A talk by Dell Rose

This presentation is an overview of the ‘anti-economic’ vision of the Swedish radical utopian August Nordenskiöld (1754-1792). For Nordernskiöld the world was in fetters to a false idol, a spirit of Moloch which required human lives for gold, and he promoted a radical agenda of alchemical liberation. Nordernskiöld was also a perfect representative of an important yet neglected political tradition which has been defined for the first time in my scholarship as

‘political Swedenborgianism.’ This tradition was advocated by an international community of activists engaged in an array of different social causes, but were united by the conviction that the writings of the Swedish prophet Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) lay the key to a more just society. Swedenborg’s descriptions of heaven became the foundation for a new terrestrial vision ,one that would overcome the challenges of the time with insight drawn from Swedenborg's revelations. The promoters of this tradition were on both sides of the political spectrum, with Nordernskiöld being on the radical fringe of the libertarian wing of this tradition, advocating the abolition of money, of legal marriage, and of racial oppression. In recognizing political Swedenborgianism as a distinct tradition, we honour one of the most important intellectual currents of eighteenth and nineteenth-century social reform, and gain a more complete vision of the intellectual heritage of modern political activism.