YUGOSLAVIA a confused situation by C. VERLA proaching the figure of 500,000 (which is 10 percent of the work force) as a direct result of the application of the reform (which allows the "profitability" of enterprises to be governed by the laws of the market), it is easy to understand why the Yugoslav government has decided to launch a vast investment policy (increases of some 50 percent between 1974 and 1975) and is seeking foreign credits to finance this investment. Alongside this development policy, a series of measures have been taken to resolve the problem of employment: support to private investments of smallholding agricultural proprietors and aid to small-scale trade. (Nearly half of all Yugoslavs working abroad are peasants who have kept their land and have the right to purchase agricultural machinery with the money they earn abroad.) Finally, some cities have experimented with a new form of financing investment based on funds accumulated by the emigrant workers. These workers are allowed to participate by offering loans reimbursable with interest for the investments needed to open small factories in which these workers will have employment priority upon returning to Yugoslavia. These experiments are going on in the poorest parts of southern Croatia, from which there is a high rate of emigration. In Arzano, for example, the local authorities took the initiative and the workers council of the Pionirka textile factory succeeded in collecting 200, 000 German marks from about a thousand Yugoslav workers in West Germany within the space of several weeks. (See Ekonomska Politika, January 20, Apart from these measures, there are three great problems requiring choices of political orientation that are now the subject of acute controversy in Yugoslavia: the contradictions of agriculfure; the considerable increase in the cost of living (25 percent this year compared with last year), and the question of employment. In 1947, in order to demonstrate his obedience to Stalin, Tito ordered the forced collectivization of land. After 1948, however, the break with the Cominform required that the regime strengthen the cohesion of its social base, which was cemented by the alliance of the prolefariat and the poor peasantry (the latter representing some 75 percent of the population in 1938 and some 38 percent today). The introduction of self-management, limited as it was, and the 1953 renunciation of forced collectivization, the effects of which had been just as dramatic as in the USSR after 1927, were the major internal measures taken to attain this objective.
YUGOSLAVIA Nevertheless, there was no question of fostering private property in the countryside. In order to prevent the developmentof a class of rich peasants, private property in land was limited to 10 hectares. In addition, and this was true until the economic reform of 1965, private possession of means of production in the private sector was very heavily faxed, while more modern investments were developed in the socialized sector. Thus, in 1963, although 80 percent of the land was privately owned, of the 45, 000 tractors in the country, 40,000 were at the sole disposal of the public sector. The economic reform fostered a certain degree of privatization of the economy. Taxes on the private sector were eased, but the 10 hectare limit was preserved and the number of workers who could be employed in a private enterprise was kept limited to five. But the result was that pressure to change the law grew steadily. After all, if it was now possible for a peasant to buy a tractor, what was the point if landholdings were still limited to 10 hectares? Thus, many peasants bought tractors and then rented them out to others. And there were many ideologues of the "socialist market" who claimed that the measures that had been taken were inconsistent and preached the extension of private property. As we have seen, the exodus of peasants leaving to seek jobs in the West was accompanied by measures aimed at holding down unemployment upon their return and at stimulating the productivity of their land somewhat, The number of private tractors thus increased formidably. By the end of 1974 there were 175,000 privately owned fractors and 200,000 tractors in the socialized sector. Nevertheless, the Yugoslav leadership did not give in on the fundamental question. The leadership's objective remained eliminating the private sector, which is less profitable, and encouraging private peasants to join collective enterprises by demonstrating their superiority, thus winning the peasants to socialization. The measures taken in this direction were the extension of all the rights of the workers (social security, old-age insurance, political right of representation in the self-management bodies) to all those who joined collective farms or donated their lands to the public sector. In opposition to those who are against any interference by the central regime in the economy in general and in agriculture in particular, a five-year Green Plan was worked out (with great difficulty) in 1973, which was aimed at increasing productivity in the agricultural sector and at consequently diminishing Yugoslavia's dependence on imports. But the 1975 results were disastrous (and not only becouse of climatic difficulties) and will rebound on the debate over orientation. The reality is that the peasants did not respond to the encouragement to join in