The following article has been translated by Intercontinental Press from the December 31 issue of La Gauche, weekly newspaper of the Ligue
Révolutionnaire des Travailleurs (Revolutionary Workers League, Belgian section of the Fourth International).]
The political crisis that has racked Yugoslavia since the beginning of December is the most serious the country has known since the break with Stalin and the Cominform in 1948. It comes on top of a social crisis of unusual intensity, of which it is but the expression on the level of the political institutions and social organizations.
The extraordinary character of the purge of the League of Communists of Croatia, initiated by the central political apparatus and President Tito himself, testifies to the severity of the political crisis.
• Miko Tripalo, principal leader of the League in Croatia and member of the Executive Bureau (fifteen members) and of the Presidium of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (fifty-two members), resigned from these organizations at the twenty-third session of the Croat Central Committee. Former secretary of the League for Dalmatia, former president of the Yugoslav Union of Students and later of the Central Committee of the Popular Youth, Tripalo had systematically encouraged the Croatian nationalists, under cover of a "complete application of self-management" and the struggle against pan-Yugoslav "statism."
• Savka Dabcevic-Kucar, chairman of the League of Communists of Croatia, resigned from his post at the same (twenty-third) session of the Central Committee. Savka Dabcevic-Ku- 42
car, who also had been a member of the Presidium of the LCY (League of Communists of Yugoslavia], is known for his rightist positions, particularly for his encouragement of foreign investment in Yugoslavia.
• Srecko Bijelic, chairman of the Council of the League of Communists for the town of Zagreb, definitively
TITO: Shows no intention of becoming figurehead for Yugoslav "strong state."
resigned from this post. He had also been a member of the LCY Presidium.
• Pedro Pirker, secretary of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia, tendered his resignation at the session of the Central Committee. He had also been a member of the LCY Presidium.
• General Janko Bobetko, after having been relieved of all his duties by President Tito himself, also resigned as a member of the Central Committee of the League in Croatia.
• Marko Koprtla, member of the Executive Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia and in charge of cadre assignments, also submitted his resignation to the Central Committee of the League in Croatia.
All these resignations were accepted by the Central Committee of Croatia at its twenty-third session, December 12-14.
To these can be added a long list of resignations of less important personalities: the president of the Council of the League of Communists for Dalmatia, Mirko Dragovic, and his alternate, Pero Kriste; the Zagreb prosecuting attorney, Slobodan Budak; the chairman of the Croatian Veterans Association, Ivan Sibl; the chairman of the Council of the League in Nova Gradiska, Ive Maricevic. There were also a number of expulsions, such as the expulsion of Ivan Jurkovic, political commentator, expelled from the Organization of Communist Cultural and Information Workers.
All these resignations and expulsions came in the wake of Tito's strong denunciation of the "rotten liberalism" of the leaders of the League in Croatia at the December 1 meeting of the Presidium. In the same manner, last July's expulsion of the right-wing nationalists Sime Djodan and Marko Veselica was arranged through Tito's personal intervention.
Since the December 1 decision, the entire central apparatus of the LCY has been set in motion. A campaign against Tripalo and Dabcevie-Kucar has been organized, under the direction of Vladimir Bakaric, member of the Executive Bureau of the LCY, and Jakov Blazevic, president of the Croat National Assembly. Supported by the central apparatus of the League, they mobilized, in the most classic style of purge campaigns, the Communists of the "work organizations," and above all, those of the Sisak steelworks (one of the largest steelworks in Yugoslavia, located, moreoveran interesting fact— in a "mixed" region having a significant number of Serbs).
Marshal Tito's heavy-handed intervention and its immediate effects dealt a stinging rebuttal to all those, both in Yugoslavia and abroad, who thought that Tito had "shot his bolt" and become a figurehead. Yugoslavia remains, like all the bureaucratized workers states (except in periods of great turmoil, like Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968), a "strong state," directed by a bureaucracy that will not allow the socialized property forms to be put in question. More exactly, Tito, who is one of the few Yugoslav leaders not to have utilized nationalist sentiments to extend his popularity, intervened in this crisis like a real "Bonaparte."
