1978/No.25 by Dennison I. Rusinow Yugoslav Domestic Develop- Europe [DIR-2-'78] ments On the Eve of the 1978 Party Congress

Two generalizations about postwar , who have proclaimed the re-enthronement of a and perhaps only two, have proved to have con- recentralized and re-Leninized Party as the sistent predictive as well as descriptive validity. Autocrat of all the Self-Managers? On the evi- The first concerns the regime's and the ' dence of the subjects being discussed in the con- apparently inexhaustible willingness to experi- text of preparations for the June 1978 Congress of ment, their impatient readiness to discard and the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY), devise replacements for organizational forms, and the way they are being discussed, this, too, procedures, epithets, priorities, and even some seems to have been at best an oversimplification. conceptual frameworks at the first signs of defec- tive parts or poor performance on the road. The Particular attention is now focused on the latest second is that every Yugoslav specialist whose pronouncements of , the regime's analysis has led to the conclusion that this or that perennial chief official ideologist. Kardelj himself policy or trend is irreversible, a "moment of is often called the regime's number two man and is truth," or commits the future of the society or the usually considered, to be Tito's most likely first system has invariably been proved wrong. Those successor as President of the Party, unless he loses who wrote about Yugoslavia ca. 1947 in terms of his battle with cancer before that time comes. His irrevocable and particularly zealous loyalty to the views, officially proclaimed "the basis for the Soviet Union and the Soviet model of socialism may presumably be excused by the state of our fac- This Report is a revised version of a Paper pre- tual and of social science theory at that sented at a conference on "Yugoslavia: Accom- knowledge plishments and Problems," held at the Woodrow time. In the later 1960s, many twists and turns and Wilson Center, Smithsonian Institution, Wash- falsified predictions later, this was a less valid ington, D.C., on October 17, 1977. The conference excuse for those of us, this time including myself, was organized by Professor George W. Hoffrnan who saw the then existing level and quality of in- ofthe University ofTexas with assistancefrom the stitutionalized, legally recognized, and assertive External Research Office ofthe U.S. Department interest group pluralism and popular participa- of State and the publishing house of Harcourt tion as an effective barrier to any reversal of the Brace Jovanovich. It was attended by about 90 trend away from Communist Party autocracy and scholars, journalists, and government officials. centralized authorityexcept perhaps through Other papers presented were by Professor Paul S. Shoup of the University of Virginia (on the outside intervention or a coup that would do too Laura much damage to the social and political fabric to Party), Professor D'Andrea Tyson of the University of California at Berkeley (on the be contemplated by those in a position to carry it economy), and Professor Fred Warner Neal ofthe out. Wrong again. And now, what of those who Claremont Graduate School formerly an A UFS since 1972 have with equal confidence composed Associate stationed in Yugoslavia (on foreign obituaries for confederation, pluralism, or social policy). Professor Neal's paper is also being self-management with a meaningful face, and published as an AUFS Report. 2/DIR-2-'78 activity of the League of Communists in prepara- antidote to "spontaneity" and to the reduction of tions for the Eleventh Congress," are set forth in a the political process to simple bargaining among speech made at a meeting of the Presidency of the socialism's "pluralism of interests" without Central Committee of the LCY on June 13, 1977, regard for the general interest; on the other hand, and in a book from which the speech was not a monopolizer of power and an "external fac- excerpted, published in October and entitled De- tor" dictating decisions only formally taken by velopmental Trends in the Political System of "self-managers." Failing to find this formula, Socialist Self-Management. Kardelj wrote in 19652 and again in 1977, the Party will be doomed to founder between "its Kardelj spoke at length about a "pluralism of Scylla and Charybdis," either maintaining its self-management interests" that must be enabled political monopoly as "a classical political party in "to find expression within the framework of a one-party system," which inevitably leads to democratic self-management decision-making as diverse "deformations" and eventually to directly and freely as possible." The 1974 Consti- Stalinism, or finding itself "on the leriphery of tution and the almost equally long Associated social developments," reduced to a seldom- Labor Act passed by the Federal Assembly in listened-to "ideological-propagandistic force." November 1976 provide improved mechanisms For Kardelj both ofthese dangers are still real and for such expression and participation, he said, but are described in much detail, but in the portions of there is still "a certain discrepancy between pro- his treatise that constituted his June speech the claimed and constitutionally established demo- Party's prevalent failing is again an excessive de- cratic principles and our social and political pendence on "administrative means" and misuse practice." This discrepancy has its "objective of power. "It often happens," he said, "that causes," including "the level of development of social-political organizations [an umbrella term the revolution and society, the level of economic for the Party and its subsidiary organizations like development and equality, the power ratio of the Socialist Alliance] illegitimately intervene in social forces, the sharpness of social conflicts, the decision-making by responsible, self-managing, impact of world contradictions on our internal state, and social organs and organizations." The social life, and the like." It is also the result of consequences, in his view, are harmful for both "subjective factors," among which he lists democracy and responsibility, since "real" and "bureaucratic centralism, technocratism, the formal responsibility are no longer one and scramble for political control of man and similar the same thing." The Party is condemned to the phenomena in the sphere of social relations, or status of a dictatorial minority dangerously iso- sectarianism, opportunism, too much reliance on lated from the influence of the masses and their administrative means [Marxist jargon for coer- variegated interests, and the regime takes on cion], individualistic ambitions and similar the appearance if not the reality of basic insta- phenomena in ideology and politics." While "the bility. system itself cannot eliminate all such phenomena," Kardelj said, improvements in the Kardelj's answer is not new and still lacks system can help, and to this end "the changes specificity, as he seems at one point to acknowl- which have necessarily to be introduced in our edge,a but it has not been heard at this level and in political system largely concern the position, role, these phrases in recent years: and manner of operation of the League of Com- munists itself. '' Our point of departure here must be that every organ and every institution should autonomously it has still not found the The Party, seems, take decisions in its jurisdiction and be fully magic formula of organization, membership, made responsible both politically and materially of that will attitude, and "manner operation" these decisions, they are taken, it to its role" as for whiqh, before enable perform "leading properly, must be subject to consultations and that role has been defined in since the of influence principle by all creative socialist forces, and especially early 1950s: on the one hand effective as a social-political and other social organizations, influential of socialist values, uniquely interpreter as well as andprofessional institutions. proponent of "socialist solutions," mediator, and scientific DI R-2-'78/3

