Yugodavia's Split Personality
STURMTHAL, ADOLF
Regime is 'somewhere between dictatorship and freedom' Yugoslavia's Split Personality By Adolf Sturmthal AFTER THE AUSTERITY of Warsaw, Belgrade appears to the visitor from abroad almost as a...
...The younger generation is greatly impressed by the achievements of the West, eager to learn from it, and frankly eager to raise the country's standard of living...
...The regime relies mainly on the indisputable popularity of its leader, Marshal Tito...
...A large part of Yugoslav industry has been built up in the south and southeast of the country—the backward regions...
...Workers' council, managing board and director administer the plant...
...An enterprise may fail and be bailed out by the local community...
...In order to induce them to work efficiently, their incomes are made to some extent dependent upon the financial results of the enterprise...
...For many intellectuals, the second job consists in writing...
...The workers start out "moonlighting" in massive doses after 2 PM...
...since most capital goods have to be imported from abroad against foreign currency, exchange controls and multiple exchange rates permit the authorities to direct the expansion of enterprises...
...No real solution, however, has yet been found for the problem of the role the unions are to play in an economy in which the workers themselves are to run the plants...
...Managerial absolutism is the more serious and oppressive, as the effectiveness of the unions is greatly impaired...
...They may pay supplemental earnings to employes beyond legal minimums...
...In this case, even though the students proclaimed their loyalty to Tito, the police intervened vigorously and broke up the students' procession...
...Wage rates are so low that the official workers' earnings hardly cover the essentials of life...
...This is the basic scheme, but, needless to say, this is not the full story...
...It would thus be wrong to describe Yugoslavia as a terroristic dictatorship, but the political police are there, as a potential threat...
...Just as in Poland, there is a sliding scale of freedom: full freedom in personal conversation, limited freedom of expression in newspapers and magazines, no freedom whatsoever in organizing...
...this usually suffices to rally the great majority of the people around the regime...
...But in this part of the world, the West is not known for its diplomatic ability...
...They are, at this stage, incapable of effective self-government...
...a new council must then be elected...
...Having witnessed the downfall of the idol, Stalin, the failure of the system of "administrative planning," which existed in Yugoslavia until 1950-52, they are less frightened by the specter of heresy, leas committed to orthodoxy, than the older generation...
...On the technical level, the director is most frequently in full control, particularly when he succeeds in getting the cooperation of the council chairman...
...This is done partly by price controls on basic commodities and sometimes on consumer goods, and partly by the need to obtain approval for price changes from the association of the enterprises in the particular branch of industry, a land of socialist cartel...
...But this silent threat applies only to potential "trouble-makers...
...His article describing the conditions in Poland ("Poland's Tennous Freedoms") appeared in last week's issue...
...The workers' council system runs the gamut from moderate effectiveness on at least some aspects of management, to being mere fiction and a cover for the absolute rule of the plant director...
...They buy and sell freely—in principle...
...And when the Party itself suffers a slump in popular standing, one can rely on the Russians to make an attack upon the Yugoslav "revisionists...
...The workers have no industrial experience and little education...
...The director's position depends primarily upon the committee of the local community...
...Embassy...
...The ultimate decision will probably be made by the international power relationships to which Yugoslavia is exposed: first, the relative strength of the West, and second, the wisdom and willingness of Moscow to accept diversity...
...the advantages of a collective economy are to be retained while those of the capitalistic mar-bet economy are to be added...
...The latter case is the most frequent in newer plants in the industrially underdeveloped regions...
...the most obvious being the political monopoly of the Communist party...
...Sidewalk cafes are crowded and in the late afternoon the main street is given over to the "corso," a typically southern European custom: Automobile traffic is prohibited...
...For the economy as a whole, the "unofficial" production, which the published statistics ignore, is an indispensable addition to the recorded output...
...Police measures prove rarely necessary...
...Who are the two sides at the bargaining table to be...
...It has some, but not all, of the features of the first...
...Thus, although unofficial lists are admitted at workers' council elections, police methods are employed to see to it that no really "dangerous" candidates run for office...
...They make life tolerable, and since living standards have substantially improved over the years under the new decentralized economic system, the internal pressure has greatly diminished...
...He and his wife move about freely, with fewer and less conspicuous guards in attendance than surround the President of the United States...
...the West still has a slight advantage in prestige...
...More recently, the students of Zagreb staged street demonstrations against the quality of the food given them in the student restaurants...
...After 2 PM factories and offices are closed...
...Capital is obtained by loans from the state bank...
...Wage scales are worked out by the councils, but must be approved by the national trade union and the local community...
...More important, for the economy and the workers, are the "second jobs...
...The strike was successful and the price of coal went up...
...In 1958 coal miners in some areas of Slovenia stayed underground, under the leadership of the union and Party cell, to obtain a wage increase which would make their wage rates uniform throughout the coal basin of Slovenia...
...Strikes have occurred, and have been tolerated, even though they are regarded as symptoms of a serious crisis...
...Regime is 'somewhere between dictatorship and freedom' Yugoslavia's Split Personality By Adolf Sturmthal AFTER THE AUSTERITY of Warsaw, Belgrade appears to the visitor from abroad almost as a city steeped in southern gaiety...
...They work either for themselves, in truck gardens or as repairmen and small entrepeneurs, or for small businessmen who—when they employ no more than six workers—are tolerated by the regime...
...They are willing to revise their thinking whenever experience so indicates...
...They are designed to combine communal ownership and a decentralized decision-making system...
...This was a strike against the Government, whose price controls made it impossible for the relatively unproductive mines to pay the higher wage...
...But democratic socialism, a socialist economy with an operating market and democratic forms of government, holds out a great appeal...
