In his reply to Andrew Miller's note about planning in Yugoslavia, Ken Coates takes up once more a theme stated in his article in Towards Socialism! - that Yugoslavia may yet be regarded as 'an object lesson in pitfalls', Here, in contrast to Todorveric's brave and futuristic words about ‘self planning... without leaders or followers,' Coates presents us with a strange and undefined alternative - ‘bureaucratic anarchy'. The Yugoslav system is said to have brought about 'decentralization!, ‘the growth of differentials, and reliance on market forces there produces 'the growth of working class apathy,' since it is ‘impalpable and uncontrolled,'
As a characterization of either features or trends in Yugoslav society, these observations, decentralization apart, are just inaccurate, In 1944, the Yugoslav communists initially faced the future amidst the ruins of their previously backward society, in terms of stalinist orthodoxy. The grandiose central plan for industrializing their country in five years did not only fail because of the rifts with the Soviet Union, It is now admitted that it was misconceived from the start, although some centralization may have been necessary for a short period in the complete breakdown which was the aftermath of the war, Yngoslavia, the only communist country to have fully emerged from communist satellite states, provides the fullest detail of the idiocy of fully centralized planning, be it democratic or totalitarian. The plan detailed the exact number of shoes to be produced five years laters the exact number of olive trees to be planted, the exact number of glass containers for medical use, etc. etc. The completed plan was over 14 tons in weight. Every enterprise had to submit between 600-800 progress reports a yeare For the whole of Zagreb there was one retail business and one consumer's co-oper-= ative, and the two largest beaches on the Adriatic had cne type of cake a day, produced by one firm for all shops, hotels, restaurants, As Bicanic comments, 'Today the savings of large scale production are less, but the cakes are better,! (cited in Waterston, A., ‘Planning in Yugoslavia,! 1962.)
The important points are (a) that even a relatively simple society is too complicated for centralized dimtive planning of a total nature, let alone one like ours. (b) That detailed directive planning is incompatible with comsumer freedom of choice = though this is relative, and may not matter where the economic level is very low. Thus, where peasants have had no shoes at all, they are unlikely to grumble because they are not offered a choice, initially at least; so long as the shoes they get meet their needs, and are not all left footed, as has been know to happen! (c) That centralized directive planning, even if decided democratically by the majority, must severely control the degree of self management that workers can havee For self management is not merely a question of deciding how an externally imposed target can be met. It involves the real decision, subject to the interests of the whole population, of what is to be produced, of prices, and of wages.
The qualification, ‘subject to the interests of the whole population!, is crucial, for it emphasizes the difference between totalitarianism on the one hand, anarchy, which Ken Coates seems to believe exists in Yugoslavia, on the other, and socialist democracy, or'associationist socialism’ as the Yugoslavs sometimes call it. The market is the only means by which citizens or workers can directly exercise a choice, and the greater the abundance produced by technological inovation, the greater the importance of this, Hut the use of the market does not automatically entail the release of an'timpalpable and controlled fforce,! leading inexorably to ‘bureaucratic anarchy.!
(Incidentally, the staff of the Federal PlanningIns‘ituteis less than 3 of
what it was in the centralized period, and from 1948-55, the number of
employees was reduced from 43,500 to 8,000. What kind of bureaucratic trend
is this?)For the Yugoslav market is a very different beast from our ow,
Its. fangs and claws have been drawn; it is domesticated,
The problems of a market economy are shortly those of monopoly; of
unequal development; of wasted resources; and of unemployment, due to
differences between estimation of demand and capacity. In Yugoslavia, there
is minimum wage legislation, and an extremely good system of social security,
which has been described as the best in the world, in relation to earnings.
There is restrictive legislation covering the setting up of monopoly, and
the Government can also use import controls to make sure there is no internal
exploitation, Subject to this, the worker's councils themselves can decide
to merge their enterprises. There is legislation to enable the control of
price increases, either over all, or in certain key sectors, and this has
been used to hold in check inflationary tendencies in 1962 and 1964.
The even development of the economy is controlled on a national level
by the control of allocations for major capital projects, so that the major
part of the development funds go to underdeveloped regions, and within
Republics, which also show marked regional disparities in some cases, by
similar control at the Republican Government level. The taxation system on
enterprises ensures that regional wealth or enterprise profitability are
reflected in the funds received at Republic and Federal level, and can thus
be balanced in increased investment elsewhere. Investment statistics show
this to have been successful in the decentralization period, Finally, the
banks can be, and are, used as regulators.
These legislative and economic controls are supplemented by pressure
from three social organisations, Each enterprise sends representatives to
the appropriate Economic Chamber for its industry, so that the policies of
each industrial enterprise are discussed by all the enterprises concerned.
