I think a couple of weeks ago Barkley posted something
about Yugoslavia and market socialism which prompted a
spirited response from somebody that Yugoslav socialism
was an 'oxymoron' because Yugoslavia was not democratic
and therefore could not be socialist. Unfortunately, (as I
indicated previously) I lost all my previous e-mail so
if I am grossly misrepresenting some views posted to
pen-l then I apologize in advance. However, I would
like to put my vote of confidence behind Barkley, rather
than his critics, who seem not to know much about went on
in Yugoslavia in the 1970s and 1980s.
When Tito came to power at the end of WWII he and the
leadership of the JCP established a 'Stalinist' type
state which lasted justed a few years before Jugoslavia
broke with Stalin and began (after 1950) introducing
worker self-management and democratizing both the workplace
and decentralizing state powers to the republics and the
autonomous regions like Kosovo and Vojvodina. Though there
was never 'two-party' elections (sic) like there are in the
US, there were multi-interest group elections at all levels
particularly after the implementation of the new
constitution in 1976. There were in fact multi-'parties'
and the Communist Party was disbanded (to be replaced by
the 'non-party' League of Communists.) Indeed, after the
breakup, these various groups reorganized as political
parties alternative to the growth of neo-liberal nationalist
parties favoured by the US (at the expense of so many lives.)
Indeed, I would argue that Jugoslavia came closer to
establishing a truly democratic regime at both the industrial
and political level than any other regime in modern
European history. It failed both because of internal
contradictions and external interventions. We have
argued this all in our book _The Rise and Fall of the
Third Way: Yugoslavia 1945-1991_ One may agree or disagree
with our analysis, but to argue that Jugoslavia was some
sort of anti-democratic, authoritarian offshoot of Stalinism
and was not (at least) attempting socialism is the kind
of bourgeois or crude-marxist crap that brings disrepute to
scholarship on the left.
Nasvidinje,
Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba
