Abstract
Thirty years have passed since the fall of socialism. However, the boundary between capitalism and socialism in the Serbian context is not so clear. Some authors postpone the period of capitalist restoration after the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime. Although this period was indeed marked by an accelerated economic transformation, characterized by mass privatization and market liberalization, it is still the question whether it is possible to make a clear cut between the socialist past and the capitalist present. Instead of looking at the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia or the post-Milošević era, we investigate the market reforms that marked the economy of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, and analyze socialism as a system ridden with internal contradictions. Following the analytical framework set by Michael Lebowitz in his book “The Contradictions of ‘Real Socialism’: The Conductor and the Conducted” (2012), and applying it to the analysis of Yugoslav socialism, we point out that the boundary between socialism and capitalism is much more blurred. Thus the question when does the transition to capitalism begin proves to be much more complex.
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Notes
- 1.
Similarly, historian Nikola Samardžić argues that the root of the war crimes, which happened during the 1990s war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, can be traced straight to the national liberation struggle led by the Communist Party during the second world war. See: Samardžić, Nikola. 2007. Putevi AVNOJ-a (The Paths of The Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia) (https://pescanik.net/putevi-avnoj-a/).
- 2.
Sociologist Boris Jašović says in a commentary in the daily Politika: “From the point of view of the common people, Yugoslavia was a welfare state. Philosophers, sociologists and politicians can debate whether civil liberties were threatened in that country, but for most people Yugoslavia was synonymous with security and safety in all segments of life, and this is best illustrated by sentences such as: ‘you could sleep in the park and feel safe’. We grew up with the feeling of living in a safe country—education and health care were free and accessible, and job security was guaranteed. Today we live with a painful feeling of general insecurity (…) that is why a large number of people have a nostalgic attitude towards the past”. See more in: Najbolje se živelo za vreme Tita (The best life was during Tito's time), (http://www.politika.rs/sr/clanak/283087/Najbolje-se-zivelo-za-vreme-Tita).
- 3.
See for example: Đinđić, Zoran. 1991. Komunizam van zakona (Outlawed communism). (http://pescanik.net/komunizam-van-zakona/).
- 4.
After the split with USSR in 1948, SFRY departed from an etatist model of rigid centralized planning and gradually introduced a self-management model of the economy which was based on social ownership. We will discuss this further below. For now, it is important to note that social ownership meant that neither the state nor a particular enterprise had full ownership rights over the means of production. For further reading see example: Kardelj, Edvard. 1979. Samoupravljanje i društvena svojina. Belgrade: BIGZ.
- 5.
Philosopher Neven Cvetičanin states: “The postulate, which is at the root of the reconstruction of institutions, is the social popularization of work as a value, that is. constituting what we can call work morality, that is, business responsibility. The value system that has been imposed on us over the past half century through stories of self-management and workers’ councils has popularized work evasion and virtual efficiency. The first point of the value system reform should be—work in order to make money” (Cvetićanin, 2002: 107). Also see: Resolution 1096 (1996) adopted by the Council of Europe. (http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?fileid=16507). Among other things, the resolution states that the goals of the transition process “must include a transformation of mentalities (a transformation of hearts and minds) whose main goal should be to eliminate the fear of responsibility”. For additional reading see also: Makovicky, Nicolette (ed). 2014. Neoliberalism, Personhood, and Postsocialism - Enterprising Selves in Changing Economies. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing.
- 6.
See for example: Lazić, Mladen (ed). 2000. Račji hod (Crab-walk: Serbia in the Process of Transformation. Belgrade: Filip Višnjić. See also: Sztompka, Piotr. 1994. The Sociology of Social Change. Oxford: Blackwell.
- 7.
It should be noted that since 2012 the usage of this concept largely fell away. The change of government in 2012 brought the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) to power. The main political focus of SNS was the critique of political actors that were in government after the fall of Slobodan Miloševićs’ regime, the actors which were in charge of the privatization process. “They stole and plundered and took everything they could from the people”, said Aleksandar Vučić, current president of Serbia and the leader of SNS (see: Vučić o 5. oktobru: Krali su i otimali od naroda, uništili su sve što je i Milošević ostavio u nasleđe, Blic, 5 October 2018. [https://www.blic.rs/vesti/politika/vucic-o-5-oktobru-krali-su-i-otimali-od-naroda-unistili-su-sve-sto-je-i-milosevic/nyls2j0]). The distinction that SNS wants to make between them and their political opposition could explain why the current government doesn’t utilize the term “transition”.