collectivization. On the contrary, their attitude was to take advantage of all the measures favoring private property and hope for a further liberalization of the laws on land ownership. The result was a multiplicity of private plots. The average size of private holdings is 3.9 hectares and there is a tendency toward an increase in the number 24 of plots of less than five hectares, because the small plots are further divided up among children. At the same time, there is a diversification of the crops grown on each holding for the purpose of consumption by the peasant family, which means that there is an immense social waste. The decision of the central powers to increase agricultural prices in order to foster the development of agriculture only resulted in increasing the cost of living for the urban workers without permitting an increase in the productivity of the land. This year it will be necessary to increase imports of wheat, which will further inflate the present trade deficit. The political tensions reflecting the various possible responses to this catastrophic situation can only mount. For the moment, the Titoist leadership remains faithful to its policy, but the bursaucratic character of the regime fundamentally prevents if from convincing the peasants to support the leadership's orientation. Hence, two other choices are possible and are clashing behind the scenes and even publicly in the press. There are those who call for a more severe orientation moving in the direction of restrictions on the private sector (which in itself does not guarantee the redress of the other problems relating to employment and the wages of workers and entails the danger of sharpening conflicts with the peasants); second, there are those who clearly call for the end of any limitation on private property in the countryside in order to make the private plots more productive (which can stimulate the development of a layer of kulaks who in any case would not be won over to the regime any more than the kulaks in the USSR were won over during the 1920s). The debate over orientation is not at all settled; it extends from agriculture to the whole of the social structure and involves the other political choices: economic centralization or not, and if so, what kind of centralization?
Along with the debates about agriculture, the various possible solutions to the problems of unemployment and the constant increase in the cost of living and social inequality are also subjects of sharp controversy. In reality, the 1971 turn settled nothing. The Titoist leadership tried to recentralize the LCY, which had been subjected to the combined effects of bureaucratization and decentralization at the same time. The conflicts among the various republics were - and remain - linked to the desire of each regional bureaucracy to grab the greatest possible share of power and to the growth of inequality of economic development because of the reform. The purges have been wholly provisional solutions. The more severe control of the party leadership over the membership, the discipline imposed on political and culPRAXIS tural life, and the repression of any opposition were supposed to be accompanied by greater control by the LCY over the economy and an increased weight of the army within the state. The Tenth Congress of the LCY openly criticized those who "entertained the illusion that the market would resolve all problems by itself." (See the speech by Kardelj published in Questions actuelles du socialisme.) In addition, the "technico-bureaucratic and liberal bourgeois forces, "which really exist in Yugoslavia, were roundly denounced, and the plan to legalize workers strikes against factory leaderships even came up again. (See Vecernje Novosti, Belgrade, March 18, 1975.) But there was no challenging of the determination of income on the basis of the results achieved by the enterprises on the market and thus on the totality of mechanisms that, in the name of immediate "profitability" in terms of market laws, provoke constant price increases and competition among "self-managed" workers and increase the weight of "specialists" in the enterprises, which are eager to introduce the most "modern management techniques, which in turn creates unemployment. Those who called for centralization on the basis of self-management and against the laws of the market were repressed. They were the Marxist students and professors of the left, among others, the leaders of the philosophic review Praxis, For them, the dilemma of bureaucratic planning versus self-management and market laws was surmountable. But that implied the elimination of the political monopoly of the LCY and the introduction of real workers democracy giving the workers themselves the central weight and the means to collectively make essential choices and carry them out. At the same time, the Titoist bureaucracy also rejected two other roads: 1. Suppression of self-management and a pure and simple return to compulsory and bureaucratically centralized planning of the USSR type. This would be very unpopular and would clash with reactions both from the workers and from the bureaucrats of the various factories and republics, whose weight has increased as a result of decentralization. In addition, that solution would mean challenging the very thing that symbolized the break with Stalin, which had to be explained as a break with central planning, which was equated with Stalinism. 