(Socialistisk Folkeparti, or SF) in 1959. The SF soon outstripped the DKP both in membership and electoral support and threatened to eliminate the truncated Communist Party from Danish politics altogether." Comparable problems faced the Norwegian party. A left-wing group of the Labor Party (DNA) left the Laborites and formed a Norwegian version of the Socialist People's Party (SF) in 1961. Although the Danish and Norwegian SF's had sprung from different sources, they constituted similar dangers to the two Communist parties, in that they were powerful groups with leftist appeal, located to the immediate right of the Scandinavian Communists ideologically, and thus potentially formidable rivals for left-wing support."

15

Not only were the DKP and the NKP challenged from the right by the emergence of the two SF parties, but they were also challenged from the left by various and sundry ultraradical groups with Maoist and Trotskyist programs. The result was a further erosion of support for the Communists. In 1960, the DKP captured only 1.1 percent of the national vote in Denmark, and by the mid-1960's (1966) the figure had dropped to less than 1 percent. The NKP received 3 percent of the national vote in Norway in 1961 and just 1.4 percent in 1965.1

By the mid-1960's, the two Scandinavian parties seemed to have reached a watershed in their political fortunes; indeed, they appeared to be on the brink of political annihilation. The problems they confronted seemed to defy solution. They were in a state of isolation both within the labor movement and within society at large in their respective countries. Regarded by the general public as lackeys of Moscow, they seemed unable to reconcile the contradiction between their allegiance to an international, ostensibly "ideological" movement and their acute need to develop appeal on the basis of proposed solutions to national issues. Intraparty splits and factional activity severely hampered their political and organizational abilities, and the policy decisions of their leaders were under constant attack from "fundamentalists" on the left and "revisionists" on the right. In this situation, it seems very likely

14 For a discussion of the relative strengths of the DKP and the SF, see Yearbook on International Communist Affairs: 1968, Stanford, Calif., Hoover Institution Press, 1969, p. 180, and subsequent editions of the yearbook.

15 The two Communist parties have in fact perceived the two SF's as just such a threat on many occasions and for many years campaigned more actively against those parties than against the Social Democrats.

16 See footnote 9.

that they might actually have expired, had not a number of developments—both international and internal in nature-presented them with some new opportunities to seek support and at least maintain a foothold in the political arena. What were these opportunities, and to what degree have the two parties succeeded or failed to take advantage of them?

The Shifting Scene: 1965-75

The potential for new Communist activity in the years since 1965 has derived from four major

sources.

Big Power Policies. First of all, the decade has been marked by the gradual but determined move toward détente between East and West-and thus the close of the long years of the "cold war." The era of ideological confrontation had been a primary factor in the movement of Denmark and Norway away from neutrality to full membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Needless to say, it had also added immeasurably to the difficulties of the local Communist parties. To be a Communist in the cold-war years was to be regarded as a Trojan horse, a spokesman for an alien faith, an unquestioning supporter of a political system whose expansionism had subjugated almost all of Eastern Europe and threatened to engulf the Western part of the continent as well.

With the advent of détente, the Soviet Union came to be viewed as a more responsible power, whose expansionism (if ever a reality) had given way to the aim of peaceful consolidation of territorial gains already achieved and a willingness to cooperate with the United States and the West European nations to maintain peace and to expand mutually beneficial economic relations. The cause of détente got a big boost from the fact that just as the Soviet Union was beginning to act "responsibly" in Europe and elsewhere, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution swept the People's Republic of China, making Peking's policies appear to be the epitome of irrationality. For the first time, a distinction was made between "good"/"rational" Communists and "irrational"/"dangerous" ones, and Communists parties which were closely identified with the Soviet Union, as were the DKP and the NKP, stood to gain in public estimation and respectability.

Other factors also helped to puncture the myth of Communist monolithism. The Soviet grip on

Eastern Europe was loosening, and the elements of terror and coercion that had loomed so large in Communist regimes of the Stalinist period had given way to an emphasis on more "administrative" methods of dictatorship. By the mid-1960's, some of the countries in the area were beginning to emerge from the shadow of Moscow in foreign policy; in particular, the Romanians were beginning to conduct a policy vis-à-vis non-Communist Europe which emphasized cooperation rather than competition and conflict. In Czechoslovakia, an economic reform movement was beginning to have significant political effects. And in Western Europe, more and more Cornmunist parties were beginning to articulate their own roads to socialism, following the example of the Yugoslavs and the Italian Communists, who became the most vociferous proponents of polycentrism and national communism." These were certainly developments which made it less feasible to dismiss West European Communists as "errand boys of Moscow."

