The Norwegians have an easygoing independence that you like and admire; and they are descended from the Vikings, who were free traders if not freebooters par excellence. This makes it remarkable that Norway has gone further in authoritarian state control than any other country this side of the Iron Curtain. Norway is ruled by a centralized and disciplined Labor Party, which began 21 years ago to put through, step by step, a program of state management of the entire economy. There has been no camouflage about this, no tricking of public opinion. It is “creeping socialism,” but it has crept openly.
“Socialism” in Norway no longer means state ownership of the means of production, as it used to, and does still in Soviet Russia. Ownership remains formally in private hands, but all the fun and most of the profit is taken out of it by comprehensive and meticulous state regulation and control. As so often happens, the principal controls were adopted in the postwar and post-occupation emergency, and they are merely kept going now that the emergency is past.
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