DENMARK: Anti-Welfare Revolution

Scandinavia for years has been the model for democratic socialism, with cradle-to-grave welfare systems that assure everybody of life’s essentials. The price, of course, has been enormous bureaucracies, staggering tax rates and an inevitable loss of individual initiative. For some Scandinavians, the socialist dream has turned into a nightmare. Last September, voters in Sweden (pop. 8,132,000) nearly threw out their socialist government after 41 years in power, and elections in Norway (pop. 3,930,000) diminished a longtime socialist majority. Last week tiny Denmark (pop. 4,963,000) was on the verge of political crisis as the voters repudiated the ruling Social Democrats and four other established parties. Representatives of five new parties were elected to the Folketing (Parliament), which is now hopelessly fragmented.

The most heavily taxed of all industrialized people, the Danes—or a large minority of them, anyway—were apparently driven to the breaking point by a government proposal to do away with deductions for interest payments on mortgages and installment buying, a step that would have reduced even further their small take-home pay.

Showing their contempt for the politicians who had been running Denmark for the past 28 years, many Danes voted for a party that literally hopes to dismantle the government. Headed by Mogens Glistrup, a maverick millionaire lawyer who boasts that he has paid no income tax for the past six years (TIME, April 9), the Progress Party wants to get rid of large numbers of Denmark’s 600,000 civil servants until the country is freed from their “paper fiddling.”

Abolish Taxes. Somewhat lightheartedly, Glistrup has suggested that his country could live without its Foreign and Defense ministries. “Denmark cannot defend itself,” he says. “Instead of an army, we should substitute an automatic telephone-answering service that, in case of invasion, replies in Russian: ‘We surrender.’ ” He wants to abolish all income taxes for those who make $10,000 or less. “Only fools pay income tax,” Glistrup once said. “There is no bigger crime against society than paying income tax.”

Glistrup does not even like the idea of having a Prime Minister, and thinks that any Danish government could get by with eight instead of the present 20 ministries. What post would he like? Minister for the Abolition of Bureaucracy, of course. Simplistic and nonsensical as his platform sounds, almost 500,000 of Denmark’s 3 million voters chose it, making the Progress Party, with 28 of the Folketing’s 179 seats, the country’s second largest.

Shattered by the election, in which the Social Democrats lost 24 seats, Prime Minister Anker Jorgensen announced that he would resign. With characteristic brashness, Glistrup suggested to Queen Margrethe II that she appoint him to head a new government, even though none of the “other nine parties had pledged him enough support to form anything close to a majority coalition. In fact, Glistrup is so disliked by other politicians that he was given the silent treatment when he entered the Folketing for the first time last week.

Whatever government is chosen, no one expects it to last very long. Denmark, in short, last week came as close to a revolution as that peaceful, cautious nation has been since Hamlet put the sword to Claudius at Elsinore.