The practitioner and the theoretician:, Secretary of the Executive Committee of the LCY since 1971, and Edvard Kardelj-both Slovenes-are the most talked about and generally considered the most influential of Tito 's lieutenants today.., and tomorrow? To achieve such influence, he writes elsewhere in ministrator of society," acting outside and above the treatise, the Party must fully "integrate itself" the self-management system, On the other hand, in today's complex system of workers' and social he warns, doing these things properly means self-management. By itself and through other learning to play by a new and more difficult set of "social-political organizations" it should begin by rules, one in which the Party "has to be prepared "ensuring that key positions in the assemblies, to retreat and make compromises when a conflict state organs, and other institutions of self-man- of interests in the sphere of self-management agement are firmly in the hands of socialist democracy or a lagging behind of the social con- forces." These social-political organizations sciousness of the working masses is involved."4 should also more regularly and consistently ex- ploit .their right, which has been expanded and Kardelj's often obscure, always verbose, and made explicit in the new Constitution, to have frequently pedantic utterances have traditionally their own direct representatives present and heard given rise to two contradictory reactions. The first at various kinds of meetings of these institutions has been to invest them with more impact and and at basic as well as higher levels. Failure to do more positive consequences than subsequent these things or doing them ineffectively is the developments have usually justified, and to credit major reason why the Party has too often been their author with more "liberalism" (in the forced back into reliance on "administrative Western sense) and antidogmatism (in a generic means" and the position of "a monopolistic ad- sense) than careful analysis warrants. The second 4/DIR-2-'78 has been privately expressed even by some middle- (addressing a Party meeting in January ranking members of the Yugoslav establishment 1977) and Federal Assembly President Kiro who share his general outlook and who fear the Gligorov (in a press conference for foreign journa- consequences if his illness removes him from the lists in June 1977)$have anticipated or echoed scene before the transition to a post-Tito era. It his views. considers much of his philosophizing boring, irrelevant, a distraction from real issues and "real Meanwhile, ordinary and non-Party Yugoslavs life," and sometimes pernicious when it has led to are reporting renewed insistence, in their own fac- institutional experiments that did not work, cre- tories or offices, that non-Communists must again ating the impression that "self-management" is be as eligible for promotion or election to decision- cumbersome, inefficient, and a source of insta- making positions as Communists, and that bility. elected "self-management" bodies (usually with non-Party majorities) rather than local Party Whichever of these reactions is usually justi- organizations must "really" make policy fiedi this writer's opinion each contains some decisions. By last summer one such Yugoslav, only truthKardelj's 1977 speech and book deserve recently concerned because decision-making in the attention they are receiving, both on their own his enterprise seemed to have returned to the merits and as an indication of a general change in hands of a politically influential Party clique that political atmosphere and potential. Kardelj is he considered incompetent, was instead com- careful to point out that his "pluralism of self- plaining about "too much so-called self-manage- management interests" is not the same thing as ment, meaning too many meetings and com- "the political pluralism of the bourgeois-demo- promises or nondecisions, so that no one can be cratic parliamentary system," which Yugoslavia held responsible when things go wrong. They call will continue to "reject in advance" as inappro- it democracy, but democracy should mean freely priate in a multinational and socialist state and a electing someone to take charge, then letting him step backward from self-management socialist do it and insisting that he be accountable for what democracy. Party Executive Committee Secretary he does." All this suggests that significant changes Stane Dolanc has subsequently made the same are taking place in atmosphere, political style, and distinction in his own way, during a meeting with expectations at the bottom of the social and polit- foreign journalists on February 21, 1978, by ical pyramid as well as in the rhetoric heard from pointedly using the native Serbo-Croatian word the top. mnotvo (meaning "a great number" or "lots of") where Kardelj had used the loan-word pluralizam On the other hand, the existence of effective (originally borrowed by Yugoslav social scientists resistance to these purported and still tentative from their Western counterparts but in general changes is confirmed by other evidence, also political and journalistic usage for more than a usually indirect and hard to substantiate. One decade) to designate the Yugoslav and legiti- frequently cited example is the delay in mately socialist form of multiplicity of interests. It proclaiming the amnesty for political prisoners is more significant, however, that a positive evalu- that finally took place on Yugoslav National Day, ation of any kind of "pluralism," and by any November 29, 1977it had been talked about at name, was explicitly condemned by Tito and the beginning of the year, at least one senior others during the retreat to firmer Party control official confirmed in April that it was "under con- after 1971. The treatise as a whole echoes criti- sideration. ''6 and informed sources had said that cisms, ideas, and values that dominated official it would be proclaimed on the occasion of Tito's Party thinking around 1967, and that were both 85th birthday in May. Some officials hinted that cause and effect of the political atmosphere and the postponement was to avoid giving the impres- the decentralizing and pluralizing economic and sion of submission to foreign pressures on behalf political reforms of that period. Finally, Kardelj's of "human rights" in "socialist" countries (in his return to such a line does not appear to be an June speech Kardelj argued that the question is isolated phenomenon. Other authoritative legitimate although the motives and intentions of spokesmenearly examples include Dolanc those who raise it are suspect), but less official DIR-2-'78/5 sources claimed that resistance within the leader- lenged, and the thaw on this and related issues ship was also playing a role. There is also the that were so hotly debated in the later 1960s may curious delay in publishing Kardelj's book. The or may not have serious and tangible as well as manuscript was circulated to members of the largely atmospheric consequences. It does, how- Party Presidency at the time of his June speech. ever, reflect a renewed self-confidence and sense Immediate publication was assumed, but it did of at least domestic security by the leadership not appear until October. In Belgrade in July it (Kardelj and others have mentioned success in was being said the delay was because the author restoring political stability as the reason why fur- was being urged to revise and "toughen" some ther "democratizing" reforms can now be con- allegedly controversial sections. The always active templated). That in turn is shaking loose other Belgrade rumor mill is inevitably ready to name social forces, generating new expectations and names in such cases, including Bosnian Party doubts, and generally reopening questions and leaders whose influence derives from Bosnia's options that were suppressed but not foreclosed ethnic neutrality as an officially non-national since 1971. To examine why and how this seems to state common to Serbs, Croats, and Muslim South have happened and what "ratio of social forces" it Slavs. However unverifiable such labeling may be, represents or releases may provide clues to the almost everyone agrees that those who would like kind of Yugoslavia that will come when (if!) Tito to see more emphasis on the role of socialism's finally departs. "pluralism of interests" and less on "the leading role of the Party" are keeping a low profile for the For two decades, from the early 1950s until time being. 1972, Yugoslavia was with reasonif also with occasional exaggeration or unrealistic expecta- Meanwhile, a selective reading of Kardelj's tionsthe focus of favorable comment and high book can offer almost as much aid and comfort to hopes emanating from "bourgeois-democratic" those who fear renewed liberalization as to those nd "neo-Marxist" circles in the Western world. who pray for it. As outside observers who consider Here at last it seemed that an old dream, common it on balance a "hard line" book point out, the to liberal and Marxist political thought, was in the kinds of passages cited above are balanced by process ofbeing realized. A modernizing dictator- others that repeatedly condemn "the illusion of ship, created by a revolutionary minority whose spontaneous democracy," that extol even more ideology included democracy as well as develop- ubiquitous if more subtle Party control until "the ment, was in significant measure fulfilling both balance of social forces" tips far more in the pledges and adapting to the change without in- direction of "conscious socialist subjective stitutional breakdown or serious conflict. If forces," and that justify the exclusion from par- Yugoslavia at the end of the 1960s was not yet a tiricipation and limitations on other rights and "democracy," by either classic liberal or its own liberties for "enemies of socialism and self-man- "social self-management" socialist definitions, it agement." had certainly evolved from quasi-totalitarianism through a looser Party autocracy into an ill- At the least it seems clear from this mixed evi- defined polyarchy of plural and increasingly dence that one important feature of Tito's re- autonomous corporate participants in public sponse to the political crises of 1971-72 no longer decision-making. It was a system in which diver- obtains. This is the freeze imposed on critical gent interests and values, most if not all social thinking about the Party's residual and then strata, and most politicized Yugoslavs who had reasserted supremacy over other "sub-systems" not opted out because of basic ideological dissent in an increasingly pluralistic "global system," in were finding forms of representation that were practical terms meaning its right to intervene real, responsive, and increasingly responsible. openly, as an organization with constitutionally sanctioned final authority, and ultimately to dic- Then, beginning in December 1971, Tito tate decision-making by other bodies. That auth- himself initiated a series of coups that seemed to ority, as defined by the Tenth Party Congress and be directed against the liberalizing and democra- a new Constitution in 1974, is formally unchal- tizing essence of the system that the outside world 6/DIR-2-'78 calls "." "Anarcho-liberalism" replaced and significance of this crisis were not always "Stalinist conservatism" and "bureaucratic cen- those that the people who executed his coups have tralism" at the top of the list of official threats to listed and what they did was probably an inappro- the Yugoslav road to socialist democracy. Com- priate response, the labels of anathema they munist "liberals" and "nationalists" were purged used"nationalist," "anarcho-liberal," and from Party and government offices and the mass "the technocratic-managerial counter-class" media, and Tito threatened to use the Army if they are clues worth following. did not go peacefully. Some dissident Commu- nists were suspended from university teaching The key question is a classic one: who rules (but only after a long and difficult political Yugoslavia, for whom do they do it, and to what struggle and even then retaining academic rank ends? Once upon a time, in the infancy of the and full pay), and some dissident and activist non- regime, it was a Politburo of a dozen men, ruling Communists went to jail. A new immediate goal through a disciplined, centralized, hierarchically was proclaimed: a cleansed, redisciplined, and organized Party whose bureaucracyDjilas's recentralized League of Communists would "new class," still sometimes officially called a reassert its authorityits monopoly of ultimate "bureaucratic caste"---combined traditional powerover the plural institutions and conflict- Balkan inefficiency and corruption with Leninist ing interests of social self-management and a ubiquity and omnipotence, a fateful amalgam. socialist market economy. Most of Yugoslavia's The Politburo ruled for themselves, dictators of friends in the West turned away their faces, often both the economy and the polity and beholden to with a bitterness that exuded an odor of burnt nobody and to nothing except the limits of the illusions. possible, which included the limits imposed by the founding myths of their regime and by their Did all these developments, as many of these ideology. new critics contend, flow merely from an arbitrary change of mind and direction by an old man, sup- Later, as a result of deliberate but cautious ported in his reversion to the Bolshevism of his decentralization, Yugoslavia was ruled by a wider youth by individuals and interests that had never Party elite, dispersed in ways that permitted liked the pluralizing fallout of "Titoism"? Or had regional and sectoral interests to surface, be rep- the Yugoslav experiment gone wrong in whole or resented, and conflict. Still, adequate discipline in part and by some standards that non-Marxists was imposed by Tito's authority, by the glue of might also accept? What was, in fact, the price of genuine wartime and postwar comradeship the particular pluralism that had developed in among key people, and by the device of placing Yugoslavia and that Tito and others had found to one well-chosen manAleksandar Rankovi, an be unacceptably high? And should one lightly and astute political manipulator with unswerving totally dismiss the argument of the regime's loyalty to Tito--in charge of both Party organiza- official spokesmen and apologists (including tion and the political police. The economy, spun numerous former "liberals" who remained in off from the monolith in the name of "workers' high positions) that reasserting the authority of a self-management" and "market socialism," was recentralized Party at this time is really a reculer kept in thrall by continuing state regulation and pour mieux sauter to a genuine"self-management control of investments and by insuring that mem- democracy," capable of repulsing every "counter- bers of the elite also held key economics posts class" of apparatchiks or entrepreneurs that seeks (which some found more engaging than their to usurp the power of the people? Party roles, with interesting political conse- quences). It was clear, at least to this observer, that the crisis which provoked Tito's "counter-Titoist" Toward the end of the 1960s, with Rankovi interventions (and which gave them wider popular gone, political decentralization carried further support than is generally recognized) was real and become self-sustaining, and a policy of "de- enough and did involve the price of particular etatzaton of the economy carried to extremes forms of pluralism. Although the parts, quality, that began to resemble nineteenth century laissez- DI R-2-'78/7 Assembly of the S. F. R. Yugoslavia