While the Soviet Union and international communism were becoming more respectable in the eyes of many Danes and Norwegians, the United States was undergoing a serious setback in Scandinavian public opinion. The American involvement in Vietnam severely damaged the US image in all the Scandinavian countries. Even normally staunch supporters of Washington criticized the buildup of American forces in Indochina, and this criticism increased in intensity after the United States commenced its air war in the North. On the political left in Norway and Denmark, numerous groups sprang up with a program of opposition to US policies in Vietnam and support for the Vietcong. Public opinion, although divided, by and large accepted the condemnation of the Americans' role in Indochina, and this outlook made it easier for groups normally considered pro-Soviet to gain a measure of legitimacy.

Internal Political Trends. The second factor that has presented potential opportunities for Communist exploitation has been the "bourgeoisization" of Scandinavian social democracy-a trend that has provided groups of a more leftist orientation with the possibility of billing themselves as left-wing alternatives to the "social renegades."

17 The Swedish Communist Party's movement toward political autonomy affords a good illustration. For the most thorough discussion of this trend, see Ake Sparring, Frän Höglund till Hermansson: Om Revisionismen i Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti (From Hoglund to Hermansson: About the Revisionism in the Swedish Communist Party), Stockholm, Bonniers, 1967.

During most of the post-World War II period, the Norwegian Labor Party and the Danish Social Democratic Party (DNA and SD, respectively) had effectively blocked the local Communists from acquiring any mass following. These large and cohesive parties simply monopolized the political left and consigned organized communism to the fringes of the political system.

At the same time, the Social Democrats in both countries had moved perceptively toward the political center in a quest for the support of the growing white-collar work force and the presumed growing body of moderate opinion. This development had ensured continued Social Democratic predominance in Norway and Denmark, insofar as the two parties remained the largest in their respective countries; but it had also engendered a considerable amount of dissatisfaction among the more orthodox, ideological adherents of both parties. It was widely felt that the DNA and the SD were abandoning "socialism," were moving toward a leftist form of "bourgeois capitalism," and had in fact given up the idea of achieving "socialist democracy," even in the distant future. In Norway, this situation had already resulted in the aforementioned split in the DNA and the establishment of the Socialist People's Party (SF); in Denmark, a similar party had been established somewhat earlier, though-as noted the bulk of the Danish SF had come from the DKP, not the Social Democrats. Further splits occurred in the post-1965 period.10

The appearance of these new leftist political entities posed both dangers and opportunities for the Communists in Denmark and Norway. The dangers lay in the possibility that the SF's in the two countries would absorb the support of the left wing of Norwegian and Danish social democracy, thereby depriving the CP's of a chance to promote themselves as a left-wing alternative to the "bourgeois" Social Democrats; the opportunities related chiefly to possible cooperation between the Communists and the SF parties, either in electoral coalitions or inside trade unions or other mass organizations.

The EEC Issue. A third factor that created fresh opportunities for the DKP and NKP was the acrimonious issue of whether the Scandinavian countries should join the European Common Market (or European Economic Community-EEC). In both

18 Serious splits in the last decade have fragmented the Danish Left into at least 10 parties and political groups and the Norwegian Left into at least seven such groups (as will be discussed later in this paper).

