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In other words, the contemporary world wants to know whether socialism as an idea has the solution for the hitherto permanent histor-ical conflict between the individual and the society, and whether its prospects include the overcoming of the alienation of man and his social power, the abolition of his State of being manipulated, and the liberation of the captive energy of an enormous number of individuals - through the authentic social alternative which makes possible the free engagement and participation of each man in the process of defining and creating the chosen social perspetive.

In an attempt to provide answers for these questions, the substitu-tion of the thesis is usually employed, so that socialism as a practice, as a regime (one of its variants), is treated as identical to socialism as an idea, as a permanent revolutionary movement: through such a paralogistic process conclusions are arrived at that deny it any pers-pective.

Although this study attempts to analyze one form of socialism, i. e. the defined model and practice of the Yugoslav socialist society, its true objective is to demonstrate that the ideas of socialism must not be confused and identified with the existing socialist Systems, and that in the analysis of these systems the following questions ought to be answered: (1) to which degree are the ideas of socialism contained in the defined models and in practice; and (2), are these ideas present, as a tendency and as a movement, in the social climate and events in order to allow conclusions with respect to the extent to which a par-ticular socialist regime is truły socialist.

The analysis which follows has as its objective such an evaluation of Yugoslav socialism only (due to the unavailability of authentic materials necessary for a comparative analysis of other socialist Systems, which could be required for broader conclusions to be reached on the prospects of socialism as a movement).

To reach this end, it is necessary to define socialism so that we know what we are talking about (there are very different definitions), and specify the concepts we take to be its foundation.

I start from the fact that socialism may be defined as the anteroom from which one enters the truły human community of men that brings to an end the class history of society, and that being such it must have the following characteristics:

(1)    As a system it must secure social conditions which will provide equal opportunity for all individuals to develop as equal members of the community;

(2)    This will be achieved only if every form of exploitation and right to privileges are abolished in the system of distribution of all social values, both materiał and cultural, creating thus the basis of elementary materiał existence and elementary education for each individual, and placing within reach of each member, of the society all the cultural values;

(3)    This implies the adjustment of generał and social interest through the creation of such mechanisms for the formulation of the generał (social) interest which will make it impossible for the parti-

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