(The following appeared as an editorial in the May 15 issue of the French-language Paris fortnightly Inprecor/Intercontinental Press.]
The reaction of the Yugoslav masses to Tito's death confirms one essential fact: that the proletariat and layers of poor farmers consciously identify with the coun try's regime, and with the workers state, to a qualitatively higher degree than in any other country in Eastern Europe.
The reasons for this have nothing to do with Tito's so-called charismatic personality. There are three principal factors involved.
First, the Yugoslav workers state came into existence through a real people's revolution in which millions of the exploited consciously participated. This was not the case in any other "people's democracy."
Second, the Yugoslav masses saw the Tito-Stalin split in 1948 and the victorious resistance to Stalin-capped by a spectacular triumph in 1955 when Khrushchev had to go, if not to Canossa, at least to Belgrade,'-as an affirmation of the right of the Yugoslav peoples to build their own political future, independent of the Soviet bureaucracy's dictates.
Third, the Yugoslav masses view the establishment and development of workers' self-management, despite all its weaknesses, imperfections, and contradictions, as an additional fundamental result of the
1945 revolution, along with the end of capitalist exploitation and national oppression.
With the disappearance of the supreme arbiter, the contradictions and growing tensions in Yugoslavia create a difficult political situation.? These contradictions and tensions result from the hybrid combination of self-management in the enterprises with the so-called socialist market economy and the single-party political regime-a party that continues to exert tight control over the central economic decisions and the state apparatus, leaving no real possibility for the masses to assert their interests and opinions on these levels.
These tensions threaten to deepen in regard to relations between nationalities, relations between the workers and bureaucrats, and relations between the party central bureaucracy and army on the one hand and the "technocratic" wing of that bureaucracy on the other. We can also expect to see numerous reflections of all these contradictions inside the League of Yugoslav Communists itself, which is less homogenous than ever, and more susceptible to the most diverse pressures.
In this situation, it seems probable that the Soviet bureaucracy and the imperialists of southern Europe, for whom the particular experience of the Yugoslav workers state remains a special source of irritation and even trouble, will seek opportunities to fish in troubled waters and stir up these tensions.
The spectacular gathering of so many heads of state and government at Tito's funeral hardly represented an hommage to this former partisan leader who founded the Nonaligned movement, and even less a gesture of "good will" toward a workers slavia's aid. But we give no support to the Kremlin's attempts to subordinate defense of the Yugoslav workers state to the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy, and we give no support to the Kremlin's maneuvers inside Yugoslavia to accomplish that end.
Since 1948, the Fourth International has taken a special attitude toward the Yugo slav workers state. In no way do we underestimate the weight and control exercised by the bureaucracy in this workers state. We believe that in Yugoslavia, as in all the other European workers states, a political revolution is needed to clear the way for progress toward socialism.
But we also believe that in Yugoslavia the working class and critical and oppositional communists have a greater margin for independent activity than in any other workers state in Europe, not to mention the Soviet Union.
We believe that even though workers' self-management was established bureaucratically from above and in an extremely hybrid form, the Yugoslav proletariat sees it as a decisive gain. We are for defense of this gain, just as we are for defense of the Yugoslav workers state against all dangers and all threats by the forces of social conservatism worldwide to "destabilize" the Yugoslav federation.
This is why we believe it is our duty to stress the point that once the cohesive factor Tito represented is gone, the integrity of the Yugoslav state and the postcapitalist society can only be assured in the long run by extending the selfmanagement system to the entire economy and transferring it to the political plane.
This means establishing a congress of workers councils and communes as the supreme body for planning and economic centralization. It means that such a congress must exercise real political power. There must be socialist democracy that would allow the working class and toiling masses to elect these councils and to make key political decisions by having a choice between several alternative proposals on each question.
This would make Yugoslavia invincible against all open and hidden enemies.
Notes
1. In 1077 Emperor Henry IV had to journey to Canossa, a village in northern Italy, to make a humble submission to Pope Gregory VII. In 1955, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev landed at Belgrade airport and publicly apologized to Tito for the seven-year campaign of insults and slanders that had emanated from Moscow.-IP/I
2. See Intercontinental Press/Inprecor, May 19, 1980, pp. 511-518.