'Yugoslav self-management was born with

Scan page 12

grave bureaucratic deformations, ... Tito limited the power of the workers' councils by imposing an appointed director to run the plant.' Socialist Action ForumsSOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1988 13 they fueled Croat nationalism.

The contradiction between "laissez-faire socialism" and national planning led to the promulgation of the third constitution in 1974. The proclaimed intent of this constitution was to disperse power widely so that no ethnic group or economic strata could dominate. An elaborate structure of Chambers of Associated Labor, Chambers of Local Communities, and a Chamber of Nationalities was set up.

Workers' power delegated

But a glaring contradiction was posed by the system of elections. Workers voted only once at the bottom of a pyramid of power. The body they elected nominated and elected a higher body, whose members elected a still higher body.

This system of delegated power enables the sole political party, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY), to control elections ever more tightly as the highest legislative stages were reached. Atop this pyramid of power sat Tito as "Party Chief and Head of State for life." Since Tito's death in 1980, a "Group Presidency" of six representatives of the six republics has taken his place.

The party itself is entangled lin contradiction. In 1952 the Communist Party was renamed the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. This was to suggest that the party would no longer dominate political life, but serve as an educational body to imbue self-management committees with socialist consciousness.

Things did not work out this way. When the Croatian national movement threatened the power of the LCY in 1970, Tito came down with all the force of the monolithic party he headed. At another time, two of Tito's closest collaborators, Milovan Djilas and Alekandar Rankovic, were purged for challenging party doctrine. Far from "withering away," the LCY, to this day, has been the ultimate authority in any crisis.

The experimental nature of much of Yugoslav politics has fostered much discussion of Marxist theory. Beginning in 1963 the Marxist philosophical journal Praxis challenged many official policies. It was tolerated for 12 years till it was finally shut down in 1975.

Students and workers protest The universities have been a source of much dissent. For a long time students were apathetic, concentrating on personal careers. But the events of 1968 woke them up. The prospect for many students is bleak. There are few jobs. Many have earned advanced degrees only to wind up as laborers in German factories.

Yugoslav students have paraded with banners proclaiming, "Workers we are with you" and "There is no Socialism without Freedom, and no Freedom without Socialism." Today youth in Slovenia are expressing dissent within the ranks of the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA), the youth section of the LCY. They are campaigning for the legal right to strike.

The workers are striking without this legal right because the burden of austerity is being loaded on them while the bureaucrats are still driving expensive cars and building holiday villas. The Yugoslav trade unions are no help. Like Stalinist unions elsewhere, they are concerned only with increasing production.

The scope of the anger against the Yugoslav bureaucracy was most clearly evidenced at a Sept. 22, 1988, demonstration of about 70,000 Serbians over the ethnic conflict in Kosovo. A New York Times article on Sept. 23 captured the sentiments of the crowd:

"We don't want imposing villas, planes, yachts, and private beaches,' said Vojislav Radunovic, the union leader at the railroad car factory in Kraljevo. 'You are not our comrades,' he continued [referring to the authorities], 'because you do not line up at dawn to buy so-called people's bread. You don't share our destiny on the first, second, or third shift. You don't go down in the mine shafts. You don't climb high to build bridges. You are not our comrades."

The Times article continued: "''The people should judge them!' was a shout that rose from the crowd, which responded enthusiastically throughout the meeting. 'Thieves,' the crowd roared. 'Down with those who sit in armchairs.' One of the hundreds of homemade posters being held high proclaimed, 'Down with the socialist bourgeoisie.' Indeed, austerity is being imposed by foreign creditors as well as Yugoslav bureaucrats who are desperately seeking loans and capital abroad. They have accepted a loan of $490 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with its onerous demands for austerity. This means wage freezes and loss of food subsidies.

Yugoslavia looks partly to the Eastern bloc. These countries welcome Yugoslav products but do not have the products Yugoslavia needs. So Yugoslavia competes with Poland and Hungary for the Western capital they all want. This means yielding more and more concessions to capitalist interests.

