Titoism

[Narodnik]

AFAIK, Titoism is for:

- a single-party system, but not totalitarian (civil liberties allowed)

- a nationalized economy with a market for goods (but not labor or means of production)

- economy managed by a co-determination (of workers' councils and party/state bureaucracy)

- international decentralism (oppossing blocks that have a central power)


Did I make some mistake, and did I miss anything?

What do you think about Titoism?

Also, are there any Titoist organistions?

[subcp]

Good article on the political and economic reality in fYugoslavia:

http://www.libcom.org/library/class-yugoslavia-aufheben-2

I don't see how there would be a "Titoism", since it was a series of practical applications of a very specific state model in the context of an extinct imperialist bloc division of the world.

[Questionable]

If I'm not mistaken one of the reasons Yugoslavia collapsed was because they accrued an incredible amount of debt from the NATO countries.

Doesn't sound very impressive for a socialist nation, IMO.

[Comrade Alex]

Titoism was great no doubt but it only worked when tito was around after his death is when the debt came nationalism arose and Yugoslavia inevitably collapsed
I think it was a very good idea and an almost ideal form of socialism

[DarkPast]

Ok, first of all "Titoism" was a pejorative coined in Moscow, much like "Trotskyism" (though this still doesn't stop the MLs whining when someone calls them "Stalinists"). Tito himself, I feel, did not have any strong desire to break with the ML line; the break with Stalin was of a political nature, not an economic one. Still, he later felt the need to justify the break on an ideological level, and thus began to implement the measures suggested by some of his theorists.

Generally speaking, the pillars of Titoism were the idea of worker's self-management, non-alignment and the right of each country to pursue its own road to socialism, Leninist-style vanguardism, and "Yugoslav socialist patriotism" (the latter two characteristics were common to all East Bloc countries). From the mid 50-ies the country became a strong supporter of the UN.

Tito's announcement of the introduction of worker's self-management: http://marxists.org/archive/tito/1950/06/26.htm

Milovan Đilas was literally the most influential theorist in the early years of Yugoslavia and advocated the worker's self-management system Yugoslavia became famous for. He later became bitterly disappointed with the Yugoslav Communist Party and demanded the formation of a second one, which was to be called the Democratic Socialist Party. His idea was immediately rejected by the Party leadership and he was told to back down, but he refused and was kicked out and later arrested. He spent the rest of his days writing criticism on the Yugoslav state, but generally didn't slander it; he accurately predicted its breakup would be bloody and result in something even worse.

The other important theorist, one who remained in favour with Tito until his death, was Edvard Kardelj. His works would offer one the official line on the economic policies of Yugoslavia. He was the editor of Yugoslavia's had it's official journal, available in English under the title Socialist Thought and Practice.

Branko Horvat was a market socialist theorist of the younger generation. His works are worth checking out for those interested in market socialism.

The book Ours to Master and to Own: Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present (by Immanuel Ness and Dario Azzellini) offers some great insight into the ideas and problems of the Yugoslav economic system.

An interesting critique of the system by Ernest Mandel: http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1967/04/yugotheory.html

Critique by Ted Grant: http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1966/07/yugoslavia.htm

Smallish archive of texts on Yugoslavia: http://marxists.org/subject/yugoslavia/index.htm

Finally, I think I should mention there were various socialist groups in Yugoslavia that did not tow the party line. One was called the Praxis group, and was active during the 70ies before the state clamped down on it.

I'll try to find more works at a later date (particularly if any of Horvat's works can be found in English online).

[Ismail]

I wrote at length about Titoism in this topic: http://www.revleft.com/vb/titoism-and-yugoslavia-t178789/index.html?t=178789


Ok, first of all "Titoism" was a pejorative coined in Moscow, much like "Trotskyism" (though this still doesn't stop the MLs whining when someone calls them "Stalinists").Because "Stalinist" is almost always used as a pejorative hurled by Trotskyists, revisionists, liberals, etc. who more often than not praise Titoism.


