SFRY Self_Management

Conscript wrote:

Bourgeois reforms had what's supposed to be a workers' state be led by counter-revolutionary nationalists, just like it did in Yugoslavia.

Conscript wrote:

Your state capitalist system couldn't survive without Tito, just like the USSR's couldn't without a strong bureaucratic party.

EdvardK wrote:

Also, Yugoslavs had Edvard Kardelj, the guy who "invented" self-management. It should've been conceived and definitely implemented differently in order for it to work.

Conscript wrote:

I'm saying the anticommunist reforms you're talking about cemented the power of opportunists and nationalists in the government. They would eventually dissolve the system in favor of full blown capitalism, even against popular vote.

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Under these two slogans Yugoslav socialism was built. As opposed to the USSR (and obviously not very well known to everybody), factories were not state owned. They were owned by the workers who "associated and cummulated work" in them. Workers managed their own factories. The managers (from the very beginning) were appointed by the League of Communists.

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The theory and practice of Yugoslav “self-administration” is an outright denial of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and the universal laws on the construction of socialism.

The essence of “self-administration socialism” in the economy is the idea that allegedly socialism cannot be built by concentrating the means of production in the hands of the socialist state by creating state ownership as the highest form of socialist ownership, but by fragmenting the socialist state property into property of individual groups of workers, who allegedly administer it directly themselves. Already in 1848 Marx and Engels stressed:

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class.” (K. Marx / F. Engels, Selected Works, vol. 1, p. 42 Tirana 1975, Alb. ed.)

Lenin stressed the same when he sternly combated the anarcho-syndicalist views of the group hostile to the party, the “Workers' Opposition”, which demanded the handing of the factories to the workers and the management and organisation of production not by the socialist state but by a so-called “Congress of producers”, as a representative of groups of individual workers. Lenin described these views as representing

“... a complete break with Marxism and communism” (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 32, p. 283, Alb. ed.)

He pointed out that

“Any justification, whether direct or Indirect, of the ownership of the workers of a certain factory or a certain profession for their specific production, or any justification of their right to tone down or hinder the orders from general state power, is a gross distortion of the fundamental principles of Soviet power and complete renunciation of socialism.” (V. I. Lenin, “On Democratisation and the Socialist Character of the Soviet Power”)

In June 1950, when Tito presented the law on “self-administration” to the People's Assembly of the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, while developing his revisionist views on ownership under “socialism”, he said, among other things: “From now on state property in the means of production, factories, mines, railroads will gradually go over to the highest form of social ownership. State ownership is the lowest form of social ownership, not the highest form...” Among “the most characteristic acts of a socialist country” is “the transfer of factories and other economic enterprises from the hands of the state into the hands of the workers, for them to manage... “ because in this manner the “slogan of the action of the working class - Factories to the Workers! - will be realized.” (“Factories to the Workers”, Prishtina 1951, pp. 37, 19, 1)

These assertions of Tito and the reactionary anarcho-syndicalist views of the “Workers' Opposition”, which Lenin exposed in his time, are as like as two peas in a pot but they are also similar to the views of Proudhon, who wrote in his work “The Theory of Property” that “the spontaneous product of a collective unit... can be considered as the triumph of freedom... and as the greatest revolutionary force which exists and which can be opposed to the state.” Or let us see what one of the leaders of the Second International, Otto Bauer, said in his book “The Road to Socialism”: “Who, then, will lead socialised industry in the future? The government? No! If the government was to run all the branches of industry without exception, it would become too powerful over the people and the national representative body. Such an increase of government power would be dangerous for democracy” (Otto Bauer, “The road to Socialism”, Paris 1919, p. 18)

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Quite the opposite happens in our country, where this common socialist property is managed by the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat with the participation of the working class and the masses of working people in direct, centralised forms which are planned from below and orientated from above.

The course of the decentralisation of the means of production, according to the anarcho-syndicalist ideas of workers' “self-administration” is, in essence, nothing else but a clever way to preserve and consolidate capitalist private ownership over the means of production, although in a form disguised as “property administered by groups of workers”. In fact, all the confusing and obscure terms invented by the “theoretician” Kardelj in his book, such as “fundamental organizations of united labour”, “complex organisation of united labour”, “workers' councils of the fundamental or complex organisations of united labour”, “self-administrative communities of interests”, etc. etc., which have even been written into the law of the Yugoslav capitalist state, are nothing but a glossy facade behind which the stripping of the working class of its right to ownership over the means of production, its savage exploitation by the bourgeoisie, is hidden.

