Yugoslavia -- he was the No. 2 man” in the regime for almost fifteen years! -- and of Svetislav Stefanovic from the secret police, “brought into the open: the ‘crisis which | the Yugoslav workers state is currently undergoing -+ a crisis which Tito (as against some of his sycophants abroad) fully recognized in the first speech he gave at the sensational July . i- 2 meeting of the Central Committee. .
The most diverse accounts are being circulated as to the substance of the crisis. Some characterize it as merely a crisis over the succession to Tito, Rankovic presumably having attempted to assure himself of the position through a "plot" -+-- with Tito blocking it. Others characterize it as a governmental crisis touched off by the.resistance of the hard "Stalinist" core in the party apparatus to the 1965 economic reforms and the political reform now underway. which aims at really separating the state and party apparatuses.
These different versions, however, disregard the social background of the crisis; namely, the objective consequences of the 1965 economic reform itself. A series of articles which appeared in the French daily Le Monde [July 8, 9 and 10] revealed a tragedy that had remained .largely unsuspected among internationa2 revolutionary circles. The reform caused or increased massive oo layoffs of workers in the plants. It.caused a considerable drop in the standard of living of the workers in various areas. It seriously deepened the gap between income and even the rate of growth between the "advanced" and "backward" republics.
To grasp the extent of these ‘phenomena, one must ‘bear in mind that since the beginning of 1964 the official figure for unemployment in Yugoslavia has been put at 230,000 and that in addition 250,000 Yugoslav workers have gone abroad. Unemployment at present, both the officially acknowledged and the hidden (through emigration) is not far from six to seven percent of the active population; that is, twelve to thirteen percent of the working class. While the decline. in the. standard of living is very real for hundreds of thousands of workers, today there are citizens, according to the July 8 Le Monde who make five million dinars [750 dinars U.S. $1] a season through private hotels which they have built. According to the July 9 Le Monde, the gap between the rich regions and the poor ones, which is widening, amounts to 600 percent on a | per capita basis between Slovenia and the autonomous district of Kosovo,. Since 1956, the total investment per capita, which was formerly higher in the poor regions, has shifted to 101.4 in the rich regions (taking 100 as_ the average for Yugoslavia as a whole ) and fallen to 79.4 in the poor regions.
. -;::. This is.an inevitable consequence of the prineiple of "indi-. vidual plant profitability," of "free. competition" lifted to theo level..of. a.dogma..and: considerably strengthened by the 1965 reform::: The Trotskyist. movement: has pointed. this, out for years. "Competi-' tion! between. the..rich:and poor plants inevitably strengthens the rich at: the. expense. of.the poor; the wider-and wider application of the principle of “individual plant profitability" must inevitably end in massive layoffs and unemployment. To seek to orient the economy of a-multinational,.country like Yugoslavia in substantial _accordance: with: the- criteria: of a market economy must widen the gap between- the nationalities and. -provoke new conflicts among. then. Events: have shown. the correctness of this view.
There. are some "Marxists" who went. beyond correctly accepting the. principle of workers self-management to accepting the anti-. Marxist.theses which hold that self- -management of the plants neces~sarily involves: greater and-greater economic-decentralization, more and more unlimited financial autonomy of the:plants, increasingly © "free". competition. among them, progressive reduction of centralized investments;:in short, the establishment ofa "socialist market econony" functioning: more and more in accordance with autonomous’: economic forces. They accepted these revisionist theses: under pretext that without this economic decentralization, "the material infrastructure of the bureaucracy" -- which is | based on. "centralization" -- could. not be. broken. ren cla.
‘What do we see ‘today? Sixteen: years after. the ‘establishment. of self-management , and ‘ten years after the beginning of the process of "decentralization," Tito himself is compelled to admit thata — small core of Stalinist: police tightly controlled the entire state apparatus! The power of the bureaucracy is so great: that the duly.:10 London-Observer reported Tito's political proposals after the:fall : of Rankovic’ as follows: "He asked for.open discussion between all shades of opinion and all interests, so that the party and the managers, from the directors of factories to the highest administrators, can arrive at a consensus." Apparently, the workers interests are not part: of this "gamut," just as the press of. the:.Fourth International cannot be found in Tugoslavia whereas the bourgeois press is freely distributed there.
That 400 Stalinist- -type- “bureaucrats. ‘have been. fired; that 800 have been: suspended; that. the cops can no-ionger hide microphones: in the offices of ministers -- all this is:good. We will evidently:still be kept waiting for restoration of the right to strike.and recognition of the right to establish workers parties. But without these it is idle to use the term "socialist democracy" in connection with Yugoslavia. But this is not the essence of the problem.
In analyzing the social origin of the conflicts and contradictions that affect a society in transition from capitalism to socialism in a backward country like the USSR in 1925 or even 1936 (and like the Yugoslavia of today), Trotsky reached the conclusion that what gave strength to the bureaucracy was in the final analy-
sis neither "centralization" nor "decentralization" but the political passivity of the proletariat. He carefully analyzed the objective and subjective causes of this political passivity and proposed some remedies as a result: Soviet democracy, industrialization, a course towards the world revolution. All these remedies had one point in common +- they tended. to reactivate the ‘proletariat politically and Socially. :
Today the balance sheet of the Yugoslav test: is clear. ‘Selrmanagement is a step forward in comparison to: Stalinist hypercéntralization. But combined with excessive economic decentralization; . with exaggerated recourse to the "market mechanisms," extreme opportunism with regard to imperialism and the international bourgeoisie, an almost total absence of workers democracy on the political level, it has failed to accomplish its primary task --:. to convert the Yugoslav proletariat into a force displacing the bureaucracy in management of the state and the economy. The bureaucracy. today is at least as strong as it was in:1950 or in 1956. And the proletariat, depoliticalized, atomized: lacking political education, sees with dread that -after twenty years.of a Communist government, unemployment, a high cost of living; a‘drop in real wages,: even a conflict between nationalities and the rule of: the secret police can: “again afflict. the country:: .
In face of this lamentable palance sheet, no Trotskyist worthy of the name can celebrate self-management as a universal panacea capable of assuring victory over the bureaucracy. It would be more modest and wiser to go back to Trotsky and to advocate with him the combination of socialist political and economic democracy (which would involve workers management of the plants), centralized planning with limited recourse to the mechanisms of the market, and a course toward world revolution, as the only policy capable of limiting the power of: the bureaucracy in the transitional period.
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