Yugoslav Workers’ Selfmanagement: Proceedings of a Symposium Held in Amsterdam, 7–9 January, 1970

263 Pages·1970·4.99 MB·English

by  Najdan Pašić (auth.)

YUGOSLAV WORKERS' SELFMANAGEMENT
YUGOSLAV WORKERS'
SELFMANAGEMENT
PROCEEDINGS OF A SYMPOSIUM
HELD IN AMSTERDAM, 7-9 JANUARY, 1970
Edited by
M. J. BROEKMEYER
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY / DORDRECHT-HOLLAND
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 73-118133
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-3289-6 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-3287-2
001: 10.1007/978-94-010-3287-2
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 1970 by D.Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1970
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm,
or any other means, without written permission from the publisher
PREFACE
This book contains the Proceedings of a Conference held on 7-9 January
1970 in Amsterdam on the problems and perspectives of Yugoslav
workers' selfm anagement.
The Yugoslav writers were selected according to the criteria that they
are competent in their field and that they have different viewpoints in
their assessment of the system.
We hope that the threefold purpose of this book will be attained,
namely to provide a clearer insight for the Western reader into the
Yugoslav system; secondly to confront Yugoslav society with the ques
tions asked and the criticism voiced here with regard to the practice of
workers' selfmanagement; and, lastly, to pay a modest tribute to the
20th anniversary of Yugoslav workers' selfm anagement.
To be sure, the range of subjects treated in Amsterdam might seem to
be rather wide, but one should bear in mind thaI this was unavoidable
in the first large-scale confrontation of two different social systems
outside Yugoslavia.
Although the language used in this book may not always correspond
with the official standards, we trust that the published texts will be easily
readable for the benevolent reader.
M. J. BROEKMEYER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE V
NAJDAN PASIC: Selfm anagement as an Integral Political System 1
T. B. BOTTOMORE: Comment on Dr. Pasic's Paper 30
Discussion 33
ZORAN VIDAKOVIC: The Function of the Trade Unions in the
Process of Establishing the Structure of the Yugoslav Society on
a Basis of Workers' Selfm anagement 42
P. H. HUGENHOLTZ: The Task of the Trade Unions in a System of
Workers' Selfmanagement. Comment on Vidakovic's Paper 61
Discussion 70
MITJA KAMUSIC: Economic Efficiency and Workers' Self-
management 76
JAN TlNBERGEN: Does Selfmanagement Approach the Optimum
Order? Comments on Professor KamusiC's Paper 117
IVAN MAKSIMOVIC: The Economic System and Workers' Self-
management in Yugoslavia 128
PETER WILES: A Descent towards Particulars 154
Discussion 161
EMERIK BLUM: The Director and Workers' Management 172
A. STiKKER: Comments on Mr. Blum's Paper 193
Discussion 208
RUDI SUPEK: Problems and Perspectives of Workers' Self-
management in Yugoslavia 216
P. NAVILLE: On the Report by R. Supek concerning the
Conditions of Selfmanagement 242
Discussion 251
NAJDAN PASIC
SELFMANAGEMENT
AS AN INTEGRAL POLITICAL SYSTEM
Yugoslavia is rather widely known throughout the world as a country of
workers' councils. In the popular view, this general and rather indetermi
nate image is frequently taken to mean all that this country has done and
undertaken in the 20-year effort to find an original approach to the so
lution of the specific and general problems of building a socialist society
on the basis of selfmanagement. Of course, reducing the 'Yugoslav ex
periment' to workers' councils cannot be attributed solely to insufficient
knowledge or underestimation of everything that is happeni~g in the
development of this relatively small Balkan country. Other reasons would
appear to be more important.
