Preliminary Programme

This paper will deal with the social order of the rural factory community of Nokia from 1870s to the 1930s. The focus is on local bourgeoisie: its circumstances, social status and goals. The question is how the bourgeoisie, which were very few in number comparing to workers, were able to hold social supremacy in the factory community. In this case the local social order refers to the system and network of social relationships that guided and ruled the functioning of the community.

The rural mill towns were unique social communities governed by one or two factories. In these communities the strong interdependent ralationship between the company and workers largely determined social order at any given time. The societies of the factory communities were quite similar all around the industrialized world. That gives also a good chance to make international comparisons.

In my paper I will study the question with the help of the case of the factory community of Nokia in Southern Finland, near the industrial city of Tampere. Nokia was firstly a typical Finnish paper mill town from the beginning of 1870s to the beginning of the 20th century. The factory company, Nokia Ltd, created the whole locality and it governed the society with its factory paternalistic order. This “harmony” gradually broke up when another major factory, rubber plant, arrived, in 1904 to the mill town. At the same time civic society became stronger and stronger in Finland and the labour movement started to demand better working conditions and influence of power. Also the national development of Finland changed the circumstances. Finland gained independence in December 1917. This was immediately followed by a bitter Civil war, which in turn concretely affected Nokia. The Civil war divided the nation into two, and factory communities where the majority of the population consisted of workers felt the division keenly.

After the civil war the two major factories were still the driving force of the community. After the war workers gained the municipal power and factory companies had the economical power as before. The tension between these two sources of power culminated in the rubber plant strike 1928-1929. The total defeat of the workers gave bourgeoisie, led by the factory companies, a chance to gain total social hegemony in the community.

In my paper I will explain bourgeoisies strategies and motives for keeping social hegemony. I will put great emphasis to the social structure of mill towns and to the development of the social order of the community. The analysis of social order reveals the social realationships, the operational dynamics and their preconditions and therefore also the conditions and possibilities that local bourgeoisie had in the community. (Show less)

Of the four major bourgeois parties in inter-war Finland only one, the Agrarian Union, was mainly defined by its relatively homogeneous social base. The other three, the conservative National Coalition Party, the liberal National Progressive Party and the language-based Swedish People’s Party, had a socially rather diverse support. Accordingly, they saw and labelled themselves as “idea parties” (aatepuolueita). My paper is linked to a current Ph.D. project which deals with different aspects in Finnish political culture between the two World Wars and their relevance for the course of Finland’s domestic politics. Above all, the doctoral thesis will discuss the question if and how several phenomena of political culture promoted and/or retarded the process in which the dangerous inheritance of the 1918 Civil War was “defused” and the democratic system thus stabilized. The conference paper intends to add a sociohistorical dimension to this analysis. It will be concerned with the question how traditions of political culture and socio-economic interests concurred, intertwined and countered each other in the decision-making of Finnish parties, mainly those of the political centre and moderate right. Under which circumstances, for instance, the strong peasant element within the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) could outweigh the party’s mental reservations towards the “plebeian” Agrarian Union and bring about a closer co-operation, as happened for some time in the mid 1920’s? In addition to inter-party relationships, the paper will focus on parties’ internal self-definitions, with particular reference to cases in which the notion of “middle class” was used. The attempt to reconcile Kokoomus’ self-image as an “idea party” caring for the whole nation’s best with the particular consideration for its own client groups can be seen in Yrjö Koskelainen’s speech at the party conference 1920: One should, Koskelainen claimed, “defend the educated middle class” for the very reason that by doing so one acted “in the interest of the whole”. In the National Progressive Party, whose electoral support had been shrinking rapidly throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the idea of emphasizing its middle class appeal came to the fore particularly at the 1937 party conference. Arvo Linturi stressed in his lecture that the Progressive Party should finally part with its belief that an “ideological party” (maailmankatsomuspuolue) was something more sublime than an “interest party” (etupuolue); instead it should concentrate on mobilizing the lower middle class. The party conference passed a resolution corresponding to Linturi’s proposals, but the radical change took place only after World War Two when the National Progressive Party was replaced by the Finnish People’s Party. At least both National Coalition Party and National Progressive Party added clauses to their platforms in 1939 which promised support for the “middle class”. (Show less)

The Scandinavian welfare state system has been an object of both idolization and opposition. Sweden has been considered a “progressive” country run by a workers’ movement as early as from the 1930’s onwards. The welfare state has been looked upon as the achievement of social democracy and the working class, or, alternatively, as a result of cooperation between the workingman and the farmer.