Generally speaking, the pillars of Titoism were the idea of worker's self-management, non-alignment and the right of each country to pursue its own road to socialism, Leninist-style vanguardism, and "Yugoslav socialist patriotism" (the latter two characteristics were common to all East Bloc countries). From the mid 50-ies the country became a strong supporter of the UN.Here's the problem: you're declaring the stated goals of the Yugoslav state, goals which sound all nice and socialist-y by themselves. After all, who can oppose "worker's self-management," "non-alignment" and "the right of each country to pursue its own road to socialism"? Shall the masses of the world be condemned to worker's non-self-management, total dependence on larger powers, and carbon-copies of foreign socialist roads?

Except this was all demagogy. "Non-alignment" meant that Yugoslavia could do as it pleased for its own geopolitical gain: praise the division of Germany by the West and the American line on the Korean War, uphold Nasser and Indira Gandhi as "socialists," maintain fraternal ties with Swedish and British social-democrats, praise Brezhnev as a fellow comrade, recognize Pol Pot's government in exile at the UN alongside other Western countries, etc. All while being clearly indebted to Western imperialism and exporting much of its labor force overseas to prevent an economic crisis at home. Yugoslavia used "non-alignment" the same way bourgeois nationalists like his friend Nehru used it: against communism.

After Stalin died and the Soviet revisionists rehabilitated Tito's name, the Yugoslavs pretty much made nice with them afterwards. The only tensions arise when leaderships to the right of Soviet revisionism (Gomułka in Poland, Ceaușescu in Romania, Nagy in Hungary, Dubček in Czechoslovakia) sought "national roads to socialism" as the Titoites did, and looked to Yugoslavia and the West, which conflicted with the interests of emerging Soviet social-imperialism.

The experience of Yugoslav-style "workers' self-management" was studied in China under Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping and emulated to varying extents by various bourgeois nationalist regimes (Ben Bella in Algeria for instance.) It basically taught workers how to be "responsible" capitalists.

As for Tito's lackeys, both Đilas and Ranković were criticized as dubious Marxists by Stalin; by the 60's the Yugoslav state was obliged to remove Ranković due to his ambitions to usurp Tito's power and his terrorist policy against the Kosovar Albanians, while Đilas eventually ended up being an anti-communist. The Praxis group and others delved deeply into Marxist theory in order to justify policies to the right of those of the Yugoslav state, just as Polish, Czechoslovak, and other countries' intellectuals attempted (for example Kołakowski who, like Đilas, became an anti-communist.)

[Tim Cornelis]

Because "Stalinist" is almost always used as a pejorative hurled by Trotskyists, revisionists, liberals, etc. who more often than not praise Titoism.

It is ridiculous to assert that left communists, anarchists, and Trotskyists praise Titoism, just to rationalise objecting to the use of "Stalinism".

[Ismail]

It is ridiculous to assert that left communists, anarchists, and Trotskyists praise Titoism, just to rationalise objecting to the use of "Stalinism".I've seen plenty of Trots and anarchists on RevLeft praise Titoite "workers' self-management" or at least Tito's "revolt against Stalinism." And let us not forget many Trots originally considered Tito an "unconscious Trotskyist." Trotsky's wife, a "third campist," declared in her resignation (http://www.marxists.org/archive/sedova-natalia/1951/05/09.htm) from the Fourth International that:

All the sympathy and support of revolutionists and even of all democrats, should go to the Yugoslav people in their determined resistance to the efforts of Moscow to reduce them and their country to vassalage. Every advantage should be taken of the concessions which the Yugoslav regime now finds itself obliged to make to the people. But your entire press is now devoted to an inexcusable idealization of the Titoist bureaucracy for which no ground exists in the traditions and principles of our movement.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Moved to Learning

[Brutus]

Oh wow! Someone claiming to be a communist is anti stalin! Must be a closet trot!
Titoism was proved to be a failure after its namesake died. It also condoned Yugoslav nationalism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Because "Stalinist" is almost always used as a pejorative hurled by Trotskyists, revisionists, liberals, etc. who more often than not praise Titoism.

Certain Trotskyist groups have an alarming tendency to attach themselves to socialists and "socialists" that are opposed to "Stalinism", but I think the claim that Trotskyists support Tito "more often than not" is not entirely fair (though it is not entirely baseless either); in fact, I am not aware of any major Bolshevik-Leninist group that, at present, supports Titoism.

