(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Pål Steigan turned down the chance to become an academic in Oslo, but studied a little philosophy. Where did his thinking really begin?
"When my father brought home Arne Næss's history of philosophy, I was twelve years old. I read it two or three times as if it were a novel. I acquired heroes rather than anti-heroes in the history of philosophy. It was Heraclitus, Protagoras, Plato, certainly not Aristotle, Descartes, a little Marx, but first and foremost the existentialists."
But the years passed: "At the age of 15 I became friends with Tron Øgrim, who also had parents from the same tradition, it turned out. He gave me Marx-pamphlets Theses on FeuerbachFor me, it became a divide in my thinking – the problem I was facing
"The questions we were looking for were 'criteria for truth', because ultimately it all has to come down and be tested against reality. And that, of course, also applies to Marxism itself."
But why not become an academic, I wonder: "I was an intellectual from my early youth, but it became impossible for me to go into academia, since my father wanted me to do what he couldn't finish because of the war. I had to find another way. The political movement took hold of me, and I was declared Marxist around 1965–66. It was about changing the world.”
"We were also the first in the country to take a hard line in supporting the Palestinians against Israel."
"In 1967, our gang was on Teisen school, the red school, among AUF. We were also the first in the country to go out of our way to support the Palestinians against Israel. We were also called 'Nazis' by people in our party. I became a political activist who wanted to realize a political program. I put myself at the service of revolutionone. I then read a pamphlet by Mao that showed how Mao in his youth went out into the countryside to talk to all classes – for me it was seminal.”
In what way? I ask. “While the Executive Committee of the International in Moscow was issuing directives on what was the right line, Mao out to people, talked to them and heard their opinions. It wasn't long before I was absorbed in what became The ML movement (Marxist-Leninists). At that time, becoming an academic was not an option.
But more followed when Pål Steigan started working in industry because he wanted to change: "I wanted to understand the working class, which I saw as the real revolutionary force. And in 1970 I got a job at ASEA Per Kure as a transformer winder, a place where I made good friends. There was something fascinating about the working class language. Like in the Iron and Metall union – it was almost fairy tale style.”
AKP Party (ml)
With its long history as party leader In AKP, the 75-year-old now looks back at a small piece of Norwegian history, and what remains from this time:
"I was elected as party leader of the AKP against my will, because I wanted to work in industry. I really liked ASEA Per Kure, and we also had small children to support. As party leader, I went down to a third of my salary with different working conditions. I was elected because Sigurd Allern suggested me. He was a good friend of mine, and we still keep in touch. At the time, he was criticized by the party because he didn't understand much of working class and showed very little interest. We also needed a push to develop the newspaper Klassekampen, which came out in 1969." [See the article about Klassekampen.]
I repeat the question about how he looks back on the AKP today, and the values and ideology they stood for:
"Interesting question, because we were against the Soviet Union. There was no doubt that we were. Yet we were hit just as hard, you could say, by the collapse of the Soviet Union – just like the traditional communist parties, like the NKP and the Italian Communist Party. Because people stopped believing in socialism and what we had fought for."
"Everything went crazy. Now the right-wing wave had been going on throughout the 80s with in Jappet. The revolutionary radical wave of the 70s was over and out. It was not so strange that the whole socialist thought came into disrepute. I had to reject the Leninist party leadership.”
Steigan then chose to read Lenin again: "I found out that there is not one Leninist party theory, but at least five. There are many things that are wrong. I found out that the Stalinist and also the Maoist planning model did not live up to the standard, since the model became very bureaucratic. Moreover, it prized salivation, where the local party leaders would like to overfulfill the plan, in order to be rewarded – preferably with prestige. Thus, the plan was corrupted.”
I ask him to elaborate: “When you combine bureaucracy"Without criticism and without freedom of expression, and an economy that is not tested in practice, it is not able to survive. And without freedom of expression, how are you going to control the economy? Freedom of expression is for me a productive force for developing society."
But more about AKP's mistakes – did they have the same limitations in Norway?
"We were very good at copying other people's mistakes, and we made a few mistakes of our own as well. And contrary to my original thinking, I, like Mao, took the lead in developing a bureaucratic system. We were revolutionaries and liked to create activity and actions. But then I ended up administering directive packages – like a so-called secret party, distributed via couriers."
"The revolutionary radical wave of the 70s was over and out."
But what remains usable today? I ask. “Yes, Marx’s theory of exploitation, labor, and capital. The first volume of capital. Second volume of capital also stands solid. It was the basic materialist philosophy, understood in a correct way. That is, not as a theological system, but as a tool. Participantsone was nothing special, but I still think the imperialism book is very good. It is not very ideological, more sociological – where he sat and counted railway kilometers. Marx created an understanding of both the role of monopoly and finance capital. Also of the uneven development of capitalism that means that ruling great powers will one day fall. So there is something left, but a lot had to be thrown overboard.