...True, there are no town squares in the Yugoslav capital comparable in their quiet elegance to the reconstructed medieval market in Warsaw with its dignified Fugger house—seat of the renowned trader family—and its lively cellar cafes...
...But, in addition, there is a conflict of generations going on in Yugoslavia whose evolution may greatly contribute to the ultimate decision...
...All employes of a firm elect a workers' council which appoints smaller managing boards...
...The dictatorship of the Party is incompatible with real self-government in any aspect of social life, particularly in as vital a sector of the economy as industry...
...Since, however, they may be tempted to consume their profits at the expense of investments a highly progressive tax is imposed on profit disbursements beyond the minimum pay-scale of wages...
...The second jobs are unofficial, but indispensable, safety valves for the regime...
...The workers themselves referred to them as "the second government...
...And if there is a conflict between principle and effectiveness, it is the principle that must bend...
...Biology is on the side of these young men, the more so as the war thinned out the ranks of the generation above them in age...
...The older generation in the Party, the men who surround Tito, are unquestionably old-time Communists and nothing will shake their conviction...
...The latter operates like a capitalistic enterprise in making loans to those enterprises which undertake to pay the highest interest and offer satisfactory security...
...But the official wages are frequently only a part of the earnings...
...Until recently they could hardly be described as working-class organizations...
...The official hours of work run from 6 or 7 AM to 2 PM...
...They belong to the East and want to make peace with Moscow— on their own terms, of course, since accepting any other terms would mean their self-destruction...
...At the same time, its shortcomings are no less instructive...
...Professional journals, magazines and newspapers pay well by local standards...
...in 1952, and the growth of production since then indicates that it has not been entirely unsuccessful...
...All signs indicate that his personal following is very large...
...It has a few of the characteristics and even more of the potentialities of a democracy: the basic framework of industrial democracy in the plant, the absence of fear in the man on the street, the strong tradition of the peasant democracy in Serbia, of unionism in Croatia and Slovenia...
...They are supplemented by pilfering on an impressive scale which no one has seriously attempted to stamp out —except in cases in which the director or council chairman has engaged in "economic crime" of an unusually large volume...
...There are, however, other checks on self-government...
...it must prove first of all that it works...
...This—like all administrative organs of Yugoslavia—is elected by a two-level legislative body, one layer of which has its origin in universal suffrage while the other is composed according to the contribution each social group makes to the national income...
...In which direction will the country move...
...The regime is thus located somewhere in the spectrum between an oppressive dictatorship and a free country...
...The world of printed statistics and the one in which the Yugoslavs really live are only distantly related...
...In these second jobs, earnings are often substantially higher than the official wages...
...The unions regarded "plan fulfillment" as their main objective...
...The saying is that the workers need the official job for the social security which it alone can offer, and the second job in order to survive...
...The fundamentals of the system are well known and rather simple...
...Are they, in the guise of unions, to bargain with themselves, in the role of trade union representatives...
...The income estimates guarantee control of the body by industry —which in turn insures the controlling influence of the Communist party...
...The Milovan Djilaa case is ever-present in the minds of possible oppositionists and so is the case of the three veteran Socialists and trade unionists sentenced for having been in "traitorous" contact with the U.S...
...The appointment of one of the regime's most outstanding men, Svetozar Vukmanovitch-Tempo, as president of the Federation of Trade Unions has reactivated the unions and improved their standing...
...The director of the enterprise is appointed by the committee of the local community in cooperation with the workers' council...
...The sputniks have made their impact, but on the whole they are regarded as achievements of a concentration of resources, not as indicative of the average of the Soviet Union's ability...
...Without doubt, to a reasonably unbiased student, the councils are the most interesting and challenging experiment in creating a new social order since World War II...
...But there are signs of modest luxury in evidence: The former Balkan capital is growing into a modern metropolis and an impressive government center is being constructed on a new site near the airport just where the Sava River meets the Danube...
...The younger generation, perhaps up to 30 or 35, is of a different frame of mind...
...An attempt is also made to prevent enterprises from obtaining or increasing their profits by exploiting their monopolistic position...
...It is not at all difficult for an economist of any standing to earn more by his publications than in bis job as researcher in a government-sponsored research organization...
...except for shops which reopen at 5 PM for two or three hours, official working hours are over...
...At the same time, the director's rate of pay is usually rather modest in relation to the average worker's earnings...
...boys and girls, men and women, walk up and down the street looking each other over, arranging dates and discussing the latest news...
...And in the background is the Party cell in the plant, ready to insure that no serious breach of official policy occurs...
...The man on the street is not concerned and few hesitate to speak their minds freely...
...They are far more realistic and empirical than their ideological fathers...
...A further check is provided by the need of enterprises for foreign exchange...
...The Party and its dictatorship are of course, the key to the functioning of the entire system and, at the same time, set its limits...
...The investigation of the security offered gives the bank, at the same time, an opportunity to examine the firm, and the refusal of credit or the offer of a reduced credit volume are effective controls of the operations of the enterprise...
...The experiment was started in earnest Adolf Stnrmthal, Philip Murray Professor of International Labor Studies at Roosevelt University, has recently returned from an extended trip to Poland and Yugoslavia...
...For the foreign observer, this is an appealing backdrop for the investigation of the Yugoslav workers' council system...
...For them principle must be more than simply a part of the sacred tradition...
...If the West plays its cards well, Yugoslavia may never return to Moscow's orbit...
...The situation is somewhat different in the older industrial areas of Croatia and Slovenia, in the northern and northwestern parts of the country...
...Fiction exists also in other aspects of working-class life...
...No one believes in a capitalist future for Yugoslavia, for the only capitalism they have experienced was a dismal failure...
...Until this problem is solved, an element of fiction remains in the existence and operation of the unions...
Vol. 42 • November 1959 • No. 44
