One evening, the young inner party circle around Furubotn was discussing the book. Furubotn was there, and to the amazement of the meeting spoke out against the ``Kira type'', so an oral source tells us.(68) The NKP, he said, had no need of ``Kira types''. There was no room in the party, he is supposed to have said, for people who merely subjected themselves unreasoningly and had no ideas of their own,. Another source, strongly critical of Furubotn, says that he ``encouraged us to be independent''.(69)

All the evidence concerning his ideological work shows the priority he gave to innovative thinking, and it is interesting to note that none of the opposition he encountered induced him to moderate his efforts.

Why all this intense effort?

Furubotn soon realised how difficult it would be for new ideas to gain ground in the party. Seeking the reasons for this, he concluded that they were ideological in nature: the party had not been welded together, was not homogeneous, and was unschooled in Marxism.(70) Criticism for the absence of any ideological breakthrough in the party had to be directed at ``us in the party leadership''. There must be no slackening, even if (71) ideological work could lead to defeats within the party even in the difficult situation which arose when Tito was thrown out of the Communist movement in July 1948. He argued that anyone who sought to ``raise the ideological level'' would have to expect to be in a minority: ``It is always more agreeable to be with the majority, but that cannot be our political guideline''.(72)

In 1945, Furubotn had his own ideas about how a Communist Party ought to develop. If he was to have any chance of surviving with his unorthodox ideological and political beliefs, he would have to raise and develop fellow workers who could stand up to any criticism they might be subjected to from the East, as he had on several occasions. ``Kira types'' would on the contrary turn their backs on him at the slightest hint from Moscow. His attempts to raise the ideological level on the basis of his own political writings from 1940 to 1946 can be seen as an effort to place his own policies on a firm footing in the party.

Reservations about the new line

After the Communist parties launched the idea of a peaceful transition to socialism, it was natural to ask whether the theory of a violent revolutionary seizure of power had been abandoned for good. Was Lenin's view that the revolutionaries would have to crush the bourgeois system in order to introduce socialism -- out of date?

We can begin to find an answer in Furubotn's statement in 1944 that Marxism must at all times accord with what he called the laws of social development.(73) That was a wording which would permit freedom of political manoeuvre and prevent adherence to static positions. Furubotn's underlying principle, however, was that: ``Our principal tactical-strategic line must at all times be deduced from international developments''.(74)

As he saw it, the main line to be adopted at any time by the Communist parties in each country must be determined by class relations, i.e. by how matters stood between the bourgeoisie and the working class in the international arena. In other words: good relations between the Soviet Union and the great capitalist powers would facilitate a peaceful transition to socialism, whereas bad relations could lead to a return to the traditional Communist line of seizing power by force. Tactically, then, the traditional Marxist-Leninist model for seizing power was simply being kept in reserve while the new line was tried out.