The highly complex systems of production and management character
izing contemporary industrial and 'post-industrial' society have intensi
fied the widespread feeling of dissatisfaction and the resignation of people
as to their own subordinate or depersonalized position, the absence of
any real possibility of participating effectively in decision-making and
managing affairs directly concerning their existence as workers and social
beings. Thence the numerous attempts and projects - initiated by organ
ized labor (trade unions, workers' parties) and other social factors, or
engendered more or less spontaneously - to solve this problem or at least
to ameliorate it by creating various forms of consultation involving
workers and office employees and allowing for their participation, even
if restricted, in decision-making through workers' councils, production
consultations, committees for 'joint consultation', enterprise councils,
organs for coordination and consensus, etc. There is an understandable
tendency to conceive of and deal with workers' councils in Yugoslavia
simply as one of these attempts to improve and humanize labor relations
through the participation of the workers in management. Frequently,
however, the broader historical context for the creation of workers'
councils in Yugoslavia is neglected as are its far-reaching revolutionary
effects and implications for the development and character of the socio
political system in its entirety.
M. J. Broekmeyer (ed.). Yugoslav Workers' Se/fmanagement, 1-29. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 1970 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland.
2 NAJDAN PASle
Secondly, the processes of transformation of social relations in
Yugoslavia in terms of selfm anagement are frequently regarded through
the narrow prism of workers' councils also for the reason that their
formation in 1950 was the first decisive step in the direction of changing
radically the social position of associated labor. However, with the
advancement of selfmanaging relations both in the economy and in other
spheres of the society, and with the gradual transformation of self
management into the fundamental principle of the entire organization
of society, workers' councils became only one of the institutions through
which the working people exercise the rights of selfm anagement.
The successes and failures, the achievements and misfires of self
management in Yugoslavia may be perceived in their entirety only against
the background of their broad socio-historical dimensions and their
significance in terms of the overall organization and nature of the social
system. By dint of historical circumstance, Yugoslavia found herself in
a situation in which the question of selfm anagement was posed before
the revolutionary forces which were the standard-bearers of her socialist
development, as a vital question of the historic alternative between the
statist conception and practice of socialist advancement and the con
ception of selfmanagement. There is no doubt that the conflict with
Stalinism and the attending defense of the right to pursue an independent
path of socialist development was highly influential in orienting the
socialist forces in Yugoslavia to the construction of a system of self
management, which increasingly acquired the significance of a critique of
Stalinism in the sphere of revolutionary social practice. In any case, the
conflict between the Yugoslav Communist Party and the Cominform
was one of the first clear symptoms of the crisis of that system of relations
in the international workers' movement, and between socialist countries,
which had been founded on the statist conception of socialism and the
corresponding political practices.
On the other hand, selfm anagement could progress only to the extent
to which statist relations were surmounted and suppressed in the internal
economic and political organization of Yugoslav society, which could
not, overnight, wrench itself free from the statist shell in which it itself
had been developing. For all these reasons, the development of self
management in Yugoslavia (regardless of how we assess its results) raises
in acute form some of the general questions and dilemmas confronting
SELFMANAGEMENT AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM 3
the development of contemporary societies, especially the socialist, and
therefore deserves to be the subject of broad critical consideration and
analysis.
In this article, an attempt is made - taking as a point of departure
several basic ideas characterizing the Yugoslav conception of socialism
and selfm anagement, and the experience that has accumulated in its
realization - to indicate in the most concise possible manner some of the
key problems and measures and some of the unsettled dilemmas attending
the constituting of a society on the lines of selfmanagement.
I. THE IDEA OF DIRECT SELFMANAGING DEMOCRACY AND
SOCIALIZATION OF POLICY-MAKING
The social emancipation of labor in the sphere of material production
and income distribution is the point of departure for the historic process
of socializing policy-making. In the organization of production and
distribution on the lines of selfmanagement, all the basic social forces
and powers - forces whose actual source lies in associated, combined
human labor - themselves come under the control of the associated
workers rather than bossing them. According to Marxist theory, the
forced alienation of the product of social labor from the producers,
under a system of exploitation, lies at the root of pitting the common and
general social interests against the concrete and personal interests of
individual citizens (man as a private person in the specific system of
production and social relations and man as an abstract citizen, a member
of the 'body politic'), consequently at the very root of the alienation of
public power (the state) from society.
