Self management

[Josip Broz Tito]

In 1950. Tito and Kardelj introduced so called self-management in all factories in Yugoslavia. The basic idea was that factories became self managed by the workers who formed workers councils, so factories were not fully controlled by the country. It worked quite well and it failed only because whole Yugoslav economy failed due to high external debt. What do you think about it?

[Maaja]

It can be good because the workers of one factory may understand better what this factory needs and what has to be done first. Country may make mistakes by not understanding the little differences. Workers can also take into consideration their the level of their own knowledge and that gives them the possibility to work even more and to make more good changes. But I can't be sure how much would it really work. For how long time it worked well in Yugoslavia?

[Josip Broz Tito]

It worked well for more then 40 years. In 1990 it started to show some bad outcomes. But main reason was, as I said before, great external debt of Yugoslavia taken between 1950s and 1960s. After the economic collapse and the break-up of the country, many people blamed self management.

[lenin]

self management was a great idea but i think tito implemented it too soon. a communist economy must first be centrally planned and then as time goes on, the bureacracy dissapears as the workers start to manage the economy themselves. the economy must be stable in order to starts implementing the workers democracy.
JBT, do you know the gdp for yugoslavia for the 60's and 70's? it would be interseting to compare the results with the strict soviet economy, tito's economy and the semi-liberal chinese economy of today.

[Josip Broz Tito]

I don't know the exact data, but I will have to as soon as possible, probably tomorrow. I think that per capita in Yugoslavia in that period was higher then the ones in China or USSR. Regarding the timing of implementing self-management, I don't think it came to early. The problem was that Yugoslavia didn't protect domestic products, so we didn't have self-management in full scale.

[Maaja]

I would like to know how big those factories were?

[Supermodel]

I think its a brilliant idea ahead of its time. I wish organizations could be run this way. Mainly because I hate my boss but that's another story....

[Josip Broz Tito]

Maaja, ALL factories were self managed. Size was not important. As any other country we had very big and very small companies and factories. Even some international companies in Yugoslavia were self managed. For example, Volkswagen company in Sarajevo. UNIS, the metal industry was among the biggest in south-east Europe and it was self managed.

[sypher]

are there any books on self management

[Josip Broz Tito]

Yes, try to find Edvard Kardelj's book "Principles of Self Managing" (I think that is a proper name in English")

[maoist3]

Ack, it should now be obvious that self-management
is a hurrendous failure. Tito here starts the thread
blaming external debt, but can external debt really
be to blame for the ethnic cleansing that happened
in ex-Yugoslavia? No.

Self-management is bourgeois and proved it by
creating the basis for provincialism. It's not that
the issue is worker control: the issue is that
each factory is its own economic unit. That means
each economic unit has in its own best interests
the screwing of other economic units. Not surprisingly,
such an economic approach does nothing to integrate
the country along ethnic lines.