Original scientific paper
The Contradictions and Internal Boundaries of a Political Model; The Party, State and Self-management in Yugoslavia
Veljko Cvjetičanin
; Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb
Abstract
In the period from 1944 to 1947 the KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia) played the leading role in the new government, but the multi-party system also existed The dilemma of choosing between such party pluralism and the one-party system was quickly and relatively easily resolved in favour of the KPJ. In this period the party system in Yugoslavia had come closest to the Bolshevist system. The conflict with Stalin compelled the leadership to search for a new identity of the Yugoslav society, different from the bureaucratic Soviet system, but retaining the discontinuity with the Western type civil democratic societies. What was sought after was the so-called third road of social development on the pounds of self-managing socialism. The KPJ decided to transform itself into the SKJ (League of Communists of Yugoslavia), but in essence it neither changed its role nor organizational structure. In the mid-fifties the withering away of the state concept was launched, but the undeveloped social practice and dogmatic theoretical legacy was also accompanied by undeveloped theoretical debates about the crucial problems concerning the dying away of the state. After short-lived initial results in reducing the role and function of the state, came long periods in which the state strengthened its power. The state remained a force above the institutional forms of self-management. With the 1974 Constitution the so-called integral system of socialist self-management was octroyed In such a system, but also due to it, a deep and long lasting social crisis had flamed up. In spite of frequent changes, the political system reproduced old bureaucratic institutions which prevented deeper social changes from taking place. The domination of politics over economy did not permit work to be done on the deetatization and debureaucratization of the political system The transition to the developed model of parliamentary democracy was indispensable but it has been very dramatic.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
155035
URI
Publication date:
31.12.1991.
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