Values and Facts Are on Our Side!

By Jonas Gahr Støre, Leader of the Norwegian Labour Party

Excerpted from the “Global Progress: New Ideas for the Future of the Global Progressive Movement” booklet in which world leaders discuss how progressives can overcome obstacles and lead a new, global progressive movement.

The test of progressive politics is our ability to develop and support policies that promote fairness and equity. There are two dimensions to this: one linked to our values, the other linked to external facts. On the one hand, our values help define the good society. On the other hand, research and evidence provide a guide as to how to achieve it. Today, both values and facts are on our side: Fair and equitable societies are better placed to succeed in the knowledge-based economy.

The confluence of values and facts presents the possibility of a win-win scenario for the progressive movement. If we adapt, if we modernize, if we read the changes in the right way, then we can both promote the values that are the hallmark of our movement and create modern, effective, and caring societies.

These lessons mirror my reflections on the Nordic experience during 25 years in political and public life in Norway. During the early 1990s, we frequently heard that the so-called Nordic model was doomed; the state was too big, the unions too strong, the taxes too high, and the elites too few. Then, gradually, the message changed. These grim predictions did not stand up to reality. The Nordic countries passed the financial crises with higher employment, lower unemployment, sounder public finances, and higher productivity levels than most other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, countries.

A key factor in this performance has been our relative success in pursuing policies that promote fairness and equity. We still have a long list of reforms and improvements that we need to make, but what matters here is the favorable comparison with other political models. Those who opted for sustained neoliberal policies — cutting back on public responsibility though privatization and commercialization, limiting the role of organized labor, and lowering taxes for the rich — ended up with growing inequality, limited trust, and reduced social capital. In short, they prepared themselves poorly for the constant need to adapt in the knowledge-based economy.

The test of effective progressive policies has always been the ability to develop real-world answers to the real-world problems experienced by ordinary people.

In the past, our movement was weakened when we proved unable to address the problems and shortcomings linked to a weak economy, rising unemployment, and social tension. When we as a popular movement have been weak, then the road has been opened to more extreme forces, on the right and on the left.

We need a constant focus on the everyday test of our policies: Do they work? Have we been honest enough to challenge our old answers as new questions arise at home and globally? Today, we must help equip a new generation to face a changing economy and labor market and address the great global challenges ranging from global warming to universal human rights and disarmament, to mention but a few.

There are still lessons to learn from history. Historically, the labor movement and social democrats were at the forefront of a broad popular mobilization that shaped the social and economic transformation of Europe toward the modern welfare state in the 20th century.

We did this by reaching out. Active involvement of a great number of civil society organizations, in particular through our close partnership with organized labor, created a network — an organic everyday democracy — able to address and influence issues that affected people’s everyday lives. This strategy of involvement is neither an antique nor old-fashioned, but it does need to be re-energized and adapted to modern realities.

We should seize upon this approach, not only for the purpose of winning elections, but also in order to improve and modernize our own policies. We need a much more open and inclusive approach to people from all walks of life. As political parties, we may be good at writing election manifestos, but we need broad outreach in order to collect the knowledge it takes to fill them with substance that speaks to reality and meets society’s full potential. We need to engage existing party members, but we should dare to go further, listening actively to knowledge, research, and experience from a much more diverse group of citizens. In this way, we can also recruit more members to our movement. We must be open to change, listen to new ideas, and engage with new people — particularly the young.

Read the full essay.