834707476

society posesses less and less of a »socialist consciousness«, and that it, in fact, even refuses to have it. Recently, ideologists of the revived petty-bourgeois outlook have intimated that socialist consciousness and marxism are even a threat to this society and should be morę thoroughly eliminated. Who could, on the basis of a serious sociolog-ical analysis, maintain that, on the universal level of our society, self-management has not turned against the working class?

POLITICAL DECENTRALIZATION AND THE FUTURĘ OF SMALL

NATIONS

The recent measures toward political decentralization, the shifting of the majority of the responsibility from the Federation to the Re-publics, have aroused much »concern« among well-meaning West-European circles, not only because they are well-acquainted with the shortcomings and misfortunes of our economic system: galloping inflation, stagnation of economic growth, mass emigration of workers, continual growth of the deficit in the export-import trade balance, etc. Actually the reason for their concern is that Yugoslavia, through its internal difficulties, might lose its role as a bridge between East and West, as a factor of neutralization in the policy of the great powers and in błock policy, which it has until now successfully performed. It is a well known fact that these measures have given rise to various plots and to »underground forces« which count on the further dev-elopment of Yugoslav separatism, though the present situation of Eu-ropean politics does not favor them. From the standpoint of our own internal development, political decentralization should be regarded as the natural course of certain political processes, that have been def-ined by the theory of the »withering away of the state«, i. e., by the strengthening of the self-managing basis of our society. That would have also included the integral processes of its foundations, had it not been for strong affirmation of contrary tendencies: public antagonism between the Republics, the publication of economic reports that re-vealed the unequal relations among the Republics, the stressing of the need for »Republic sovereignty«, without a corresponding change in the self-management system, mobilization of »national interests« along with political tensions used as a means of pressure on others, the revival of nationalism in one part of the intelligentsia (probably also in one part of the disorganized workers), manipulation of rumors, and irrational factors - all this clearly shows that the leadership of this country is not sufficiently familiar with the »strategy of social innovation«, which presupposes a sober and thoughtful introduction of changes, but uses the old methods of creating psychoses, confusion, mutual blackmailing, shocking the public, the procedurę of »cold and

hot showers«, so as to make the troubled and perplexed public realize that there fortunately exists a »deux ex machina« who is by his im-prosivations the only one capable of settling our situation and that is the narrow circle of our »political vertical«, the bureaucratic elite whose political pragmatism reveals in such situations its true vitality and raison d’etre.

388