It goes without saying that actual Trotskyists were persecuted by the Tito regime, just as consistent Marxists-Leninist were.


Here's the problem: you're declaring the stated goals of the Yugoslav state, goals which sound all nice and socialist-y by themselves. After all, who can oppose "worker's self-management," "non-alignment" and "the right of each country to pursue its own road to socialism"?

I suppose I can; "workers' self-management" refers almost exclusively to semi-market arrangements in which particular groups of workers are allowed to act as capitalist enterprises. This is, at best, an inferior form of social ownership, but the pious apostles of autogestion usually present it as the more "democratic" alternative to ownership by the entire working people organised through the proletarian state.


The experience of Yugoslav-style "workers' self-management" was studied in China under Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping and emulated to varying extents by various bourgeois nationalist regimes (Ben Bella in Algeria for instance.) It basically taught workers how to be "responsible" capitalists.

Sometimes, not even that. In many cases, the chairmen of the various "self-management" bodies in Yugoslavia were the old owners, and they exercised de facto dictatorial authority over other members. Their authority was also bolstered by the police apparatus; it wasn't unheard of people to be killed by State Security for exposing graft and corruption. After further market reforms, foreign capital could own up to one half (minus something symbolic) of stocks in Yugoslav enterprises.


It is ridiculous to assert that left communists, anarchists, and Trotskyists praise Titoism, just to rationalise objecting to the use of "Stalinism".

The rationale for objecting to that term is that (1) only an extreme minority of Marxists-Leninists uses it, and (2) it has become a slur. In fact, it might be the slur on the revolutionary left, unlike "Trotskyist", which has mostly been reclaimed by us Bolsheviks-Leninists.


Milovan Đilas was literally the most influential theorist in the early years of Yugoslavia and advocated the worker's self-management system Yugoslavia became famous for. He later became bitterly disappointed with the Yugoslav Communist Party and demanded the formation of a second one, which was to be called the Democratic Socialist Party. His idea was immediately rejected by the Party leadership and he was told to back down, but he refused and was kicked out and later arrested. He spent the rest of his days writing criticism on the Yugoslav state, but generally didn't slander it; he accurately predicted its breakup would be bloody and result in something even worse.

Đilas is also somewhat famous as an author of a book of, ostensibly, recollections about Stalin, which manages to contradict everything that can be gleaned about the man from other sources.


AFAIK, Titoism is for:

- a single-party system, but not totalitarian (civil liberties allowed)

"Totalitarianism" is an entirely ridiculous term; what was part of Gentile's doomed attempts to give fascism a coherent ideology was revived by cold warriors in order to claim that the fascist states they backed were merely "authoritarian" while those damn commies were "totalitarian". In theory, "totalitarian" states controlled every aspect of their citizens' lives - which is ridiculous. And, of course, the reactionary dictatorships supported by the likes of Kirkpatrick and her masters controlled the lives of their citizens to a far greater degree than those evil Stalinists.

Yugoslavia was as "totalitarian" as the other glacis states if not more; political opponents of the Tito regime were still persecuted, whether they were Trotskyists or "Stalinists", the regime enforced a particularly backward social policy, the rights of certain national groups (particularly Albanians, but also Serbs in Croatia for example) were trampled and so on.


Also, are there any Titoist organistions?

The Socialist Labour Party (SRP) and the Communist Party of Croatia (KPH) come to mind. The latter is probably dead, though; I haven't really heard anything about them.

I am not aware of any Titoist organisations outside Yugoslavia, though as I understand it, the Carlist princes in Spain found the theory charming. Sapienti sat.

[Brutus]

The book that comrade Semendyaev is referring to is this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0156225913

[DarkPast]

Because "Stalinist" is almost always used as a pejorative hurled by Trotskyists, revisionists, liberals, etc. who more often than not praise Titoism.

lol no. Stalinist is a term used by just about everyone except the MLs themselves, and the assertion that using the term means support of Titoism is laughable.


