The Efficiency of Self-Management

In the preceding chapter, I have shown that the Yugoslav economy has expanded very rapidly in the period during which self-management developed. No causality was claimed to exist: it was not suggested in that chapter that self-management has caused economic growth, nor that economic growth led to the rise of self-management. This question was simply left open. The only conclusion drawn was that of compatibility of growth and self-management, and, more specifically with regard to the latter part of the period under survey: that of compatibility of industrialism and self-management. This conclusion seems to represent a consensus among scholars and other observers of the Yugoslav system. Despite the enormous problems Yugoslavia has coped with, and is still struggling with, it is hard not to be impressed by its successes. As Jan Tinbergen (1970, pp. 119–20) noted: ‘A rate of growth of per capita real income of about 6 per cent, together with a considerable degree of democracy in the everyday environment of the mass of producers, is not easily found elsewhere.’ And even Albert Meister (1970, p.365), who has been most critical of self-management in Yugoslavia, admits that Yugoslavia has, ‘in only 15 years, managed to bring about the basic industrialization of the country, which it took us [Frenchmen] nearly a century in our own country. And, despite some abuses, Yugoslavia attained this result in a much more human fashion.’ (Transl. by Jenkins, 1973, p. 113)