Free Viking Economics by George Lakey

and led campaigns that eradicated poliomyelitisand reduced tuberculosis. A popular radio speaker, lecturer, and author, he later spoke against Norwegian participation in the Korean War and in NATO. In 1972, he helped lead the movement that kept Norway out of the European Union.
THE OWNING CLASS STRIKES BACK
    By the middle of the 1920s, some members of the Norwegian owning class began to doubt the effectiveness of the army for repression of the labor movement. My future father-in-law Johannes Mathiesen was far from alone in his passionate rejection of the military. The Labor Party tried calling for a military strike; the government retaliated and threw party functionaries in jail. Nobody knew how reliable the army would remain in defending the status quo.
    The Patriotic League was their answer. Launched in 1926, the League’s mission was to wade into labor strikes and violently defend replacement workers from the efforts that union members made to keep “scabs” from taking their jobs. By the 1930s, the League had recruited tens of thousands of members.
    This resort to street violence to try to keep the Norwegian labor movement from winning had of course been preceded by the rise of Hitler’s Nazis in Germany and Mussolini’s Fascist “blackshirts” in Italy. Sir Oswald Mosley was a frustrated politician in the United Kingdom whose meeting with Mussolini in 1932 inspired the English version, called the British Union of Fascists. Its paramilitary wing also called itself the “blackshirts.” Mosley was supported by an array of wealthy funders and members of the British nobility.
    The Great Depression hit Norway hard, resulting in a higher rate of unemployment than in any other Nordic country. In a shrewd move, the union movement decided to continue the membership of unemployed workers, even those who couldn’t afford their union dues. It was another way to generate solidarity, and to reduce the chance of former union members turning, in their desperation to feed their families, into scabs.
    The year 1931 was one of widespread hunger and suffering. The unions organized boycotts and eighty-two strikes. The Norwegian Employers Confederation tried to force the unions to accept a reduction of wages for workers who still had jobs, and used the technique of the lockout—locking the doors of their factories and shipyards to prevent workers from working. Workers fought back nonviolently, with massive demonstrations. The four-month struggle had no clear victor.
    In 1932, the total number of union campaigns increased again, to ninety-one unions fighting for a living wage, union recognition, and the right to strike. A middle-aged Norwegian politician named Vidkun Quisling believed that the time had come for a coup d’état to establish military rule and crush the left.
    Quisling had begun his career in the military, where he joined the General Staff on the eve of World War I. He was said to detest the strong Norwegian pacifist movement that achieved its goal of keeping Norway out of that war. After the war, Quisling did diplomatic work, using his administrative skills to help Fridjof Nansen with international humanitarian projects. He then drifted rightward in his politics. He explored the value of militias, published an openly racist book, and advocated war against Bolshevism.
    In 1931, he became defense minister in a government led by the Agrarian Party, although Quisling was not himself a memberof the party. One of his first tasks as defense minister was to deal with a conflict at Norsk Hydro’s plant near Berit’s hometown of Skien. Coincidentally, Quisling had also lived in Skien as a boy.
    Norsk Hydro had joined the national employers’ strategy of locking out their workers, but then the local management hired some replacement workers for limited production. One hundred police guarded the replacement workers while 2,000 striking workers marched to the port and warehouse at Menstad. The police were overwhelmed by the