Free Viking Economics by George Lakey Page B

gathered at farms nonviolently to prevent seizure. Workers launched ninety-three strikes in Norway in 1933.
    The 1933 general election did not resolve the deepening conflict. Labor got more votes than ever and added twenty-two more members of parliament than it got in the 1930 election. Nevertheless,the Labor Party missed by seven seats the number required for a majority in the Storting.
    The Conservatives had made a blunder in Norway’s second-largest city, Bergen. For the local election it formed an alliance with Quisling’s new party, the National Union. Because Quisling was widely regarded as Norway’s Hitler, the generally democratic Norwegians were shocked to see their party of the economic elite make that alliance. In the general election, the Conservatives lost a quarter of their popular vote and thirteen parliamentary seats.
    The parliamentary majority was held by what Norwegians call the four “bourgeois” parties, but that coalition had no real mandate. Politically, Norway was split fairly evenly. A former prime minister from a right-of-center party put together a caretaker government.
    Significantly, the minority Labor Party did not try to move to the right and make a deal that would enable it to form a government. The Norwegian workers’ theory of change, after years of study groups and educational debates, accepted the need for polarization in order to bring about a new society.
    The Agrarian Party, however, formerly in coalition with the Conservative Party, began to reposition itself. Labor had been wooing family farmers for decades, and it was obvious that the Conservatives had no idea how to get out of the depression. The Agrarian Party’s experience with Quisling in its government’s cabinet was bruising, and it needed to look elsewhere for answers.
    The workers’ nonviolent direct action intensified. In 1935, the strike total hit 103. The bourgeois parties saw that they could not, in fact, govern. The Agrarian Party switched sides in the Storting and supported the Labor Party to form a government. But the power struggle between labor and capital was not yet resolved, andthe Labor government could initiate only limited Keynesian measures to expand the economy and start an old-age pension scheme for hungry workers.
    The poorest members of the labor movement pushed their leadership to alleviate the pain immediately, rather than to continue to struggle for the complete overthrow of capitalism as stated in the party’s manifesto. Labor’s leadership began to consider compromise.
    On the other side, the employers’ federation had waged decades of open struggle against the growing workers’ movement and had its back to the wall. It knew that the Labor Party’s manifesto envisioned a socialist society. Norway has a common border in the north with Russia. The owners were well aware that the Russian revolution left no room for capitalist survival. The owners had to wonder: if they were not willing to compromise, would the Norwegian workers and farmers and middle-class allies surge ahead and leave them with nothing?
    In 1935, the owners met with the labor leaders. Together they hammered out what came to be called the “Basic Agreement.”
    The owners’ federation agreed to accept the right of unionization throughout Norway, including collective bargaining, and accepted the workers’ right to strike (except during the life of a contract). Owners agreed to political strikes and sympathy strikes.
    Labor leaders agreed that the owners could continue to own and guide their firms. Labor expected that their political instrument, the Labor Party, would restrict owners through government regulation and control the overall direction of the economy. The intensifying nonviolent struggle by workers and farmers, plus middle-class allies, created a fundamental power shift.
    In 1937, the Labor Party won the largest share of the vote (althoughstill a minority, in a multi-party election), stepped up its Keynesian