Splendour, Misery, and Possibilities. An X-Ray of Socialist Yugoslavia

Description

Suvin’s ‘X-Ray’ of Socialist Yugoslavia offers an indispensable overview of a unique and often overlooked twentieth-century socialism. It shows that the plebeian surge of revolutionary self-determination was halted in SFR Yugoslavia by 1965; hat between 1965– 72 there was a confused and hidden but still open-ended clash; and that by 1972 the oligarchy in power was closed and static, leading to failure. The underlying reasons of this failure are analysed in a melding of semiotics and political history, which points beyond Yugoslavia – including its achievements and degeneration – to show how political and economic democracy fail when pursued in isolation. The emphasis on socialist Yugoslavia is at various points embedded into a wider historical and theoretical frame, including Left debates about the party, sociological debates about classes, and Marx’s great foray against a religious State doctrine in The Jewish Question. Contents List of Figures and Tables xiii Acknowledgements and Thanks xvi Foreword to Darko Suvin, Splendour, Misery, and Potentialities: An X-ray of Socialist Yugoslavia xix Fredric Jameson Introduction: Pro Domo Sua 1 part 1 Fundaments: Freedom and Accumulation 1 Radical Emancipation and Yugoslavia: On the Founding Singularities of sfry 23 2 Accumulation and Its Discontents 36 part 2 Class Interests and Politics as sfry Dominants 3 On Class Relationships in Yugoslavia 43 4 On a Hidden Ruling Class and Central Conflict 72 5 What Has Been and What Could Have Been 81 6 15 Theses about Communism and Yugoslavia, or the Two-Headed Janus of Emancipation through the State (Metamorphoses and Anamorphoses of ‘On the Jewish Question’ by Marx) 105 7 The Communist Party of Yugoslavia 128 part 3 Self-Government vs. Alienation: A Tractate on Yugoslav Economics and Politics section 3.1 On Self-management in s.f.r. Yugoslavia: A Critical Stock-Taking (1945–72) 8 Anatomy: Macro-Political Economics, or the View from Above 162 9 Anatomy: Micro-Political Economics, or the View from the Workers 180 10 Physiology: The Interests and Stakes behind the Macro-Events 206 section 3.2 On the Horizon of Disalienation in s.f.r. Yugoslavia: Self-Government and Plebeian Democracy 11 On the Politics of Disalienation, Inside and Outside Economic Production 247 12 In Production: Rise and Fall of Self-Management 253 13 In Civic Life: Dis/Alienation and Oligarchy Monolithism 264 14 Conclusion: On Failures and Potentialities 279 appendices The Socialist/Communist Discourse about Bureaucracy Appendix 1: Bureaucracy: A Term and Concept in the Socialist Discourse about State Power (Upstream of Yugoslavia) 323 Appendix 2: The Discourse about Bureaucracy and State Power in Post-Revolutionary Yugoslavia 1945–72 345 References 388 Index of Proper Names of Historical Persons 421