Anyone here care much about Yugoslavia? I’m pretty interested at the moment, namely because:

  • worker self management seems rad
  • pretty cool multiethnic state that balanced minority rights, regional autonomy, and party oversight pretty well
  • a bit like a red precursor of the EU
  • property law was radically different and separated nominal ownership (pretty much all the state) from use rights (enterprises etc) in basically the same way old English common land did
  • choosing industrial democracy over political democracy doesn’t seem like a bad choice at all
  • SovereignState
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    1 year ago

    I think ultimately history has shown that the Yugoslav line regarding market socialism was mostly correct and the split between them and the rest of the socialist bloc was a grave mistake from all sides involved.

    I absolutely detest the great man-ism that clouds even communists’ minds around this period. Tito probably never said badass things about Stalinist assassins or whatever and Stalin probably didn’t personally want Tito’s head on a spike. It was more complicated than what it’s made out to be, and focusing attention on two Great Men instead of the ruling parties and material reality writ large does a disservice to historical understanding. It’s everywhere, though.

    The CPY/LCY shouldn’t have split with the Cominform and should have maintained communication instead of running to the west/U.S. at the sign of any criticism. The Cominform should have addressed its Soviet-centric model of prescribed socialism and allowed for pragmatic differences in socialist construction between parties based on national realities while maintaining a sense of proletarian internationalism and socialist fraternity. As with the Sino-Soviet split, dogmatism and petty nonsense helped facilitate the beginning of the destruction of yet another socialist project that should still be standing today.

    TLDR: Yugoslavia pretty good.

    • @hktoOP
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      310 months ago

      Turns out I didn’t see this reply at the time, but: yes! The focus on individuals blinds us to the processes. I’ve an interest in the splits that occurred that we’re talking about here and I honestly have no idea what forces out there in the world could have led to them: the Great Man approach is blinding.

      On that note… any idea what a good not-Great Man book covers this kind of thing?