Federal Chamber Chamber of o (220 delegates) and Autonomous Provinces (88 delegates)

Assembly of a or Province (8)

Chambrof of Associated Chamber Sociopolitical Labor Communes Chamber

Assembly of a Commune (501) to tO Chamber of Chamber of Associated Local Sociopolitical Labor Communities Chamber

tO tO

ITU*t FYI etc. in Basic Organizations of Asso- as Sociopolitical averages ciated Labor [BOALs], etc. in Local Communities in Local Communities

LC League of Communists *SA and TU "propose and determine" candi- SA/SAWPY- Socialist Alliance of the Working dates for all types of Delegations/Delegates in Peoples of Yugoslavia addition to electing their own TU Trade Union FY Federation of Yugoslav Youth [Simplified by omitting the Municipal Assembly etc.- Federation of Associated Veterans Organi- level for larger cities comprised of more than one zations, Women's organizations, et al. Commune] 8/DIR-2-'78

faire, the answer became more complex and beneficiaries of the process of political pluraliza- eventually nonexistent: by 1970 Yugoslavia was in tion on which other forms of "democratization" effect not being governed at all. and "self-management" were based.

In this process the national question, Yugo- The power of central state and Party authorities slavia's eternally central question, played an to make and implement decisions evaporated, at essential but potentially two-edged role. Each of first gradually and almost unnoticed and then, the South Slav nations that give Yugoslavia its after 1966, dramatically and rapidly. Enough of nameSerbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, this power came to lodge in republican and pro- Montenegrins, and now Muslim Slavs of Bosnia as vincial state and Party apparatuses so that it a newly recognized "nation"has a Republic of became necessary to secure their agreement its own as an ostensible nation-state (or in Bosnia- before measures affecting general interests could Herzegovina a tri-nation-state for Muslim Slavs, be adopted or enforced. The situation was aston- Serbs, and Croats)within the Federation. Each of ishingly legitimized by Constitutional amend- the two largest non-Slav minoritiesAlbanians ments adopted in 1971 (and more astonishingly and Magyarsshares with Serbs and others an confirmed by the new Constitution of 1974, after Autonomous Province that has enjoyed most of Tito's coup), which in effect converted Yugoslavia the attributes of a Republic since 1968. (That none into a confederation with few central powers. But of the Republics, except , comes even the regional authorities, with all their new polit- close to the "ethnic_ puritv" implicit in their d_efini- ical weight, lacked commensurate economic tion, but mirrors the ethnic complexity of Yugo- power. Monetary and fiscal instruments and im- slavia as a whole, is a complicating factor of in- portant tax powers remained in the hands of the creasing but often unrecognized importance.) paralyzed Federal government of 1968-1971, Gradual decentralization of political and eco- while an important fraction of total investment nomic power after 1950,whether it favored the Re- funds remained at the disposal of three former publics or smaller units within them, enjoyed a Federal banks, located in the Federal capital. mutually reinforcing relationship with the Thus the power of the regional authorities was national sentiments and suspicions of regional almost entirely negative. They could and did leaders. Each decentralizing step and consequent veto-since their respective interests demanded acquisition of local decision-makifig power and contradictory solutions to most major problems locally controlled wealth gave themexcept for but they could not implement policies of their the Serbs, historically devoted to a unitary state own. which they would dominate from Belgrade, their own and the Federal capitalsomething more to Effective power ca. 1970 was therefore nowhere defend and more to defend it with. This and everywhere, a quasi-anarchy of diffused something with new included power bases decision-making reduced responsibility (for battery separate is founded on their autonomous control of more anonymous power irresponsible power), of and on their together with a free-for-all scramble to pick up the power and instruments patronage The and self-advertised defense of pieces. country prospered, after a fashion, incresingly visible and both economic and ethnic) interests. At the same political life were un- local (perceived as free and for centralized (Fed- precedentedly exciting; but macroprob- time, competition remaining lems accumulated unanswered. eral) funds and favors reinforced resentment of other that seemed to be doing better, again regions This, then, was one dimension of the crisis that meaning other ethnic groups, and of the Federal administration in Belgrade that non-Serbs con- Tito sought to resolve with his coup de main. But it sideed Serb-dominated and ethnically preju- had two others, in the shape of the two principal diced. All this still further increased "national contenders (or were they really two faces of one consciousness" and the motivation and credibility contender, as Tito's ideologues now maintain?) of regional leaders as national leaders. Thus for the mantle of power, the role of primary de- regional leaderships qua national leaderships cisionmaker, that had been stripped from central became the principal instruments and principal Party-state apparatuses. These were the "nation- alism" and the "managerial-technocratic elitism" DI R-2-'78/9 of subsequent official anathemas; by any name socialist views of the nature of human freedom they existed and were a blemish on either and the kind of social order needed to guarantee Western-liberal or Yugoslav-socialist definitions its existence and growth. It belongs instead to a of democracy. vision of the world in which society is hierarchical, roles and status are prescriptive, and individual The conviction that national freedom, as ex- salvation is to be sought through identification pressed in "national sovereignty" and a nation- with the community and submission to its pre- state of one's own, must precede and is a pre- scripts, known to and enforced by an enlightened condition for individual freedom is certainly not or chosen few. new in Eastern Europe; nor is the tendency to slide from that conviction into an absolute identifica- What had in effect taken place was an inver- tion of national with individual freedom or into an sion, at most partly conscious and willful, of the identification of the nation with the personae of its rank-order of self-management and national leaders, whether elected or self-proclaimed. This emancipation as the cardinal political values of is also a region with particularly intense experi- official Yugoslav Communism, at least momen- ence of the nation elevated to a superordinate and tarily giving precedence to the latter. A series of even exclusive value and point of reference, so that constitutional amendments adopted between every issue is interpreted in national terrns. 1967 and 1971 symbolized and institutionalized this inversion by gradually if never completely These attitudes and attendant emotions did not shifting from one principle of decentralization disappear "under socialism" in postwar Yugo- and aggregation to another, which is funda- slavia. The tendency of regional Communist mentally different. The first, evolving in theory leaders to present themselves and to be accepted and institutional forms since the 1950s, aspires to as national leaders has been noted. In some cases pluralistic decision-making through essentially their claim to speak for their nation came close to syndicalist or corporativist mechanisms, by sounding like a claim that they incorporated the delegates of "working people" grouped according will of the nation. In the public discussion of con- to economic and social function. The second stitutional amendments of 1971 great attention aspires to pluralistic decision-making on the basis was paid to the concepts of national and of territorially focused ethnic groups.The first is republican "sovereignty" and the Republic as the consonant with the regime's declarative dedica- "national state of the Croatian (or Slovene or tion to "direct social self-management without Macedonian or Montenegrin)nation." intermediaries" through progressive "de-tatiza- tion" and an eventual "withering away of the Except for constant lip service to the principle Party," and is at least indirectly consonant with its that each Republic was to be a "self-managing search for a form of "consociational democracy" socialist community" in which the "class content" based on consensus decision-making as the most is equal to or takes precedence over the "national appropriate form for a multinational state.Z The content" of citizenship, this was highly second, by itself, implies the continued existence reminiscent of debates in the similarly multi- of forms explicitly rejected by official Yugoslav national Hapsburg Empire in this same region Marxism: of a state or confederation of states with before 1918. Now as then, a man's national par- the usual mix of traditional and modern func- ticularity was taking precedence over his univer- tions, in the end perhaps autocratic, perhaps sality. His relationship to society is seen in organic "bourgeois-democratic," perhaps "social-demo- terms: if his identity can be fully realized and his cratic," but not "socialist-democratic" as this interests protected only as a member of a nation, term is defined in Yugoslav theory. In this evolu- then the nation takes precedence over the indi- tion the quest for an answer to the national vidual and the "general will," as articulated by question was at odds with the quest for viable national leaders, has greater value than an indi- macropolitical forms of self-management, even as vidual will or a collectivity of wills. Such a concept the two had been mutually supportive in the pre- of man in society does not belong to the ceding phase. mainstream of either Western liberal or Marxian lO/DIR-2-'78