This kind of private property exists in Yugoslavia not only in a disguised form but also in its open form, both in town and countryside. This, too, is admitted by E. Kardelj in his book when he says: “in our society such rights as... the right of personal property or, within given limits, also of private property... have special importance...” (p. 177). Kardelj tries in vain to play down the negative effect which the open acceptance of the right to private property might have even in the form of small-scale production, which, as Lenin says, gives birth to capitalism every day and every hour. The Yugoslav revisionists have issued special laws to encourage the private economy, laws which recognise the citizens' right to “found enterprises” and “to hire labour”. The Yugoslav Constitution explicitly states: “Private owners have the same socio-economic position, the same rights and obligations as the working people in the socio-economic organisations.”
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As opposed to other countries and USSR especially (also obviously a very little known fact), land was not collectivised and nationalised completely. All peasants were assigned a certain size of land for them to cultivate. Yet, they also had to "associate and cumulate work" in collectives (Kombinat) as well.

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I find it hard to believe people in the past (and even nowadays) were so naive thinking "communism will be reached in 20 years" or something. That's why the entire social experiment failed. It should've been more gradual, starting like it was started in Yugoslavia, and then gradually build collective conscience and attitude towards a better society.

Loz wrote:

The Yugoslav "Worker's Self-Management" System (Samoupravljanje) has been criticized since its creation in the 50s.

Loz wrote:

Let me quote Enver Hoxha's "Yugoslav "Self-Administration" - Capitalist Theory and Practice",written in 1978.

Loz wrote:

Well,socialism cannot actually "win in the city if it doesn't win on the countryside too".And Yugoslavia had millions of peasants,it was an agricultural country for most of its existence.

Loz wrote:

But,IMO,with Yugoslavia the opposite happened.The further it went,the more capitalist it became.

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I'm sorry for this spontaneous laughter, but do you really find Enver Hoxha an authority on self-management and socialism?
He was the guy who managed to isolate Albania and solidify it to be the absolutely LAST country in Europe by all standards.

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So, do you find it problematic that peasants possessed land much like workers possessed factories or do you support that idea?

Loz wrote:

Hoxha did a lot for Albania,but that's off-topic.What do you think about his evaluation of the Yugoslav Self-Management?

Loz wrote:

I find it problematic that kulaks (veleposednici) owned huge portions of land,animals,machinery etc. and exploited others.

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As I said before, how can I take seriously someone who has discredited himself? I can't, therefore, I think his ramblings are a bunch of Albanian poop.

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I agree with you on that, too, comrade. And what Yugoslavia did after 1947 was dispossess kulaks and gave the land to those who cultivated it. And those who cultivated it got only as much land as they were able to cultivate it. Otherwise, they'd be kulaks again.

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In Yugoslavia private property of 10 to 25 hectare is allowed (V. Vasic, “The Economic Policy of Yugoslavia”, Prishtina University Press, 1970) But the Yugoslav law which permits the buying and selling, renting and mortgaging of land, the buying and selling of agricultural machinery and hired labour in agriculture has also created the possibilities for the new bourgeois class of the countryside, the kulaks, to add to the area of their land, means of work and implements, tractors and trucks at the expense of the poor peasants and consequently, to step up and intensify their capitalist exploitation.

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Problems of Agriculture in Yugoslavia, a work published in Belgrade, states that "...judging by how they are organized today and how they function", the co-operatives "do not in the least signify socialist reconstruction of agriculture and of the countryside. They are working not so much for the creation of socialist strongholds as for the development and promotion of capitalist elements. There are cases in which these cooperatives are kulak associations".

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Polarization in the countryside is firstly revealed in the changes occurring in land ownership. Slavko Komar, formerly Yugoslav Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, admitted that in 1959 poorer peasant households with less than 5 hectares of land each, which constitute 70 per cent of all peasant households, owned only 43 per cent of all privately-owned land, whereas well-to-do peasant households with more than 8 hectares of land each, which form only 13 per cent of all peasant households, owned 33 per cent of all privately-owned land. Komar also admitted that about 10 per cent of the peasant households bought or sold land every year.

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In order to take the capitalist path, in 1959 the Tito clique promulgated the Law on the Utilization of Cultivated Land, stipulating that the land of peasants working on their own, who cannot farm it according to requirements, is subject to the "compulsory management" of the "general agricultural cooperatives" and "agricultural farms". In effect, this means the expropriation of poorer peasants and the forcible annexation of their land to develop capitalist farms. This is the path of capitalist agriculture, pure and simple.

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"The matter has nothing to do with either Sch[ulze]-Delitzsch or with Lassalle. Both propagated small cooperatives, the one with, the other without state help; however, in both cases the cooperatives were not meant to come under the ownership of already existing means of production, but create alongside the existing capitalist production a new cooperative one. My suggestion requires the entry of the cooperatives into the existing production. One should give them land which otherwise would be exploited by capitalist means: as demanded by the Paris Commune, the workers should operate the factories shut down by the factory-owners on a cooperative basis. That is the great difference. And Marx and I never doubted that in the transition to the full communist economy we will have to use the cooperative system as an intermediate stage on a large scale. It must only be so organised that society, initially the state, retains the ownership of the means of production so that the private interests of the cooperative vis-a-vis society as a whole cannot establish themselves."