appears somewhat fore-
sighted in emphasizing the progressive charac-
ter of the American experience; that many
problems Swedes deal with are something the
Americans have already considerable experi-
ence in handling and accommodating to. Thus
Americans have something to teach us - for
better or worse - in housing, educational
reform, multi-culturalism, etc. - and, not least,
restrictions on top-heavy publicly financed
bureaucracy. Myrdal criticized (19~2, Appendix
to chapter 5) the fact that civil servants were
eligible for political office in Sweden. He fore-
sightedly puts his finger on what remains to
become a theme in the ’iron triangle’-or
renewed oligopoly debate (PnrteimrdroJ~enmit.
lack of trust for politicians, an old theme with
roots in Max Weber and Roberto Michels).
Since Gunnar Myrdal was not a modest
personality it is noteworthy that he did not
launch any definitive answers to difficult
matters of values and objectivity. During his
entire life he wrestled with how to handle value
intrusion and bias, developing from a rather
empiricist ’Vienna’ position in the 1920s to a
pioneering extension or application of Weber-
Rickert L’Uertbo;.iehung (value orientation), under
the guise of Axel Hagerstrom’s nihilist philoso-
phy. i.e. the combination of negative value
ontology and non-cognitivist value sentence
theory.
S. Conclusion
In some respects Gunnar Myrdal still remains a
19th century thinker, namely in the combina-
tion of Utopianism and Optimism (idea of
progress) and Enlightenment rationality. He
appears as a fascinating hybrid between Plato
and Popper. However, this does not distinguish
him greatly from other Lltopians, from Saint-
Simon to the Fabians.
In a longer perspective Myrdal’s most
lasting contribution is his operationalization of
the norm-sender problem, in the service of
rationalization of value hierarchies, to accom-
plish a more functional social policy. He was
extremely ambitious and lucid in making his
value premises (or the value premises he as a
researcher adopts) explicit, for instance in An
~‘~111c’1’IC’lill Dilemmll. Myrdal’s role for the diffu-
sion of Weber’s scientific value-rclativism equals
the role that Samuel Pufendorf once played for
Hobbes. In the longer perspective they all,
40
together with Bentham and Machiavelli, drew
straws to the same stack of anti-metaphysics
(anti-natural la~n’1 promoting the pursuit of
instrumental means-end analysis. However,
Myrdal was also a very compassionate person.
One does not easily put him in a box with a label
on it.
Nlvrdal was a man of many contrasts.
Perhaps his most central antinomy could be
phrased as one caught between total Enlight-
enment reason on the one hand, and Weberian
anti-metaphysics on the other.
Notes
1 mail-communication early March, 2000).
V&auml;gvisare (Stockholm: Norstedts 1998). This volume is
about to appear in English although it does not document the
transactions, where the exchange between Rickard Swedberg
and Bo Gustafsson, on Myrdal and Hagerstrom was particularly
intriguing. The role of Karl Mannheim remains a matter of
interpretation and debate Myrdal got to know Mannheim after
the war but had known of him since the early 19 30s. Many
archives are of relevance to cover Gunnar Myrdal’sfull span of
activities, such as Carnegie. etc. The copyright of the Myrdal
material at Arbetarrorelsens arkiv belongs to the local commu-
nity of the city of Stockholm. The effect this might have on the
options to bring about text critical editions of his work is a
matter of dispute
2 Reportedly among the first books Myrdal ordered to New
Delhi when starting his work on Asian Drama was Kjellen’s
Stormakterna, which is a resource analysis of how states relate to
each other in a global system, a mode of analysis rather similar
to Immanuel Wallerstein’s world system analyses, albeit in
embryonic form and with lingering elements of metaphysics.
3
See for instance Historien om An American Dilemma, p. 39,
for one example of many of Gunnar’s relation to Hagerstrom
About the relation to Weber, see for instance Jan-Olof Nilsson
1994: p. 146 et passim. The precise nature of Myrdal’s relation
to Weber remains a matter of both interpretation and further
research In a letter to Sissela Bok of 30 November 198 1 Myrdal
says that: ’I have never been deep in Max Weber.I recall thatI
was stopped from going deeper by finding that he labored with a 13
logically interrelated system of valuations whichI personally
don’t believe exists. I wonder whether you have an early article
by me. Das Zweck-Mittel-Denken in der Nationaloekonomie’
(Ubers. aus dem Schwedischen Manuskript von Gerhard
Mackenroth) ( Zeitschrift f&uuml;r Nationaloekonomie 4:31933, pp.
