At 21:07 17/10/00 -0400, Michael Hoover wrote:
>Point of all this is to suggest that anti-privatization stance and move to
>control "commanding heights" in recent years was more a pragmatic
>response to circumstances than an indication of commitment to socialism.
>Milosevic or no Milosevic (and I agree with Yoshie that too much of
>debate has revolved around SM
[I too agree]
>, government policy twists - recall that
>privatization was initially met with hostility by working class supportive
>of public property and working class was later denied self-management
>rights when private property was statized (a word?) - contributed to
>declining popular support. Michael Hoover
It is not clear what mistakes were made or what could have been done
economically. (The political issues are another matter.)
The market inevitably exists to some extent anyway in state socialist
economies if only in the form of queuing for limited supplies of
commodities and to the extent that there is any flexibility in the sale of
labour power.
The larger issue is whether the compromises the Yugoslav regime made,
retained overall social control of the economy. A reassertion of central
state power, may not have done so. Retaining state ownership of the banks
may not have done so unless there were sophisticated mechanisms for
controlling their investment decisions.
A crucial feature of overall socialist control of an economy would have
been how to adjust for the differential in growth rates in different parts
of the country. Block transfer of funds from areas like Serbia to Kosovo,
may have been only part of an answer, and one open to Serb resentment.
That is why I think one must ask whether the compromises with the market
were wise ones. Or whether for example there should have been a market in
usage of development land such the central funds would have gained revenue
for economic developments through market mechanisms, which could have then
been redistributed to the outer regions of the economy.
But no states have very flexible systems for redistributing funds from the
centre to the periphery. And Yugoslavia, situated near a powerful economic
black hole, the EU, capable of sucking large quantities of exchange value
into its inside, also came under intense almost gravitational forces
sheering apart the different regions developing at different rates. These
problems do not deny the powerful political interference and impact of the
EU on Yugoslavia, but they complement the picture and need analysis in
their own right.
Chris Burford
London
