Quote: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.
The Yugoslav "Worker's Self-Management" System (
Samoupravljanje) has been criticized since its creation in the 50s.
Let me quote Enver Hoxha's "Yugoslav "Self-Administration" - Capitalist Theory and Practice",written in 1978.
The System of “Self-Administration” in the Economyhttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archi ... via/02.htmQuote: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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Quote: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.
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.
But Yugoslavia abandoned socialized agriculture already in the late 40s.
PIKs (Combines) were states farms similar to the Soviet Sovhozes,but only some 10% of land was owned by PIKs.
Quote: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.
But,IMO,with Yugoslavia the opposite happened.The further it went,the more capitalist it became.