Marshall Tito

[MexAmLeft]

I dont see too much talk on Tito, im curious to see what you guys think of him

[ReD_ReBeL]

Tito was alright i suppose but i'm not much of a fan of authoritarian Socialism. He did however bring together 'brotherhood and unity', although many dissidents where sent to work in Labor camps and prisoned. And he did rely on western aid which caused to be trouble in the later years of Tito's rule when the economy started to weaken due to Debts. But later in his rule he loosend his authoritarian rule and become known as the 'most liberal communist country of it's time'.
He promoted scientific ideas with the west and his citizens where free to exchange different views. So yea he was ok in my opinion, better than Stalin anyway. Stalin labeled Tito a Fascist and put Sanctions of Yugoslavia when Tito didn't want to take the same path as Stalin, Petty or what?

[Janus]

I think it was Tito's successors who borrowed money from the International Monetary Fund as a result of the stagnating economy.
Tito was mainly responsible for moving Yugoslavia away from the domination of the USSR and keeping unity between the ethnically divided regions. This of course led to the suppressing of nationalist insurrections such as the Croatian Spring.
Unlike the USSR's command economy the economy of the S.F.R.Y. was based on market socialism. Workers also had a greater deal of control over their lives than other Eastern European nations at the time. These factors allowed Yugoslavia to enjoy a much greater standard of living than most other Eastern European states. But some of these factors would result in the economic troubles in the 1980's and for the breakaway republics in the 90's.

[JC1]

Tito's economy was not "Market Socialism".

The Yugoslav economy was based on federation's of worker's co-operatives that self-regulated production and distribution.

[ReD_ReBeL]

Yes Tito's economic model was a form of Market Socialism.


For a period in the 1960s and '70s, some intellectuals in the west saw Tito's model of market socialism as representing a point to which the Soviet and western economic systems would over time converge. The Yugoslav standard of living was somewhat higher than Eastern Europe, particularly because Yugoslavs were permitted to travel easily to Western Europe or other countries, bringing in money to support the economy.

[JC1]

Red Rebel;

1) where did you get that quote.

2) Of what substance is that quote ? There is nothing empiric about it. All it talk's of is that Yugoslavs traveled to the west.

Thats not realy a big deal. I know plenty of eastern Europeans who traveled between the West and East.

[Scars]

I like Tito. He was definately not perfect, for instance he was too severe with his repression of pro-soviet party members during the Yugoslav-Soviet split, but the fact that he remained independent of all power-blocs (Soviet, Chinese and American), supported and aided revolution when others were unwilling to do so (for instance in Greece) and instituted plans like worker self-management is enough to earn him some praise.

In addition you cannot look past the fact that 1945 to 1980 when Tito died was the longest period of stability and prosperity in the Balkans in the 20the century. As we know, after Tito died the Balkans turned into one giant genocidal clusterfuck.

As for 'market socialism'. The term is misleading. The economic definition is any place where people come together to exchange goods and services. The market will always exist because people will always exchange goods and services. The Yugoslav economy was not centralised, much of it was controlled and directed by the workers themselves and it was not capitalist.

As for the part about Yugoslavs going abroad, Yugoslavia was involved in various labour schemes. Essentially in countries that were growing at such a rate that there wasn't sufficent labour they would hire Yugoslavs who would go to said country, do the work and help train people to do their jobs. When the country no longer needed them their contract would terminate and they would return home. Workers from Yugoslavia went as far as Iraq on such contracts. As for their pay, it was higher, but this was because contract jobs always pay better, to compensate for having to work on the other side of the world (the deserts of Iraq would probably come as a shock to someone use to the mild climate of Serbia) etc.

The other thing was the Yugoslavs were allowed to leave Yugoslavia. Many Yugoslavs would go on holiday to West Germany, for instance. In addition to this they would go and buy things that were expensive or not as easily available in Yugoslavia in West Germany- for instance TVs. The other reason that living standards were higher was because Yugoslavia never neglected consumer goods in the way that the rest of Eastern Europe did. They realised that workers want to have radios and TVs etc and thus would try to provide for them, instead of making more steel and guns for export.

Tito gets far more abuse that he deserves. The split happened because Tito refused to be a pawn on Moscows chess board. Nothing to do with ideology.

[JC1]

Comrade Scars explains my position perfectly. Im just saying that Yugoslavia was not Market Socialist like Dengist China is.

[вор в законе]

I believe that this (http://www.marxist.com/workers-control-nationalization-pt3-2.htm) is an interesting read regarding Yugoslavia.

[viva le revolution]

