Reflections on Yugoslavia’s Socialist Past and Present-Day Colonization (original) (raw)
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ABSTRACT: Former Yugoslavia represents one of the most interesting – and contradictory – models of the so called real existing socialist experiences. Soon freed from the soviet hegemony (1948), Former Yugoslavia was characterised by socio-economic and political experiments that led many scholars and experts to conceptualise the country as a specific variety of socialism. The self-management of enterprises was the pivot of this permanent economic and institutional engeneering, becoming thus the specimen of the "Yugoslav-style" socialism. Between 1945 and 1991, for instance, three Constitutions were enacted, and the economic governance of the country changed many times, transiting from a period of central planning to a reform oriented to the strengthening of market relations (1965), to a further restriction of market relations in the period 1974-76. Then, to a period of permanent austerity during the 1980s. In such respect, a key section of the work explores the austerity therapy imposed to the country by international financial institutions, first and foremost the International Monetary Fund, and argues that this is a fundamental dimension to explain the rise of ethno-nationalism. Specifically, the work analyses, in the first two chapters, the historical movements of Yugoslav socialism from the establishment of the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945) to its demise in 1991. In the third chapter, the post-socialist transition of Slovenia and Coatia to neoliberal capitalism is taken into account, and explored in the background of the European integration process.
An analysis of the Yugoslav socialist system
Academic Journal of Business, Administration, Law and Social Sciences, 2015
The Socialist Yugoslav Federation established from 1951 to 1990 introduced the so-called system of “social ownership”. While in the system of planned economy, private property was negated from “means of production”, in the economic system of self-management of workers (Yugoslav Federation) an object (thing) that was in social property had no owner. In Yugoslavia, from 19741990, the “Basic organization of associated labor” was the institution which met the needs of the economic system of self-management and social property. The “Basic organization of associated labor” was defined in Article 14 of the Yugoslav Constitution from 1974 as “a workers union, in which workers fulfill directly or equally their social-, economicand self-administering rights, and decide on issues dealing with the socio-economic situation of the organization”. Based on Article 463 of the law “On associated labor” from 1976, this organization consisted of the Council of Workers, which was also the centraland the...
Self-Government in Yugoslavia: The Path to Capitalism?
2020
This chapter analyzes self-governing Yugoslavia in the context of capitalism. Regarding the problem of capitalism in socialist world, the practice of the former Yugoslavia cannot be ignored. The socialist Yugoslavia was predetermined to be qualified as capitalist. The Yugoslav leadership developed: (a) self-government, (b) elements of market-biased socialism, and (c) openness to the international economy or the integration in the world market. Its economy achieved remarkable results by the mid-1960s. Some notable economists compliment the results and suggest that the model is sustainable. However, since the mid-1960s, regressive tendencies have emerged that perpetuate significant social dissatisfaction. In 1968, students protested against the state of Yugoslav socialism, believing that it had absorbed capitalism. Others felt that Yugoslav socialism had not sufficiently developed market-based socialism. There were authors that argued that Yugoslav socialism had become capitalist but without capitalist rationality. In the 1970s, the de iure existing federation became a de facto confederation with closed national economies. The chapter discusses the presence of elements of capitalism in this form of socialism based on (a) dependence on the world market, (b) banks as the institutionalization of "financial mode of capital," and (c) the existence of perpetuated unemployment.