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key issues in Yugoslav society, especially those concerned with the distribution of the surplus of value. Here also lies the explanation for the fact that the working class has continued in the socialist society to use almost exclusively the classical method of combat - the strikes. In this way, the working class remains within the framework of the struggle for economic emancipation, sińce it is not constituted politic-ally as an integral social force which could act as a United »ruling class« at all levels through the appropriate forms of self-manage-ment.¹⁵

Some of Antonio Gramsci’s thoughts on the self-managing system which can be created with the help of integrated working class sound very modern. He insists on the establishment of a network of self-managing institutions not only in cities but also in villages. Apart from factory workers’ councils, there should be meetings of workers through which not only the elected representatives but all workers would be trained to »exercise power«, as well as regional councils of factory delegates as the »emanation of the working class inhabiting an area«.¹⁶ Gramsci emphasizes that free association and solidarity must be the basie principles of self-managemnt. This has not been solved by the Yugoslav model of socialism: a way has not been found for these two essential principles to be built into the foundation of the system. This is the cause of the apparent paradox, i. e. that the dev-elopment of self-management is accompanied by an inereasing num-ber of instances of particularism and unfair competition; effects of the economic laws of the market have not been curbed by a social system in which the crucial mechanisms would be based on free association of »producers« and on the solidarity of the working class.

If one investigates the position of »producers« in the wider sense, including thus in the analysis not only the working class but also the most numerous stratum in our society, the peasantry, the problem be-comes even morę serious. There is not in the Yugoslav system even a theoretical solution to the question of inclusion of peasantry into new social conditions in order to create a single system of self-management (although we are not without tradition and without some experiences in this respect, considering the socialist writing of Svetozar Marković and others). Although villages certainly add up to two-thirds of com-munites (settlements) in Yugoslavia (by sociological, rather than pu-rely statistical, criteria), and although morę than a half of our popu-

¹⁵ It seems to mc that O. Kozomara’s conclusion (sce the mentioned article), accompanied by strong arguments, is quite convincing. According to him, the proletariat of this country is not organized as a class, but reduced to atomized organiza-tions within enterprises. An argument to the effcct that socialism should abolish rather than constitutive classes is merely a sophism, ignoratio elcnclii. It overlooks the fact that Yugoslav society never had an organized working class in the truć sense of the word, and that the first premise of its liberation is its constitution as a class in order to be ablc to fulfil its historical function, i. e. the abolition of

itself as a class, and of the class society in generał.

By means of the theory of »working people*, the social differenccs between strata are supposedly erased in Yugoslavia. Howevcr, neither theorctically nor prac-tically is thus solved the main problem of socialism, the relationship between the working class and the govemmcnt.

'* A. Gramsci, Selected Works. Belgrade: Kultura, 1959, p. 155.

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