Her personality, considered unruly for a girl at the time, earned her the contemporary Swedish moniker kata, meaning 'intrepid'.

Opposed to authoritarian discipline and conservative views already as a child, she came to be a sympathizer of liberalism and then Marxism and socialism by her intellectual contacts, particularly Ellen Key, Knut Wicksell and Fridtjuv Berg.

As a lecturer, she participated frequently as a freelance writer in the Swedish socialist press, such as in Socialdemokraten, Stormklockan and Politiken.

[1] She was engaged in Swedish trade union work from 1898, and a member of the committee organizing the great strikes of 1905, 1908 and 1911.

With her powerful agitation, she reportedly had the ability to awake great enthusiasm: her fiery, aggressive and drastic speeches made her one of the most popular and efficient agitators of the Swedish working-class movement, and her ability to excite the masses and give them courage to keep fighting during conflicts with the authorities and in the midst of disappointments, especially during the great strikes of 1902 and 1909, has been described as an unusual one.

She continued to believe that the class struggle of Marx and Engels was the only true way for the working-class movement to achieve its goals, and she became disappointed in the pragmatist development of the Swedish Social Democratic Party.

[1] She continued as a lecturer, now for the Communist party, using her ability and popularity to activate the mass movements during Sweden's final transition to democracy after the end of the war in 1917–1918.

[1] One reason why she abandoned communism at the end of her life, as well as one of the controversies Dalström was responsible for within the Swedish Communist group, was her view on religion.

"[1] Already in 1907, she had held a famous debate with the priest David Granqvist [sv] on Christianity and Socialism, and the same year, she copied Martin Luther by nailing her opinions upon the church door in Åmål.