Red Party

The Red Party is a communist political party in Norway. It was founded in March 2007 by a merger of the Red Electoral Alliance and the Workers' Communist Party. A Marxist party, it has been described as left-wing and far-left on the political spectrum. In its political programme, the Red Party sets the creation of a classless society to be its ultimate goal, which the party says is "what Karl Marx called communism". The party's other goals are replacing capitalism with socialism, an expansive public sector and nationalisation of large enterprises. It has a revolutionary socialist ideology, which aims towards new legislatures taking power on behalf of the workers, though the party does not support violent armed revolution as espoused by its predecessors in the 1970s and 1980s. It strongly opposes Norway becoming a member of the European Union. The Red Party has 20 county council representatives nationwide and 193 municipal representatives. In the 2013 parliamentary election, it was the largest party that failed to win a seat. The party entered Parliament in the 2017 election, winning 2.4% of the vote and its first seat ever in the Storting. The last time a far-left party had representation in the Storting was when its predecessor party, the Red Electoral Alliance, won a seat in 1993. In the 2021 parliamentary election, the party achieved its best result ever, with 4.6% of the vote, securing eight seats in Parliament. Ideology and positions The party supports the existing welfare state in Norway and high taxation upon the wealthy as a means of tackling continuing inequality in Norway. Since its formation, notable groups have merged with the party, the most notable example of this being the Trotskyist International Socialists. The party consists of various internal factions, including Trotskyists, Marxist–Leninists, and democratic socialists. One of the Red Party's primary objectives is to protect the Norwegian welfare state, calling for the government to spend 30 to 40 billion Norwegian krones on the public sector to counter the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Red politician Mimir Kristjansson said that the "right-wing parties have proved their willingness to dismantle the very foundation of our welfare state." According Kristjansson, the socialist parties, along with the Labour Party, need to be forced into a policy which strongly protects the welfare model for the poor.