The Progress Party keeps slipping out of my fingers when I try to define it ideologically. They're not pure libertarians, (they were kicked out of the party ten years ago), and they're certainly not social democrats, but they have picked up elements of both these ideologies, in addition to some more typically conservative and populist causes (anti-immigration, more law and order). From libertarianism, they have the basic distrust of regulation and bureaucracy, and a belief in privatization and low taxes. From social democratic thinking they seem to have picked up the ideal of the state as an active party in business and in ensuring people's welfare. That makes classification difficult. The Conservatives can be counted on to lean in one direction, and Labor in the other. Not very hard, perhaps, but predictably. Hagen, on the other hand, is often unpredictable, and I'm not entirely sure if this is because I just haven't figured out all his political principles yet, or if he, like his critics claim, doesn't have any, and is only turning with the wind. I lean towards the first, of course, or I wouldn't support him, but how many of Hagen's decidedly un-libertarian ideas are based on principle, and how many on populism?

In its national convention last week the Progress Party added to this confusion (or perhaps reduced it) by declaring itself as the New Labor Party. To understand what this means you have to understand the role that "Old Labor" once played in Norwegian politics. The Labor Party under Einar Gerhardsen held a majority or a near majority in Stortinget from WW2 to the early 70's, (ruling nearly continously from 45 to 65, and last seeing 40% support in 1985), and effectively had the power to do whatever it liked. Modern Norway, with its wealth, freedom and security, its regulations, taxation and bureaucracy, is a product of the Labor Party in that period. How much of what should be owed to and blamed on who can be discussed, but not the monumental role Labor had in post-war politics. Old Labor had a vision, and they saw it through.

There'll never be another party the size of Old Labor, of course, but also apart from size the position as Old Labor is up for grabs. Labor itself certainly isn't. This is partly because they succeeded. They made their dreams come true, (and noone has yet been powerful enough or willing to unmake them), and yet they still use the same social democratic terminology, the same toned down class rhetoric. When Jens Stoltenberg derides a status-quo-preserving centre-right budget as "unsolidaric", that appears nearly as ridiculous as when journalists go on strike for a sixth vacation week. Another reason for its fall is the corruption of power. Old Labor ruled Norway almost like a one party state, and its position, until very recently, as the largest party in Norway tended to attract a certain kind of ambitious conformists. After the last of Labor's great leaders, Gro Harlem Brundtland, left Norway to harass the UN instead, this has become more obvious, and Labor now appears to many clearly as a party that really, really wants to rule, but for no particular reason.

It should also be mentioned that the general direction of Norwegian society over the last decades has a been away from the society that Gerhardsen built. The economy has been significantly deregulated and somewhat privatized, as has the media, leaving behind heavy taxation, an all-encompassing welfare model, and a huge public sector as the remaining legacy of Old Labor. This liberal development has been accompanied, as was Gerhardsens years in power, by increasing wealth. Combined with the record high unemployment during Brundtland's 90-96 period in power, this has done much, I think, to dispel the illusion of Labor as the guarantist of our well-being.

When Carl I. Hagen wants the Progress Party to become the New Labor Party, what I think he would most like to emulate is its vision, and its appeal to what's left of the worker class. Labor was a radical party. It had a vision of a wealthy and secure society, seeing itself and the state as playing an active role in making that happen. Many of Hagen's methods will be different, of course. The Progress Party has a strong distaste of taxes, of bureaucracy and regulation - favourite all-purpose tools of Labor. But then again some methods are the same.

One example: Last year, the Progress Party made a deal with the left-wing opposition, Labor, the Socialist Left and the Centre Party, for a maximum price on childrens day-care, with whatever being above that limit to be financed by the state. Although the proposition passed in Stortinget, it is extremely unpopular with the government coalition, which threatens to refuse to make room for this new expense in its revised 2003 budget. The issue will be decided later this spring, but it's not at all impossible that the Progress Party may actually bring down a centre-right government over a social democratic cause (subsidized day-care), possibly for the benefit of a new left-wing government. This may possibly be strategically wise, (at least when the 2005 election moves closer), but it's ideologically incoherent.

