Define Titoism

Tito made changes in three areas of decision-making and state affairs: political and national organisation, the economy (industries and agriculture), and the relaxation of totalitarianism. The most important change involved the devolution of power to local authorities at the republican, provincial, and municipal levels. He also introduced the concept of socialist self-management which was an important tenet of his new doctrine. These changes became institutionalised with the adoption of the new constitution that was promulgated in 1953. The new constitution proclaimed Yugoslavia as a country independent of both the Soviet Union and the West. The new constitution expanded political autonomy of the six constituent republics. It increased their control over their own affairs, thereby recognising them as independent partners in the Yugoslav state.

By implementing this reform, Tito took a great risk. The devolution of power away from the centre was done with the assurance and confidence that the republics would use this power wisely to their own advantage, and consequently, to the benefit of socialism and the federation as a whole. This was the legacy of Austro-Marxism that Tito applied to his country. Just like Bauer and Renner, Tito made sure that no nationality initiated any violent and dangerous nationalism that could lead to inter-national conflicts within Yugoslavia. Tito gave these republics more control over their cultural affairs. He also divided the Communist Party of Yugoslavia along national lines, which corresponded to individual republics. Thus, he combined the principle of extra-territorial national-cultural autonomy advocated by Austro-Marxists, with the territorial principle from the Leninist solution to the national question.

The reforms also implemented the principle of ‘socialist democracy’ which differed from ‘bourgeois democracy’ in that the former would still preserve the so-called proletarian rule.  Worker’s self-management, autonomy of local government, and guarantees of political and national rights were the three important features of the Yugoslav socialist democracy. Kardelj argued that if “decentralisation had been carried out in the Soviet-style administrative system it would have led to despotism of the local leaders.”  By utilising the principle of socialist self-management, the threat of local leaders abusing their power was eliminated because a great deal of power was now in hands of local collectives. These collective bodies acted as forums for voicing community concerns. It was these bodies that were to ensure the election of those representatives who best expressed concerns of their members. “In the view of the Yugoslav leaders this system would be even more democratic than a multi-party system.” Kardelj considered a multi-party system as competing factions that “clashed over economic interests and forgot the real issues of concern to the people.” The political democratisation implemented in Yugoslavia would bring, in his opinion, the "struggle of opinions necessary to better evolve in the policy-making process" However, the communist leaders also indicated that they would not tolerate anti-socialist criticism which would threaten the foundations upon which socialism was built in their country.

Several major changes also took place in the economy. The central planning system was revised and workers were given the right to manage their own factories: This decentralisation of the economy lifted the stifling control from above and provided incentives for worker’s initiative.  This was a very important innovation. According to Marx, Tito argued, the surplus value that workers created should go to workers. Under capitalism, owners of the means of production appropriated this surplus value. Under Stalinism, it was appropriated by the bureaucracy. Tito made sure that in Yugoslavia the workers receive fair share for their work, since they would actually own the means of production. This "socialised property" was to be controlled by the organs of self-management.  While Yugoslavia still had a planned economy, it was not a centrally planned economy. The planners of the Yugoslav economy, unlike planners in the USSR, did not enforce production quotas, prices, and quality, and were to make these decisions according to the law of supply and demand; competition among enterprises was allowed.  All efforts to-collectivise agriculture were halted. The Yugoslav approach was to permit some private ownership of land. This particularly concerned the land in hard-to-reach places which made consolidation of land plots very difficult. In other places, however, collective ownership was preserved.

Finally, important reforms were carried out with regard to the party structure. The Sixth Party Congress decided to “suppress [the] dangers of bureaucracy in the party” by further decentralising the party organisation and by proclaiming that its activities would be limited to political and ideological education and would no longer directly affect governance.  The congress state that it was important to separate the party and the state. Rankovich explained that the KPJ had to harmonise with the changes in the state and economy. The party was no longer the sole leading force in the development of society, but rather its role was that of a conscious vanguard. The party was to be decentralised. It could no longer intervene directly in the affairs of the government and the economy; rather it was to provide political and ideological guidance and education.'1 In June 1952, a series of directives were adopted which instructed the local party leaders to give up their positions as heads of local government organisations. Local governments had earlier been a mere extension of the party organisation, and had been led by local party bosses which gave them enormous control and power over local affairs.  Despite these changes, however, Tito emphasised that the party was not going to give up completely its leading role until "the last class enemy had been inmobilised and socialism was constructed.”  The most telling change which reflected the essence of the reforms was the renaming of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia into the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.  Tito wanted the party to be seen as a more open and pluralist organisation, as Marx's vision of a league comprising a selection of the best workers from working class, peasantry, and progressive professionals who would set an example to other workers.  This name was also adopted because Tito believed that the League of Communist of Yugoslavia had to win its leading role "on the basis of good work and extensive knowledge of the laws of society and not by a decree determining for itself that it is a leading political force." 

