Richard D. Wolff

In part two of this episode, Professor Richard Wolff continues with Sensible Socialist about Yugoslavia, Milovan Djilas, and socialist movements.

KEVIN GUSTAFSON: [02:19] You do name-drop somebody who is maybe not as well-known to socialists and non-socialists alike, which is Milovan Djilas.

So, I have a two-part question for you. For those who noticed the name, but maybe didn't look it up, who is Milovan Djilas, and what was his analysis of the twentieth-century social experiments in the Soviet Union and China?

And then given that he's from Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia had its own sort of tradition, you know, that made it different than the Soviet Union and China in terms of its attempt at some kind of worker self-management while still kind of under the rule of a powerful communist party.

So, how did Yugoslavia's experience in worker's self-management, to a certain degree, differ from the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China?

RICHARD WOLFF: I'm going to talk about Milovan Djilas, less about him as an individual because he isn't all that important and his work isn't all that momentous.

What is interesting is who he was, and in what particular situation he intervened, in that particular way because that's what's interesting. That's what could have, it wasn't, but it could have been taken up, and if so, it could have changed history. And he did have his finger on something, so that's the way I'm going to go.

Listen to the full episode on SensibleSocialist.com