Within the enterprise itself, the League of Communists and the trade union
branches act as pressure groups, though they have no statutory authority,
towards socially orientated rather than selfish, long term rather than short
term decisions,
How far is planning democratic? Long term plans are now purely predict-
ive and general. For the 7 year plan, 1964-70, initial drafts from the
Federal Planning Institute, were widely circulated to Economic Chambers,
enterprises, trade unions, communal organisations, etc. and many «mendments
and additions incorporated, The yearly plans are in theory obligatory,
though this is legally meaningless, as there is no specification as to the
responsibility for non fulfillment. They are drawn up on the basis of
enterprises! annual returnsof their capacity and investment plans, together
with national estimates of investment and trade. They are published in draft
form, and again widely discussed, before final amendment and acceptance by
the Federal Assembly, The plans are short and general. The 1961 plan was
only 25 pages in length. There are, no doubt, improvements that could be
made in this procedure, but it contrasts most favourably with the presentation
of our own, so called, National, Plan.
Do we find either, the ‘rampant growth of differentials and incentives, !
or'worker's apathy'in Yugoslavia? My own research there in 1961 and 1964
does not confirm either statement. Differentials are, on the whole, low,
compared with either the Soviet Union or the west. It would be nice if every=
one had the 'socialist consciousness' to accept the same reward an everyone else for their own work, and if groups of people whose skills were in short supply would forego their privileged bargaining position, But this is hardly reasonable to expect in the first 20 years! socialist experience of a developing country. Thus, limits of 1:4 were maintained up to 1960 (in very large enterprises 138 was allowed), In this year differentials were made the responsibility of the worker's councils, Such was the shortage of engineers, however, that differentials in some plants shot up to 1312 or 13:13, although only one man might be earning the high figure, This began to even itself out as the supply has slowly improved, and in the factories I visited in 1964 in the Sarajevo area, the maximum differential appeared to be about 1:4, 1:5. ‘The workers council meeting I attended voted a small reduction in differentials, and I think this is part of a general, long term trend, ‘tIncentives' cannot be seen in the same light in a self managed enterprise as in a privately owned or manager controlled one, as the whole idea of payment is different- c.f. the discussion in Singleton and Topham's Fabian pamphlet~ but schemes for'payment by results' have not spread widely among teachers or doctors; and, judging by the difficulty the workers council in the Tvornica plyboard factory had in assessing the value of its maintenance department, abuses will not be tolerated for long, As to apathy, this is again a relative matter, but I interviewed young peasant workers in four factories in Sarajevo, a recently industrialised area, and it is my impression that their knowledge of, and interest in their enterprise was markedly higher than that of groups with comparable skills I have interviewed in this country. The four Directors I interviewed, all with experience of the ‘administrative period' were unanimous in agreeing that there was a totally different atmosphere in the factory nowadays- at least one was openly unhappy about the way his powers were curtailed. Meister's research in Smederevo Commune indicates, as one might predict, that activism is related to skill level/education/urban background, and Kozomara's longitudinal study in the Famos factory at Sarajevo, that it develops with length of stay and emancipation from peasant background. We can safely say that thedecentralised system has neither produced general apathy, nor is tending that way. People do not feel at the mercy of “impalpable” markdt forces. There is perhaps more validity in a general criticism of the lack of a political opposition party in Yugoslavia, but one must be very careful of this, There is no settled tradition of nationhood, If other parties were allowed now, as Djilas advocated, there is no doubt that what would emerge would be a reactionary peasant party which would revert to Catholic nationalism in Croatia, and attempt to exploit the differences in investment between, rich and poor regions = some groups in the richer areas feel they are being "milked" to provide for the underdeveloped sections, This would be a tragedy for Yugoslavia. But there is, at last, choice of candidates in-elections at all levels, and the right of recall is, occasionally at least,being used, It seems likely that in a society with no ereat divisions of principle, elected representatives will not form stable parties, but shifting pressure groups, as different mmbinations of individuals reach different assessments of different problems, As long as Yugoslavia exhibits an extension of the area of real political choice, associationist socialism is evolving; we need not necessarily expect a stable party system to form, This may seem to be an apologia for Yugoslavia. In as far as the situation there has been misrepresented, it ise...the Yugoslav experience is crucial in discussing the problems of interrelating planning, self-management, centralisation and freedom of choice, Socialists have for so long made a fetish of planning and a bogy of the market; such a simplistic approach cannot any longer. be sustained, at least for industrialised society.eeeeThe theory and practice of Yugoslav associate ionist socialism provides a more complex, but more realistic alternative, It should be at the forefront of our discussion...Insofar as Preobrashenski's ghost contributes to the fallacy of centralised, directive planning, it requires exorcism, not invocation! ‘