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SelfManagementintheContextoftheDisintegrationof"RealExisting"
Socialism
SelfManagementintheContextoftheDisintegrationof"RealExisting"Socialism
byMiroslavStanojevi
Source:
PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:1+2/1990,pages:90103,onwww.ceeol.com.
SELF-MANAGEMENT IN
OF THE DISINTEGRATION
"REAL-EXISTING" SOCIALISM
Miroslav Stanojevic
I. Self-Management and the Market
The project of economic self-management in Yugoslavia has failed. This is the
thesis of Prof. Dr. Josip Zupanov, a persistent advocate of the idea of self-
management and one of the most prominent representatives of Yugoslav critical
sociology in "Samoupravni socializem - konec neke utopije" (' 'Self-management
socialism - the end of a utopia").
The structure of the argument Zupanov uses to explain the failure of the
project of self-managed socialism is as follows: (1) Yugoslav society is one of
the societies of the east-European type; the latest crisis has unambiguously revealed
its' 'real-existing socialist" substance.
1
(2) The definitive attribute of any' 'real-
existing socialist" society is the essentially non-market regulation of its economic
life. (3) The development of self-management, in contrast, is feasible only in a
market economy: "real-existing socialism" is (therefore) incompatible with self-
management. (4) The key to the proofthat (the development of) self-management
in "a society of self-managed socialism" is impossible, is the thesis of the full
compatibility of self-management and the market.
Zupanov criticizes the basic attributes of self-managed socialism from the
point of view of the logic of market-regulation of social reproduction. This is the
perspective from which the economic irrationality of self-mangement socialism
is demonstrated.
Zupanov further questions the project of self-managed socialism from the point
of view of advanced (market-oriented, of course) form of self-management. He
detects inadequacies in the motivation system and in societal support for the project
of self-managed socialism.
According to Zupanov, the project of socialist self-management was bound to
fail, first, because it had been derived from an incorrect theory of social change,2
second, because it contained a series of construction defects (misplaced focus,3
inadequate regulation of interrelations between administrative and participative
structures at the level of the work organisation, inaccurate identification of the
substance of motivation for self-management), and third, because it evolved in
an inappropriate (ideological, economic, political, social and cultural) environ-
ment, so that it would probably not have succeeded even if it had been derived
from a more advanced theory of social change and been without any construction
defects.
Inadequate regulation of the interrelations between participative and administrative
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Praxis International 91
structures constitute the construction defects in the project of socialist self-
management at the level of work organisation.
4
This inadequate regulation may
be recognized in the exaggerated emphasis on participative structures and the
normative subordination of managerial functions to these structures: an enterprise
is defmed as a social group (work collective), and enterprise management is defmed
as the amateur activity of all workers (workers' assembly, workers' council). The
implications of these construction defects were far-reaching: with regard to the
primary position of the working collective and its objectives, the social functions
of the enterprise were pushed into the foreground. The amateur character of manage-
ment ensured the fulfillment of precisely these functions: the administrative structure
occupied itself with the maintenance of social peace in the work organisation and
with survival at all costs (personal incomes), while economic performance was
pushed into the background.
The consequence of inadequate regulation of the relation between participative
and administrative structures at the level of the work organisation is that conflicts
at this level have not been regulated. Whereas in the market context, conflicts
- which are (in the relationships between managers and the managed) inherent
to any industrial organisation - are regulated through the mechanisms of collective
bargaining; in the institutional system of self-management these conflicts cannot
be regulated because their subjects are normatively and organisationally undif-
ferentiated. The result of the absence of a clear distinction between the position
of the enterprise (as a market institution) and the working collective (as a social
group) is that an autonomous trade union cannot be conceived, and hence systematic
conflict regulation through a trade union is not possible; in other words, the conflicts
are shifting to other levels (structures) of the work organisation. A quite clear
outcome is the immobilisation of management and chaotisation of the enterprise.
5
The environment in which the projected system of self-managed socialism had
been installed was, according to Zupanov, extremely unfavourable for the
development of self-management. The ideological environment of self-managed
socialism never surpassed the scope of the bolshevik ideological matrix. That is
why the definitive attributes of this context were reduced to: a consistently negative
attitude toward private ownership, ambiguous conceptualizations of the market,
treating farmers as unreliable allies (latent enemies), the theory of class struggle
and (the world-historical mission ot) the working-class, dictatorship of the pro-
letariat, avant-garde (one-party system, party monopoly) and democratic centralism
in the party. According to Zupanov such (bolshevik) ideology "cannot be an
adequate framework for the advancement of self-managemeD:t and self-management
socialism. ' , 6
The economic environment of self-management was subject to changes (the central
plan model of the economic system and its abandonment), but it never achieved
the quality of an essentially market regulation of social reproduction. In other
words, self-management was installed and forced forward in an essentially non-
market context. In Zupanov's opinion, this context is entirely unsuitable for the
promotion of self-management: self-management is possible only in a market
economy. Zupanov explains the compatibility of self-management and the market
in the following way: first, the basic condition of self-management is the economic
independence of economic subjects, and this condition is "by definition" fulfilled
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92 Praxis International
only in a market system; second, a market economy alone ensures economic
efficiency - "yet if self-management economy is not efficient then self-management
has no future".