The relaxation of the internal régime was reflected in the new party statute adopted by the Sixth Party Congress. Three points worth are mentioning about the statute: (1) all party activities were to be public knowledge; (2) non-party members were encouraged to participate at the lower levels of policy-making so that party decisions.  Reflected opinions of broad segments of the population; and (3) republic party congresses which under the old statute could only make tactical decisions, were now allowed to determine their own political line in accordance, of course, with that of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.  Also, Yugoslavia was unique among all communist countries in that in comparison with the USSR and other communist régimes, little distinction was made between party members and the rest of the population. Party members did not enjoy special privileges, such as food rations, better housing, or other material benefits."

The party also tried to carry out what they termed the "self-management pluralism of interests” which, as Kardelj called it, was a system of "restricted pluralism" but without completely free elections and party competition. Under this system it was possible for groups to express divergent opinions and criticism of government policies. The implementation of this principle was a vivid reflection of the views of the working class as monolithic; it recognised that different sections of the working class could have different and conflicting interests.'' The party sought to "harmonise" rather than express these different interests. For example, compromises were to be sought in some contentions such as party interference in the economy, influence of the administrative apparatus, the voting system, the power of managerial hierarchies, or interregional and inter-ethnic tensions. These issues were to be openly discussed in the media, something that was completely unimaginable in any other communist country. Although the party tried to set the "parameters on political dissent," they were defined very loosely by the central and regional party elites.

Ever since shedding the pre-1950 Soviet-style totalitarianism, Yugoslavia intermittently followed its trend of liberalisation, stumbling along the way with ever higher hurdles. But when presented with problems, there was a reason why Tito did not simply take back the liberal reforms he had instituted. The régime had already silenced all the political opposition that threatened the communists's hold on power, and it well could have suppressed all viewpoints that antagonised the official government stands, but it chose not to. First of all, with every reform in the new theoretical structure of Yugoslav communism, the state leaders became more liberal and human than their previous dogmatic selves. It would have been impossible to prohibit all expressions of different opinions, because not only would that have halted the pace of liberalisation, it would have reversed it. Yugoslavia's national communism relied on a dialectical opposition to the Soviet Union; thus the Yugoslav communist regime needed more popular support than that which the USSR or its satellites enjoyed.  Also, the decentralisation already achieved in government functions and devolution of authority was another factor why Tito was hesitant to re-obtain absolute centralist power. It would have been hard for the party to take control of so many economic and social management bodies. Many non-communists participated in these self-managing bodies because they could act free of influence of the party. To put party members back in their former positions of influence would have cost the state the support of many non-communist citizens.  Last but not least, there was a problem concerning the participation of young people in politics and local decision-making. They were opposed to rigid conformity even if the political environment they grew up in had already been decentralised to a considerable extent, for they did not know that. “For young people, the situation would never be liberal and democratic enough. Especially if some of them had had the chance to travel abroad and saw how much freer the political environment was elsewhere.”  Tito needed the support of the youth of Yugoslavia, because this was the segment of society that was destined to continue the long hard work he had gained. Unfortunately, Tito could not come to terms with the fact that despite his own ideological changes, the newer generations changed at a faster pace, demanding more control over the affairs of their country. After everything Tito had gone through to establish his own utopia of a socialist Yugoslavia, he was not going to let any liberal-minded personality take the dream away from him.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

V Dedijer, Tito Speaks (London, 1953)

M Djilas, Tito: the story from the inside (London, 1981)

Fred Warner Neal, Titoism in Action (University of California, 1959)

Sabrina P. Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962-1991 (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 41.

Lenard J. Cohen, Broken Bonds, the Disintegration of Yugoslavia (Oxford: Westview Press, 1993)

Vojin Dmitrjevic, in Yugoslavia, the Former and Future (Brookings 1995)

George W. Hoffman and Fred Warner Neal, Yugoslavia and the New Communism (New York 1962)

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