Party Red
We move on to talk about Steigan's great involvement in the Red partyAs is known, Red turned against him in our time:
"The Red leadership are some cowards, I have to say that frankly. Bjørnar Moxnes has, according to himself, carried out a Steigan process to clean up the Steigan influence in Rødt. The bizarre thing for me is that the defendant has never had the indictment read out or been briefed on what this process consists of. As an avid reader of Kafka I must say that I feel very much like Josef K. who never found out what he was really accused of. He was faced with a faceless bureaucracy that had actually already passed the verdict before the accused was informed of what the charges were. I have never been able to present my views. These people say that they are for creating a democratic socialist Norway. I was deprived of all membership rights without law and judgment, you could say. I wanted to attend open meetings to discuss the criticism, but no one wanted to. I was scolded by the party leadership in the press without any opportunity to defend myself. City council leader Raymond Johansen demanded in a newspaper that Moxnes should settle with me, and right afterwards Moxnes did so. NRK invited Moxnes and me to a conversation in the studio, but he sent Magnus Marsdal instead...
To those people, I stood for being a revolutionary, anti-capitalist, and a supporter of fred – which fits very poorly into this party. I have a criticism that is quite fundamental, while they are opportunists – and have little insight into what is going on in the world.”
How does Steigan, who helped found Rødt, really feel about such a settlement now in 2025?
"This patricide they committed, it was a pathetic attempt to prevent criticism of themselves. If I had been a different kind of person, this might have affected me."
"I found that the Stalinist and Maoist planning models were not up to the mark."
But I'm trying to understand. Ask Steigan if perhaps the revolutionary ideology, in a Norwegian democratic system with welfare and a functioning economy, would be to completely overturn the existing system. And therefore a distancing?
"My criticism of their relationship with NATO and their relationship with Norwegian capitalism, their relationship with social democracy and now, incredibly, their relationship with Nazism in Ukraine, is in a way a bomb under the ark of their own system."
But couldn't Steigan be perceived as too extreme and not be taken seriously? Perhaps the Reds would rather reform than revolution?
"What they criticize me for, for example, is conspiracy theory. But they have no analysis or insight into how today's capitalism works. For example, when I review the current ownership of the major companies in the world and show that there are three companies, three funds – BlackRock, State Street and Vanguards – that own most of all these sectors, they call it a 'conspiracy theory'. But they haven't even looked into it and read the background material. They don't come up with any factual arguments against it, they just label this as a conspiracy theory. I'm very unimpressed with that."
But is there still room for this type of revolutionary thinking in Norwegian politics?
"I don't see it. We see that the Red party has largely rejected everything that had to do with our tradition. I understand that a new generation must be allowed to kill their parents. That's fine, that's perfectly fine, but at the same time you have to try to see if there is something to take care of. For example, as happened when the Red party's youth leader was criticized for calling himself communist and got beaten up by his own party and by Klassekampen – but that's what the party stood for, 40 years ago.
I address the authorities' previous skepticism towards the AKP and Steigan's environment, where there were plans for the detention of him and his ilk in Norway:
"NATO held staff exercises to arrest and detain union leaders, AKP members and activists. When we found this out, we also discovered the so-called Gladio system that exists in NATO, which has become known through leaks in Italy. There were such Stay behind groups that were supposed to both infiltrate and neutralize groups like us.
In the 80s I received a message from PST in connection with the trial after the Hadelands murders. During the witness interviews, some of that gang had said that they had a very specific plan to kill me. But they thought I lived in a different place than I did, and went to the wrong address.
China
How about China and its history? Steigan points out that it is impossible to deny that the Chinese have achieved amazing things, but he has traveled there and seen the weaknesses of the Chinese system. And historically: “They had the Great Leap Forward, which Mao carried out because he believed that China would be atomic bombed by the Americans. Those plans existed, it was not a persecution frenzy. Therefore, Mao thought that all parts of China should be self-sufficient – that is, able to grow their own grain and forge their own iron and so on. But that led to a misallocation of resources. And the slobbering caused the party cadres to report production results that were not there. Central Committee "They thought they had another 100 million tons of rice because of misreporting. Then people starve to death. I've met people in China who tell stories of digging roots out of the ground with their fingers to survive."
"Marx created an understanding of both the role of monopoly and finance capital."
That's not exactly Feuerbachs theses about testing theory against reality, this one?
