Swedish statesman, born in 1860. As a student he seemed at first destined for a scientific career. He early devoted himself to astronomy and for a period he acted as junior official in the observatory of Stockholm. His keen interest in political and social questions, however, soon drew him into journalism and into active politics, and he threw in his lot with the then small group of Social Democrats in Sweden. In 1886 he assumed control of the weekly journal Socialdemokraten, their leading organ, which later was converted into a daily. In 1888 he was condemned to a short term of imprisonment on account of his articles. He was elected a member of the Second Chamber of the Riksdag in 1896. An able speaker and tactician, he exercised in Sweden an influence proportionate to the growing numbers of his supporters. He joined the Eden Government in the autumn of 1917 as finance minister, and when this ministry fell in 1920 Branting became prime minister and formed an entirely Social-Democratic administration which, however, resigned office in the autumn of the same year. Meanwhile he had played an important rôle in international labour politics. He acted as representative of Swedish Social Democracy at all the congresses of the First International, and in the summer of 1917 he was chairman of the Dutch-Scandinavian delegation which sat in Stockholm and conferred in turn with delegations from the Socialist parties of most of the belligerent countries with a view to devising a platform for joint intervention by them in the interests of peace, the moving power being Camille Huysmans, the secretary to the International. Their efforts were unavailing. In January and February 1919 Branting was chairman of the International Social-Democratic Conference in Berne, at which British, French and Germans met for the first time since the war. He was a member of the executive committee of the Second International, which later sat in London with Mr. Henderson as its chairman. He had taken an active part in most of the Scandinavian workmen’s congresses since 1886; and at the ninth congress in Copenhagen in 1920 he introduced the question of “democracy and dictatorship,” the debate on which ended with the passing of a resolution by a solid majority, representing up to 800,000 organized workmen, against a small Norwegian minority, disapproving of the Bolshevik policy and adhering to the Second International.
