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»idiocy«, and 80% still live on the minimum borderlines of existence. Frequently even massive migration to the towns fails to free these people from the misery and poverty of yillage life. It is estimated that the agricultural over-population of this country is still at the level of 1,300,000, and some 1,400,000 worker-peasants vividly express our populations dilemma between village and town. That section of our population has still not achieved the idiocy of city life (an idiocy of which our intellectuals frequently complain), expressed in the ideals of the massive consumer society. The »futility«, the »pointlessness« of city life constitute for the majority of our people an unattainable dream. The advertisements for expensive cars of for holidays in Palma de Majorca sound to the immigrant into the town - in which, in 99% cases, he continues his mjserable existence - like the famous words of Marie Antoinette: »Let them eat cake?«

The peasantry, then, ceased to be that category of the population which comprised the social mainstay of the Party apparatus that was constructing the new social system. The town populations became that mainstay. Without doubt this was a natural process, although it is unnatural that half the population should live on the margins of the socio-political and economic system. Did the workers become that social mainstay? Did the working class become the basie social force for economic life? In a process of permanent revolution that would be entirely logical.

Has that logie of revolution triumphed in the practice of Yugoslav society as well? At first glance it might seem that it has. Between 1950 and 1952 workers’ Self-management was introduced into the socio-economic and political system. Factories to the workers! Ali power to the Workers’ Councils! It looked as though the old ideał of the Com-munist movement had begun to be realized in practice.

Here I would like to draw attention to the word »introduced«, which seems adequate. The Yugoslav system at the time of the »intro-duction« of Self-management already had two firmly-organized, firmly-built supports: the bureaucratic power structure and the forces of repression best personified by the political police.

For both a decisive moment was the rejection of the Informbureau Resolution. That courageous and dignified act signified the decisive rejection of Stalin’s domination over our society. But it was not pos-sible to stop there. With the rejection of the foreign domination it became necessary also to reject the Stalinist model of the State, of economic development, and of intellectual life. It was necessary to find our own model of Socialist system, different from the Soviet. Thus Self-management manifested itself above all as a political act which should signify a national road towards Socialism.

It is necessary to emphasize that a powerful polarization within the Party characterized the resistance to the Informbureau Resolution. Party members had for too long been educated to trust Stalin. In the war they had died with His name on their lips. He was a symbol of Socialism for them. Thus some of them could not reconcile themselves to the fact that Stalin was, after all, wrong. They could not accept the fact that a world in which they had been brought up, and which

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