The dream that some proletarians around the world probably dream of - to take over and run factories independently, was a reality for Yugoslav workers thanks to self-management.
"Self-governance is not an invention of Yugoslav theory and practice, which some unfairly attribute to us as a merit and others as a sin.
"The idea of self-government is as old as the idea of humanism and, in particular, as old as the international labor movement, the history of its class struggle, and the history of socialist practice." he wrote the father of Yugoslav self-governing socialism, Edvard Kardelj.
The introduction of a new system of social and economic relations in the late forties and early fifties of the last century was a kind of reaction of the Yugoslav communists to the Soviet state socialism.
And at the same time, an alternative was offered to their planned economy, as well as to the capitalist system of the West.
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With this "Yugoslav experiment", as some called him, the worker got a new role - to manage and dispose of his own work and make decisions.
"The means of production belonged to the working people, that is, the owners of the companies were their employees," Ljubodrag Savić, a professor at the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade, told the BBC in Serbian.
In addition to the economy, self-management also referred to political and social organization in cities and municipalities, as well as culture and education.
"Historically, self-governance should be taken as an extremely progressive system, which according to all economic parameters, not to mention ideological ones, was far more successful than today's economic system," says Marija Obradović, a research associate at the Institute for Recent History of Serbia, for the BBC in Serbian.
In the legal system of the then Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia (FNRJ), self-management was introduced in June 1950 by the Law on the Management of State Economic Enterprises and Higher Economic Associations by Labor Collectives, and then confirmed by the adoption of the Constitutional Law of January 13, 1953.
Self-government in Yugoslavia
Ideas about workers' self-management can be found in the 19th century among various philosophers and theorists, such as the father of anarchism Pierre Joseph Proudhon, but also the liberal thinker John Stuart Mill.
In an indirect or direct way, this concept was represented by the participants of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, the fighters in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, and various labor movements around the world.
However, Yugoslavia fundamentally decided on this socio-economic model at the highest level only after the split between its lifelong president Josip Broz Tito and Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, in June 1948.
In such circumstances, an alternative was sought for Soviet-style state socialism, where the party held the leading position, but also for liberal capitalism from the West, where business owners were mostly private individuals.
"Yugoslavia was something in between, the first country that tried to combine two things - the central role of the party, that is, the state in the management of the country and to interest people in (self) managing, not for the needs of the boss or the state, but for their own needs and the needs of their company ", explains economist Ljubodrag Savić.
This is how we came to socialist, i.e. workers' self-management, whose conceptual guidelines were given by Tito, and theoretically and practically elaborated by Edvard Kardelj, the Yugoslav communist revolutionary and ideologue.
Kardelj is allegedly was under the influence of the Scandinavian social democrats who then were the only ones who did not turn their backs on Yugoslavia, unlike the Soviets, because of the conflict, and the West, which was still suspicious of the ultimate intentions of the Balkan country.
From theory to practice already at the end of 1949, when the first workers' council was formed, "as an experimental body of workers' self-management" at the Prvoborac cement factory in Solin, near Split, Croatia.
"It was unheard of for the world, to create a workers' council in which, of course, there will be university-educated people, but it will be dominated by representatives of the workers who, together with the management of the factory, will decide on all important questions about the functioning of the company," Savić points out.
Workers' councils later became the main organ of self-management.
Self-management was given a legal framework the following year by the Law on Enterprise Management, while on January 13, 1953, the Assembly adopted the Constitutional Law on the Basics of the Social and Political Organization of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Federal Organism of Government, which further shaped and confirmed it.
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Workers' councils as the backbone of self-management
"Social ownership of the means of production, self-management of producers in the economy and self-management of the working people in the municipality, city and county are the basis of the social and political organization of the country". it was written in Article 4 of the Constitutional Law.
Thus, the other relics of Soviet politics were discarded, and social property was adopted at the expense of the state, and territorial self-government was introduced instead of centralism.
All employees democratically decided how the company would operate, spend profits and distribute income through workers' councils.