"Bonapartism" must be understood in the sense defined by Trotsky- a regime in which the economically dominant class is compelled, in order to protect its possessions, to tolerate standing above it a crowned "savior," a charismatic personality, an individual made larger than life and independent of history. A similar situation occurs in periods when class contradictions are particularly acute. Then Bonapartism has the aim of preventing an explosion. With the aid of the bureaucratic apparatus and the police, the main function of the "supreme savior" is to protect the new property forms by usurping the political prerogatives of the dominant class.
Such is the real source of the strength, and at the same time the weakness, of Tito. For only the working class, by mobilizing itself, can definitively and truly defend the new property forms and the system of selfmanagement.
But each time, Tito's intervention takes a form foreign to the working class and opposed to workers' democracy —a referendum. Everything is reduced to the question, "to be for or against Tito," which means, "to be or not to be." Only traitors can be against. That is why the very mechanism of Bonapartism leads Miko Tripalo, when he is attacked by Tito, to write to the latter: "Be assured that I will actively support your policies January 17, 1972
and those of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and Croatia."
There is no doubt that the profound social import of the Croatian crisis is the revival of reactionary nationalism, led by the factory bureaucracy, the petty bourgeoisie, all the elements aspiring to become a new bourgeoisie, as well as the remnants of the old bourgeoisie. Five years ago, in 1966, the first leaflets of the "ustashi" (Croat nationalists of fascist inclination) began to appear at the University of Lagreb. Since then, nationalism in all
"communist,"
its varieties - fascist, and others- has continued to exert pressure.
The roots of this nationalism lie in the uneven economic development of the Yugoslav republics. A feeling has developed in Croatia that this nation is "exploited" by the Federation when it sends a portion of Croatian social surplus to be invested elsewhere, or when it retains a part of the currency obtained through the exports of Croatian factories.
Such sentiment is completely unfounded. The exchanges between the advanced regions (like Croatia) and the underdeveloped ones is unequal, but in the opposite direction. A small amount of Croatian labor is exchanged for a large amount of Macedonian labor, for example, Macedonian productivity being much lower.
It is only fair, therefore, that the Federation should try to restore to the underdeveloped regions what they lose through unequal exchange. The correct criticism to make here is that the Federation is operating less and less according to the above corrective mechanism.
Self-management became viewed increasingly as requiring decentralization, its degree of success being measured by the amount of revenue that could be kept. The partisans of the Croation republic simply held to the same principal; "realized value" in Croatia should profit Croatia, and Croatia alone.
Behind this selfish logic obviously lurks the outlook of the petty proprietor. Sociologically, he acts like a person for whom there is no longer social property (of the whole), but only the properties of the local group.
Sociologically, this is the outlook of bourgeois nationalism. It is typically bourgeois to demand an equality that engenders inequality, and to want everyone to be free to retain the full equivalent of whatever he sells (while forgetting that further down the line of production lie the factories and crystallized labor of other regions). Consequently, it is natural for these demands to be directed against what remains of the state monopoly of foreign trade.
The crisis is far from over. Very deep differentiations and very divergent interests "peacefully" coexist in Yugoslavia right now. But in our opinion, the crisis demonstrates something very important. Contrary to what is said by "leftist" ignoramuses, the struggle for or against the restoration of capitalism in Yugoslavia does not lie in the past, but rather right before us.
What we are seeing now is a clear manifestation of the tendencies toward restoration of capitalism. All those whose special cup of tea was harping on this danger have suddenly become silent. China itself is now seeking a rapprochement with Yugoslavia, and in the past months Peking Information has shown what has come of these ardent embraces. There, madam, is why your daughter stands mute!
On the other hand, one must denounce the eclectics of journals like Politique-Hebdo (December 2 and 9 issues), who, on the next to last page, include little salutes to their "autonomous" student pals of Zagreb, who are fighting for a "real federalism" and "against the Belgrade bureaucracy."
The task of the Marxist revolutionary movement must be to mercilessly fight all existing confusion in the far left about Yugoslavia. We, for our part, intend to occupy ourselves with this. In the areas where we fight, this is the best service we can render the real communists in Yugoslavia.
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