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Why I am a Titoist
The SFRY was the greatest socialist country to have ever existed. Under Tito's rule, its accomplishments were outstanding:
-Tito was the leader of the non-aligned movement, never becoming a pawn of the imperialist or Soviet spheres.
-People could travel freely. The Yugoslav passport was one of the best in the world.
-Tito managed to bring together all of the different nationalities of Yugoslavia under the banner of brotherhood and unity immediately following a bloody ethnic war.
-Unlike Stalin, Tito was the true successor of Marx and Lenin, attempting to create a socialist state that was actually led by the proletariat through his system of self-management.
-The Yugoslav partisans defeated the Nazis with little help from the Red Army.
-Unlike in the Soviet Union, there was little censorship of art, allowing Yugoslav cultural production to flourish.
-Tito rejected Stalin's perversion of Marxism-Leninism. Marx advocated the liberation of man, while Stalinist policies were aimed at man's repression.
Please feel free to add to this list! Let us never forget the accomplishments of comrade Josip Broz Tito.
Yugoslavia relied a lot on western investment and tito. When tito died and western investment turned into debt, it dissolved into one big nasty ethnic conflict which was already in the making. The nationalisms were never surmounted like they were in the USSR, unfortunately.
That and market socialism is ew.
What is 'titoism' anyway? I know im criticizing it, sort of, but all of these accomplishments are that of yugoslavia. It's like crediting marxism leninism with victory in WW2.
Last edited by Conscript; 2nd November 2011 at 16:07.
The country probably wouldn't have industrialized itself to the point of being able to resist the Nazi Germany without a Marxist-Leninist leadership and Stalin.
IMO.
Stalin created "Marxism-Leninism" ... how can his vision of it be a perversion when his was the original. I can see it being a perversion of Marxism, which I wholeheartedly agree ... but M-L was absolutely Stalin's creation ...
He also squashed political freedoms, had political opponents murdered and had a rather poor track record when it came to civil liberties.
But yes, Kardelj's worker self managment and market socialism was pretty cool.
When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues.
~John Maynard Keynes
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Since the breakup of the USSR, there have been many ethnic conflicts in the former republics (Chechens, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Georgia-Ossetia, Georgia-Abkhazia, Ossetia-Ingush, and Moldova-Pridnestrovje), showing that national questions were not overcome any more in the USSR than in Yugoslavia.
could you elaborate, please?
Titoism is the name of the practical implementation of the theories of Marx and Lenin in the Yugoslav context under Josip Broz Tito, just as Stalinism refers to the implementation of Marxism-Leninism under Stalin in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc. "Stalinism," referring to the policies of Joseph Stalin, is often credited for the victories of the USSR during WWII, as Stalin was the Marshal of the Soviet Union (head of Red Army). In the same way, Titoism can be credited for the victories of the Yugoslavia during WWII because Tito was the Marshal of Yugoslavia, leading the partisans to victory.
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Idea of workers co-operatives opperating on a 'free' market, Proudhon and anarcho-collectivists wrote alot on it, Edvard Kardelj also took some ideas from it. I can't post links yet, so just wiki 'market socialism'. [/FONT]
When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues.
~John Maynard Keynes
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Marxism-Leninism was indeed a term coined by Stalin in order to try to lend legitimacy and historical precedence to his policies. But, if they came back from the dead today, who do you think Marx and Lenin would actually see as better carrying out their goals and visions: Stalin or Tito?
Name one leader of a socialist country who you think has better protected political freedoms and civil liberties than Josip Broz Tito.
Where is this wonderful paradise called Yugoslavia? Can't find it on the map.
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Can't find the USSR either...[/FONT]
When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues.
~John Maynard Keynes
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I already agreed that it was a perversion of Marxism, do I really need to repeat myself?
Sorry comrade, you must have misunderstood my point. I am saying that while Marxism-Leninism as a term was coined by Stalin, the theories and principles of Marx and Lenin were better realized in Yugoslavia under Tito.
[FONT="]Salvador Allende
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When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues.
~John Maynard Keynes
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I am not a fan of the USSR either.
What is funny about Titoism is that the term was coined by Stalinists as the new heresy, the new Trotskyism/Bukharinism.
[FONT=Franklin Gothic Medium]I could swear Stalinists do nothing more than invent new slurs for thier opponents...[/FONT]
When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues.
~John Maynard Keynes
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What kind of argument is that? It's like arguing as follows: "Monarchy A had more freedoms than monarchy B, therefore I advocate monarchy A". Just because he was the lesser evil does not make him not evil.
Your other arguments are also shallow and meaningless.
And Tito was a dictator. People in Yugoslavia were as free as people are now under Lukashenko in Belarus. Maybe there is not a severe degree of repression, but it still is a dictatorial country that lacks basic freedoms.
