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Market-Friendly Social Democracy Under the leadership of “modernizers”, have social democratic parties renounced the socialist project of their predecessors? While it is true that these parties have been introducing liberal reforms for over a century, the relative continuity of their positions must not be underestimated. The analysis of the political platforms of Labour and the Swedish Social-Democratic Party (SAP) from 1966 to 1990 is in this respect revealing: it shows that shared terms like “economic planning”, for example, can be the object of multiple and diverse uses depending on the political tendencies of the moment. Though these parties very early on chose to put their hopes in the welfare state, party leaderships have in fact always been convinced that a prosperous market economy and competitive national industries were the only ways to finance it. This general acceptance of the market and the limits it places on public action subsequently prepared the way for the “modernizing” turn. One should thus not speak of a “revisionist” break with the past.