7
The political environment for the implementation of self-managed socialism was
a one-party system modelled on "the dictatorship of the proletariat". The state-
party centre, as the exclusive administrative subsystem, mediated all other executive
subsystems (economy, technology, social institutions, ideology). The only specific
Yugoslav feature was territorial decentralization of this system: several identical,
territorially separated monoparty systems were formed ... Pennanent (ideological)
features of these systems were an understanding of self-management as a form
of the dictatorship of the proletariat, democratic centralismin the party and rejection
of political pluralism. In the overall concept of self-managed socialism the obvious
starting point was the conviction that a monoparty, totalitarian or at least autocratic
political system is the only adequate framework for the advancement of self-
management. According to Zupanov, this view is unacceptable.
8
The social environment of self-management is comprised of social groups that
have "invested" their interests in this social project. The system of institutionalized
self-management in Yugoslavia relied on a political bureaucracy and the tradi-
tional working class. The self-managed project was founded on the coalition of
these two groups: the political bureaucracy - the demiurge of the Yugoslav self-
management system, its animating spirit, protector and undisputed arbiter - ensures
workers have job security, low but regular personal income and the freedom to
work poorly or be idle, while in return for this security, the physical labour force
- playing the part of a world-historical subject - renders legitimacy to the political
elite and gives it a free hand to manage society as it wishes. 9
The cultural environment, too, was unfavourable for the promotion of self-
management. Yugoslav political culture is characterized by authoritarian values
and intolerance, whereas in the complex of societal values radical egalitarism is
predominant. All this is incompatible with self-management. In view of the coalition
of physical workers with the politocratic elite, overall authoritativeness and the
"philosophy" of "uravnilovka" (wage levelling) among this category of workers
have broader implications. The mutual interdependence between the two social
groups mentioned results in a merging of the patterns of behavior and values of
physical workers with official ideology, and hence generates ideological hegemony
that enhances etatism. Zupanov stresses, however, that etatism does not favour
self-management.
Professor Zupanov unambiguously states that self-managed socialism was a
utopian project. However, he stresses that this assessment is not enough to prove
that the very idea of self-management was utopian: despite the failure of project
of self-managed socialism, self-management itself should not be rejected as well.
As a matter of fact, there exist economically efficient self-managed enterprises
in some advanced countries. Zupanov uses this as an argument in favour of his
thesis that - in spite of the failure of the Yugoslav project - self-management is
hardly irrelevant today.
Zupanov favours a reconceptualisation of self-management by which self-
management would be redefined as a system of industrial democracy. The focus
of this system would be on the self-management of autonomous working groups
Praxis International 93
(in the work process), combined with the institution of collective bargaining and
with a corresponding support of autonomous worker trade unions. Furthermore,
self-management would imply full information for workers as well as their
participation in all phases of decision making at the enterprise level, including
participation in the supervision of the implementation of business decisions and
production results.
11. Etatistic Assumptions of Self-Management?
The implication of Zupanov' s central thesis about the congruence of self-
management and the market on the one hand and his diagnosis about the essen-
tially non-market character of the Yugoslav economy on the other results in the
assessment that what we have been experiencing in Yugoslavia for the last four
decades has not been real self-management but rather some sort of surrogate
simulation of self-man3;gement.
I will try to criticize Zupanov's text by inverting his central thesis. According
to my thesis, self-management is feasible only in a non-market context. In my
opinion, this thesis, according to which the project ofself-management socialism
belongs basically to 'real-existing socialism" explains the coincidence of the
disintegration of Yugoslav self-management and the present disintegration of "real-
existing socialism"; provided this thesis stands at least by and large, that would
mean that for the last 40 years real self-management has been in existence in
Yugoslavia. The final implication of this thesis could be that self-management
reached its peak in the seventies and that more optimal conditions for its develop-
ment than those that existed then in Yugoslavia are hard to imagine.
I will try to indicate the outlines of a pattern of interpretation that may be derived
from my central thesis. I will also present some relevant empirical findings that,
in my opinion, unambiguously sustain that pattern. Finally I will confront this pattern
with the basic theses of Zupanov. As part of my task, I will basically rely on the
models of work organisations from both market and non-market contexts as
explicated by M. Burawoy and J. Lukacs. The comparison of these two models
reveals great differences in organisation and structure that are of crucial impor-
tance for confirmation of the thesis about the compatibility of self-management
and a non-market context. Let us examine those differences.
