ABSTRACT
This chapter is a conservative argument against ambitious attempts at comprehensive planning, or a contribution to laissez-faire ideology. It illustrates a reinterpretation of the history of Norwegian industrialization. Many books could be filled with the laments of Norwegian industrialists frustrated by the negative attitudes toward industry demonstrated by politicians, academics, artists, and the general public. There are few industrial heroes in Norwegian fiction, but many heroic defenders of old virtues and ways of life. More significant, the material development of the Norwegian economy was heavily influenced by what could be called active Luddism, as when smallboat fishermen physically destroyed a whale factory at Mehamn, Finnmark, in 1903. The present leader of the Federation of Norwegian Industries has blamed the anti-industrial forces for keeping the country dependent upon the export of primary products and resource-based manufacturing. Harvesting the enormous shoals of spawning cod in the coastal commons was of course an attractive alternative for ambitious Norwegian entrepreneurs.