Another example: The local Conservative government in Oslo, supported by the local Progress Party, is planning to sell it's majority shares in Hafslund, the largest power distributor in Norway, with a good chance that they'll be bought by a foreign company. One would expect a libertarian party to welcome a standard case of privatization like this, and a lot of people were surprised when the Progress Party on the national level came out against it, with Hagen saying that the national government ought to buy these shares from the city. His motivation is to prevent an important power company from falling into foreign hands, but it's also part of a larger, Keynesian plan for a national investment fund, which will use oil money to warm up the economy. This kind of thinking is common in Norway, national (or at least in-country) ownership has traditionally been seen as a defense against ruthless, foreign capitalists. But it's unexpected from Hagen. I don't agree with it, and I don't agree with the price limit on day-care, but the question remains: Principle of populism? I just don't know.

But I do think Hagen is onto something with "New Labor", strategically speaking. The Progress Party has suffered from a reputation as cold and angry, (inevitable for an anti-immigration right-wing party in a politically correct social democracy), and by aligning itself with the reputation of Old Labor, while retaining most of its core values, it is in effect reassuring people that it wants the same as Labor did, wealth and security, (though not equality), but using different methods. Call it a Norwegian variant of Deng Xiaoping's observation that it doesn't matter if the cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice.

I'm glad you're back from Intermission.

I learn more about Norway from you than from all other sources combined. Thanks!

Good to see you back. Lots of your ex-countrymen live here in North Dakota and Minnesota. More of them should be reading your site. Patience. In time they will.

Nice to see you back, Bjorn. One thing that interests me about the Norwegian situation is that government child care, which in America is seen as a sign of the creeping hand of Big Brother clawing its way into the home, seems in Norway to be a family values issue (so far as I understand it). The difference seems to be that in America (to some extent, though not in every case) one parent can still stay home with the kids, providing the other parent has a good-paying job and they're willing to tighten their belts a lot. In Norway, on the other hand, that's pretty much impossible (largely, I think, due to the tax burden). So people who want to promote families and the raising of children in traditional homes have to support some kind of system for cheap child care. (Or am I talking through my hat on this?)

Lars Walker: Well, Labor's assumption has always been that women don't want to stay home to raise the kids, so when they do something must be discouraging them.

But there's another factor here: The Christian People's Party introduced a system a few years ago that provide parents with money if they _don't_ use daycare. (It's called the "Cash payment" system, although in a saner world it would be called a tax cut.) The intention is to make staying home for one parent an option. I don't know how well it works, though.

Hooboy! A "Cash Payment" tax cut system to induce one parent to stay at home. This is what a social democratic welfare state concentrates its energies on: finessing yet another change in a byzantine maze of tax laws for the sake of the questionable social good, while depriving the economy of yet another opportunity for free enterprise to flourish.

I bet tons of money was spent by Norwegian academia to study this problem, to corroborate the studies other Scandinavian countries have done on the subject. And on and on it goes...

Why not eliminate excess taxes, and let the private sector deal with the problem? If both parents were working, with money to spend on childcare (if the parents were taxed less), it might just create a vibrant child-care industry, gainfully employing even more people. Hey, there's even a term for it. It's called the "free market".

It was actually a pet cause of the Christians, not very popular with more traditional social democrats - because it would encourage women to stay at home.

Yeah, it's ridiculous. We should just drop all tax benefits and adopt a flat or at least a predictable tax rate. I understand that your own tax system is quite complex as well, though, so this may not have all that much to do with social democracy, but more to do with democracy itself. Politicians tend to be more interested in solving specific, highly visible problems with specific, highly visible solutions, than solving vague and general problems with vague and general solutions.

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