Re: Re: Yugoslavia

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul, thanks for the very informative post.

At 04:10 PM 7/17/00 -0500, you wrote:
> Jim, in the case of Slovenia at least, unemployment did not rise during
> the crisis as it remained around 2 per cent though this was in part due to
> overemployment by enterprises.

right. Also, wasn't a lot of the unemployment "exported" to the north?

> Contrary to the prevailing neoclassical orthodoxy (Ward-Vanek) workers
> were overly protective of fellow workers leading to considerable hidden
> redundancy which didn't come to the surface until after austerity and
> abandonment of socialist self-
> management at the end of the 80's.

I think it was Domar who pointed out the obvious -- that a co-op wouldn't
fire its own members. That's why I use phrases like "fraternity-like
exclusivity." Frats don't expel their members (except for really extreme
behavior) while being reluctant to increase membership by a fixed amount
each year. In the case of a co-op, there's much less turnover (no
"graduation") so that the problem of exclusivity can easily become
intensified.

> As a result unemployment increased markedly in the early 90s after the
> breakup and the loss of the domestic market.  However, in Slovenia it only
> rose to just over 9 per cent (9.1% in 1993-94) which was the peak.  (It
> has since fallen to around 7.5%) In general, I would argue that
> self-management put a damper on regional tensions as opposed to the
> political, cultural and religious ationalisms
> that took advantage of the economic crisis arising out of other factors.

Don't you think that self-managed firms tended to be monolithically
Serbian, Croatian, or whatever? That's very common with self-selecting
organizations. This can prevent communication between ethnic groups that
could counteract the nationalistic demagogues...

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine