Description
Book SynopsisSuvin’s ‘X-Ray’ of Socialist Yugoslavia offers an indispensable overview of a unique and often overlooked twentieth-century socialism. It shows that the plebeian surge of revolutionary self-determination was halted in SFR Yugoslavia by 1965; that between 1965– 72 there was a confused and hidden but still open-ended clash; and that by 1972 the oligarchy in power was closed and static, leading to failure. The underlying reasons of this failure are analysed in a melding of semiotics and political history, which points beyond Yugoslavia – including its achievements and degeneration – to show how political and economic democracy fail when pursued in isolation. The emphasis on socialist Yugoslavia is at various points embedded into a wider historical and theoretical frame, including Left debates about the party, sociological debates about classes, and Marx’s great foray against a religious State doctrine in The Jewish Question.
Table of ContentsList of Tables and Figures Acknowledgements Preface: Pro Doma Sua PART 1: FUNDAMENTS: FREEDOM AND ACCUMULATION 1: Radical Emancipation and Yugoslavia: On the Founding Singularities of SFRY 2: Accumulation and Its Discontents PART 2: CLASS INTERESTS AND POLITICS AS SFRY DOMINANTS 3: On Class Relationships in Yugoslavia 4: On a Hidden Ruling Class and Central Conflict 5: What Has Been and What Could Have Been 6: 15 Theses about Communism and Yugoslavia, Or the Two-Headed Janus of Emancipation through the State (Metamorphoses and Anamorphoses of ‘On The Jewish Question’ by Marx) 7: The Communist Party of Yugoslavia PART 3: SELF-GOVERNMENT VS. ALIENATION: A TRACTATE ON YUGOSLAV ECONOMICS AND POLITICS Part 3.1: On Self-management In S.F.R. Yugoslavia: A Critical Stock-Taking (1945-72) 8: Anatomy: Macro-Political Economics, Or the View from Above 9: Anatomy: Micro-Political Economics, Or the View from the Workers 10: Physiology: The Interests and Stakes behind the Macro-Events Part 3.2: On the Horizon of Disalienation in S.F.R. Yugoslavia: Self-Government and Plebeian Democracy 11: On the Politics of Disalienation, Inside and Outside Economic Production 12: In Production: Rise and Fall of Self-management 13: In Civic Life: Dis/Alienation and Oligarchy Monolithism 14: Conclusion: On Failures and Potentialities APPENDICES Appendix 1: Bureaucracy: A Term and Concept in the Socialist Discourse about State Power (Upstream of Yugoslavia) Appendix 2: The Discourse about Bureaucracy and State Power in Post-Revolutionary Yugoslavia 1945–72 References
