I think Barkley is quite correct about the relative success of the Slovenian economy. The unemployment rate peaked at 9.1 % (ILO definition) in 1993 and had fallen to 7.4 % by 1995, well below the German rate. GDP had recoved to about 97 % of the pre-breakup maximum by 1995 and real wages stood about 5% higher than the were in 1990 before the war. Inflation in 1996 was estimated at 10 % and the real growth rate at 3 %. Much of this is detailed in my article with Bogomil Ferfila in *Slovenija*, "The Slovene Economy: the First Five Years", Summer 1996. I am in the process of updating this article but existing trends seem to be being followed. Re the property/ownership situation, the majority of the economy is now privatized but the privatization scheme has left control largely still in the hands of the workers/unions -- so much so that the managers have been complaining that nothing has changed. I hope to get to Slovenia next year to do a survey of managers to find out if that is still the case. Barkley is also correct about FDI. Of the more than 1500 privatization programs received by the Slovene Agency for Restructuring and Privatization by April 1995, only three involved foreign participation. Re the analysis of Yugoslavia outlined by Louis, it certainly doesn't appear much like what I saw in Yugoslavia over the last 10 or so years. Ferfila and I give a much different interpretation in our book *The Rise and Fall of the Third Way: Yugoslavia 1945-1991*. In fact, one of the causes we cite for the collapse of the country was the imposition of utopian schemes by the top theoreticians (e.g. Kardelj in particular) rather than working through praxis to modify the system. However, the whole argument is too long to present here. In short, I would agree with Barkley that both its success and its failure makes Slovenia a useful (though flawed) model for a feasible socialist alternative. Nasvidinje Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