The central message of the Party line since hated, nor did they lose more than one dimension 1972, although it does not make this point in quite of their previous quasi-autonomy within the sys- this way,a is clear about a related one. The Party, tem as a whole. it is now said, had virtually abdicated its "leading role" because it became disoriented by "incorrect Those who viewed the system developed under views" originally promulgated at its 1952 Con- "liberal" ascendancy after 1965-66 as more stable gress (the first attempt to codify an emerging and resistant than it turned out to be made the "Titoism") and revived in modified form after mistake of underestimating the explosive poten- 1966. Those who held these views, now scathingly tial of the nationalist sentiments released by that described as "anarcho-liberals" or simply system and the reaction of politically important "liberals," had erred grievously in holding that at persons and groups to the national, economic, and present levels of socioeconomic modernization the social problems the reforms seemed to have gen- -further promotion of social-self-management erated or aggravated. But they also underesti- should be characterized by more "spontaneity" mated the extent to which the Party's partial and "pluralism" and thus a decreasing political or abdication of centralized and even decentralized "interventionist" role for the Party. Instead, control, essential to the amount and kind of according to the indictment presented at the pluralization of decision-making centers and ex- Tenth Party Congress in May 1974, the relaxation pansion of participation which was taking place, of firm Party control and of centralized Party continued to be reversible, i.e., dependent on per- authority had led to power being grabbed by local ceptions, personnel, and balances of political politicians who were often more nationalist than forces and calculations that could change over communist and by "technocrats" in industry, time rather than a reflection of irreversible social, commerce, and banking whose admiration for value, and generational changes. In the same Western managerial techniques led them to fashion, after 1971-72, those (including many of behave like capitalist managers. Those who had the same observers)who predicted a return at least countenanced these developments were therefore to the centralized if loose-reined Party oligarchy either wittingly or unwittingly promoting the and token self-management of the 1950s have restoration of a bourgeois-type economy and been guilty of miscalculating the extent to which multiparty democracy, undermining both social- social and value changes since the 1950s and their ism and the unity of a state in which multiple institutionalization are irreversible and a for- parties had always meant ethnic parties. The midable barrier to political rollback, to a new reassertion of Party authority and of intra-Party, form of monolith, or to a really effective neocen- pan-Yugoslav "democratic centralism" was thus tralism. Many other options are open and offer necessary to protect both unity and socialism. In varying degrees of desirability from various doing so it would also make possible the further ideological points of view (Western-liberal-demo- development of self-management, at last freed cratic, social-democratic, national, or "socialist from the distraction of nationalism and the domi- self-management"), but not those. This is a nance of its own "technocratic bureaucracies. ''9 bold assertion, which needs further argument and more precision. With this criticism and consequent action, the Party in its traditional function as ultimate and ultimately centralized arbiter of the system and "with Tito at its head" returned to downstage A charter for the new chapter in contemporary position in the drama. But the institutions and Yugoslav history which opened after the political associated interests that were now clustered crises and Tito's coups of 1971-72 can be found in around the confederal structure of the state (the a combination of three sources" in the new Con- national question), "market socialism" and its stitution that was promulgated in February 1974, autonomous enterprises (the developmental in the proceedings and conclusions of the Tenth question), and the institutions of self-manage- Congress of the LCY three months later, and in ment (the question of socialist-democratic forms the no less than 671 articles of the Associated and "consciousness")were not thereby elimi- Labor Act passed by the Assembly of the Socialist D R-2-'78/11

Stane Dolanc, in a characteristic pose, during a February 1978 conversation with foreign and domestic journalists about the forthcoming XIth Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and the state of Yugoslavia and the world. 12/DIR-2-'78

