History of the Arbeidarpartiet (Labor Party) of Norway

by Alexander_Wagner

I discovered in reading Wikipedia that the Norwegian center-left party, which like the center-left parties in most of northern Europe has been the dominant political force for almost a century was, at least at one point in its history, quite a bit more radical than its cousins in other nations.

The Arbeidarpartiet was a member of the comintern from 1919 to 1923. This is rather shocking to learn because as far as I can tell in every other country the established workers' party stayed with the Second International and a group split off to the left to become the "Communist Party of X". But in Norway the reverse happened, a group split off to the right in protest of the affiliation with the comintern, and it wasn't until later when the Arbeidarpartiet left the comintern that the two groups merged and a group split off to the left to become the Communist Party of Norway.

How can one account for the Arbeidarpartiet siding with the Bolsheviks?

KongChristianV

Part 1/4

I'll try to address this, at least illustrate what happened within the Norwegian Labour Party. I might have to go through and edit some mistakes, as i usually end up doing..

Do note that Norwegian labour had both a right-split and a left-split in that period. In 1921 the Labour party split to the right, with the right wing forming NSA (Norges Socialdemokratiske Arbeiderparti). In 1923 the left-wing left, after the exclusion from Comintern, to create NKP (Norges Kommunistiske Parti), which still exists today. The right-wing in NSA would rejoin the Labour party again in 1927. So the long-term consequence was the exit of the left-wing, and since then Labour has been a pretty standard European social-democratic party, and typically been challenged by various socialist and/or communist parties to the left. Currently the main left opposition is Rødt (Red, which grew out of the Worker's Communist Party and it's electoral front, The Red Electoral Alliance) and Sosialistisk Venstreparti (Socialist-left party, a party formed after a new Labour left-split in 1961). The original left-splitters in NKP still exist as a party to this day, and remained a relevant party for decades after the split, having the first female minister in Norway and playing a large role in the immediate postwar parliament. Today it is a very minor party with no representatives.

So, what happened to the Labour party in 1919-1923?

We really want to answer two things: (1) What caused DNA (the old short name for Norwegian labour) to join the comintern and right-split in 1919-1921, and (2) What caused the DNA to in 1923 to denounce and be excluded from the Comintern, leading to the left-split. To do that I first need to provide some background and context. This will also be a long post, detailing what happened within the party, so if you don’t really care about that there is a tl;dr at the bottom.

(1) The Norwegian context, DNA (labour) in the 1910s

It is important to note that the DNA (labour party) at this time was essentially the political arm of the labour movement, so a history of the DNA is inherently tied to the history of the movement as such, thus i will be talking about unions and parties a bit intertwined.

It's also worth noting that the unions are quite centrally organised, i.e. people were members of a local union, which belonged to a sectoral union/industrial union (though, trade unions also existed, which the left generally disliked). These further often belong to a central union, the Arbeidernes Faglige Landsorganisasjon (AFL) being the main one. There were others, but they were less political and not relevant for this.

Before the war there had been general disagreements within the Norwegian labour movement on strategy. Especially workers in the growing heavy industries, and miners, favoured a more activist line, with demands of nationalisation and the control of the means of productions by workers, rather than just focusing on small disagreements on wage or working conditions while working for reformism. Martin Tranmæl was a central leader for this “fraction” of the movement. In 1911 this opposition was formalised as a part of the AFL, and it’s membership rose towards 1918, where it had about 17 percent of the total AFL membership (18000 people). This group was essentially your standard internal left wing opposition, wanting the labour movement to build class consciousness and revolution rather than tariff agreements and better wages, this also reflected the attitudes towards political work, with the radicals preferring non-parliamentary work and opposing compromises.

To a degree this also represented a conflict between skilled labourers and the emerging manual labourers, and represented a conflict between the older generation that had fought for voting-rights and reform and the newer generation less tied to that fight. A key supporter of Tranmæl throughout this decade was, for example, the youth wing of the party.