In the market context (in the sense of a predominantly market model of the
economic system as defined by Zupanov), a work organisation is the means for
the production of profit. Its regulative principle is the principle of private appropria-
tion. Thus an oriented work organisation is an enterprise. An enterprise is an
autonomous subject exposed to the competition of other similar subjects and hence
confronted with permanent uncertainty regarding the placing of its products (the
problem of demand uncertainty). This uncertainty produces a corresponding job
insecurity within the organisation. Job insecurity is a function of the purposive
rationality of the enterprise: the logic of operation on the principle of profitability
implies also business moves that in certain circumstances inevitably affect workers.
The organisational implications of all this is the unity of ownership and super-
vision,lO along with a strict centralization of decision-making. This high degree
of centralization and concentration of management and knowledge at the top of the
94 Praxis International
organisation is derived - by way of the differentiation of managerial and super-
visory functions vertically along the working body - from the technical division
of labour. Together with the technical division of labour, it provides a structural
and organisational response of (individual) capital to the pressure of competition.
In the market context, competition exerts hierarchical linking of all instances, 11
their function adjusted to the basic production goal: such a linking ensures quick
adjustments of the work process to changes imposed by competition and thus ensures
the production of a surplus. Immanent to the market model of a work organisa-
tion - to an autonomous, closed organisation- is therefore an unceasing, rational
hierarchy - a necessary form of the transition of the market constraint into the
labour process.
It is important to note here that a high autonomy of the economic subject - an
autonomy suitable to a market economy only - is in line with the continuity of
the decision-making hierarchy, frrm ties between strategic management and medium
and lower decision making agencies. With this linkage, the space for any worker
autonomy - in principle, as a model - is minimal. A high level of organisational
autonomy is a crucial detenninant ofa strict, hierarchical structure ofpower which,
in principle, does not tolerate polyarchic deviations at any of its levels.
In a non-market context (in the sense of state or para-state regulation of social
reproduction) a work organisation is a means to enhance the power of the state-
party apparatus. That apparatus tends to appropriate and redistribute social wealth.
By definition, in such a context, a work organisation is not independent. This low
level of work organisation autonomy (and a high level of openness to environmental
influences) is the key determinant of persisting polyarchic deviations in the
hierarchical structure of power of that organisation.
The organisation's openness or, in other words the fusion of its apparatus with
the apparatus of the state, involves a characteristic imbalance of power in the
organisation: the orientation of the strategic management to bargaining and negotia-
tion with various segments of the state and party has its reverse side in the power
vacuum occurring within the organisation. Organisational and supervisory aspects
of strategic management in the system are loose: the lowest decision-making
agencies are left to themselves.
Strategic management functions as a channel for environmental influence on
the organisation - it transfers the (arbitrary) demands of the environment to lower
agencies of decision-making in the organisation. This constantly produces
"bifurcations" in the line strategic - operational management, tending to deepen
and determine structural and organisational discontinuity in the organisation's
hierarchy.
As opposed to the market model of organisation that is under the constant
constraint of demand uncertainty, non-market organisation is faced with an eternal
problem of supply uncertainty. This calls for improvisation at the plant level,
constant adjustments of production' 'under way"; this is why initiative at the lowest
levels, a high autonomy of operational management is a condition without which
production could not continue at all. This initiative and autonomy of operational
management fills the power vacuum in the organisation produced by systemic distur-
bances in the focus of strategic management power.
So by absorbing strategic management, inducing' 'bifurcations" on the strategic
Praxis International 95
- operational management line and production supply uncertainty, the non-market
environment of the organisation ensures conditions for a high level of autonomy
at the lowest decision-making levels within the non-market organisation. The
combined effects of the non-market environment induce polyarchic deviations in
the structure of power of a work organisation . ..
This is not all, however: in a non-market model of a work organisation, job
security of employees is also guaranteed. This of course stabilizes the employees'
autonomy and, apart from the mentioned conditions of polyarchic deviations in
the structure of power, it closes the circle of assumptions substantiating the high
level of autonomy of the lowest decision-making levels of a work organisation
in non-market context.
It can therefore be said that a positive correlation exists between the non-market
context of a work organisation and the high decision-making autonomy of the lowest
levels of that organisation. The characteristic organisational and structural distinc-
tion between the market and non-market model ofa work organisation is the high
level ofautonomy in decision making at the lowest levels - (particularly) ofopera-
tional management - in the non-market model of a work organisation.
The classification of the basic types of factory regimes offered by Burawoy is
instructive from the point of view of the possibilities of development of industrial
democracy within the two different models of a work organisation.