In 1948, Stalin launched a historic struggle against the policy followed by Tito in Yugoslavia. Titoism was a combination of the three bourgeois currents; Trotskyism, Bukharinism, and nationalism that were defeated in the Soviet union during the twenties, thirties and forties. At that time, the international bourgeoisie denounced the 'control' Stalin wanted to exert on Yugoslavia and supported the 'policy of independance' of Tito. However this struggle wasn't between 'control' and 'independance', but between the Marxist-Leninist line and the bourgeois line. The struggle against Tito was not a detail;it was a summary of all the struggles waged by Stalin against enemies of Bolshevism.
In launching in 1948 the struggle against Tito's revisionism, Stalin showed his foresight and his firmness on principles. Forty-five years later, history has completely confirmed his forecasts.
At the time of the German invasion, in 1941, the clandestine Yugoslavian party had 12,000 members; 8,000 of them were killed during the war. But it increased by 140,000 members during the war and by another 360,000 before mid-1948. Tens of thousands of Kulaks, bourgeois and petit-bourgeois elements entered the party. (James Klugmann, from Trotsky to Tito, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1951. p.13)Tito relied more and more on the latter elements in his struiggle against authentic communists. The party did not have a normal internal life, there was no political discussion inside it, and therefore no Marxist-Leninist criticism and self-criticism; the leaders were not elected but co-opted (p.22)
In june 1948, the cominform, grouping 8 parties published a statement criticizing the Yugoslavian party. It underlined the fact that Tito did not care about the increasing class differences in the countryside and about the growth of capitalist elements in the country.(p.9). The resolution claimed that, starting from a bourgeois nationalist position, the Yugoslavian party had broken the united socialist front against imperialism. The text said that: " such a nationalist line can only lead to degerescence of Yuogoslavia into an ordinary bourgeois republic."(p.11)
Having heard this critique, Tito launched a massive purge. All the Marxist-Leninist elements were eliminated from the party. Two members of the central committee, Zhoujovic and Hebrang, had been arrested in 1948. General Arso Jovanovic, head of the partisan's army was arrested and assasinated, as well as general Slavko Rodic. 'The Times' mentioned numerous arrests of communists supporting the resolution of the cominform and estimated the number of arrested people between 100,000 and 200,000.
In his report to the eight-party congress, in 1948, Kardelj used many quotes from Stalin in order to claim that Yugoslavia had "pushed back Kulak elements" and would never take "anti-soviet positions".
But a few months later, the Titoists publicly endorsed the old social democratic theory of the transition from bourgeoisie to socialism without class struggle! Bebler, vice-minister of foreign affairs, declared in april 1949: " We do not have Kulaks like there were in the Soviet Union. Our rich peasants took part in the people's liberation war...would it be a mistake if we manage to make the Kulaks pass to socialism without class struggle?(Klugmann, p129). And in 1951, the Tito team declared that the "soviet Kolkhoze reflects state capitalism that, mixed with many left-overs from feudalism, is the social system of the USSR." Developing Bukharin's conceptions, the Titoists replaced planning by free-market: "nobody outside the cooperative sets the norm or the categories of what has to be produced." They organize "the transition to a system leaving more freedom to the functioning of the objective economic laws. The socialist sector of our economy is able to win over capitalist tendencies by purely economic means"(in question actuelles du socialisme, p.160, 161, 145). In 1953 Tito will re-introduce the freedom to buy and sell land and to hire labourers.
In 1951, Tito compares the Yugoslavian communists faithful to marxism-leninism to the Hitlerite fifth column, justifying the arrestation of more than 200,000 communists, according to the testimony of Vladimir Dapcevic. Tito writes; "The attacks of fascist aggressors proved that a new element is very important:the fifth column. It is a political and military element which enters in action when aggression is being prepared. Today, one tries to do something similar in our country, particularly from the cominformist countries"(ibidem, p.85)
At the beginning of the fifties, Yugoslavia was still largely a feudal country. But the Titoists attack the principle according to which the socialist state must maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat. In 1950, the Yugoslav revisionists launch a discussion on the "problem of the withering away of the state and specially the role of the state in the economy". To justify the return to the bourgeois state, Djilas calls the Soviet state "a monstrous construction of state capitalism" which "oppresses and exploits the proletariat". Still according to Djilas, Stalin was struggling "to enlarge his state capitalist empire, and, inside, to strengthen the beurocracy". "The iron curtain, the hegemony over eastern europe have become indespensible to him". Djilas speaks of "the misery of the working class which works for the imperialist 'superior' interests and for the privalege of the beurocracy." "the USSR is today objectively the most reactionary big power". Stalin is "practising State capitalism and he is the spiritual and political leader of the beurocratic dictatorship". As a true agent of American imperialism, Djilas continues: "We encounter theories among the Hitlerians which, by their content and by the social practice that they suppose, look entirely similar to the theories of Stalin". Let us add that Djilas, which settled later in the U.S referred in this text to the "critique of the Stalinist system", made by.....Trotsky.
In 1948, Kardelj still sweared fidelity to the anti-imperialist struggle. However two years later, Yugoslavia supported the aggression against Korea!!
'The Times' said: "mr. Dedeijer sees the events in Korea as a manifestation of the soviet will to dominate the world....The workers must realize that a new contender for world domination has arrived and must give up illusions about the USSR which would be, supposedly, a peaceful and democratic force"(!!!) (dec. 27, 1950)
So Tito became a simple pawn in the anticommunist strategy of the U.S. Tito declared in 1951 to the 'new york herald tribune' that , "in case of a Soviet attack anywhere in Europe even if it occurs thousands of kilometres away from Yugoslavian borders, (he) would immediately fight on the side of the west...Yugoslavia considers herself as part of the wall of collective solidarity bulit against Soviet imperialism"(june 26, 1951).
In the economy, the socialist measures taken before 1948 were quickly liquidated. Alexander Clifford, reporter for the 'Daily mail' writes about the economic reforms of 1951: "If they are realized, Yugoslavia will finally be less socialized than Great Britain." "The prices of goods will be determined by the market, that is, by supply and demand.", "the wages will be determined on the basis of profits of the company.", the companies"decide in an independant way what they produce and in what quantity", " there is not much classical Marxism in all that."(August 31, 1951).
The anglo-american bourgeoisie wanted to use Tito to encourage revisionism and encourage subversion in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe. On december 12, 1949, Eden said in the 'Daily Telegraph'; "The example and the influence of Tito can chnage in a decisive way the course of events in central and Eastern Europe". (p.191). Truly appreciating the communist demagogy of Tito, 'The Times' writes; "However Titoism remains a force, to the extent that Marshall Tito can claim to be communist."(the times, sept. 13, 1949)