The radicals/left-wing faction lost out in a vote on political strategy in a party congress in 1911 and the reformist faction would be mostly dominant in the rest of the 1910s, but disagreements would come to a head near the end of the decade.

As with other countries, the first world war affected peoples lives, even if Norway was certainly less involved than many countries in the war. Prices rose and people – workers – saw their general purchasing power and welfare slide as wages did not keep up with prices. The tensions boiled and largely came to a head towards the spring and summer of 1917. There were clear signs of inspiration from the revolution in Russia and demonstrations in neighbouring countries like Sweden. This caused masses of demonstrators on the 6th of June, with tons of workers who weren’t originally organised in unions participating. There were however disagreements in the movement on whether to proceed with negotiations or a more activist line and a general strike. The organising committees were seen as complicit in undermining the movements intended minimum demands by taking a more negotiatory line, and cancelling a planned labour congress (meant to, probably, initiate a general strike). The decision was widely condemned in worker’s papers and various mass meetings, and represented a larger discontent with the intern democracy of the organisation which went beyond just the radicals.

This mistrust towards the leaders was largely the background for another development, where towards the end of 1917 and the start of 1918 there was a move to establish worker’s councils (i.e. soviets), of course partly inspired by and tied to the Bolshevik revolution of that November. It started in the iron-and metal union establishing a council in a meeting the 18th of December 1917. These posed a challenge to the party and the established leadership. At the same time, a larger support for activist or violent revolution was developing, especially in the youth wing of the party, which largely moved towards Marxism. The youth wing and the left-wing thus different ideologically, but it often arrived at similar policies, and became part of the same radical wing within the movement. The radicals had large support among many worker’s papers, which helped them a lot.

Of course, the existing organisation and less radical elements favoured the existing organisational-line and the control of organisational activists, rather than the worker’s council where workers were directly elected from their workplace. They tried to uphold this by influencing who got to be elected to these councils, preferring representatives from the unions rather than workplaces, and largely succeeded in “controlling” the movement in that way. But this still lead to a council-structure that was formally independent from the party. This was good for the left-wing opposition, and it gave their sometimes “abstract” arguments a concrete application and legitimacy. Furthermore, for many, the situation felt and looked like one of imminent revolution that could come from abroad, with the two Russian revolutions and increasing strikes and conflicts in many countries, like large strikes in Sweden or the attempt at establishing a socialist state in Finland.

In the 1918 party congress the radicals won important victories, allying with the centrists against the right wing. This largely happened partly because of the previous general discontent among members and trend towards radicalisation, and partly because the representative system for the congress de facto favoured activist members who tended to be radicals.

In the lead up to the congress, the majority of the leadership had supported a preposition denouncing the dictatorship of the proletariat idea, and renouncing general strike, mass action or military strike as oppositional tools right now, instead favouring reformism through elections. The minority (Tranmæl and the radicals) supported the possibility of revolutionary mass action and saw the worker’s party as a class party. They also supported electoral work, but supported establishing workers- and soldier’s councils alongside this.

The result was a victory for the revolutionary wing, and the reformists became the minority opposition after the 1918 meeting. Despite attempts from the opposition, the radicals were further strengthened by 1919, where the ambiguous preposition of the 1918 meeting, supporting both revolution and electoral work, was supplanted to have a clearer focus on mass revolutionary action as the primary tool of the party, and the party largely started working for worker’s control of workplaces.

In this time the work of the party changed, from primarily reformist- and parliamentary-oriented towards agitation, organisation, mass action and preparation for a revolutionary situation. Because of this development, the other centre-right parties generally became more conciliatory towards the demands of the reformists that they originally had opposed, so 1919 saw both electoral reform, early labour laws and the 8 hour work day, partly in fear that not supporting such reform would increase the popularity of the revolutionaries.

It’s also worth, to add, as a general context, that prices stabilised from an all-time high in 1920-1921, which was also peak unemployment, towards somewhat high but still much more normal levels in 1922.

Continued below