And "workers' self-management" in practice was "co-determination" of workers and public officials. Moreover, unemployment in Yugoslavia was extremely high. The market economy needs to be abolished.
[FONT=Franklin Gothic Medium]Really? I've always heard that he supposedly achieved almost 100% employment (though that could just be propoganda). [/FONT]
When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues.
~John Maynard Keynes
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I am sympathetic to Tito and so on due to my biases as a Slav, but still, I have tried to put aside those biases and look scientifically at Titoism, and unfortunately, titoism isn't what you say it is.
True, years later in the aftermath of the ethnic bloodbath of the former Yugoslavia, millions still look back longingly to bygone days when Tito personally directed the destiny of the country on its “unswerving road to socialism.” For at least then there was no “fraternal” war, and Yugoslavia was held in high regard internationally and renowned for its achievements, both political and economic, as a multinational entity capable of resisting the Stalinist eastern bloc. Yet, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia did eventually collapse in the face of genocide, war, and economic depression. Its failure, however, was not a failure of socialism or a failure of ethnic cooperation and coexistence but instead a failure on the part of the ideology and policies of Josip Broz Tito used to build socialism in Yugoslavia, known collectively as the Stalinist variation of Titoism.
The popular propaganda tale of Tito’s rise to power as the supreme leader of Yugoslavia is one of inspiring heroism, exhilarating and arousing rhetoric, and nationalist sentiment in which Tito, the revolutionary communist partisan, leads his people victoriously into battle against the fascist invaders and is later propelled to a position of power in an excited wave of anxiousness to begin the struggle to build socialism for the Yugoslav people. Such an absurd fiction is entirely contradictory to the historical reality of how Tito actually arrived at the position of political leadership over the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, and later the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
In reality, Tito was no revolutionary communist. His career at the top of the Yugoslav Communist Party (YCP) was bound up with the Stalinization of the international communist movement, and Tito’s earliest actions in the People’s Liberation War were, as Tony Cliff correctly wrote in On the Class Nature of the “People’s Democracies”:
“to abolish the plebeian democratic character of the armed forces and transform it into a regular army hierarchically organised, with ranks, medals, etc. On 1 May 1943 the ranks of officers and non-commissioned officers were introduced, and in the next four months about 5,000 officers and generals were created, and Tito was raised to the rank of Marshal. These higher layers of the Tito army took the commanding positions in state administration and economy when at the end of 1944, Belgrade, Zagreb and other important towns were liberated from the Germans.”
In all of Tito's leadership spheres, he created a bureaucracy to entrench his rule, this was true in the partisan forces of the People's Liberation War, and the Jugoslavian state. this is a major fault of titoism - bureaucracy - as even though workers were allowed to some extent self management, the massive potential productivity of planned economics was wasted by the bureaucracy of the YCP that held power over the sectors that weren't allowed self management, and still some sway in self management.
when I say that tito was no revolutionary communist, it's true. May I remind you of the Bihac program, the original program of the partisans and Jugoslav struggle against fascism. this extremely conservative program simply stated conservative demands, as tito called for the social status quo to be kept in the name of the infamous Stalinist People's Front Policy. the program stated:
"(2) The inviolability of private property and the providing of every possibility for individual initiative in industry, trade and agriculture.
(3) No radical changes whatsoever in the social life and activities of the people except for the replacement of reactionary village authorities and gendarmes who may have gone over to the service of the invaders by popularly elected representatives truly democratic and popular in character. All the most important questions of social life and State organisation will be settled by the people themselves through representatives who will be properly elected by the people after the end of the war."
The only seemingly "communist" aspects of the program were the "abolition of private property" and the "election of representatives for representation." Yet, the reality was that this program was still conservative, as most property in the remote areas of the partisan warfare was already public, and the "popular, democratically elected representatives" would really just be Tito's bureaucracy that was directly transferred from the partisan force into the ruling administrative positions as cities were liberated.
Tito’s transition to more “socialist” policies and rhetoric and so on were only products of revisionist change in the course of his increasing dictatorship of the nation, again characteristic of the slow revisionist, stagist change advocated by the Stalinist “People’s Front” theory.
Lastly, tito's resistance to Stalin was not out of difference of theory or practice, etc. but rather for personal greed over WHO was to rule over jugoslavija with their bureaucracy and military.
I do, however, give a LOT more credit to tito in areas than most hardcore Trotskyists do, and I’m more than open to be convinced against my existing opinion.
Last edited by PolskiLenin; 2nd November 2011 at 21:09.
And btw, all comrades interested in a good read should read Communism and Fatherland by Boris Ziherl. I believe it is on MIA...
Firstly, Yugoslavia wasn't Socialist.
Secondly, fuck Serbia.
Thirdly, Kosovo is Albania.
Thankyou