Propose stock sales

To tap the millions held by guest workers in foreign banks, the government proposes to sell bonds and shares in enterprises and institute forms of mixed ownership. This carries Yugoslavia another step back on the road to capitalist penetration.

But there are obstacles on this road. Foreign investors will not aid the underdeveloped South. They want short-term profits. They won't raise wages, or control inflation. And foreign capital exacerbates the North-South dichotomy that is tearing the country apart.

The national government tries to exert its Cincinnati:

Oct. 5, 7 p.m.:

"The Young Karl Marx,"

U. of C., 418 TUC.

Oct. 12, 7 p.m.: Film:

"Labor's Turning Point"

U. of C., 418 T.U.C.

Los Angeles:

Oct. 7, 7:30 p.m.:

"Trotsky and the USSR under Gorbachev."

Speaker: Alan Benjamin editor, Socialist Action.

Palms Recreation Ctr., 2950 Overland Ave.

San Francisco:

Oct. 14,8 p.m.:

"The Greenhouse Effect:

Is There a Way Out?"

Speakers: Prof. J.B.

Neilands, biochemist, U.C. Berkeley, and Ralph Forsyth, Socialist Action. Oct. 28, 8 p.m.: "Struggle of the United Farm Workers."

Speakers: Karen Schieve, Local 1100 UFCW, and Howard Wallace, Field rep. UFV S.F. forums held at 343 Army St., Rm. 308.

Boston:

Oct. 21: "The Struggle for Irish Liberation Today." Speaker: Gerry Foley, editor, International Viewpoint. U. Mass, Harbor Campus. Room, time to be announced. Oct. 22, 7:30 p.m.: *The National Question in the Soviet Union Today. Speaker: Gerry Foley. Cambridge YWCA, 7 Temple St. loose from federal control. This latter road of "laissez-faire socialism" can lead to a Slovenian-Croatian mini-state dominated by Western capitalism.

The workers of Yugoslavia have a chance to escape this trap. Forty years of experimentation with various "roads to socialism" has developed a population open to change and fiercely resistant to dictatorship. They can see that they have a common struggle with the workers of Poland and the other Eastern-bloc countries. Their victory could lead to meshing all workers' states in an economic plan that transcends national boundaries.

Demands made by the student movement indicate the lines of struggle. They call for:

• "Measures to rapidly reduce the great social inequality in our community.

"Action against the accumulation, in non-socialist fashion, of private property.

"A long-term perspective for the development must be adopted, based on the right to work.

'Destroy the the bureaucratic forces that fetter self-management and development. "Halt all attempts to transform individual labor into individual or group capitalism. "Prevent speculation on social or private property."

Yugoslavia serves as an object lesson in the pitfalls of "market socialism" that workers in Poland, China, and other workers' states should learn from. Yugoslav workers may also give lessons in taking power back into their own hands.

Detroit:

Midwest Educational Conference Nov. 12-13:

Wayne State University Film: "Labor's Turning Point," with introduction of the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strikes. "What Malcolm X Would Say Today."

Speaker: Kwame M.A.

Somburu. "Nicaragua: Is the War Over?"

Speaker: Carl Finamore. "What is Socialism?"

Speaker: Barbara Putnam. (Rooms to be announced)

Scan page 13

Over 300 people attend rally in Sao Paulo, Brazil, calling for an "End to All Aid to Apartheid Israel, For a Democratic-Secular Palestine." Rally speakers are (from left to right): Joel Oliveira, Pres., Cabinet-Makers Union of Sao Paulo; Hassan El Amleh, Pres., Federation of Brazilian Palestinian-Arab Organizations; Ralph Schoenman (standing), Exec. Dir., Palestine Campaign; Julio Mey, translator; Arlindo Chinaglia, Pres., Union of Doctors, Sao Paulo; Maria Emilio Boito, rally organizer; Fawzi El-Mashimi, P.L.O.; Airton Soares, PDT candidate for mayor of Sao Paulo; Luiz Eduardo Greenhaigh, National Directorate, Workers Party (PT); Aldo Rabelo, Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB); Jorge Coelho, CUT (Confederation of Trade Unions); and Carlos Noronha, Brazilian Communist Party (PCB).

