the East, for her workers' councils. The organisation of units
which soon made for the workers’ management of their industries
began in the early fifties in the country. The Yugoslav call their
system ‘self-management’ and if the size of their literature on the
subject is anything to go by,*® they seem to see themselves as
having made a novel contribution to ‘socialist theory and practice’.
This system gives the workers of each enterprise overriding power
over their plant; it is a system of extreme decentralisation. Each
enterprise is in effect owned by its entire personnel, an
arrangement long advocated by syndicalists and guild socialists as
I have already noted. Management is in the hands of the elected
workers’ council and the director appointed by the council. There
is thus no central planning as such, each industry produces what it
thinks will make it gain maximum profit with some control only
by the budgetary and banking institutions.

The Yugoslavs themselves defend the system on the grounds, first, that
autonomous development will afford the broadest possible scope for the
intiative of individuals, work collectives and society as a whole . . . .,
second, that this will assure the most effective democratisation of
political and social relations, the most effective criticism and control of
government activity; and third, that this will lead to the genesis and
development of a new human personality deeply imbued with and in-
spired by socialist humanism, to the development of man the producer,
consumer and manager.*®

Thus, the running of each enterprise is done mainly by the laws
of the ‘free market' with occasional checks by the state banks as
far as loans are concerned. All enterprises prepared and approved
their plans independently, deciding on methodology and terms
covered. In this way:

work organisations in all spheres constitute independent commodity
producers and purveyors of services. The acquisition and increase of in-
come and, analoguously, the rise of the overall standard of living, is the
motive and aim of their activity. It is through the market, as a rule, that
work organisations obtain social recognition of their income.®

This of course raises many questions about socialism under these
conditions. The Chinese have in fact questioned the correctness of
calling Yugoslavia a socialist country at all. 40 This, however, is not
the place to go into the debate on the subject. Let us just note,
though, that it is rather strange, to say the least, to find that at a

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