Some later studies have, however, questioned this myth – especially the doctoral thesis of Peter Baldwin, who did research on the class-base of the European welfare state from 1875 to 1975. Baldwin claims that the middle class had an important role especially in creating the so-called universalist social policy in the Nordic countries. The universalist social policy, which distributed the money and services evenly and automatically to everyone benefited especially the middle class. As an important example Baldwin refers to the policy of the Swedish right-wing party in creation of the pension system in the mid-1940’s. In his opinion the Swedish Conservatives chose the universalist line because of the interest of the middle class: since the middle class funded a big share of the social security of the lower classes in the form of taxes, it was time for the middle class to get some social benefits from the state as well.

My paper in the conference will deal with the middle class aspect of the welfare state policy, the aspect that the Swedish and Finnish right-wing parties pursued after the Second World War. This comparative viewpoint will enlighten the problems and questions between the middle class and welfare state policy: how important was the middle class in the development of the Nordic welfare state and the policy of the right-wing parties.

I maintain that the middle class indeed played an important part in the right-wing policy on welfare state. Especially the positive view that the Finnish Conservative party (Kansallinen Kokoomus) took towards the welfare state in the 1970’s and the Swedish Conservatives (högerpartiet, later Moderata Samlingspartiet) in the 1940’s is largely due to the middle class interests. However, this explanation is problematic because the Swedish Conservatives opposed the welfare state especially in the late 1950’s and from the late 1970’s to the present day. Can this be explained with some other factor than the middle class, or is the Swedish middle class very different from the Finnish? Or does the Finnish welfare state suit better to middle class interests than the Swedish? The comparative analysis thus reveals very illuminatingly how different solutions affect the middle class attitudes concerning the welfare state. (Show less)

The purpose of my research is to study the development of the middle class in Finland during the era of rising nationalism. The project is connected to my previous studies on conservative, liberal and authoritarian circles in Finland, the ranks from which the new Finnish nationalistic intellectuals rose in the 19th century. This middle class / civic society elite was peculiar in the European scale, since it did not have its origins in a traditional nobility and gentry nor in an urban, commercial bourgueise – both were Swedish-speaking and small in numbers in an agrarian society.
The aim is to track down the values and the role of the middle-class in a wider perspective than in the “traditional” political history (state institutions, parties and elections). What sort of influence did this middle-class have in society? What made them so dominant among intellectuals, church, university, civil servants, business circles, trade and industry? Moreover, what prevented them from going to the other extreme, especially as these circles in Eastern, Central and Southern Europe became very authoritarian and undemocratic, in many cases even national socialist and fascist later in the 1920-30’s? How did the middle class see its own role – how was the danger of Bolshevism and how were new ”upstartish” circles and parties (workers, peasants) to be controlled; how were the people to be ”civilized” in the nationalist, basically traditionally conservative model?
I maintain that it was the ethos of duty, the notion what a “sense of duty” and “setting an example” (misguided and paternalistic as these sometimes might have been) meant, and the mainly cultural emphasis which lay down the tradition of middle class virtues and middle class nationalism. Also the Scandinavian heritage played a part: the model of German-type nationalism has often been emphasized, but the models of a middle class “good life” largely came from Scandinavia. It must be remembered that in many cases the middle class considered itself apolitical.
This was so even though, or rather, because everything was political and national according to the so-called Fennomania. When everything was seen as a part of constructing the Finnish nation, it did not seem relevant to be active in party politics. Nation-building and example-setting were more important in one’s own professional career (as a teacher, doctor, lawyer, engineer, clergyman, civil servant, scientist etc.). Also the gender issue was very relevant. Naturally there were also active politicians, but politics as a whole-time profession, without a career in the civic society, seemed suspicious and inappropriate – even sinister.
It is interesting to see that this nationalistic ethos was in many ways more moderate and even understanding towards international influence than the nationalism of the next generation. The latter had experienced the Civil war of 1918 as a heroic battle and took a more radical, militaristic and in extreme cases even xenophobic view; the interpretation of the “sense of duty” had become more militant, politically motivated and – at least as an ideal – mass-based. The political culture had changed. (Show less)