Re: [Marxism] Are worker-owned companies an alterative to capitalism?

["farmelantj@xxxxxxxx" <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

As I recall, factories and other
forms of capital were owned by the
state but the firms themselves were
described as being "socially owned",
and as I understand it were essentially,
cooperatives.  The long term trend
in Yugoslavia was for the economy to
become increasingly marketized, which
had the effect of undermining worker
democracy within companies, leading
to more and more control shifting to 
the managers.  It was usually the professional
managers who were the enthusiasts for market
reforms, while the rank-and-file workers
usually being opposed.  As the Yugoslavian
economy became more integrated with the
Western economies, pressures for adopting
market reforms intensified.

Yugoslavia was tolerated, and even embraced
by the West during the cold war because of
its neutrality but after the cold war ended,
Western tolerance for the Titoist experiment
rapidly diminished, which resulted in Western
support for the breakup of the country and
for the forced obliteration of the remnants
of Titoism in that country.

Jim F.

---------- Original Message ----------
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Are worker-owned companies an alterative to      
capitalism?
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:15:43 -0400

farmelantj@xxxxxxxx wrote:
> Yugoslavia under Tito attempted to
> institute an economic system based
> on worker cooperatives on a nation-wide
> scale.  

As far as I know, the factories were owned by the state and not by the 
workers. They competed with each other under a form of workers control 
but I don't believe that the organizing principle was based on profit. 
That, of course, was revealed to be true when imperialism decided to 
wipe the Titoist experiment off the face of the earth when Milosevic was 
president.


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