Here's the problem: you're declaring the stated goals of the Yugoslav state, goals which sound all nice and socialist-y by themselves. After all, who can oppose "worker's self-management," "non-alignment" and "the right of each country to pursue its own road to socialism"? Shall the masses of the world be condemned to worker's non-self-management, total dependence on larger powers, and carbon-copies of foreign socialist roads?

Blah blah blah - had you bothered to read my post rather than just hold your Stalinist sermon, you could have inferred from the links I posted above that I am far from uncritical about the system - indeed, it failed on so many levels, just like the other states in the East Bloc. The ruins of all the East European "socialist" regimes are testament enough to that.


Except this was all demagogy. "Non-alignment" meant that Yugoslavia could do as it pleased for its own geopolitical gain: praise the division of Germany by the West and the American line on the Korean War, uphold Nasser and Indira Gandhi as "socialists," maintain fraternal ties with Swedish and British social-democrats, praise Brezhnev as a fellow comrade, recognize Pol Pot's government in exile at the UN alongside other Western countries, etc. All while being clearly indebted to Western imperialism and exporting much of its labor force overseas to prevent an economic crisis at home. Yugoslavia used "non-alignment" the same way bourgeois nationalists like his friend Nehru used it: against communism.


Again, this no different from the policies of the USSR practiced almost since its beginning: taking loans from Swiss banks, forced Russification in the Baltics, trading agreements with Nazi Germany, leaving the Turkish communists to be massacred by the Turkish government, helping Chang-Kai shek, banning strikes, killing off communists more efficiently than any bourgeois state - and I haven't even gone beyond 1953.


After Stalin died and the Soviet revisionists rehabilitated Tito's name, the Yugoslavs pretty much made nice with them afterwards. The only tensions arise when leaderships to the right of Soviet revisionism (Gomułka in Poland, Ceaușescu in Romania, Nagy in Hungary, Dubček in Czechoslovakia) sought "national roads to socialism" as the Titoites did, and looked to Yugoslavia and the West, which conflicted with the interests of emerging Soviet social-imperialism.

Wrong. There was a very real fear of Soivet intervention during Brezhnev's time. Tvrtko Javkovina's book on Yugoslavia in the Cold War has some info on this, but I don't think it has been translated into english.


As for Tito's lackeys, both Đilas and Ranković were criticized as dubious Marxists by Stalin;

Indeed - Leninists do tend to be dubious Marxists. As an aside, one of Đilas's works - I forget which - does mention that Stalin didn't trust Hoxha either, due to his petit-bourgeois intelligentsia background.

All that said, Stalin was suspicious of just about everyone, so that doesn't mean much.


while Đilas eventually ended up being an anti-communist.

Considering his experience with "communists", I don't blame him. That said, he identified himself as a democratic socialist.


Certain Trotskyist groups have an alarming tendency to attach themselves to socialists and "socialists" that are opposed to "Stalinism", but I think the claim that Trotskyists support Tito "more often than not" is not entirely fair (though it is not entirely baseless either); in fact, I am not aware of any major Bolshevik-Leninist group that, at present, supports Titoism.

Dude, Ismail is doing the typical Stalinist act of associating opposing tendencies into some kind of vast anti-communist conspiracy. Just like the Great Purge linked the Old Bolsheviks with fascism.

As for Trotskyists in Yugoslavia, I'm still unconvinced that there ever were more than a few of them. The term was used as a generic slur against communists who didn't tow the party line - just like in the USSR.


Đilas is also somewhat famous as an author of a book of, ostensibly, recollections about Stalin, which manages to contradict everything that can be gleaned about the man from other sources.

Why do you think so? I've read Đilas's biography of Tito and found it surprisngly even-handed - especially considering that regime treated him harshly, to say the least. Nonetheless, whatever you think of Đilas, I think the recollections are worth reading - they are, after all, a first-hand account.


enforced a particularly backward social policy,

I agree, though from what I gather, it was no different than the East Bloc countries.


the rights of certain national groups (particularly Albanians, but also Serbs in Croatia for example) were trampled and so on.

Albanians - yes (and let's not forget the Romani), but Serbs in Croatia? They were significantly over-represented in the Party, army and police.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

As for Trotskyists in Yugoslavia, I'm still unconvinced that there ever were more than a few of them. The term was used as a generic slur against communists who didn't tow the party line - just like in the USSR.

