Furubotn was not the first member of the labour movement to have taken a positive interest in the national question. In the Labour Party, Halvdan Koht and Ole Øisang had been pioneers in the field while in the NKP, Olav Scheflo had shown a similar interest in his book published in 1924 on ``The red element in Norwegian history''. However, on the whole an attitude to the national cultural heritage like the one Furubotn espoused in 1946 had been rare in both parties. Between the wars, the labour movement had been hostile to anything remotely resembling national values and slogans. For a Norwegian Communist leader to dig out the Liberals' old ``millennium'', blow the dust off it, and turn it into practical politics, was a rare event indeed. No wonder Norwegian and foreign delegates to the national conference were both amazed and antagonised, whereas in contrast the old Liberal, Adam Egede-Nissen was delighted and declared himself impressed. (16)

Furubotn and the Christians

Furubotn's favourable mention of Christians caused a stir and after the conference, he went on trying to change the negative attitude to Christianity which had been dominant, especially in the NKP. Towards the end of 1945 he set the NKP an untraditional assignment for study, saying that Communists must look in the Bible for ideas which could be used in party policy, ideas which stood for ``progressive thought''.(17) Furubotn regarded relations with the Christian congregation as so important that study of the Bible almost deserved to be placed side by side with Marxism.(18) He used dramatic effects to get his message across to meetings of party members, turning up with a Bible in one hand and Marx's Capital in the other and showing both to the audience, before lowering Capital, raising the Bible, and telling his astonished listeners to concentrate on the latter.(19) This was too much for one of the old NKP members, who left the meeting, along with other people.(20)

Furubotn did not confine his message to the Norwegian party, but presented his views on Christians and religious values at occasions like the Scandinavian party conference in Stockholm towards the end of l945.(21)

Furubotn was seeking to reverse the political situation in which, between the wars, religious faith had been pitted against the labour movement by non-socialist parties. He wanted to get on speaking terms with the Christian community so as to lead up to co-operation with it on political issues; it was to be won for socialism and against capitalism. Being a Christian did not, in Furubotn's view, necessarily mean being bourgeois in thought and deed. His own parents had proved the contrary. They were both deeply religious and active in the labour movement, his father as one of its pioneers in his home village.

On developing the party

Furubotn had stood out since the 1920s as a politician with a keen interest in ideology. His distinctive approach to an ideological discussion was normally by way of topical issues. Ideology was for him a premise for political action (1924) and ideological revolution was ``the first condition'' necessary for the working class to be able to engage in a ``revolutionary struggle''.(22) He did not see Marxist theory as a ``lifeless and rigid dogma'', but as something which had to change according to what he regarded as the laws of social life (1944). The theory had to be based on the actual state of society.(23) ``Each day'', the NKP had to set itself the task of eradicating from Marxism ideas which had outlived their usefulness; Marxism was daily to be enriched with ``living'' thought. Stale Marxist formulations were to be replaced by new ones.(24) He even said that in some respects Lenin's policies were out of date.(25)