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on November 25, the election of other "delegations and delegates," 1976. The new Constitution reflected both planks both informally and through the Socialist Alli- of the post-1972 Party platform. On the one hand ance, which nominates all candidates. it provided in impressive and apparently realistic detail for the further development of plural insti- It is revealing that Kardelj himself, in his June tutions and loci of decision-making and of checks 1977 speech and book, has referred to "hesita- and balances among them. On the other hand it tions and debates" within the Party concerning legalized the restored role of the Party as the final the necessity or appropriateness of both these authority over and above all other systems. The innovations. "Because of this," he adds, "the sort Tenth Congress further endorsed this restored of sociopolitical chamber which we should have role, amid some hints of continuing top-level dis- elected was not chosen at the first elections." agreement about the quantity and quality of Kardelj blames such doubts on the survival, optimal Party intervention, and confirmed the apparently also at high levels, of the erroneous purges, the new, surviving, and resuscitated "liberal" idea that "spontaneous," unguided "leading cadres," and the organizational devices democracy is possible, which it never is in any and rules that were to facilitate the "ideological system, and will produce properly socialist de- and political offensive of the League of Com- cisions. As for the Party, returning to his principal munists" ordered by Tito, Dolanc, and others in theme he argues that Labor in turn 1972. The 1976 Associated Act there is one alternative to this kind demo- the only of elaborated the Constitution's provisions in cratically responsible social position the League the eco- of area of "socioeconomic relations" and Communists. This is it to become a social enormous of for nomic system in enormous detailso organization that would operate outside the it to it as a normal that is difficult regard legisla- system, controlling the operation of self-manage- tive act, capable of point-for-point implementa- ment and state organs by means internal direc- or the of tion and enforcement; if it is so regarded, tives and resolutions without assuming formal results of such a courageous attempt to anticipate social responsibility and without democratic of every contingency and legislate for every aspect cooperation with the working masses, self-man- "socioeconomic relations" seem likely to immo- agers, sociopolitical organizations, and socialist the the bilize the system and make legal profession forces in general The League of Communists country's major growth industry. rightly renounced such a role long ago. 12 In two areas the 1974 Constitution breaks all "The system of delegations and delegates," one precedents by providing for the Party's direct of Kardelj's pet concepts since the 1960s, is itself representation in government organs. First, it the most discussed, theoretically significant, and specifies that the Party President (Tito, since 1974 cynically greeted innovation in the formal political "without limitation of mandate," and someday system. Officially it is a unique form of "direct his successor) should be an ex officio member of democracy" that has at least two formidable ad- the collective State , vantages over the traditional "bourgeois-demo- which now consists of eight other members, one cratic representative system." First, it permits from each Republic and Province, and which is issues and plural interests to appear on the formally the ultimate constitutional arbiter in dis- political stage individually_ and in relevant ad hoc putes among the regions and nations? Secondly, combinations (and therefore with specific, issue- the Party and the other "sociopolitical organiza- focused majorities and minorities)rather than tions" that are its principal levers of mass political lumping them together in large and often incon- and social controlthe Socialist Alliance with its sistent packages for mediation through class- 8.5 million (formal) members and subsidiary based or other kinds of political parties. Second, it youth, women's, veterans', and other organiza- permits every individual citizen to participate in tions, the Trade Union Federation, etc.elect politics and to represent his interests directly and their own "delegations and delegates" to special in a variety ofways rather than treating him as "an "sociopolitical chambers" in the new parlia- abstract political citizen" and making politics mentary system. This is in addition to influencing "the monopoly of a thin stratum of professional DIR-2-'78/13 politicians, the techno-bureaucracy, the politi- elections held under the old system, in 1967 and cized intellectual elite, and the true power- 1969, when many and then a majority of seats were holders of class rule. ''a Its more mundane reality contested, some of them hotly, and when the begins with the direct election of two kinds of resulting assemblies were effective, vociferous, "delegations," one for citizens as "producers" in and frequently disputatious actors in the decision- more than 65,000 "organizations of associated making process. The official reply is that a labor" and analogous bodies (i.e., those employed hankering after such contested elections is in the socialist sector in industry, commerce, agri- another relic of fixation with "bourgeois parlia- culture, and social services) and the other for citi- mentary democracy" as the only form of zens as citizens in 12,000 "local communities" democracy and a misunderstanding of the (mesne zejednice), Yugoslavia's smallest terri- delegate system. torial units. About one million Yugoslavs, or one of every 14 ofvoting age, are members of a delega- With these exceptionsfor many, contradic- tion of one of these two types. Beyond that all tions which undo the ostensible intent of all the elections are indirect: the two types of delegations rest, but in official eyes its ultimate guarantors elect delegates to corresponding chambers of other changes introduced by the 1974 Constitu- communal assemblies and the latter elect dele- tion and Congress and the 1976 Law on Asso- gates to similar chambers in municipal, Repub- ciated Labor have a different theme. This is the lican, and Provincial assemblies (all tricameral) elaboration of more devices designed to prevent and to the Federal Chamber of the bicameral accumulation of power, in effect a far more com- Assembly of Yugoslavia at the top of the pyramid plex elaboration of the American Constitution's (where the second chamber consists of delegates system of "checks and balances," here involving from the eight republican and provincial the economic as well as the political system. assemblies). The third or "sociopolitical" In the chambers of lower-level assemblies are economy and in relations between the comprised economic and of delegates from the Party and other "sociopolit- political systems the focus is on what Professor Pai of Univer- ical as described above. Only Najdan Belgrade organizations," on the 1974 at a these last may include professional politicians; all sity, commenting Constitution the rest are required by statute to be filled with seminar for American law students organized by part-time amateurs, who continue to do their the AUFS Center for Mediterranean Studies, ordinary jobs and are supposed to consult their called "the basic dilemma of public ownership, delegations on all issues. which is therefore the basic dilemma of socialism" who controls the great economic power mate- rialized in cynicism about the new system derives public property and social capital?" In Popular this dilemma has been in the from the indirectness of all elections above the Yugoslavia posed level, control of all nominations by the form of two subsidiary questions: how to avoid the delegation to Socialist Alliance, the compara- state's doing it, which the answer in principle Party-controlled had been and that full-time poli- long workers' self-management; tive advantages professional then, how to from in the chambers can be prevent self-management ticians sociopolitical pre- "social into to and a paucity of con- perverting property" "group sumed enjoy, singular of effective tested elections, even with all these precautions. property" through appropriation ownership rights by the professional cadres or This last is as true in the elections in spring 1978 as even the workers who manage specific of it. it was the first time under the new system in 1974. lumps In a random election-day check of lists of candi- In attempting to answer these questions, the dates for all three types of delegations in new Constitution defines "social property" and its and Belgrade in March 1978, I found that abuses more precisely and makes rules to prevent two-thirds contained precisely as many names as intra-enterprise and inter-enterprise credits or there were places to be filled. The rest, usually in those made by banks and insurance companies the local community category, offered some from becoming a source of control over income choice, for example 28 names for 25 places. All earned by the present or "past" labor of others. It this is in marked contrast to the last two general extends "de-tatization" by expanding the area in 14/DIR-2-'78

