Ellen Engelstad has an MA in comparative literature from the University of Oslo and is editor of the left-wing online magazine Manifest Tidsskrift.
When sociologist Michael Young coined the term “meritocracy,” he was warning against the idea that we should have to compete to prove how talented or hardworking we are. A truly egalitarian society would guarantee a dignified existence for us all — regardless of arbitrary measures of how much we deserve it.
New Deal job programs didn’t just absorb unemployment but allowed thousands of artists and writers to work on ambitious creative projects. Works Progress Administration funding allowed a golden age in US culture — but drew vicious anti-communist attacks, offering a foretaste of McCarthyism.
A magic money tree does exist — and not just in Scandinavia. The question is who gets to shake it first.
At the start of the coronavirus epidemic, Norway’s government said it would help businesses by making it easier for them to get rid of workers. But trade unions and left-wing parties fiercely denied that these measures were “inevitable” — and they won a bailout to serve working people, not just their employers.
Pete Buttigieg learned Norwegian so he could read Erlend Loe, whose novels used to voice the feelings of young liberals who don’t have to deal with any real problems. But more recently, Loe’s work has become sharply political — viciously lampooning know-it-all elitists like Buttigieg.
From Winston Churchill to the Nazis, anticommunists have long blamed the spread of socialism on Jews. With the Left again on the rise, the antisemitic trope of “Judeo-Bolshevism” is back.
Spurred on by a radical left party, the Norwegian parliament booted the country’s most prominent anti-immigrant politician from government.
A leader of Norway’s Socialist Left Party on tomorrow’s elections and how small, insurgent parties can change society.
Norway’s parliamentary elections on Monday will point the way forward for the country’s left.