12
The
criterion of his classification is the degree to which the state is "involved" in the
structure and operation of an enterprise. The institutional relationship between the
apparatuses of factory and state can be conceived either as separation or fusion. 13
These two kinds of institutional regulation of the relationship between state and
enterprise belong to different models of social reproduction: institutional separa-
tion of the apparatuses of factory and state is immanent to the market model, while
their fusion is an essential attribute of a non-market economic system.
The intervention of the state in a factory regime may be direct or indirect: the fu-
sion of factory and state apparatuses does not exclude the possibility of the indirect
intervention of state, nor does their separation exclude direct state intervention.
Burawoy's thesis is that the combination of the two types of institutionalized regulation
of the relationship between state and factory, and ofdirect and indirect state interven-
tions in factory policy, render four principal types ofJactory regime: (a) Separation
of the apparatuses of state and factory combined with indirect intervention of the state
in factory policy results in a factory regime of market despotism. In conditions of
market competition (demand uncertainty, particularly labour market constraints),
all power is in the hands of the owner/entrepreneur. (b) A combination ofinstitu-
tional separation of state and factory apparatuses with direct state intervention in the
policy of enterprises produces a hegemonic factory regime. This is an internal
organisational equivalent to a still essentially market regulation of social reproduction,
but modified to some extent by direct state intervention. Among various interventions,
state determination of minimal wages and unemployment benefits are particularly
signficant. (c) The third possibility is a combination of thefusion of state and factory
apparatuses and direct state intervention in factory policy. The implication of such
a combination is a factory regime of bureaucratic despotism. (d) The fourth option
is a combination of thefusion of state and factory apparatuses and indirect intervention
of the state in factory policy: this is the collective selfmanagement regime.
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Some of the mentioned factory regime types entirely exclude, while others imply
industrial democracy. The factory's market despotism and hegemonic regimes
correspond to an essentially market regulated model of social reproduction. Within
this model, limited fonns of industrial democracy are possible only in the hegemonic
factory regime. This type of factory regime implies an intervention of the state
in factory policy: state fixing of minimal wages and payment of unemployment
benefits undoubtedly increases the autonomy of workers and, in principle, enables
sound forms of industrial democracy. 14
The absence of such interventionism in the conditions of an institutional separation
of the apparatuses of state and factory implies the full autonomy of economic
subjects. The organisational equivalent of such autonomy is a market despotism
regime. In this kind of factory regime, industrial democracy has no chance at all.
The bureaucratic despotism and collective self-management regimes are the
internal organisational equivalents of an essentially non-market regulated model
of social reproduction (fusion of state and factory apparatuses). Their common
structural and organisational attribute is a high level of autonomy in decision making
at the lowest levels - this designation being a "reflection" of the non-market context
(decentered power of strategic management, supply uncertainty and job security).
The differences between these two types of non-market model of work organisa-
tion have their roots in the different nature of state intervention: indirect state
intervention in the case of the fusion of state and factory apparatuses results in
the growth of this autonomy, which is in any case structurally feasible in such
a context. This means that the inlplication of indirect state intervention in such
a context is the increasing autonomy at the lowest decision making levels. Indirect
state intervention in the context of thefusion of state and factory apparatuses provides
conditions in which the lowest levels of decision making within a work organisa-
tion may grow into an autonomous working collective - in a structure of power
parallel to that of the work organisation.
However, there is another prerequisite to the full development of this autonomy
within a work organisation: a fnechanisnl ofindustrial democracy. The introduction
of this mechanism into the scope of decentered power (high autonomy of working
collective/shifted focus of power of strategic management) inevitably results in
a self-managed regime - an advanced fonn of industrial democracy; the autonomous
working collective is the subject, the reproduction of its autonomy the contents
of this democracy.
Indirect state interventionism and the institutionalization ofindustrial democracy
in a non-market context produce autonomy 0..( a working collective.
This autonomy in no way implies the autonomy of the work organisation. Quite
the opposite: it is in inverse proportion to the level of autonollly of an economic
subject. An autonomous working collective is feasible only in a non-autonomous
work organisation; a working collective of an autonomous econofnic subject is
non-autonomous.
Using the above systematization of the assumptions of self-management, we can
identify some kind of ttontological propensity" toward self-management that exists
only in a non-market work organisation: an organisational and structural discon-
tinuity - a polyarchic deviation in the structure of power (autonomy at the lowest
levels). The self-management option within this organisation is thus made realistic
Praxis International
97
- it actually enables a relatively simple transformation of its internal structure into
advanced forms of industrial democracy.