which "self-management agreements," and half empty. Reports of BOALs successfully nego- "social compacts" among economic units, "self- tiating "self-management agreements" for inte- managing communities of interest," and "socio- grated production or sales that are as or more political communities" should legislate and efficient than those of formerly, centralized enter- collect and dispense revenues in place of the state prises are balanced by reports of nothing yet at any level.5 Potentially of particular impor- undertaken or of unended conflicts that are seri- tance, the new statute in effect destroyed the ously impairing often already inefficient opera- enterprise as it had existed since 1950, completing tions. Elsewhere, and particularly in social ser- the gradual evolution of "work units" within vices like health and education, one hears of con- enterprises, created in the late 1950s and since scientious formal implementation of the new rules 1971 called Basic Organizations of Associated leading to even more meetings of more people Labor (BOALS), into the central legal entity of the than before, producing more nondecisions or too economic system. The enterprise remains as the many decisions that are unimplemented or unwise form in which a contractually integrated cluster of because lines of responsibility are blurred and BOALs would normally appear on the market or sanctions for mistakes or inaction cannot be or are be represented in other external relations, but wrongly imposed. only on the basis of powers delegated by the other- wise independent BOALs; all net income from Some complain instead that decision-making in economic activities is now BOAL income, its use their "organization of associated labor" has been and distribution with few restrictions under each reassumed by a Party aktiv or an informal group BOAL's control. of politically influential Party members whom they consider less intelligent than their local Within BOALs and.enterprises the new Con- "te6hno-managerial elite" and at least as stitution also forbids the election of managerial arbitrary. This, too, can up to a point be con- and technical staff to workers' councils, an sidered implementation of the constitutionally attempt to reduce their power and separate policy- sanctioned post-1972 right and duty of the Party making from technical administration. Enter- to interfere directly in all matters; it is significant prise directors are again elected, for a renewable that the press, which from 1967 to 1971 tended to four-year term, from a list of one to three candi- use disapproving language in reporting instances dates proposed to the workers' council by a com- of Party organs intervening to secure the dismissal mission comprised of an equal number of enter- of a director or a change n enterprise policy, was prise representatives and of communal Assembly in 1974-1976 usually reporting them as examples appointeesa return to the system before 1964, of what ought to be happening. The same quali- when communal participation in the nominating fication applies to other complaints that promo- commission was eliminated after it was criticized tions and appointments to managerial positions as unjustifiable political interference in workers' again depend more on Party membership or Party rights. A further reform of the banking system, connections than on ability or educational and job also required by the new Constitution, is designed qualifications. This practice, too, is at least argu- to make the banks at last really responsible to the ably consonant with post-1972 official insistence BOALs and enterprises which subscribe to their that an applicant's ideological qualifications capital and thus in theory to the workers who pro- should be considered his most important ones if duce values rather than those who administer the distortions' and 'deviations from self- them, an ideological distinction on which all such management of former years are to be avoided. It new controls are based. Similar controls are to be also, however, creates a problem in terms of effi- imposed on insurance companies and commercial ciency, morale, and the principles of self-manage- enterprises. ment acknowledged in recently renewed attacks 1 Judgment concerning the extent to which these on it by senior officials. and other provisions have been implemented or had an impact on "socioeconomic relations" ulti- At the same time, still others (including a once mately depends on whether one is inclined to view again more candid press) report a sense and some a pint glass that contains a half-pint as half full or evidence that "grassroots" participation in BOAL DIR-2-'78/15 and communal decision-making is in many in- among them rather than a superordinate medi- stances more widespread, effective, and produc- ator or arbiter speaking for socialism and the tive of economically efficient or socially desirable general interest. results than on any previous mile of the Yugoslav road to socialism. It is less clear, however, that this is true of the "system of delegates and delega- tions" in the hierarchy of assemblies. Soon after All these impressions are no more than that, the 1974 elections, and as most people must have based on the Yugoslav press and random observa- anticipated, the press was recording the failure tions and conversations with official and unoffi- and practical difficulties of delegates' regularly cial Yugoslavs in recent monthsa sample too consulting their delegations as required by the small for accurate analysis and with the omens too Constitution. There is also little evidence that the mixed for confident prognosis; therefore an Federal or republican assemblies with their statu- agenda for systematic research rather than the torily-guaranteed nonprofessional and working product of same. Some conclusions can neverthe- class majorities may reassume the aggressively less be drawn. The most obvious and important critical and active role that was frequently played are that political life in Yugoslavia has become by some of their chambers between 1963 and 1969 neither dull nor actually subordinated to a single and that made Yugoslav parliamentary life in that center since the reassertion of the Party's power period exciting and worth following. and the rule of "democratic centralism" after 1972, and that plural and at least partly autono- mous loci of political and economic decision- Meanwhile, these same sources reveal tensions making with broad if still very finite participation and conflicts among "self-managed" institutions continue to be its hallmark. These loci in turn and "interest communities" that are also familiar generally correspond to the aggr.egations of some- to observers of the Yugoslav scene before 1971. times conflicting but "legitimately socialist" Banks and large commercial enterprises and functional, national, and personal interests that conglomeratesa major target of the Croatian were in principle postulated, accepted, and leadership before 1971 and subsequently under accommodated by Yugoslav Communist theory at equally intense fire from Tito and the postpurge least as early as 1962.a They are also presumably Party, now as infringers of "self-management what Kardelj has in mind when he speaks of a rights" rather than "national" onescontinued pluralism of self-management interests," which to resist the dilution and sharing of their economic he and (some?) other members of the current power ordered by the new Constitution. Negotia- leadership purport to favor despite only recently tions of "self-management agreements" and being burned by what they then described as the "social compacts" aiming at vertical or horizontal consequences of a more vaguely defined "plural- integration of production or marketing activities ism" run wild. (often in effect the establishment of a cartel, with predictable impact on the functioning of a market There are undoubtedly many reasons why the supposedly based on free competitionbut that is Party's apparently genuine determination to another problem and story'7 have dragged on. regain control over this complex political and eco- Wealthier partners resist integration with poorer nomic power structure seems to have resulted only ones while all warily guard their autonomy and, in some shifting about of relative strengths within where they exist, the economic rents that such it, on balance away from managerial personnel agreements would often eliminate. And local and toward Party ones. In the first place, it is rea- political life, as far as one can tell when press re- sonable to assume, and there is some evidence, porting has become more circumspect, still seems that a number of senior officials who participated to involve disputes and shifting coalitions among in or applauded Tito's coups of 1971-72 and the groups and organizations representing diverse reimposition of a measure of Party centralism and interests and kinds of interests, each containing dictatorship were sincere in their insistence that some Party members and with the local Party this was a self-limiting retrenchment and the only organization only a particularly powerful one way to clear and smooth a badly distorted and 16/DIR-2-'78 rockstrewn Yugoslav road to self-management economic functions (that is, as "producers" in a socialism, therefore really a reculer pour mieux broad sense), on nationality, and on one's other sauter. This is surely the meaning of recent identity as a consumer of values (again broadly invocations of restored political stability as the defined to include goods, services, and intangibles reason why it is now safe to reopen certain ques- like culture, leisure, or security). In the present tions concerning the Party's use of power and the Yugoslav system each of these is endowed with a suitability Of its social composition and the atti- corresponding set of institutions, already de- tudes of many of its members (its "personality") scribed above but meriting repetition at this point for an age of self-management. It is equally in the argument. Organs of workers self-manage- reasonable to assume these people have ment, economic chambers and associations, trade persuaded some of their more doubtful colleagues unions, and Chambers of Associated Labor in the that they are right that the post-1972 level and assemblies aggregate "producer" interests of quality of Party intervention has done more harm various, often conflicting, and sometimes over- than good, that reopening these questions now lapping types, and "self-management agree- will not pose a threat to the power or policies that ments" and other devices provide modalities for these others value most, and that it may indeed negotiation and agreement among them. Repub- enable all of them to ride herd with less effort and lics and Autonomous Provinces aggregate better effect. national interests, in a theory that is in reality marred by the fact that all of these except Slovenia But these are also once again personal and therefore removable are in varying degrees actually multinational factors, like the balance of : here the and and of minds that facilitated units; organs elaborate procedural Party power Party rules of the Federation serve the mechanisms the reforms of the 1960s and were changed by the as for conflicts and for events of 1970-1972. (Tito's repeated assertion, in negotiating agreement by consensus on matters of common concern that the context of those events, that the "rot" had common Third, begun with the Sixth Party in 1952 and require policies. "self-managing Congress communities of interest" consumers that he "had never liked that Congress"which provide gen- first proclaimed the principle of an "influential" erally and "users and renderers" of services" like rather than a powerful, ruling, and universally education, science, culture, and health and wel- fare in with for "interventionist" Partyis worth recalling. It is a particular, analogous forums reminder that anticipating when minds may intragroup negotiations and external relations. change under changed circumstances, or when Finally, there are additional institutions and pro- long-suppressed doubts may seem to be proved cedures for negotiation and agreement among right by changed circumstances, may be more these kinds of "subsystems" of interests. These useful than a calculus of power relations based on include the tri- and bi-cameral assemblies of the assumptions of consistency on the of the parliamentary pyramid and other organs of what part pro- calls tagonists.) Nor is it clear that these views have pre- Yugoslav parlance "sociopolitical commu- vailed. It is therefore surely more important, and nities." They also include the device of "social the point of the line of argument offered here, to compacts" and the auxiliary services of the Social- ist Alliance as a roof with and know something about the relative rela- organization, under strength, the of Communists, for interest tive autonomy, and of that League special durability Yugoslav and other mass"sociopolitical organizations. ''2 version of "countervailing powers," the institu- tionalization of "a pluralism of self-management It is my contention that three factors have interests." endowed several of these institutions with a strength, an impact on the present functioning Over time these have come to mean three kinds and future shape of the system, and on balance a of interests that are analytically and now institu- consenting and supporting role in terms of the tionally distinguishable, but that are often indis- survival of the regime (meaning an independent, tinguishable in perceptions and in their dynamics one-party, federal, and socialist Yugoslavia) that because they overlay one another in the same have often been underestimatedand by mem- individuals and in some of the groups to which bers of the leadership as well as other Yugoslav they belong. These are interests based on socio- and outside observers. DIR-2-'78/17