305-329.) I think there is something at the end of this article, as
also of course in the Political Element I think one should see
Myrdal’s criticism as an attempt to further the antimetaphysics
and sharpen up the core of the Weberian position. According to
Kaj Folster the young Myrdal (her father) made a great deal of
Randglo&szlig;en in books by Max Weber, for instance his early
sociology of religion.
4
The role Myrdal had for the diffusion of Chicago school
style of thinking and Chicago school concepts remains a matter
of interpretation and further research. Mrs W. I. Thomas had
been to Sweden before and there are several sources involved in
this migration of thoughts and concepts. Of course I refer to the
Chicago school of sociology in this context; the concept has been
used to characterize a school in economics as well and since
Myrdal was an economist we should anticipate misunderstand-
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mgs. The Chicago school in political science is, however, closely
related to the Chicago school sociology, in both cases a focus
on ethnic groups in cities being a topical concern
5
See Leif Lewin in Planhushallningsdebatten (1967), on the
so-called Myrdal commission - and its much less ideological
character than one might assume from contemporary public
debate. Myrdal felt that Keynesianism perhaps had been too
victorious and that state interventionism - necessary for in-
dustrial modernization-should not be allowed to undecut the
free market, a responsible position which is hard to ’get through’
in a polarized debate climate.
6
Contributions to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Woche
and Die Zeit during fall 1997, see Die Woche 5 September 1997.
Wohlfart - messerscharf. Schweden Im europaischen Muster-
land eines Sozialstaates wurden jahrzehntelang "Minderwer-
tige" zwangssterilisiert’ or FAZ,2 September 1997. Jasper von
Altenbockum: "’Nazismus mit umgekehrtem Gedankensgang"’
in Schweden. Die Zwangssterilisierungen’.
In Part2 of Herbert Tingsten’s memoirs he bears witness
(p. 232) to Gunnar helping him to overcome a racist attitude to
black people (Jan Myrdal drew my attention to this passage in a
8 In one sense of the word, as it has recently been used in
Sweden in philosophical debate, about diagnostics of unborn
children and abortion: but here utilitarian is combined with an
organic view of the genetic stock as something contributing to
define the people, demos
11
I have in mind Weber’s vehement attack on Ploetz’s
unscientific and metaphysical racism at the first German
sociological conference in 1909 which he, however, combined
with a condescending attitude to especially the Polish element.
10I allude to the famous article in Der Spiegel in the early
1980s about legally ignorant adminitrators (social workers
creating their own demand) violating the rights of the parents to
take care of their own children. to an extent unseen in the rest of
the civilized world and more in line with Sparta and the Soviet
union.
11
There are no simple correlations. Robert Putnam’s
famous comparison between Northern and Southern Italy
shows that the role of the family for civility differs and that
the strong family by no means necessarily promotes civil society.
12
Our original homogeneity is of course the background to
our recent huge immigration, which we have dealt with in a
more human way than in any other country. At least this goes
for organized Sweden - the state, the local communities, the
press, etc. - although many individuals and even local groups of
Swedes sometimes have misbehaved’ (Myrdal 1976, quoted
from Vagvisare p. 409, my translation)
Friedrich List was a German political economist in the
mid-19th century who spent several years in America and who
was critical to British laissez faire doctrine.
14
This reciprocity across the Atlantic ocean remains a hot
topic. as demonstrated in the controversy between Alexander
and Munch a few years ago (in Newsletters from ISA’s RC16,
’Theory Research Group’). In Sweden especially Ron Eyerman
has been addressing the theme: ’Why is Swedish - and Euro-
pean-social science so American?’. Turner and Turner: The
Impossible Science (Sage 1990) addresses the theme of philan-
thropy and Bagge’s letter exchange with Rockefeller’sRuml has
been published in Swedish (in Andreen & Boalt, 1987).
15
Myrdal(1984) is a neglected source for the protectionist
element in Myrdal’s views of economic development.
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