This means that non-autonomous, non-market organisations open to their
environment are (at least potentially) more democratic, i.e. in principle more in
favour of self-management than autonomous, market organisations closed toward
their environment. These correlations were fully confirmed by empirical surveys
of industrial democracy (and of the process of decision making in industrial organisa-
tions), conducted in the seventies in Yugoslavia and in several west-European
countries. 15 According to these research findings, the level of industrial
democracy depends on (a) the openness of work organisations toward their
environment and Cb) on the basic features of this institutional and socio-political
environment. It hs been demonstrated unambiguously that a lower autonomy of
work organisations, i.e. their higher openness toward (the influence of) the
environment, coincides with a higher stage of industrial democracy.
Within a general pattern of hierarchical distribution of power in any industrial
organisation, these surveys register characteristic deviations in the amount of power
held by diverse social groups within these organisations, as well as deviations in
the intensity of participation in decision-making of those diverse social groups.
In the case of more open organisations, signs of polyarchic deviations in the distribu-
tion of power were detected; this resulted in a higher total amount of participation
in decision making in those (more open) organisations ... What is of most interest
to us here is that Yugoslav work organisations "on average" are more open than
comparable organisations in the West: the findings revealed a higher level of
democracy in Yugoslav work organisations.
A specific feature of the decision-making process in Yugoslav work organisa-
tions is/was the distribution of different phases of the decision-making process to
various social groups. The most characteristic difference was observed in the third,
decisive entrepreneurial phase of decision making (in the phase of selection and
confirmation of one of the offered alternatives). In western companies this phase
involves the highest participation of strategic management, whereas in Yugoslav
organisations, the participation of self-management bodies in this phase is very
high. 16
In addition to all this it is necessary to say that analyses of various interlinking
dimensions of participation in decision making have revealed the formation of a
kind of specific coalition block within Yugoslav work organisations. This coalition
block consists of workers, low management (operational management) and workers'
representative bodies (self-management organs).
Empirical investigations, therefore, convincingly demonstrated that Yugoslav
work organisations of the seventies were more democratic than (comparable)
organisations in the West, that through self-management bodies, the workers were
involved particularly in the decisive, strategic, entrepreneurial phase of the process
of decision making, and that the social carriers of self-management were opera-
tional management and workers. These facts testify to an advanced form of industrial
democracy that existed in Yugoslav work organisation of the seventies. There exists
no (rational) reason why this higher stage of industrial democracy could not be
called self-management.
98 Praxis International
Ill. Critique
According to Zupanov's central thesis, self-management can prosper only in
a market economy: the basic condition of self-management is the independence
of economic subjects, and this condition is ensured only in a market system.
In consideration of Burawoy's typology of factory regimes, self-management,
or any other form of industrial democracy, has no chance at all in a "pure" market
model: the basic condition of self-management is not economic independence but
- on the contrary - the dependence of work organizations; the level of democracy
in a work organisation is in proportion to the level ofits openness (non-autonomy).
In this point theoretical findings and empirical research results are indeed
unambiguous.
State interventions into the market model indeed produce "contextual supports"
which, in principle, may bring about a certain level of industrial democracy even
in a market context. This level encompasses also a system of industrial democracy
whose point of gravity would lie in working groups (in the context of the every-
day production process) and would involve the participation of workers in all phases
of decision making at the enterprise level and the functioning of autonomous
workers' trade unions (a reconceptualization suggested by Zupanov). Self-
management, understood in this way, can exist in a modified market context.
The problem with self-management is, however, that it implies a higher, advanced
form of industrial democracy, expressed as - in terms of the market - the intolerable
autonomy of the working collective and its high participation in decision-making
(entrepreneurial decision-making in particular). Such a higher form of industrial
democracy is possible only in a non-market context.
The key determinant of a society of the east-European type is exactly this context.
An advanced form of industrial democracy is therefore feasible solely in a society
of that type. Socialist self-management is a terminological combination through
which the inseparability of those higher forms of industrial democracy and of that
(east-European) type of society are precisely expressed. Self-management is,
therefore, comprehended as industrial democracy in "real socialism": as a certain
level of industrial democracy, which, in principle, is not achievable in a market
economy.
Viewed from this vantage point, Zupanov's assessment of a significant
divergence between an autocratic political system and self-management is prob-
lematic. Creators of the self-management system departed from the hypothesis
that self-management can evolve in such a political system: this hypothesis was
in no way mistaken. The non-market regulation of social reproduction simply implies
a non-distinction between state and society, the fusion of state and factory
apparatuses. An inevitable implication of such a non-market regulated mode of
social reproduction is the aggregation of power in the' 'administrative subsystem":
the "crystallization" of oligarchic macro-power. Such concentration of social power
in one point of the social system cannot avoid being institutionalized as (in the
most modest variant) an autocratic political system. Monopartism is just one of
the easily recognizable signs of that system.
