Word: yugoslavias
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Marxist theory and practice differ widely in Yugoslavia, in ways that were probably never foreseen by the regime's founder, the late Josip Broz Tito. In 1950, Tito began to create "different forms of socialism" for his Communist nation. In his plan, the country would openly look to the West for trade and inspiration. Today, 800,000 Yugoslavs live in Western Europe, mostly West Germany, as guest workers, while their countrymen are also free to travel to the West, and openly aspire to a Western style of living. Says Zoran Mandic, 23, a clerk in a Belgrade bookstore: "Compared...
...heart of Yugoslavia's brand of Communism is "workers' self-management," Tito's notion that the means of economic production should belong directly to workers, rather than to the state. The Yugoslav system now depends on Basic Organizations of Associated Labor, which are, in theory, voluntary groups of workers who make any type of product...
...BOALS permeate Yugoslavia's economic society, and are the Yugoslav equivalent of shareholders. They elect the workers' councils, like the one at Red Banner, that serve essentially as a factory's board of directors. Behind the democratic facade, of course, Communist Party control is ironclad. In theory, says a Western diplomat in Belgrade, the self-governing councils are "the purest form of Marxism." But in practice, "the trade union and the management are all controlled by the local party in every big plant...
Yugoslav Communism has been plagued by a Balkan variant of Murphy's Law ("if anything can go wrong, it will"). Local empire building is rampant, a practice that is amplified by Yugoslavia's strongly regional nature. The polyglot nation consists of six republics and two autonomous provinces, meaning that in each area regional bureaucrats have competing, equally wasteful strategies...
Unlike Hungary, some 85% of Yugoslavia's cultivated land is privately owned, but the country gains little from that. Private landholdings average less than eight acres; farmers cannot benefit from any economies of scale. Says Davor Savin, counselor to the President of the Federal Assembly: "It results from the theory that socialism should prevent farmers from being old-style capitalists." Partly for this reason, Yugoslavs spend 65% of their income on food, vs. 35% in Hungary...