(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Jens Stoltenberg is a man without qualities, Magnus Marsdal reports in his new book. Or he may be "a collection of traits without a man". It is the same for the radical writer.
He has borrowed the title anyway from Robert Musil. In the never-completed timber mill Man without properties describes the cultural and political decline in the double-monarchy of Austria-Hungary before the outbreak of the First World War. There is fine de siècle and traditionalism at idle, a human hollowness with the threat of civilization.
The parallels from Vienna at the beginning of the 1900 century to Norway anno 2008 are high in height. The politician Marsdal also does not claim any wider relationship with the literary master Musil. Stoltenberg is no personification of the death dance of a European superpower. In Marsdal's eyes, he is just a right-wing politician in sheep's clothing, a social liberal in the wrong party, or at best an incredibly cowardly social democrat.
Unholy tax promise
There is also another significant difference: Musil embarked on his life's major project in 1921, and continued to work for the rest of his life. The first two volumes were published in the 1930s, while the last one was published posthumously in 1942. Marsdal, in turn, has written a new essay on 70 pages. He has put considerable work into it, but nothing indicates the same sacrifice over the typewriter. The rest of the content in the Man without qualities and other problems in Norwegian politics are reprints of pointed articles and articles from newspapers such as VG, Dagbladet and Klassekampen, magazines such as Prose, Samtiden and Demo, as well as the not so successful news magazine Memo.
Here is the settlement with Hege Storhaug, Erik Solheim and Stein Erik Hagen. However, the title essay deserves the greatest attention. In it, Marsdal argues well for his diagnosis of Stoltenberg and his flock on the right side of the Norwegian Labor Party, sorry ... in "The Norwegian Administration Party". The main sin is the sanctity they attach to their own tax promise from the 2005 election campaign and how they have been swindled by it.
The essay is framed by a strong story about Terje, who is the night watchman at a nursing home, and who, due to staffing, has to choose whether to take care of Mrs. Hansen who has fallen and broken her neck or Marit who is dying. It is an illustration of the contrast between public poverty and private wealth.
Using their best abilities and some statistics, Marsdal tries to disprove the right-wing blind belief that this is how we should be. Not only does tax relief policy in Anglo-Saxon countries create more poor, higher infant mortality and greater economic inequality. It is also less effective in economic terms than a traditional Nordic and egalitarian social model. When asked in a certain way, the figures also show that a good abrupt Norwegians (78 percent) say they are willing to pay more tax for good health and elderly care.
Hands, not grunts
Marsdal asks a good question in the extension of this. With a majority in the Storting, the public opinion in turn and a boom in the economy: How have the ruling parties been able to fall like a stone on the polls? The answer is not quite as good, but it works in the author's political project: The problem is the "proud citizens", their tax breaks and their corporate governance of Norge ASA. Only a few heroes stand out: The washed-out red-green, the popular and radical, who are not represented in the Administration Party, and hardly enough in the corridors of power in the SV or Sp either. They must change Norway. But first, in the author's eyes, they must change the left side.
Marsdal (and Victor Norman, whom he relies on) is probably right in the real-economic analysis that tax increases are the most sensible form of wealth transfer from the private to the public sector. It is, as they both say, not just pouring oil money into the economy. The problem is the number of hands, not the number of grunks. However, whether the man behind the Frp Code is right in that the left-hand side in an election year can create enthusiasm by explaining to voters that tax is fun, seems more questionable. Such a line would have been a strategic gamble that would have McCain's choice of vice presidential candidate merged with a cream-yellow loss.
Still, he may be right. We just never get the chance to test it out. For that, the "proud citizens" have great power.