An autocratic political system is in full accordance with non-market regulated
social reproduction. Since a non-market economy is a postulate ofselfmanagement,
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99
selfmanagement is in full accordance with an autocratic political system. Non-
market regulated social reproduction and its organisational and political explication,
an autocratic political system, is matched by ambiguous doctrinaire understanding
of a market economy, the principled rejection of private ownership, the theory
of a world-historical mission of the working class, the derived dictatorship of the
proletariat, the theory of the avantgarde (one-party system, party monopoly) and
democratic centralism in the party. This is the cycle of bolshevik ideology that
has not (yet) been pierced in Yugoslavia. According to Zupanov, this ideology
is an entirely inadequate framework for the promotion of "self-management and
self-n1anagement socialism".
Our approach shows that key elements of this ideology are in correspondence
with an autocratic political system which is in full accordance with non-market
regulated social reproduction. As we have found out, non-market regulated social
reproduction is an essential presumption of self-management. The only possible
conclusion is that bolshevik ideology is adequate frame for development of "self-
management and self-managed socialism".
Authoritarianism and intolerance are essential features of the Yugoslav political
culture. According to Zupanov, such a culture is unfavourable for the develop-
ment of self-management. If to this we add radical egalitarism (dominant in the
complex of societal values), then self-management in Yugoslavia - owing also
to its cultural context - had no particularly good chances to succeed.
Authoritarianism and intolerance probably have a negative, blocking effect on the
solidarity and horizontal cooperation at the level of working groups in work
organisations. Research has actually confirmed that at this micro-level, the partici-
pation of workers in Yugoslav work organisations is in many cases lower than the
participation at the same level in comparable west-European work organisations. 17
In spite ofthese facts, polyarchic deviations in the structure of power and a higher
intensity in worker participation in decision making can be found in Yugoslav work
organisations than exists in western systems of industrial democracy. This can
mean only that a self-management association - an autonomous working collective
- in a Yugoslav work organisation is structured on an authoritarian pattern; that
according to this matrix coalition blocks of operational management and physical
workers are being formed. These coalitions formulate their interests within the
coordinates of radical egalitarism: a self-management association or autonomous
working collective is a group, structured in an authoritarian way and supplementing
worker representative bodies. By means of the mechanism of self-management
decision making, it endeavours to implant its objectives into the work organisa-
tion's goals. With regard to the fact that the phase most accessible to this group
is "the selection of alternatives", it endeavours to build such (in fact the most
indicative) demands into this - by definition - entrepreneurial decision. The
consequence is the blocking and suppression of professional management, amateur-
isation of decision making in the enterprise and chaotisation of the organisation.
We can conclude that authoritarianism and "uravnilovka" are not at all in opposition
to the autonomy of a working collective and that they do not block the participa-
tion of workers in decision making: an authoritarian culture, intolerance and radical
egalitarisln do not, therefore, mitigate against self-management.
Coalitions that are formed at the lowest levels of decision making in work
100 Praxis International
organisations, coalitions that are made structurally possible through the higher
autonomy of these lowest levels of decision making in work organisations in a
non-market context - according to the logic of the (technical) division of labour
- are dominated by operational management (plant managers, technicians and
experienced workers). The articulation of these coalitions' interests is the actual
substance of the process of self-management. The true, direct subject of self-
management is the coalition block of physical workers and operational management.
That is the traditional working class, one of the two key components of the
(unfavourable) social environment of self-management that Zupanov is writing
about. The second crucial support of the system of self-management in Yugoslavia
is (was) the political bureaucracy.
The great coalition between the working class and political bureaucracy - as
stressed by Zupanov - is inherent to all societies of "real-existing socialism".
It is the social base of etatism, or else it is the key anti-reformist force in those
societies. In that great coalition, the political elite accepts the philosophy of
uravnilovka generated in the "basement", while the "basement" , on the other
hand, takes over elements of the official ideology. The consequence afthat signifi-
cant interdependence is the strengthening of etatism. Etatism, however - as
Zupanov points out - does not encourage self-management. 18
This conclusion is debatable: self-management association is a mode of existence
of the coalition block of physical workers and operational management - self-
management is an instrument of that block. Concurrently, the political bureaucracy,
the author of self-management project, functions pennanently as its animating spirit,
protector and arbiter: self-management, obviously, is of vital importance to the
political bureaucracy.
The result of the mechanism of industrial democracy, installed in the structure
of the Yugoslav work organisation - as it was shaped by way of classic non-market,
state-party regulated social reproduction - was worker self-managelnent: an initial,
rapidly achieved, relatively high autonomy of a working collective within a non-
autonomous work organisation.
This initial strengthening of the autonomy of the lowest levels of decision making
did not basically jeopardize the position of the director: even in those circumstances
the director's commitment to higher agencies was expressed as undisputed authority
- as a channel to import power into the organisation - that secured order appropriate
to a (factory) regime of bureaucratic despotism.