Norway and Denmark, the question of membership in the EEC produced protracted and unprecedented debates over national peculiarities versus greater European integration. The debate became especially far-ranging in Norway; raging with uncharacteristic fury in the country's otherwise rather staid political system, the controversy came to a dramatic head with an "advisory referendum" in 1972, in which a solid majority of the population (55 percent) voted against membership.19

During the period preceding the referendum in Norway, a significant reorientation of political allegiances took place, the long-range dimensions of which can be perceived only dimly at the present time. The EEC controversy was particularly problematical for the Social Democrats. The top leadership of the party and the trade unions, as well as the bulk of the DNA representatives in parliament, argued for Norwegian membership in the Common Market; they maintained that to stand outside such a massive economic market would place Norwegian industry and shipping in a very dangerous situation. Joining the Social Democrats in this stance were the conservatives, some of the liberals, and assorted other political groups commonly associated with right-of-center politics. Organized business, finance, and shipping interests also urged the pro-EEC course. Against this coalition was arrayed a motley collection of political forces ranging from the generally conservative farmers' interest groups and the Center Party (formerly Agrarians), through the nationalistically-oriented section of the Liberal Party, to the Social Democratic youth organization, the SF, the NKP, and the numerous splinter groups to the left of the Communists. It soon turned out that the majority of the rank and file of the DNA and the trade unions shared the anti-EEC views of the agrarian/left-wing coalition.

The split between the DNA leadership and large elements of the party's rank and file resulted in a massive defection from the Social Democratic standard in national elections held in September 1973. Many of the traditional supporters of the DNA apparently voted for the Socialist Electoral Alliance (Sosialistisk Valgforbund, or SV), a leftist political alliance which included the Norwegian Communists. The defection brought about a serious loss of Social Democratic seats in the parliament (12 of 74) and

19 A thorough examination of this important referendum is currently being conducted by the Institute for Political Science at the University of Oslo, under the leadership of Professor Henry Valen.

a dramatic gain for the SV (which, with no previous experience as an electoral coalition, won 16 of the total 150 seats).2o

Despite the considerable blow suffered by the Laborities, the DNA remained by far the largest in the Storting (the Norwegian parliament) and was in fact called upon to form a government. Thus, in one of those ironic twists that occasionally beset parliamentary systems, the biggest losers in the election ended up in the driver's seat of a minority government. For the NKP, as one of the main members of the SV electoral alliance, the formation of a Social Democratic minority regime provided a welcome opportunity to exercise some influence on its erstwhile archenemy, to the extent that the DNA had to rely on SV support for its program. The result has been a considerable turn to the left in the Laborites' policies, a development for which the NKP has noisily claimed a major share of the credit."1

Political Polarization. Finally, the emerging polarization in the Scandinavian welfare state systems has created opportunities for both the local Communists and other leftist groups to wage class politics.

The erroneous expectation that political radicalism would gradually wither away in modern society—a notion discussed at the outset of this paper-was based on the logic that with the development of social welfare states and growing prosperity, the general public would become increasingly middleclass in social status and economic position, and public opinion would cluster in the middle of the ideological spectrum.22 Political trends in Western Europe-including Norway, Denmark, and Sweden

during the last decade have disproved this notion; in fact, it now appears that prosperous welfare states may be especially prone to the upheavals of a new form of radicalism originating precisely in the middle class and leading to the polarization of the entire political system.

Systematic research is beginning to unravel some of the causes of this phenomenon. The extensive social services of the welfare state are based upon heavy taxation, a disproportionate share of which is borne by the middle-class "salariat." In such a

20 Arbeiderbladet, Sept. 12 and 13, 1973.

21 An example of this trend is the current campaign by the DNA to establish greater control over the banking system.

22 For specific application of this notion to the Nordic countries, see Harry Eckstein, A Theory of Stable Democracy, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1961, and his Division and Cohesion in Democracy: A Study of Norway, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1966.

system, a significant leveling takes place; income differentation is offset by a broad program of pensions, services, and grants that lifts the lower socioeconomic strata up to a level of income, from direct and indirect sources, which is not drastically different from that of the lower middle class. The very rich, on the other hand, enjoy a number of opportunities to utilize tax loopholes and write-offs not available to the salaried middle class. Middle-class discontent over this situation is aggravated by the fact that the Social Democratic parties of Scandinavia, the dominant political forces in their respective countries for 30 years, have continued to verbalize strong commitments to social and economic egalitarianism.

23

23 See, e.g., Gilberg, op. cit., pp. 204-12.

-Norsk Telegrambyrä Billedarkivet.