The first, already mentioned, is spasmodic per- acquire a strength and durability that is less likely missiveness or encouragement on the part of one to be found in the more amorphous and informal organization in a good position to frustrate such or extralegal forms of interest group participation an evolution, which is, of course, the Party, ot and pressure found in most societies. more accurately the Party-state apparatuses. This has happened in part because some leading offi- Finally, there are the dynamics of three decades cials believed it should happen, as argued above, of a particular quality and style of rapid if uneven and in part because internal dissension has peri- economic and social modernization. These have odically paralyzed these apparatuses sufficiently, created or greatly enlarged the social strata and at either the Federal or a regional level, to provide occupational categories that have these otherwise a functional equivalent of permission. abstract "interests" and that man these otherwise meaningless institutions. One such stratum is The second is quite simply that these institu- comprised of what Yugoslav terminology means tional arrangements are there and available. This by "the working class," in effect limited to is not merely the statement of the obvious that it workers in the socialist sector, i.e., in "organiza- appears to be. Only partly as a result of deliberate tions of associated labor." Then there are the planning, these arrangements provide places and people that I call "socialist entrepreneurs" and mechanisms for the mobilization and expression engineers, often called "the technical intelli- of group interests that by their nature, because gentsia." Another intelligentsia, sometimes (and they represent particular but collective demands usually with malicious purpose) called "the on the system, will seek to mobilize in any society, humanist intelligentsia," is found in education, but that do not often find such conveniently ready- science, culture, the health service, the law,.., and made, legal, clearly defined, and functionally dif- in the ranks of the unemployed and underem- ferentiated devices to this end. Furthermore, there ployed, since additions to the supply of this cate- is a place in these arrangements for almost all eco- gory have lately outstripped the growth rate of nomically or socially important collective interests demand in many branches. One should also and social strata. (The most conspicuous and probably include the disputably separate category significant exception is the private peasantry, that is often (and again disparagingly) known as which still tills 85 percent of the country's "functionaries," numerically significant in local cultivable land and with dependents accounted "social-political organizations" and the organs of for about 38 percent of the population in the last "social-political communities." Taken together, census. One political reason for continuing resis- these are also the society's most dynamic social tance to proposals that would give them their own strata, whose functions are essential to further channels for participation2 seems to be a economic development and general welfare, and lingering fear of a mobilized and politicized whose support or at least compliance is essential private peasantry, kept alive by regime memories to the survival of the regime and system. Each of of the strength and anticommunism of prewar them has its complaints. However, many peasant parties and at least instinctive awareness observers are convinced that even if they were free that this is the numerically largest social stratum to express their intimate and ultimate political that has been excluded from the benefits of the desires (which, it is worth remembering, they are system and that is therefore most likely to be not free to do), none of these strata as such, and nonsupportive if politicized.. To the peasants only a minority within each of them, would be should be added the less important exception of found to be in general opposition to the regime ca. 90,000 people working in the nonagricultural whose policies have created or enlarged them or to private sector, and the presumably temporary the system that nourishes them and that includes exception of Yugoslavs working abroad, still legal, routinized, and (what is unique and in my numbering an estimated 600,000 after a decline in view particularly important) particularized and the total that began in 1974.) The institutions and clearly identifiable channels for expressing their procedures that emtody and express the interests interests and visibly influencing policy.2a of such a relatively inclusive and clearly differ- entlated cross-section of economically or socially The very existence and importance of these important functional groupings will tend to people and strata and the importance to them of 18/DIR-2-'78 these channels, combined with the regime's these resistant qualities will include formidable inevitable awareness that their basic loyalty, barriers to attempts to reimpose a fully effective motivation, and efficiency matter and can be personal or Party dictatorship. Moreover, these undermined by attempts to deprive them of such barriers will tend to constitute points of departure channels, must also strengthen and tend to pre- for counterattacks by individuals and groups with serve an effective "pluralism of self-management an economic, social, or ideological stake in re- interests." At the same time, this approach to capturing and expanding recently existing levels understanding its strengths provides a clue useful of participation in making public choices through in understanding or anticipating which of the plural and autonomous channels. Such a counter- institutions of "self-management pluralism" are attack, characterized by ambivalence, extreme likely to have a relatively larger or more powerful caution, and in general a "low profile" that seems role in the making of effective public choices. This likely to last as long as Tito is there, and his should reflect the relative importance of specific reaction is uncertain, appears to be taking place at strata or functions in the global socioeconomic the present time. system and in the regime's estimations of its need for support and compliance. Thus, for example, These are modest conclusions, as cautious and the "technical intelligentsia" and the instruments circumscribed as the apparent revival of liberal- through which it expresses its demands (despite izing currents that they purport to explain. They being more limited in number or accessibility omit, for example, the potential impact of "the under the 1974 Constitution) can usually be external factor," which is worrying many Yugo- expected to carry more weight than the "humanist slavs of almost all political complexions, and intelligentsia" and the channelsin any case which usually means the Soviet Union but can also more diffuseprovided by "self-managing com- mean currently gloomy European and world munities of interest." In the same way Chambers economic prospects. They largely omit the per- of Economy, which represent "socialist entrepre- sonal factor (i.e., the potential importance of who neurs" more than workers, tended to be distinctly will be sitting where in the political game of primus inter pares among the functional or musical chairs when the band stops playing for corporate chambers in the five-chamber assem- that someday inevitable state funeral). More gen- blies of 1963-1974 and regional Party chieftains erally, they also say nothing about the economic speaking for "national interests" were more and ecological efficiency or inefficiency of the sys- important than Trade Union Federation leaders tem,24 or whether it is realizing other important in bringing about the liberalizing economic socialist and democratic values, including Reform of 1965. equality, freedom from all forms of exploitation and injustice, and relief from alienation in all its If the thesis presented in these last paragraphs manifold dimensions. These, too, are important is valid and as significant a part of Yugoslav social for many people more important than the and political equations as I suspect it is, two question of how, by whom, and for whom we are further conclusions of broader and predictive governed in politics and economicsbut are importance follow. The first is that the "system" separable if ultimately never separate subjects. as a whole is thereby more stable and on balance acceptable to most Yugoslavs who matter, or who are likely to matter, than many outside observers (and many Yugoslavs!) think it is. It is therefore The speaker quoted below is a former and likely to prove more resistant to institutional apparently popular and effective director of an breakdown or basic (revolutionary or "counter- "organization of associated labor" in one of the revolutionary") change than these others either more developed parts of Yugoslavia. He happens fear or hope when they focus instead on counter- to have been a prewar Communist (one of about pressures and tensions arising from national 12,000 who joined an illegal, hunted, revolution- rivalries and fears and from the jolts that must ary organization before 1941 and one of 3,000 such come with the passing of "charismatic" Tito and people who survived the war) and is still a believer the founding generation. The second, which has in the high ideals that led him to become one, been the principal argument of these pages, is that despite latterday, sad, and debilitating reflections DIR-2-'78/19 about the ability of human nature plus power to than any theoretical or social scientific "model" pervert the most noble ideals and ideologies. He is or analysis of the workings and potential of self- talking about the circumstances surrounding his management and its plural interests, including decision to leave his directorship and take early the discussion in the preceding pages. retirement: In addition, it suggests a final set bf unanswered "There was some perplexity about my decision, questions: who in Yugoslavia really believes the and I was asked to withdraw it and was summoned concept of ubiquitous social self-management as a before various committees to explain. In fact, it supremely democratic and supremely socialist was a matter of choice between fighting for the form of socialist democracy can be implemented dismissal of some colleagues who were not in the real world of what Milovan Djilas calls working, which is virtually impossible in our sys- "unperfect society"? If it cannot be, what are the tem, or having a heart attack, which I didn't par- nature and limits of its real potential? If no one ticularly want. I was finally called before the city who matters believes that it can be, what do such committee ofthe Party, where I told them what I people really think and expect of the present sys- really thought. Our system of self-management, tem? How far will they go to protect it?2s instead of meaning self-management of and for the enterprise and society as a whole, means to The answer may begin with the ex-director's most people self-management of one's self-- perception that the Yugoslav system "is infinitely working only when and as hard as one wants, but better than that of the East" and "probably better with assurance that one'sjob will go on and one's than that of our Western neighbors." The first of pay will continue to increase. I needed help when these comparatives must mean better above all there was something that had to be done, but no because it is conducive to more liberty, less coer- one was there, and then I met them taking the cion, and more participation through routinized, promenade on main street, and they said: 'Why public channels representative of more legitimate were you in the office, and not here with us?' This individual and collective interests. All of these are kind of work ethic and other things, including absolute and not culturally relative values. The stealing in the usual sense, ofwhich there is also a second comparative can be translated to mean lot, areforms ofstealing under socialism, which is better adapted to Yugoslav conditions and Yugo- worse than stealing under capitalism, because slav "political culture." As the ex-director's under socialism it is stealing from society as a specific reference to Italy reminds us, it is also a whole, from one another, d'om the commonweal. reasonable and certainly common Yugoslav re- Without a sense ofrectitude and human solidarity sponse to the nature and consequences of political there can be no socialism, no self-management. So instability in a number of traditional-democratic I wanted out Our system is infinitely better states in the West and their apparent inability to than that of the East; it is probably better than cope with contemporary terrorism and their own that ofour Western neighbors, for example Italy; increasingly critical problems. Both of these but it is not good because we do not work and are modest "betters" can also give the Yugoslav notjust to one another and society." system, with all its inefficiency, corruption, limited freedom, and other imperfections, a This, too, is Yugoslavia, as much a part of its legitimacy that equals durability but not rigidity accomplishments and problems as are a "plural- and immunity to further, repeated, and even ism of self-management interests," tremendously major evolutionary change. impressive (if often costly and inefficient) economic and social modernization, an excluded (April 1978) and neglected peasantry, a model solution to the problems of multinationalism through a unique form of confederation (marred in implementation and by an ethnic map that reproduces the prob- lem on a smaller scale in each federal unit), and many contradictions. The ex-director's lament is also in many ways more real and more revealing [Photographs by Fototanjug, Belgrade] 20/DIR-2-'78

