ABSTRACT
Environmentalism, together with a general critique of economic growth and industrial pollution, severely challenged business interests and the capitalist system in the late 1960s. This chapter traces the strategic response of organized business interests in Sweden to this challenge through the ambition to educate citizens to embrace uncertainty and optimism. Following the campaigns organized by the Swedish Public Relations firm Kreab, the Swedish Confederation of Employers, and the Confederation of Swedish Industry, as well as the educational material these groups produced and the exhibitions they prepared, this chapter shows how openness and uncertainty emerged as something to be protected from the closure and certainty that reports like Limits to Growth forecasted. Building on sociologist Jens Beckert’s notion of fictional expectations, it is argued that these educational efforts were designed to protect a necessary foundation for capitalist growth: credit. Making sure that citizens considered the future to be brighter and better than the present became an imperative.
