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11 - The beginnings of self-management

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2010

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Summary

When they recovered from the shock of the breach with the Soviet Union, the Yugoslav leaders began to examine why they had so misjudged Stalin and the Soviet system. They had themselves begun to build the new Yugoslavia in the image of the USSR. Would they also suffer from the bureaucratic degeneration which had transformed the first socialist state in the world into an oppressive form of state capitalism? To answer this question they began to examine the basic Marxist texts. Hitherto their Marxism had been filtered for them through the works of Stalin. Even the leading party intellectuals admitted that they had not recently studied the original works of Marx. Djilas, Kardelj and Kidrič began to talk about the free association of producers which Marx believed should take over the factories. They would provide a workers' answer to the bureaucratic distortions inherent in the étatist model. With a few exceptions, the Yugoslav communist leadership has never been strong on theory. They have been pragmatists and men of action rather than philosophers. They operate within a Marxist framework of reference, but often the theoretical justification for a particular course of action comes after the decisions have been taken on pragmatic grounds.

The decision to introduce workers' self-management on a nation-wide basis was taken in the spring of 1950. Before this time there had been advisory councils of workers in the state-owned factories. By June 1950 five hundred of these experimental workers' councils already existed.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1985

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