NOTES

1. Except where otherwise noted, citations in this Report slavia, the collective presidency also recognizes the polit- are from the June 13 speech, which consisted of the Intr ical fact that no leader except Tito is universally regarded duction and pages 134-40, 175-79, and 56-62 of the subse- as a "Yugoslav"rather than a Serb, a Croat, etc., and thus quently published book (Serbo-Croatian title Pravci acceptable to all nationalities. Until 1974 it consisted of 23 razvoja politikog sistema socijalistiZkog samou- persons--3 from each Province, and Tito--which predic- pravljanja). I am here assuming that Kardelj excerpted tably proved unwieldy and optically absurd. what he considered his most important points. As noted below, these extracts do not include the "tougher" 12. In the June speech and Pravci razvoja p. 139. The passages in the book, particularly those concerning the same arguments are repeated ibid., pp. 148 and 157. role of the Party and justifying the exclusion of "enemies of self-management socialist democracy," that have led 13./bid., pp. 146,155. other observers to interpret the latter as on balance a "hard line" rather than a "liberal" statement. 14. See "Yugoslav Elections, 1969, Parts I, II, and III" [DIR-4, 5, 6-'69 ], A UFSReports, Southeast Europe Series, 2. On this and other points the 1977 book echoes ideas Vol. XVI, Nos. 4, 5, 6,1969. found in Kardelj's 1965 treatise, "Notes on Social Criticism in Yugoslavia" (trans. in Socialist Thought and Practice 15. See the glossaries in Yugoslav Survey, Vol. XV, No. 3, [Belgrade], October-December 1965 and January-March pp. 121-32, and in the English translation of the Associated 1966), which uses the "Scylla and Charybdis" image for the Labor Act {edition of the Secretariat of Information of the Party's eternal dilemma. SFR of Yugoslavia Assembly, 1977}. A more detailed de- scription of these aspects of the new Constitution can be 3. Cf. Pravcirazvoja pp. 182ff. found in my The Yugoslav Experiment 1948-1974 (London and Berkeley, 1977}, pp. 326-332. 4. /b/d., pp. 141ff, 149, 151,179-87, when not in the June 1977 speech. 16. Including Kardelj and Dolanc in recent days (see notes I and 5). 5. PoEtika (Belgrade), January 7, 1977 (for Dolanc), and "Magneto.fonski snimak konferencije za tampu Pred- 17. A point discussed in detail in another paper presented sednika Skuptine SFRJ Kire Gligorova..." (Belgrade, to the Washington meeting, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, "The June 27,1977, mimeo.). Yugoslav Economy in the 1970s."

6. Vladimir Bakari (who also said there were 502 such 18. When it was articulated in terms of the "functional" prisoners), in a press conference with foreign journalists in interest dimension during the discussions that accom- Zagreb, April 16, 1977 (as reported in Politika, April 18, panied the drafting of the 1963 Constitution, which ex- 1977). pressed it in the form of five-chamber "corporativist" parliaments. Its origins, however, go back much further 7. For this point, see in particular Susan Bridge (see A. Ross Johnson, The Transformation of Communist McCarthy, "Yugoslavia Moves toward Consociational Ideology [Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972], pp. 150-53, Democracy" (unpublished ms., Yale University 1969), and 168, George Hoffman and Fred Warner Neal, Yugoslavia Bogdan Denitch, The Legitimation of a Revolution (New and the New Communism [New York, 1962], pp. 214-218, Haven and London, 1976), pp. 22 ff. and Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment, pp. 67-71. 8. Kardelj comes close to it in his criticism of "the political system of the bourgeois state, whether in its multiparty or 19. This does not mean an assumption that all such people one-party form" (Pravci razvoja ch. 2). were ideologically or only ideologically motivated or "true believers" in self-management. Other considerations could lead to the 9. Cf. my account and interpretation of the Tenth same conclusion, for example, awareness that the system has become too differentiated and for Congress, "Yugoslavia's Return to Leninism" [DIR-l-'74], complex efficient or even effective monocentric control, or that the A UFS Reports, Southeast Europe Series, Vol. XXI, No. 1, motivation, efficiency, and compliance or support of key 1974. social and economic sectors was being undermined (see below). The "evidence" can in case be 10. Or at least not as long as the regime is successful in any easily dismissed, since it consists of little more than the observer's its principal foreign policy goal, which is inde- ulti- pursuing mately subjective that the terms used, con- and nonalignment. judgment the pendence text in which they are used, and the speaker's previous record indicate that he probably means it. 11. From 1953 to 1971 Yugoslavia had a single Preside nt, Tito. A collective State Presidency was created by con- 20. Slovenia's Italian and Magyar minorities are too small stitutional amendment in 1971, at Tito's suggestion, to and in general too favored and therefore quiescent to pre- prepare for his departure. Officially a further acknowledg- clude listing that Republic as an exception. In the rest, ment of the federal and multinational character of Yugo- according to 1971 official census figures, national minori- DI R-2-'78/21

ties (in Yugoslav parlance "nationalities") and members of 23. The argument in these paragraphs is similar to Bogdan nations whose focus of national loyalty is in another region Denitch's principal thesis in The Legitimation of a Revolu- constituted between 10.5 percent ("narrower" , tion {pp. 2, 4,12 and passim). On the other hand, one can without and the ) and 32.8 percent equally validly argue that the Yugoslav political and police () of total population, not counting officially systems make it impossible to know {and that there is in trinational Bosnia-Herzegovina (39.6% Muslin, 37.2% fact reason to doubt} that most members of even these Serb, 20.6% Croat) or the Vojvodina with its ethnic patch- strata would not prefer a different system. In the discus- work. sion of these points at the Washington meeting at which this paper was presented, Richard V. Burks explicitly took 21. Kardelj similarly but more elaborately distinguishes issue with Prof. Denitch's "legitimation" thesis. Prof. six "areas of social life" in which "the fundamental Burks contended that characteristics of a democratic pluralism of self-managing interests in our society appear in various ways" (Pravci "the Yugoslav regime still has not reached the harbor of razvoja pp. 89ff): legitimacy, although I would agree that it is appreciably closer to that blessed port than any of its fellows. Despite The first such area is associated labor in all its aspects... the fact that Yugoslav society has undergone the most far- expressed in workers 'self-management. reaching pluralization that any Socialist regime has yet experienced, the LCY could probably not put together a The second is the interests of working people and citizens majority in a free election What could be a more in fields of social activity such as health, education, effective step toward the illusive state of legitimacy than science, culture, and other areas of similar, broad common elections in which the voter had a real choice, not between interests...organized in self-managing communities of parties to be sure (since that might involve unacceptable interest. risk) but between candidates? As long as there was such choice Yugoslav parliamentary life, as Professor Rusinow The third area is the interests of citizens related to their says, was worth following. But the incipient political land- condition of life and that of theirfamilies in the place where slide in Croatia, and its impact in places like Slovenia and they live.., organized in local communities and self-man- Kosovo, led the Yugoslav leadership to the distasteful aging communes. conclusion that even semifree elections were out of the question." The fourth area is the specific interests of the nations and nationalities, protected by the self-managing indepen- 24. Laura D'Andrea Tyson's conclusions on this subject in dence of the Republics and Autonomous Provinces and her very able paper, referred to in Note 17 above, are as democratic relations in the system of the Federation. mixed but on balance as cautiously positive as the political conclusions in this paper. The fifth area is the creative activity of socialist social in forces in the domain of ideology and politics general... 25. I am personally doubtful whether public opinion in the specific role social-political and other expressed of surveys in Yugoslavia can give us the answer, but they do social organizations [i.e., the Party, etc. ]. provide some clues. These tend to suggest a more wide- The sixth area is the most varied aspects of joint social spread and higher level of belief in the potential worka- interests, on which the decisions are taken in the demo- bility and present beneficial effects of "self-management" cratic organs of the delegate system... than my own more limited and unsystematic probings have usually uncovered. Cf., for example, Sharon Zukin, 22. Some recent proposals, for example, by permitting Beyond Marx and Tito (Cambridge, 1975), ch. 3, with the new forms of voluntary, peasant-initiated cooperative Yugoslav survey data reported in detail in Allen H. organization outside the socialist sector, are described by Barton, Bogdan Denitch, and Charles Kadushin (eds.), Ivan Lonarevi, D/e Kooperation zwischen den privaten Opinion-Making Elites in Yugoslavia (New York, 1973), Landwirtschaftsbetrieben und den gesellschaftlichen and more briefly as an appendix to Denitch, op. cir. Wirtschaftsorganisationen in der Landwirtschaft Jugo- slawiens {Berlin, 1974), ch. V.