However, the moment when obvious deregulations - explained by the need "to
respect market laws more" - dissipated the director's everyday, most immediate
dependence on the superior state organ, the source of power of bureaucratic
despotism withered away: the working collective's autonomy could increase
radically.
It happened that a work organisation whose director ought' 'in times past" have
gone to some central-planning agency in order "to coordinate matters", and the
work organisation to which he returned after the dissolution of the entire mechanism
of central-planning coordination, was no longer the same: a powerful self-managing
working collective now existed in this work organisation.
This autonomous working collective was (institutionally) defined as an autono-
mous work organisation. A working collective, however, is not the same as a work
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organisation. An autonomous working collective in particular - both in terms of
history and logic - has nothing in common with an autonomous work organisation.
It is understandable that the most an autonomous working collective - a collective
assigned part of the work organisation - was able to do was simulate the autonomy
of an economic subject. Self-managers acted as if they were good managers.
This new' 'collective entrepreneur" was directly determining the field of action
of strategic management and, in general, the limits of autonomy of a work organisa-
tion. As opposed to the rigid system of command economy, this time the autonomy
of the work organisation was limited from below, not just by the activity of the
cells of party and trade-union organisations but considerably also by the self-
management will of the working collective. Self-management was functioning as
a control of the low autonomy of the work organisation: it reproduced a non-
autonomous work organisation. The real result ofthe (process of) self-management
reproduction ofhigh autonomy of working collectives was to keep the autonomy
of the work organisation low. 19
Being successful in blocking any perceptible increase in the autonomy of the
work organisation, self-management actually reproduced the need for non-market
regulation of social reproduction: at the micro level - in the capillary segment
of the overall system of social power - it produced the bases for oligarchic macro
power. Rendering political support in exchange for job security and "the right
to idle" - this is the most general pattern of interest coalition between the tradi-
tional working class and the political bureaucracy; it works in all countries of "real
socialism". In the case of self-management socialism, however, the matter is slightly
deeper: self-managemnent facilitates oligarchic macro power. The self-management
that we are talking about is the ultimate consequence of etatism: the very mechanism
of the latter's induction. In this sense it is also a vital mechanism of the anti-reformist
coalition. Of all the countries of "real existing socialism", only the anti-reformist
forces in Yugoslavia have this mechanism at their disposal.
The conclusion is indisputable: self-management goes with a non-market context.
Self-management socialism is the most advanced fonn of "real existing-socialism" .
This is why in the Yugoslav case the way out of it is so difficult.
NOTES
1. J. Zupanov, "Samoupravni socializem - konec nekeutopije", Studijski dnev 1989 -
Socializem in demokracija (Ljubljana: FSPN), p. 83.
2. According to the theory of social change from which the project of socialist self-management
in Yugoslavia was derived, change is conceptualized as discontinuity, a clean break, introduced
into society "from above"; the motive power and regulator of the change is the revolutionary
vanguard. According to this theory, the projected changes are imposed by new institutions, and
these new institutions are defined by legal norms: the setting of legal nonns is the main mechanism
of social change. A great social change is first projected and then carried out. Zupanov sketches
two basic courses for the criticism of this theory: historical sociological criticism would show un-
ambiguously that no big change in human history has followed the scheme' 'project: realization",
while sociological criticism from the point of view of law would point to the departure from the
basic functions of legal norms: legalization, systematization and sanctioning of the existing societal
state of affairs. Future conditions and relationships cannot be the object, and the creation of social
relations is not the function of the setting of legal norms. See: Zupanov, "Samoupravni
socializem," pp. 94-5.
102
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3. In the project of self-managed socialism, the crucial point of self-management was moved
to the mezzo (work organisation) and macro level (global society). The problem, however, is that
the best information (about production and business process) and the highest motivation for partici-
pation in the self-management process are at the micro level of a work organisation, in the working
group. Workers can influence global social processes only as citizens (by way of a democratic political
system) and as members of a trade union: self-management outside (and beyond) autonomous working
groups is pure utopia. Zupanov, "Samoupravni socializem," p. 97.