Placing the associated producer in the position of directly and jointly
controlling the social conditions of his labour and his material existence,
selfm anagement ipso facto removes the principal social causes and roots
not only of authoritarian forms of political organization but also all
forms of rule and 'bossing' by aloof political forces above the working
man and the social conditions of his existence. In consequence, the self
managing transformation of production relationships opens up for
society the prospect of such consistent democratization of managing
society's affairs, of the merger of selfmanaged organization of labor
with the global organization of society, as will logically lead to the
4 NAJDAN PASIC
withering away of the state, that is, to the complete socialization of
policy-making.
Such and similar Marxist conceptions on the revolutionary change to
which the social emancipation of labor regularly leads throughout the
entire fabric of society, and particularly in the forms of its constituting
itself politically, is the theoretical basis taken as the starting-point by all
conscious socialist forces in Yugoslavia in the development of the political
system on the basis of selfmanagement. The central focal point of the
new political system becomes man in associated labor, to an increasing
degree. Through the system of selfmanaging relationships in the working
organization itself and through association between working organi
zations amongst themselves and also with the community at large, labor
and the management of labor, production and appropriation and the
disposal of the products of labor are linked together. Thereby the
democratization of the political system, the democratization of the
management of joint social affairs, regularly and inevitably transcends
institutional forms and the limits of political-representative democracy
which has been and remains the only possible form of democracy under
conditions of the division and opposition of public power and society,
of those who rule and those who are ruled.
As the development of selfmanagement and the resulting liquidation
of the causes of division between public power and society becomes the
fundamental objective determinant of the transformation of political
relationships, so does the transformation of political-representative de
mocracy into direct social democracy become the basic law governing
that transformation. Understanding this law is an essential condition for
comprehending the meaning and perceiving the prospect of constituting
the political system on the basis of selfm anagement and for arriving at
historically relevant criteria, rather than inadequate analogies looking to
the past, for appraising concrete manifestations and the forms through
which the process of socializing policy-making in a selfmanaging society
are realized.
In the concrete historical example of Yugoslav society, the process of
transforming political-representative relationships and institutions into an
integral system of direct selfmanaged democracy has several basic aspects:
First of all, there is an expansion of the sphere of free, selfm anaged
association by people to satisfy common requirements under their joint
SELFMANAGEMENT AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM 5
management and control. This refers above all to the local territorial
communities (e.g., local communities in which the citizens, voluntarily
and at their own initiative, pool their resources and efforts to solve
problems relating to their common life in the small area in which they
reside) and to social and public services in the field of education and
culture, employment and social welfare, health protection, etc. Growing
freedom in disposing of the income they earn in associated labor (gradual
replacement of taxes and other fiscal levies by voluntary or compulsory
contributions of an agreed amount and for agreed purposes) makes it
possible for the working man, acting through forms of direct democracy
(assemblies of beneficiaries, delegates in the assemblies and other organs
of the community of interest, etc.) to participate in guiding the activities
that serve to satisfy his vital needs.
Secondly, a place of importance in the organization of the political
system is held by institutions of directly democratic decision-making and
participation in policy-making, such as assemblies of voters in parts of
the territory of the local communities, assemblies of working people in
the enterprises and institutions, assemblies of those who utilize the
services of communal and other enterprises, referendums in the working
organizations and in the socio-political communities, etc. These and like
institutions of direct democracy are not unknown to history, and in
certain revolutionary periods and in various countries they have managed
to assert themselves in their democratic function. However, the tre
mendous burgeoning of centralized state machinery and the growth of
its monopoly over the bureaucratic management of society's affairs
(which is characteristic of the present epoch) has resulted in the disap
pearance of these institutions or in their complete degradation. The
development of selfm anagement paves the way for a new and historic
turning-point in this respect as well. The fuller affirmation of the afore
mentioned forms of direct democracy is made possible first of all by the
altered position of the working man who, as part of selfmanaged pro
duction relationships and disposing of the surplus of social labor, be
comes increasingly interested, capable and competent in terms of orient
ing himself and of making decisions on all political problems concerning
his own special and the broader community. Secondly, the work of these
institutions has a firm and broad normative basis, the support of laws
and the backing of organized political forces. Legal and selfmanaging