Richard D. Wolff

In Yugoslavia (The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; SFRY) during the cold war, all industry was seased by the goverment but it was worker operated unlike as you point out in the USSR where the board of directors were replaced with goverment officials. I had an argument with both my sociology and history profesors where they give arguments that in theory this kind of a pilitical economic system could work but not in practice. We had a system where there was no competition, if one branch of the industry was doing poorly the other branches would bail it out since everything was state owned. Everybody had free health care as well as free education. Certain corporations gave out individual scolarships to students and when they finiahed college they were obligatet to work in that enterprise for a couple of years. Infact in our former education system Marxisam was a coriculum that was tought in highschools. Workers had a month paid vocation and on top of that they had something called K-15 where at the end of the year every worker gets a 13th monthly payment free of work. The Yugoslav republic colapsed for a whole host of reasons but my history profesors argument was that the workers did not understand the power they possesed over the state corporations at that time and did not know how to efficiently run the industry, since a significant number of people lived in rural areas and had little formal education, further my sociology profesor argues that in Yugoslavia in the cooperatives a phenomena developt called "the red bourgeoisie" where the workers over employ their staff, where everyone got paid but a smaler portion of the workers actualy worked hense one of the reasons that led to the Yugoslav economy downfall. Note that this is only a modest critisism of the cooperatives. As I am no Economy expert. It would be nice to hear a more indeapth analysis of the Yugoslav economic system if posible, with its advantages and posible flaws