4. Zupanov already formulated this interpretation matrix in the sixties, most clearly in his work
Samoupravljanje i drustvena moc (Self-management and social power) of 1969. According to this
conceptualization, a work organisation is a combination of 'a relatively fixed work systenl and a
relatively spontaneous social system. " Zupanov, (Samoupravljanje i drustvena moc (Zagreb:
Globus, 1985). Based on this distinction, the theory of "self-management organisation" atten1pted
to identify the factors of democratization, Le. the changes in the oligarchic structure of power of
industrial organisations that would increase (or at least that would not considerably decrease) the
performance of this organisation. In this perspective, the central problem is to find the optimal
relationship between rational organisation of the work system and spontaneity of the social systeln
within a work organisation. Rational organisation of the work system is denoted by the tenns structure,
hierarchy and enterprise, spontaneity of the social system by the term (working) collective. Partici-
pation of workers in the decision-making process rests on the spontaneity of the social system; in
other words, it is directed toward the interests of the (working) collective. A working collective
denoted by high participation - a collective reproduced by way of advanced worker participation
in the decision-making process - is a highly autonomous self-management \!vorking collective or
selfmanagement association. A developed form of the interpretation matrix just described is
formulated in terms of a dual organisational design: participative (self-management collective) and
hierarchical structure (enterprise). Yugoslav sociologists widely accept it as a proper "sumnlary"
of the defining features of a Yugoslav work organisation. See Zupanov, Marginalije odru.hvenoj
krizi (Zagreb: Globus, 1983), p. 1.
5. V. Rus and F. Admam, No'/:: in nemo'/:: samoupravljonja (Ljubljana: 1986). p. 227.
6. Zupanov, "Samoupravni socializem", p. 103.
7. Zupanov, "Samoupravni socializem", p. 103-4.
8. Zupanov, "Samoupravni socializem", p. 105.
9. Zupanov, "Samoupravni socializem", p. 106.
10. The concentration of these functions in the hands of one agent - as has been confirn1ed by
history - is in no way a necessary presumption for the preservation of unity.
11. The classic formulation of this interdependence is " ... in a society of capitalist rllode of
production the anarchy of the social division of labour and the despotisn1 of the division
of labour depend on each other" (Marx, K., Kapital I, 1947). This is the point of departure fro111
which Braverman attempts to develop terminological definitions of a production process that would
be totally congruent with the results of the development of monopoly capitalisn1. Bravern1an sees
these additional definitions of capitalist production process in the systematic subdivision of work
and in the concentration of knowledge of the labour process as the exclusive preserve of n1anage-
ment (Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital (NY: 1974) p. 119). He places this structure of
the labour process in a context of political economy categories: in this context he sees this structure
as a reflection, or materialization, of market constraints in the production process. It is, sinlply,
an internal, structural and organisational equivalent of generalized commodity production. It seems
that most of Braverman's critics failed to consider this level of his analysis. A good overview of
discussion results, initiatived by Braverman, can be found in the study The Nature by
Thompson (London: 1989).
12. M. Burawoy, The Politics of Production (London: 1985).
13. Burawoy defines political and ideological apparatuses of production as the key non-econon1ic
moments of the production process regulating relations in production. These apparatuses vary
analytically - and are (even) independent - from the working process; they are connected with the
apparatus of state. Ideological and political apparatuses of production, in addition to the ideological
and political effects of the (organisation of the) work process, determine the field of articulation
of interests of various social groups in production - factory (or production) reginlcs. See Burowoy,
The Politics of Production (London: 1985), pp. 7-8, 87.
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14. The mode of the reproduction of labour force, most closely connected with the charcter of
state intervention, is defined by Buraway as one of the key (apart from the work process, relations
between enterprises and their attitude toward the state) determinants of factory regimes. All forms
of despotic production policies rely on the exclusive dependence of the reproduction of worker's
life on his participation in production. The entire pattern changes radically from the point in which
the state interferes with the process of manpower reproduction: due to the development of a system
of social insurance and labour legislation, the labour force no longer depends directly on participation
in the production process. State guaranty of a certain level of labour force reproduction substantiates
a formerly inconceivable level of labour force autonomy. See: Burawoy, The Politics ofProduction,
pp. 125-6.
15. V. Rus, Odlocanje in moc (Maribar: 1986), p. 147.
16. In one of the surveys mentioned, Rus divided the process of decision making into the following
phases: defining of goals, (expert) formulation of options, selection of available options and carrying
out of the decision. Due to the allocation of particular phases to various social groups in the case
of decision making in Yugoslav work organisations, the possibility of (the emergence ot) irrespons-
ible domination is great. Strategic management in Yugoslav work organisation is - otherwise - more
present in the first and fourth than in the third, most entrepreneurial, phase of decision making.
See V. Rus, Odlocanje in moc (Maribar: 1986), p. 147.
17. For this reason, in the conclusion of one of the investigations mentioned, Rus stresses that
the development of this direct participation - participation at the level of the everyday production
process - is "the key to further development of self-management in Yugoslav enterprises". See
Rus, Odlocanje in moc, pp. 100-1.
18. Zupanov, "Samoupravni socializem", p. 108.
19. One of the most important - rarely thematized, almost unperceived - "by-products" of this
process has also been the radical emancipation, increase of autonomy, of the political bureaucracy:
its withdrawal into the leisure of provisional long-term planning of "the transition period" .