- 8.
See for example: Kuljić, Todor. 2008. Upotreba kvislinga (The use of quislings).
(http://www.politika.rs/sr/clanak/47625/Upotreba-kvislinga).
- 9.
See for example: Kuljić, Todor. 2006. Kultura sećanja (Memory culture). Belgrade: Čigoja; Kuljić, Todor. 2002. Prevladavanje prošlosti (Mastering the past). Belgrade: Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji.
- 10.
The “third Yugoslavia” was the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which consisted of only two republics—Serbia and Montenegro—and existed from 1992 until 2003.
- 11.
See for example: Vučković Juroš, Tanja. (2012). Social changes and the generational differences in the formation of collective memories, a dissertation submitted to the Department of Sociology, Indiana University; Velikonja, Mitja. (2010). Titostalgija. Belgrade: Biblioteka XX vek: Knjižara Krug.
- 12.
Of course, this excursion was not global, but mainly focused on old capitalist centers located in western Europe and North America. Nevertheless, it is important to notice that the period of the welfare state was induced by a strong workers movement, Communist and Social Democratic parties and competing socialist projects which emerged during the twentieth century. See for example: Whal, Asbjorn. 2011. The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State. London: Pluto Press.
- 13.
See for example: Horvat, Branko. 1981. Sistem samoupravnog društvenog planiranja. Belgrade: Institut ekonomskih nauka. Also see: Lampe, John. 2000. Yugoslavia as history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 14.
See also: Kagarlitsky, Boris. 1995. Russia's New and Old System, interview. (https://solidarity-us.org/atc/55/p2834/).
- 15.
Here we should note that Lebowitz in his analysis emhasises that it is not the plan as such which enables vanguard relations. Rather, “the plan is the way that enterprises are prevented from transforming their possession into property” (Lebowitz 2012: 104).
- 16.
These bonuses were not a negligible part of the managers’ income. For example, Lebovitz states that for the managers of Soviet companies in 1934, they accounted for about four percent of their total income. Already in 1940, this percentage rose to 11 percent, and during the second world war it jumped to as much as 33 percent. By 1960, the share of bonuses in salaries were gradually reduced and during Khrushchev's time (Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev) it was lowered to 7.7 percent, which was later interpreted as a mistake, so bonuses began to rise again, to 21.5 percent by 1966 and to 34.5 percent by 1970 (Lebowitz 2012: 41).
- 17.
“Workers’ councils had between 15 and 120 members, and in companies with fewer than 30 employees the entire collective was in the workers’ council. Workers elected and recalled members of workers’ councils by universal, direct and secret vote. The election term lasted one year but was later extended to two years. The workers’ council decided as a collective body. It adopted the most important acts of the company (rules, production and financial plans, tariff regulations), conclusions on business, selected and recalled members of the legal board, and decided on the distribution of the part of the accumulation that the company had at its disposal” (Petranović 1988: 296). However, it should be noted that their legal powers changed over time through different reforms of the Yugoslav economic system. Also, in practice, workers’ councils did not always function with the same qualitative characteristics.
- 18.
According to Bilandžić, in the beginning of the 1970s the differences in the level of economic development were very large: “the national income per capita between Slovenia and Kosovo is 6:1, and between the most developed and least developed communes 20:1. Three republics (B&H, Montenegro and Macedonia) and one province (Kosovo) have the status of underdeveloped members of the federation” (Bilandžić 1985: 353).
- 19.
As Susan Woodward wrote: “Periods of emigration always lowered the unemployment rate. For example, its sharp drop in 1955–1957 can be attributed almost entirely to the permanent exodus of ethnic minorities and political malcontents when borders opened, and the fall in unemployment in 1961 corresponded to the federal government’s organization of temporary labor migration abroad. The number of workers who left in 1969–1973, about 500.000, was almost equal to the increase in social-sector employment during the same period” (Woodward 1995: 198–199).
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Simović, V., Vukša, T. (2022). When Did a Transition to Capitalism Start in Serbia?. In: Gagyi, A., Slačálek, O. (eds) The Political Economy of Eastern Europe 30 years into the ‘Transition’. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78915-2_3
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