Voting Away Freedom

For four days and nights last week, conservative and moderate deputies hurried to the speaker's stand in the big, drafty chamber of Norway's Storting to cry "Danger!" Their words whistled through the Parliament like the wind; the other side had the votes. This week the longest Storting debate since 1909 ended. Free Norway voted voluntarily, 53 to 39, to take the road towards an economic dictatorship. Behind this move were men who are neither Fascists nor Communists, but deputies of the vigorously pro-democratic Labor Party, which has ruled Norway for 18 years; the same men who battled the Nazis in 1940 and brought Norway into NATO in 1949. Antitotalitarian by conviction and habit, they nonetheless hurried their hardscrabble land toward an economy which Norway's angry businessmen liken to that of Nazi Germany or a Red satellite.

The Law. The legislation the Storting enacted bore the humdrum title, "Law of Prices and Competition Regulations, etc.," but after reading all the small print, a Norwegian shipowner cried, "Which side of the Iron Curtain is Norway on?" The law empowers the government to control prices, profits, methods of calculating business costs, terms of delivery, ways of payment, quality of products, distribution of output, "and other controls . . . on conditions governing trade."

The law is so vague and undefined that few Norwegians can tell where it will end, but already they know where it is going. For instance, from now on the government can tell a firm where to sell, what to sell, or even whether it may sell at all. It can also appropriate any amount of the firm's profits deemed necessary for the general welfare through a special assessment called Utjevningsavgift, meaning leveling duties.

The only hindrance on the government is a requirement that, in cases of great importance, the Storting itself must initiate the leveling duties, but even this safeguard is cold comfort. For it is up to the government in the first place to decide which cases merit the Storting's attention, and in the second place the government can go right ahead without the Storting if it decides that a wait is dangerous. Moreover, businessmen ordered to pay these special levies have no recourse in law.

The single consolation for Norway's free enterprises was that it might have been worse. A companion bill for "Rationalization . . . and the Development of Economical Activity" would have empowered an economic dictator to fire company directors, effect mergers, expand or limit production, or even confiscate industries. Fortunately, even the Laborite-Socialists gagged at this proposal and dropped it. The law that did pass allowed businessmen to keep their jobs, even if it conferred most of their powers on an economic czar.

The Czar. And who would this big man be? He was no impartial expert, but himself Norway's strongest proponent of controls: 62-year-old Wilhelm Thagaard, Norway's price-control director for more than 30 years. Thagaard's economic philosophy has a single premise: free enterprise is essentially evil; ethics, integrity and devotion to the community are luxuries which the ordinary businessman, in the struggle against competition, cannot afford. Since business is essentially cannibalistic, it must be saved from itself, and Wilhelm Thagaard considers himself equipped to do the saving.

Curiously, Thagaard is no Socialist but a Liberal, a brilliant economist and lawyer, and chairman of the board of Oslo's leading Liberal daily, Dagbladet. Appointed price director in 1920, he has been virtually impregnable in his job ever since. The milestones of his career are the bleached bones of Norwegian free enterprise, starting with antimonopoly laws in the '30s, through price-control laws in 1940: the more severe postwar emergency controls in 1947 (popularly called "Lex Thagaard"), and ending in this week's law. Today Norwegians call him "Rex Thagaard."

Thagaard's opponents do not deny his ability and honesty. Tall, thin, with straggly white hair and a face as rugged as Norway's coastline, he is a dedicated public servant. He spends long working days in a decrepit old rocking chair at a big, flattop desk, carries away stacks of homework every night. He earns less than $5,000 yearly, lives in a small, unpretentious flat in Oslo, rides buses and streetcars, and does not own an automobile. His only relaxation is attending opening nights with his wife, a theater critic, whom he married in 1938.

The Opposition. Norway's businessmen have solemnly warned the government that Thagaard's law will "undermine democracy and lead to a dictatorship." They have told trade union leaders that far-reaching control of industry is, in the last analysis, impossible without complete control of labor. They have organized opposition committees in every hamlet, bought space in the newspapers, and stumped every section of the country.

So far, the opposition has not made much of an impression. One of the chief obstacles: Norway's traditional (and largely justified) trust in the honesty of its political leaders. When Erik Brofoss, Labor's Commerce Minister, says "This law may be a mistake, but faced by the uncertainties of future war or depression . . . it is a very honest attempt to meet the problems that might arise," the man in the street sees the sincerity of Brofoss' remark but misses its naivete. Another obstacle, said a bitter Norwegian shipowner, was too much reliance on skippertak, the Norwegian habit of procrastinating until the last minute and then hustling to set matters aright. This time, when the last minute came, there was no skippertak.

Norway's businessmen haven't given up their fight yet. Their next chance, although not a strong one, is the Oct. 12 general elections. Laborites, who control the Storting with 85 out of 150 members, may lose twelve seats (and their majority) under a new reapportionment law, but with Liberal support they can retain power handily. In that event, Wilhelm Thagaard, a well-intentioned man with the powers of a despot, will go right on deciding what's best for Norway's fearful businessmen.

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