and lakes. I asked: Did Sweden’s contemporaryrnSocial Democrats, now enjoyingrna strong revival in the opinionrnpolls as the conservatives take the fallrnfor decades of socialist mismanagement,rnunderstand this? No, he replied, thern”populist left” in Sweden had died inrnthe early 1960’s, replaced by a “so-calledrnleft” that was committed to smashingrnmorality, to destroying the family, and torncrushing traditional institutions. “Alvarnhad much to do with this,” he volunteered.rnToday, he continued, the socialist partyrnleaders were fat with power, cut offrnfrom the common people, and committedrnto a false concept of equality. Thernintellectuals, too, were selling out. I notedrnthat in America, the going rate for anrnintellectual’s soul and pen seemed to bernthe cost of a round-trip ticket to Paris, asrnthe Unification Church had discoveredrn20 years ago. Myrdal said that the pricernof a Swedish intellectual was cheaperrnstill, and he ticked off the names of journalistsrnand professors who had sold outrnto the internationalists.rnHe talked with great affection of therndays of Per Albin Hansson, Sweden’s socialistrnprime minister in the 1930’s, whornhad recast his party’s ideological messagernin a populist, “folkish,” nationalistrnway through speeches such as “Swedenrnfor the Swedes” and concepts such asrnfolkhemmet (“the people’s home”).rnGunnar and Alva’s “population policies,”rnseeking more marriages and more births,rnfit well into this framework.rnDid he have hope for the renewal ofrna “tradition-oriented left”? Yes, hernthought that the war of the “false leftwing”rnagainst the family was faltering.rnThis time, leading me down the spiralrnstaircase into his library, he producedrncopies of Smabrukaren, the magazine ofrnSweden’s contemporary small-farmers’rnmovement, which is struggling “to reattachrnthe Swedish people to the land.”rnHe cited the young intellectuals (includingrnhis son, a historian of agrarianrnSweden) centered around the magazinernFolkets Historia {The People’s History).rnHe hoped that the looming conflict overrnentry into the Common Market, tornwhich polls showed a majority of Swedesrnopposed, might help recreate a “left” atrnpeace with nation and tradition.rnWhat was wrong with the falteringrnSwedish economy? He showed me a recentrnbook of his, Mekana, on the historyrnand “ideology” of the Swedish erectorrnset. Sweden’s economic troubles, hernsaid, came from the loss of its people’srnability to innovate. “The Swedish childrenrnwho played with Mekana knew howrnto create.” Along with the children ofrnthe farmers, these tinkers had built modernrnSweden. But such things were nornlonger encouraged in the schools, wherernAmerican-style “democratic equality”rnhad triumphed.rnMyrdal seemed to be getting tired.rnSome of his sentences began to trail off.rnI needed to be back on the road, tornStockholm. I thanked him for his time.rn”You know,” he said as I left, “Gunnarrnnever could understand my fascinationrnfor mechanical things, or for animals.”rnAllan Carlson is the president of ThernRockford Institute and the publisher ofrnChronicles.rnLetter From Francernby Christine HaynesrnAcademia AbroadrnMany alumni of a junior year abroadrnsummarize their experience as “enjoyable,”rn”enlightening,” or even “empowering.”rnOthers rely on their senses in recallingrnthe niceties of life in anotherrncountry: they remember the smell ofrnwarm bread wafting from a patisserie,rnthe sight of a bustling and colorfulrnSaturday-morning market, the sound ofrnhigh-pitched horns coming from impatientrnPeugeots and Renaults. In writingrnabout the year I spent studying at thernUniversite de Provence in Aix-en-rnProvence, France, I could fall back onrnmy promenades along the CoursrnMirabeau or naps in the Mediterraneanrnsun or climbs on Cezanne’s Mte. Ste.-rnVictoire. But just for the sake of noveltyrn(and in order to fool my parents) I willrnfocus instead on what I observed as arnstudent.rnIn fact, one of my most memorablernexperiences abroad was an introductoryrnliterature course on “Les idees politiquesrnet sociales du XlXieme siecle,” or “ThernPolitical and Social Ideas of 19thcenturyrnFrance,” as it was translated onrnmy University of Michigan transcript.rnHeld for an hour and a half everyrnWednesday evening, the course wasrnsomewhat less ambitious than its captionrnmight indicate in that it treated the ideasrnof only two of the era’s political and socialrnthinkers. Under the guidance of ProfesseurrnBruno Viard (the very image of arnFrench professor in his tortoise-shellrnglasses, moustache, and pea-green corduroys),rnour class of 30 students spent anrnentire school year examining and comparingrnsmall portions of the work ofrnAlexis de Tocqueville and Pierre Leroux.rnWhile the first is known and admired forrnhis incisive and prophetic views onrnAmerican-style democracy, the second isrnno less incisive and prophetic in his ownrnway, and he deserves a brief introduction.rnA typographer and journalist who associatedrnwith the likes of George Sandrnand the Saint-Simonians, Pierre Lerouxrn(1797-1871) contributed several key conceptsrnto early socialist thought. In fact,rnhe was the first writer to use the wordrn”socialism,” which he contrasted withrnanother recent addition to the vocabularyrnof the time, “individualism.” A goodrn15 years before Marx, in an 1834 essayrncalled “De I’individualisme et du socialisme,”rnLeroux defined socialism as “thernexaggeration of the idea of association, orrnof society.” He also beat Marx to thernpunch in defining “class struggle” as “thernbattle of those who do not possess the instrumentsrnof labor against those whorndo,” as “the struggle of the proletariatsrnagainst the bourgeoisie.” One of Leroux’srnmain arguments was that bothrnabsolute liberty and absolute equalityrnare dangerous. Whereas unrestrainedrnindividualism turns men into wolves andrnleaves them with an “imperceptiblerndwarf” for a state, untempered socialismrngives birth to the guillotine and transformsrnthe state into a “giant Hydra.” AsrnLeroux describes it, the Scylla of absoluternliberty and the Charybdis of absoluternequality are the two political perilsrnbetween which the social scientist mustrnmaneuver. Yet according to him, safernpassage between them lies not in anyrnpolitical Utopia, but rather in the “sentimentrnof fraternity.”rnBased as it is on the abstract republicanrntriad of liberty, equality, and fraternity,rnLeroux’s philosophy of political andrnsocial progress is idealistic, to say thernleast. But his significance lies not in hisrnproposed solution to the modern strugglernbetween the individual and society,rnbut rather in his definition of this struggle.rnAs my professor wrote in an essay onrnNOVEMBER 1993/41rnrnrn