2. The breakup of the federation. This would mean the loss of the centralized control. But here the Titoist bureaucracy finds itself confronted by conflicts among the various nationalities in Yugoslavia. The price that is paid for a regime that is simultaneously bureaucratic and decentralized is that the richest republics no longer want to "pay" for the others. The Croation leaders in 1971 wanted to hold onto their currency because the federal banks (in Serbia) were not according credits on bases acceptable to the Croation leaders. To respond to these tensions the Titoist bureaucracy combined a greater federalism in its institutions with a stepped up repression against opponents of the bureaucracy's policy. The republics and provinces will be represented much more equally in all state organs. After 1968, territorial armies under the command of each republic were even instituted parallel to the federal army. At the same time, however, the most nationalistic elements in each republic were ousted and new purges are now being organized against the "liberal" Croats. But the regional inequalifies have still not been eliminated. The "Neo-Cominformists" "We recently discovered several illegal organizations. They have Cominformist platforms. • and have the backing of former Cominformists who were expelled from the party in the past. ... The material that has been seized does not prove the existence of a strong movement of this type, but it does prove the existence of an orientation favorable to adherence to the Soviet camp, which would mean. constructing socialism on the basis of state property and belonging to all the organizations of the Warsaw Pact and the Comecon. " (Speech of Bakaric, published in Vjesnik, Zagreb, October 23, 1975.)
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1UUUDLAYIA One initial comment must be made: No proof has yet been advanced showing links between the arrested group: and the USSR. It is highly possible that the people really being attacked in this accusation of "Cominformism" are all those who in one form or another call both for opposition to the present regime and for recentralization. Some of these people may even feel some nostalgia for Stalinist centralism without necessarily favoring links with the USSR today. One thing is certain: there is a flagrant disproportion between the scope of the campaign being waged and the size of the currents in Yugoslavia that could really be pro-Soviet. It is certainly possible that there have been attempts by the Soviet leadership to infiltrate some groups and stir up trouble in Yugoslavia. Yugoslav newspapers have asserted - and there is no way of verifying these claims - that radio broadcasts from countries belonging to the "Soviet bloc" have been systematically beamed at the population of Bosnia-Herzegovinia in order to foment national troubles. And it is easy to imagine that the Kremlin is interested in what the post-Titoist period wil be like and hopes that Yugoslavia will return to the Soviet fold after an increase in tensions and a victory of the centralist wing of the LCY. But twenty-eight years after Tito's break with Stalin, this is far from being achieved. Even a move by the Yugoslav army to control an explosive situation would in no way be synonomous with a return to the Soviet fold. As for a Soviet intervention in Yugoslavia, that would run up against the organized and armed mobilization of the entire population. It is cerfain that Yugoslavia is one of the major obstacle blocking Soviet plans for a conference of Communist parties that would adopt a common declaration. But that is nothing new, and if Yugoslay tensions with the Soviet Union are increasing before such a conference, even this is not sufficient to explain the current "anti-Cominformist" campaign. The recent rapprochement of Yugoslavia with China and Albania and Yugoslavia's continuing opposition to any affirmation of a common policy of Communist parties and to any denunciation of any one party by the others are already so clear that the internal campaign only confirms what the USSR already knows. Thus, while it is marginally possible that this campaign is addressed to the Soviet Union or is aimed at repressing some pro-Soviet activities, the essential point is most likely a different one. The most likely essential function of the campaign is to make an amalgam. It is not at all popular to be a "Cominformist" in Yugoslavia. Sounding the alarm about that danger is probably aimed at facilitating repression in general by preventing the debates on the future of Yugoslav socialism from breaking out more openly and stimulating a response among social forces. In fact, according to the official labels, it is the "oppositionists of all stripes, " the "Cominformists, nationalists, liberals" who must be repressed. And the reason is that all the tensions generated by Tito's policies have not at all been resolved. November 9, 1975 26
THE MASTERS TOUCH
Whitlam The Australian bourgeoisie appears to have made an important political miscalculation. Its immediate objective was achieved: the Labor party government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was ousted and new general elecfions were called for December 13, But the manner in which the Labor government was brought down may well result in a prolonged new period of rank-and-file working class militancy and possibly even the reelection of