"No, this was the opposite of Feuerbach! Then came the Cultural Revolution, which was probably supposed to correct old traditions, but it led to destruction. Much of what Mao did here contradicted much of what he had said earlier. In the 50s, he had pamphlets on practice that were in line with my point about Feuerbach and reality. For example, that if you hadn't investigated a matter, you wouldn't have the right to speak. I thought that was brilliant. But the Cultural Revolution of the 60s was supposed to tear down everything old. They hadn't done their homework there. And many of the mistakes lived 15 years too long.”
What about politicians' debate about the fight for freedom and democracy against tyrannical regimes, as we constantly hear China and others mentioned?
"There are no great powers that care about freedom and democracy, or what drives Russia and China. This is more rhetoric. Both the First and Second World Wars were rather a gigantic injection of profit into capitalism. We must realize that capitalism is willing to destroy what it should be in order to maintain itself.
The start of the newspaper Klassekampen
At Teisen School he had learned to make a school newspaper. Steigan was 16 when they collected money and bought a small offset machine and printed leaflets for Vietnam and other things. Then they rented premises and bought a larger printing machine. In the autumn of 1968 Trond Øgrim and Steigan went to the Samvirkelagskafeen in Hasle: "Trond said we had to make a newspaper – and we called it Klassekampen »
In 1975, Steigan gave a lecture in Trondheim to an audience of 600: “I said: ‘Comrades, we are going to create a daily newspaper. It will be done without state support, without advertisements and with our own printing press. This is impossible, and we will manage it.’ There was great applause, and we did it.”
The class struggle came out as daily newspaper from 1 April 1977. According to Steigan, the program was to carry out proletarianization and expansion of the party apparatus in industry and large companies with a heavy hand. But how did it go?
"We ate up our equity the first year, and the following year I heard that we were bankrupt. We were four million below zero. I offered to resign from the party after failing with the campaign, but the party wouldn't hear of it. The party beat me to it."
"The cart that I had to pull out of the ditch."
"It wasn't as much fun saving a bankrupt estate as starting the newspaper."
"It wasn't as much fun saving a bankrupt estate as it was starting the newspaper. But it was also a hugely educational period."
When they later sold AKP's stake in Klassekampen, Steigan, as party leader, was asked to make a valuation of the newspaper:
"I assessed the value of the newspaper at 50 million. But on the other side sat Bjørgulv Braanen and Oktober CEO Geir Berdahl, who was the chairman of the board. They completely disagreed with me and believed that Klassekampen's company should be valued at about 10 million – because the newspaper was almost bankrupt at the time. My point was that if you were to create such a newspaper again, it would cost more than 50 million. They even managed to get a resolution passed among Klassekampen's employees that my valuation was irresponsible. But I was not negotiating for Klassekampen, but for AKP. When I went to the Trade Union Federation about the value of 50 million, they understood that. The Trade Union Federation's investment in Klassekampen was based on my valuation."
What does he think about Klassekampen today, as they promote NATO and arms support from the editorial position? Ukraine as a 'solution'?
"I have to say, where did I fail? There are people who I have supported in their time – as editor Bear floor Braanen. He was my candidate for the AKP Central Committee. He was the leader of Red Youth while I was the party leader – and we worked well together. I made him the editor of the magazine Red Banner. And now Braanen sits there and is a NATO mouthpiece and the standard-bearer of the war industry. For me it is almost incomprehensible. I am unable to embrace this enormous change of line or the enormous change in character this is.”
But can't he understand? fryktand the fear of enemies, of threats from outside – that there is something, and perhaps easily acquired, psychological about it all?
"I don't understand that Braanen should be afraid of anything. But I can certainly believe that he is a cynical opportunist. I don't think his articles about these things are particularly high-quality. But I know that there are many people in Norway who are afraid. But why is it that this fear is much stronger in Norway than here in Italy or Germany? It may have something to do with the fact that Norway is so conformist as it has become."
"I have to say, where did I fail?"
In his book En folkefiende (2013) is Peter M. Johansen one of them, Steigan, has thanked as one of Klassekampen's sharp pens. Can he say something a little more nuanced about Klassekampen today, or has he given up something – since he probably won't get anything published there anymore?
"It's been a long time since I've had anything printed there. The newspaper has become irrelevant to me. To the extent that I read the newspaper, I rarely find anything of value. And now Johansen – one of those who could write well about international issues – has also retired. But remember that Klassekampen could not exist for a day without state support, and you don't get state aid "unless the two major parties think you should get it. That means you won't get state aid if you oppose the war aid in Ukraine."
Watch part two of this conversation and a short film in Italy with Pål Steigan in the next issue of MODERN TIMES – where we discuss the online newspaper steigan.no, his criticism of capitalism and militarism, his interest in Italy and the local development of Tolfa, as well as entrepreneurship.
