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Individual freedom proclaimed in the Constitution becomes a priv-ileged type of freedom for individuals belonging to powerful social groups who are in the position to prescribe the limits of others’ freedom and to design measures to force others to remain within these bounds. A certain number of individuals determine both the personal and the social life style, formulate both the social and individual needs, and define both what a »happy« society should be like, and of what the hapiness of others should consist, on the basis of their views, looking through the prism of their interests. In this process, they are less and less familiar with actual social conditions and with the true needs of the society’s members, above all of the working class. It is not, therefore, accidental that old. classical conflicts take place again, in which the antagonism between the individual and the system is manifested (workers’ strikes, clashes between students and the police, etc.).⁸¹

3.

The above analysis demonstrates that certain »contradictions in so-cialism« (as a system) are present in Yugoslav society also. First, con-tradiction which stems from the existence of the State, and which is manifested in the division of the members of society into the »active force«, members who have social power and initiative, and the passive mass, the populace, which is forced to follow the active nucleus (i. e. the bureaucratic stratum, the Government, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the Party members). In other words, there is a division of individuals into the »subjects of history« and the objects to be manipulated in the name of »historical objectives«.³² Second, the contradiction between the »struggle« as an action against the capi-talist system, and later, when power had been taken over, for the preservation of the new order and of the »revolution« - which should imply the replacement of the existing by the new. There is a substitu-tion of »socialist objectives« (as dialectically realizable ideas) by the direct objectives of the regime, which consist, above all, of its streng-thening.⁸⁸ Third, the contradiction between the effects of the develop-ment of an industrial society (above all the effects of the law of com-modity production, of the market, of law of value; also, the creation and strengthening of the stratum of technical experts as a new social

¹¹ The explanation commonly given, i. e. that conflicts are provoked by a certain number of individuals who begin to show their hostility toward socialism, greatly simplifies the true naturę of the conflict. On the other hand, it is not vcry corn inc-ing from a common-scnsc point of vicw either. It would appear that 2 > years after the revolution the climate is morę favorablc for hostile activities than it uscd to be immcdiately after the war. Also, how would one explain the fact that the »cncmics« do not come primarily from the ranks of the bourgeoisie which is deprived of power, but from the ranks of students and workers. (Naturally, herc we are talking about the ideological conflict, not about the terrorist actions imported from abroad).

** Sec the discussion of R. Luxemburg with the bolshcviks in Murxisme ronin diełature, Spartacus, Paris, 1946.

^u R. Luxemburg also writes about this in Ruska revolucija (Russian rcvolution) in Partija proletarijata (The proletariat^ party), published by Sedma siła. 1966, p. 189; also G. Lukacs, Taktika i etika (Tactics and ethies), Sedma siła, 1966, p. 165.

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