Some would say they got to this position by the various popular movements in the early 20th century, you had a movement against alocholism and for better working conditions. Its a bottom-up approach, when the common people organize and try to do something good for their society.

These movements didnt spring up over night, it took decades from the first Socialist agitators to spread their understanding of society. This was people like Hans Albin just taking a stance at public squares in many cities and takling about socialism and equality, organizing reading groups and forming the first labor unions - where workers learned to read.

There were clashes with the elite, even killing of workers by army in 1937 in Sweden, but the elite realized they were poking at fire - considering the USSR wasnt far away, and attempting to curb the popular movements for a better life at the cost of big business carried a risk of even worse, revolution and communism. So a deal was made - big business/elites and the representatives of the labor movement, which came to be the swedish model, a mixed economy picking the fruits after ww2 - for the various devastated countries needed both raw materials and Swedens manufacture.