Since the late 1960's, there have been many indications that the limit of taxpayer tolerance may have been reached in Scandinavia. In Denmark, a fullfledged "Poujadist" party emerged, whose program included demands for a significant reduction of taxes, the dismantling of a considerable part of the welfare state bureaucracy and its programs, and a vigorous campaign to put "slackers" back to work. There were elements of flippancy in the party's proposals (its leader, Mogens Glistrup, suggestedfor example-that the defense budget could be virtually eliminated and replaced with an automatic telephone service which would declare "I surrender" in Russian); but many people apparently felt seriously enough about the issues involved to register a protest vote by endorsing the party's program in the Danish elections of the 1970's. In fact, studies

have indicated that a substantial number of traditional Social Democrats voted for the Glistrup party, a sign that political discontent had affected the outlook of the working class as well as that of the bourgeoisie.24

In Norway, such protest moves centered around a similar new party, the Anders Large's Party (ALP), named after its founder. The ALP emphasized many of the ideas of the Danish "Glistrupites," with a generous dose of national chauvinism thrown in. It obtained four seats in the Storting in the 1973 election, apparently drawing much of its strength from traditional supporters of the DNA as well as rightists. Again, the vote seemed to express resentment of the top-heavy bureaucracy of the welfare state on the part of a substantial cross-section of the population.25 The established parties in Denmark and Norway were considerably embarrassed by the emergence of the Glistrup group and the ALP, and in the resulting political polarization, elements of oldfashioned, class-struggle rhetoric reverberated through the erstwhile moderate systems. Such a climate provided new chances for leftist radicals to promote political platforms couched in the language of class warfare and of defense against the onslaught of "reaction."

Communist Responses

Over the past decade, the Danish and Norwegian Communists have pursued a variety of policies and tactics in an attempt to exploit the new political opportunities created by these international and internal developments. Despite their determined efforts, both parties have in large measure failed to expand their influence (for reasons to be discussed); they have, however, managed to maintain themselves as live and certainly vocal minorities on the political left.

The DKP and the NKP reacted to the erosion of Soviet ideological hegemony in quite different ways. Initially, the DKP, under its chairman Knud Jespersen, followed a revisionist line, emphasizing the need to build socialism and communism in Denmark in accordance with local conditions. In 1968, the

24 See Werner Kaltefleiter, Ein Doppelter Protestwahl (A Double Protest Vote), Alfter, Der Konrad Adenauer Institut für Empirische Sozial-Forschung, 1974.

25 The significance of the vote was analyzed by Professor Henry Valen of the University of Oslo in an interview with the author in October 1974.

party supported the Dubcek reform movement and deplored the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia as "unnecessary and unwarranted." In the aftershock of that event, however, the DKP moved increasingly back toward the position of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) on matters of international communism.

Since the early 1970's, the Danish party leadership has shifted to a stance expressing a qualified, retrospective endorsement of the invasion and referring to the subsequent "restoration" of Czechoslovak society. The DKP has also accepted the call for another international conference of Communist parties, currently touted as a "necessity" by many of the pro-Soviet parties in Western Europe (no doubt at the request of the Kremlin). Its leadership has strongly criticized the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in language very similar to that employed by Moscow. The DKP's positions on détente, Danish neutrality, mutual and balanced force reduction (MBFR), and European security likewise bear a striking resemblance to the views expressed by the Soviet leadership on these questions. In short, the DKP routinely supports the formal stances of Soviet foreign policy."

In contrast, the Norwegian Communists have steadfastly adhered to an independent posture vis-à-vis Moscow. Under the leadership of party chairman Reidar Larsen, the NKP adopted and has continued to pursue a revisionist course of "national communism," insisting on the right of every party to establish its own road to socialism-a stance which was first struck in Scandinavia by the Swedish Communist leader, C. H. Hermansson. Predictably, the Norwegian Communists denounced the invasion of Czechoslovakia as a "major tradegy" for international communism, and they have not since retreated from this position. They have become increasingly critical of Moscow's attempts to reestablish itself as the center of world communism, maintaining that there should be no one leader of the international movement. By the same token, they have attempted to be even-handed in their treatment of the Sino-Soviet dispute, outlining the two sides of the confrontation but also criticizing both Moscow and Peking for infighting at a time when all "progressive" forces should be united in the struggle against "imperialism." While the NKP has been

26 For an example of the party's complete acceptance of the Soviet position on European security, see Land og Folk (Copenhagen), Feb. 5 and 6, 1972.