Fair enough; but even the most innocuous study circles focusing on Trotsky were suppressed by the police apparatus.


Why do you think so? I've read Đilas's biography of Tito and found it surprisngly even-handed - especially considering that regime treated him harshly, to say the least. Nonetheless, whatever you think of Đilas, I think the recollections are worth reading - they are, after all, a first-hand account.

Well, consider the statement you yourself mention - that Stalin did not trust Hoxha because of his intelligentsia background. But Lenin and Ordzhonikidze were also members of the intelligentsia before becoming professional revolutionaries, and Malenkov, for example, was from a quite wealthy petite-bourgeois family.


I agree, though from what I gather, it was no different than the East Bloc countries.

That depends on the country; social policy in Democratic Germany was consistently more progressive than that in Yugoslavia for example.


Albanians - yes (and let's not forget the Romani), but Serbs in Croatia? They were significantly over-represented in the Party, army and police.

I am not sure if that was the case, to be honest, it seems to have become a part of "common knowledge", but I have never seen concrete statistical data to back it up. But Serbs in Croatia were never given a chance at autonomy or independence, in gross violation of Leninist principles. Perhaps independence for the Serb territories would have been the best solution, in fact.

[Ismail]

Blah blah blah - had you bothered to read my post rather than just hold your Stalinist sermon, you could have inferred from the links I posted above that I am far from uncritical about the systemThen don't parrot Titoite slogans. It's not like someone begins analyzing the USSR under the Soviet revisionists and says, "They stood for the construction of communism, proletarian internationalism, solidarity with the international anti-imperialist and working-class movements, strengthening of the world socialist system..."


Again, this no different from the policies of the USSR practiced almost since its beginning: taking loans from Swiss banks,I like how you compare the USSR of Lenin and Stalin taking loans and trading with capitalist states to Yugoslavia joining the IMF, accruing billions in foreign debts, exporting Yugoslav labor abroad, being dictated to by international capital to "liberalize" its economy, etc. Let us not forget that Yugoslavia had to recourse to austerity measures as part of its complete integration into the world capitalist system.


forced Russification in the Baltics,If you're trying to draw comparisons to Kosovo you're failing quite badly. A great many Kosovar Albanians were classed as "Turks" and deported from their homeland to Turkey. Kosovo was the poorest region in Yugoslavia. The Baltics became the richest region in the USSR and their culture was preserved, there was no "Russification."


trading agreements with Nazi Germany,See above. No one was denouncing the Yugoslav government for trading with the West.


Wrong. There was a very real fear of Soivet intervention during Brezhnev's time. Tvrtko Javkovina's book on Yugoslavia in the Cold War has some info on this, but I don't think it has been translated into english.This was when the Soviet revisionists carried out their invasion of Czechoslovakia, and yet by 1971 Brezhnev was visiting Yugoslavia and declaring, "Another thing we always remember is that it was in the crucible of the Russian revolution that Comrade Tito started on the path of a revolutionary; today he is known to us all as the organiser and hero of the liberation, revolutionary struggle of the Yugoslav people, the leader of the Communists of Yugoslavia, the head of the Yugoslav socialist state." In other words, there was no more than a temporary decline in relations between the two revisionist ideologies à la 1956.


Indeed - Leninists do tend to be dubious Marxists. As an aside, one of Đilas's works - I forget which - does mention that Stalin didn't trust Hoxha either, due to his petit-bourgeois intelligentsia background.I'm aware of the work, but one also needs to remember that Stalin was originally dependent on the Yugoslavs for information about Albania. What's important is that in the end Stalin's suspicions about Đilas and Co. were confirmed, that they were nationalist deviators. His initial, Yugoslav-fueled suspicions about Hoxha were dropped in due course and obviously no one continued Stalin's legacy like Hoxha did.


Considering his experience with "communists", I don't blame him. That said, he identified himself as a democratic socialist.A "democratic socialist" who said that Marxism was a prescription for disaster and that Gorby, Deng and Co. realized that "Communism doesn't work." Interesting socialist.