Paul Phillips: >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. Louis: I have never visited Yugoslavia myself, although I have a suspicion that Susan Woodward did. I wonder why you didn't respond to the substance of the arguments that I presented on her behalf, rather than making such a pointless observation that you were an eyewitness to events in Yugoslavia. >Ferfila and I give a much different interpretation in our >book *The Rise and Fall of the Third Way: Yugoslavia 1945-1991*. Louis: I will see if this book is in the Columbia library and give you some feedback. You can absolutely bank on this. >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. Louis: This sentence doesn't give us much to work with. Susan Woodward's analysis revolves around Yugoslavia's problems within the context of European economic decline in the 1970s and 80s, and less favorable relationships to western banks and lending agencies. "Working through praxis to modify the system" is such a meaningless phrase that I wouldn't begin to try to comment on it. Why do you use the word utopian in this context by the way? Don't you mean "unrealistic" instead? What *is* utopian is the idea of people like Schweickart (and yourself, I guess) that you can take a snapshot of an Eastern European republic formed by a whole set of specific class relations and set that as a goal for socialist parties involved in political action in places as diverse as Belgium and Ecuador. It is applicable everywhere, just as the utopian schemas of the 19th century were, and by the same token applicable nowhere as well.
