The debate between Halvorsen and Knutsen over Knutsen's account/interpretation provoked rebuttals, chiefly from Halvorsen: the two of them conducted a debate in the pages of Tidsskrift for arbeiderbevegelsens historie (periodical on the history of the labour movement). Halvorsen does not agree that the radicalisation of the Furubotn wing amounted to ``oppositional reformism''. He criticises Knutsen's use of sources(34), and claims to show that the Furubotn wing's theoretical platform was revolutionary, at least in intention.(35) The use by the Communist Party leaders of an ideology of productivity during the Herøya dispute is dismissed by Halvorsen as tactical(36), and not the narrowly economistic trade union argument which Knutsen makes it out to be. In his answer to Halvorsen, Knutsen shows that the basis of his assessment of the party profile is not limited merely to the theoretical points of departure of the two wings.(37) He presents a list of criteria which in his opinion have to be satisfied before a party can be called ideally revolutionary.(38) Programme ideologies and theories only make up one element of his ideal model of a revolutionary party. Another important aspect, in Knutsen's view, is political practice, the policies actually conducted, from both an intentional and a functional point of view. Knutsen accordingly describes Halvorsen's argument as axiomatic in choosing to regard elements of theory as sufficient grounds for calling a party revolutionary(39), and on the whole sticks to his earlier opinion. He rejects the thesis that for the Communists, the productivity ideology introduced into the Herøya conflict was only a pretext: according to him, the party leaders used productivity as an argument for claiming better working conditions because they believed in it. In Knutsen's opinion, the Norwegian Communist Party did not uphold the revolutionary alternative in politics, because in 1948 the party remained caught up in the idea of a joint effort for national reconstruction. (40)

The most interesting aspect of the Halvorsen-Knutsen debate is that they emerge as the spokesmen of two schools of thought in research into the Norwegian labour movement. Halvorsen represents the views of Edvard Bull ´the Elder`, who called the Norwegian Labour Party revolutionary because of the ideology of its programme and its international affiliations from 1919 to 1923 (as a member of the Comintern).(41) Knutsen, on the other hand, maintains Odd-Bjørn Fure's arguments that these two elements fail to take party and trade union practice into account(42), an approach which Bull senior found methodically unacceptable. Most importantly, Paul Knutsen was the first to try to assess the implications of the NKP's so-called ``turn to the left'' in 1947-49. His conclusion that it amounted to ``oppositional reformism'' breaks new ground in relation to the previous unquestioning assumptions that the party moved from right to left and from reformist to revolutionary politics. This places Knutsen as a Norwegian exponent of European research into the problem of revisionism in the Communist movement since 1945, which came into prominence in particular in the wake of the so-called 1968 revolution. The question remains, however, of whether Knutsen succeeds in capturing the real processes underlying the adoption of a new course after 1945. This is a question the answer to which all too often depends on individual interpretations of concepts like revolutionary and revisionism. It blurs into relativism, as Donald L. M. Blackmer points out in arguing that the problems of revisionism are insoluble, because:(43)

they rest on an appraisal of the intentions of the party leaders: in Leninist terms one may make compromises without becoming an opportunist as long as one does not lose sight of the longer-term goals behind present actions.