"At the assemblies, decisions were also made whether new equipment would be bought, wages would be increased, or whether the workers, which also happened, would give up their 12th and even 11th wages, because of the investment they were making not only in their own, but also in the future their children," Savić points out.
Self-management was accompanied, he says, by "full employment", and such a system gave rise to dozens of global factories from this area whose products were also sold on the Western market.
Professor Savić cites Elektronska industria (EI) Niš as an example, which in the 1980s exported cathode ray tubes for televisions for the Dutch company Philips.
He adds that, apart from the economy, the advantage of this model was that the "broad masses" participated in the "management of society".
Historian Marija Obradović says that this "deeply revolutionary and progressive idea" led to "exceptional economic growth" in the country.
"This means that Yugoslavia never had negative growth rates until 1989 and that none of its former republics after the collapse of the state reached GDP (gross social product) per capita compared to that year," explains the doctor of historical sciences.
In addition to economic development, he points out, self-management also led to cultural, educational and health development.
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Flaws of Yugoslav self-governance and its breakdown
No matter how independent and autonomous the workers were in decision-making, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, later the Union of Communists, controlled the functioning of those companies and factories.
Economist Ljubodrag Savić says that, for example, "you couldn't get the position of director if you weren't a member of the party", although often many of them were not competent for that position.
"And later, the so-called techno-managers began to appear, who slowly brought the company under their control, as a kind of group property," he adds.
The professor also believes that in the mid-1960s, the first blow was dealt to the "self-governing system", which was then transforming and trying to catch up with the "market economies of the West".
Some companies therefore fell into big problems, so the state tried to save them, especially the big ones, while some "sunk deeper and deeper".
"You also had a banking system that lent it, so loans were approved even though the company did not meet the economic criteria.
"And that then meant that the company was collapsing and the bank was also involved in the problem," explains Savić.
The public debt of Yugoslavia was in 1966 amounted to 1,4 billion dollars, while in 1980 it grew to about 20 billion dollars.
Self-government was further developed and shaped, both in practice and through legal acts, such as the Constitutions of 1963 and 1974.
However, for professor Savić, the beginning of the end of this model in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) begins precisely with this second constitution, because "republics took over the care of economic development in their own territory and the federation was broken."
And the "hawthorn stake" for self-management was hammered in by the Law on Joint Labor from 1976, when the so-called Basic Organizations of Joint Labor were introduced, which further complicated the economy.
"At that time, the unique economic system was divided, as well as companies that performed multiple activities and produced different goods, so instead of 50 meters away, they brought raw materials from the neighboring republic, which increased the costs," explains Savić.
Historian Marija Obradović believes that the last days of self-government began in the mid-1980s due to the rise of nationalism in the country, after the famous memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) from September 1986, which, among other things, dealt with the economic crisis in the country and linked it to national affiliation.
However, with the collapse of the state and the bloody war at the beginning of the 1990s, as well as the Privatization Laws that were already widely voted in the republics of the former country, self-management, just like the SFRY, went to the dustbin of history.
Is there self-governance in the world today?
There is no, at least not self-management as an official state policy, on such a scale and in such a capacity as it was in Yugoslavia.
There are certain factories and companies in South America, especially in Argentina, which functioned according to these principles.
However, in Europe and in the United States of America, a similar concept is found today, which is called participatory, that is industrial democracy.
Obradović says that there are such companies and firms in Germany, France, Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands and elsewhere.
"There, workers participate in making official decisions, for example, when technological redundancy is determined, then when giving bonuses, applying new technological measures, appointing management to the middle level and the like", the historian explains how this model looks in practice.
"This is called participation, which means that not only the union negotiates about your position and interest, but you, as an employee, have the right to participate in the discussion and the right to vote," he adds.
It differs the most from self-management in that the worker cannot decide on investments, the appointment of directors and the company's production scheme.
He says that in Serbia this type of engagement is not recognized by the domestic economy, nor are any remnants of workers' self-management.
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