as, in Bosnia, Herzegovinia, Mon °
sate eee of undermining such enterprises will prove eee
strong central counteremeasures are takens and without —— ears
foreign trade monopoly such counter=measures will prove mT c a eag 6 A
since all the political force of the "profitable" sector = ade
resist obviously expensive social rescue work in the outback, The 9
reporting on all this, summed up some of the problers 8
“"As the most advanced republic Slovenia's industry will benefit from
the reforms and the progess of readjustment will be less painful
than in the less developed South, It is enough to arrive in the capital
to realise how great is now the difference, not only in the visual
impression ~ the excellent modern building .and the number of privately
owned cars = but also in the psychological clymate, in the business=
like approach to current problems." (Times 2 8.656)
The Times correspondent noted the great progress in Slovenia, whose standards
did not seem any lower than those in adjacent Austria or Italy. He praised
"the Slovene!s hard work, thriftiness and living standards." The Slovenes,
he went on, “have for several years been pressing “or «> veforms” which
“have been received ees in other parts of the coun». ., ith mixed feelings."
Of course, 'thrift', "hard works and all these virtues arc notoriously more
difficult to practise in underedeveloped regions than advanced ones, If the
Times does not understand this, there are many people in Nacedonia who
understand it very well,
In a context like’ this, with the expectation that some 250,000 unskilled ~
workers’ are to be dismissed, and with a similar number ghready unemployed,
it is difficult to be as sanguine as David Riddell about the beneficial
effects of the market, Claws and teeth or no, it is exacting its pound of
flesh, Certainly "minimum wage legisletion" does not look so good in a
context of an all round 25% cut in the living standards of precisely the
lowest paid groups.
The alternative to all this is not to go back on self-management, On the
contrary. When David Riddell says that self-management “is not eee 2 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," he is quite right. The question is,
at what level must these things be democratically decided ? And the answer
can only be, that it is nonsence to talk about a "plan" in which the broad
outline if what is to be produced is the problem of a sub-group, however
democratically constituted, Some of these questions require a democratic
nechinery for taking decisions at »republic and national level,
On the matter of "bureaucratic
anarchy? David Riddellts cite — of the decline in the Staff of the Federal po pila Peper aa noe Saleh nd are You cannot measure the extent of bureaucaacy
eople € planning offices, The Yux a: does not simply consist of 8000 "cent ' of whem ene ee
: ral planners" (most of wh ; sleued ween co an employees) who oo Peon the =
when 43, worked in that field. It also consists i
e 1 £
ieee of factory managers and industrial personnel whose effective
Ww ave greatly increased to the extent that the market has replaced the Federal Planning Institute. Ter i is #natic S nae = e the measurement of differentials in
= =o underlines my point, No doubt they have decli oe = to assume that now they are universally back to the level of 1:5
n 1:4 seems to me to be very optimistic, Koleja's survey of two fact factories (published this year by Tavistock) showed differentials of 135 and 1:6 or 7 which are very high when it is borne in mind that Lenin's norn for the Soviet Union in 1917, in conditions of primeval backwarcness and wartine dislocation, was 1:4, The fact that the Soviet Union today is a much worse sinner in this respect than Yugoslavia does not invalidate this argument. Kolaja reports that workers in his 'factory Bt considered these differentials to be "quite excessive", But in a context of overall competition, the differentials between factory and factory become possibly more significant than those within .factories, Kolsja's two factories had paid out to all workers, in the one case, $2 month's bonus, at the end of the year before he arrived. This process of differentiation will accelerate in present ~: conditions, To assume that such developments will inhibit the solidarity -. and political consciousness of the workers may be too mechanistic in the circumstancesg possibly the very stringency of the present crisis may conduce to a revaluation within the league of Communists, 2nd a reversal of the present trends, If not, then fragmentation seems inevitable.
ned from this absurd
On the question of how far 'payment by results! has effectively permeated the educational and health services, I hope David Riddell is right. But if he is, it will be because of the entirely proper hesitation of teachers and doctors themselves, and not for want of very considerable politicad% pressure fron the central and republican governments, I should like to pursue this matter further, when it is possible to argue this matter out at length. The last, seminal question about which we are at odds is that of overall political democracy. I am not at all advocating the random licensing of reactionary prrties: clearly the negative social influence of the peasantry is an important danger, although when I raised the question of Djilas! im= prisonment with leadinz members of the LYC in 1960 and again in 1964, they all denied very strenuously that it had anything to do with the power of the peasantry. Be that as it maye What is clear is that there can be no democratic central planning without the right to form "shifting pressure groups" to agitate for one course of action rather than another, to publish one's views as a platform around which to attempt to group others, and so one It is not by any means excluded that the institutional recognition of the legality of factions within the LYC itself might meet this need to a considerable degrees Again, I am not minimising the very real areas of political freedom which exist in Yugoslaviae These have pioneer. sigmificance: but simply to faccentuate the positive' is no fitting position for a socialist, If we are to really profit from the Yugoslav experience it must be discussed not only with sympathy, but also with clinical objectivity.