SAO PAULO, Brazil—A 30-foot banner over the stage of the Cabinet-Makers' Union Hall proclaimed, in Portuguese, "End All Aid to Apartheid Israel, For A Democratic and Secular Palestine."

The occasion was a rally on Aug. 26 in defense of the Palestinian people sponsored by the Union of Doctors of Sao Paulo.

Three hundred people filled the hall to hear a panel of speakers, including Ralph Schoenman, executive director of the Campaign to End All Aid to Israel/For a Democratic Secular Palestine, representatives of the P.L.O., and various Brazilian political and union organizations.

The Campaign to End All Aid to Israel/For a Democratic Secular Palestine published a full-page statement around its two central demands in the March 13, 1988, issue of The New York Times. The signatories included 300 intellectuals, artists, community activists, and unionists from the United States, as well as over 100 signatories from 14 other countries, including Brazil. [See statement in April 1988 issue of Socialist Action.] Among the speakers at the rally were Fawzi El-Mashimi, vice-deputy of the P.L.O. in Brazil; Luiz Eduardo Greenhalgh, a member of the National Directorate of the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores/PT) who is currently the PT candidate for vice-mayor in Sao Paulo; and Jorge Coelho, a representative of the Confederation of Trade Unions (CUT), Brazil's largest and most militant union federation.

"Organize a delegation"

In his keynote presentation, Schoenman highlighted the international support for The New York Times statement.

Dr. Rodolpho Repullo Jr., an orthopedist, described the oppression and brutality a Brazilian team of doctors witnessed while working for three weeks in Gaza during the Intifada, the uprising of the Palestinian people that is now into its tenth month.

In the closing speech to the rally, P.L.O. representative Fauzi El Mashimi emphasized the importance of The New York Times "End All Aid" statement. He called on the rally participants to organize a delegation on Sept. 16 to the U.S. consulate to deliver a copy of the statement with all its Brazilian endorsers. Sept. 16 is the anniversary of the 1982 massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila.

Support grows in Brazil The rally in Sao Paulo was the first event in what was to become an inten: ive Shor Mya 10-day schedule of meetings, lectures, and interviews with the press and radio about the "End All Aid" statement and Ralph Schoenman's new book, "The Hidden History of Zionism."

The National Union of Students at the University of Sao Paulo sponsored an evening at the History Ampitheater. Alberto Handfas, the student union president, introduced our lecture with a coherent analysis of the significance of the call for a democratic-secular Palestine.

The leadership of the Workers Party (PT), a party of over 500,000 members that grew out of the strike wave of industrial workers in 1979-80, invited Schoenman and myself to address the PT's International Secretariat. A two-and-a-half-hour discussion took place, with topics ranging from conditions of struggle in Palestine to the structure of power in the United States.

Newspapers and radio stations from Rio de Janeiro and Brazilia, as well as Sao Paulo, interviewed Schoenman on the purpose of the Campaign statement and the plight of the Palestinian people.

Folha de Sao Paulo, the city's leading newspaper, carried two stories: "Declaration of a state will not resolve the Palestinian question, declares writer," and "Gore Vidal and Linus Pauling support a campaign against aid to Israel." LEIA, a literary journal, is among the magazines running lengthy interviews.

The Palestinian community The Palestinian community in Brazil was duced us to Brazilian legislators from a wide variety of parties such as the PDT of Brizola, the PSDB, and the PMDB. The legislators with whom we met all expressed their support for the demands of The New York Times ad.

The Union of Doctors, in coordination with the P.L.O., sponsored a lecture in Brazilia. The audience, including ambassadors from many Arab states, was extremely moved by the presentation of both my slideshow "The War in Lebanon: An Inside View" and Schoenman's lecture, which followed.

The slideshow is an eyewitness account of the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, the destruction and siege of Beirut, and the devastation of the Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon.

The P.L.O. also asked us to participate in their booth at the10th Biennial Bookfair, held in Sao Paulo from Aug. 26 to Sept. 4. Approximately 1 million people attended this 10-day event. Requests kept pouring in for a Portuguese-language version of "The Hidden History." To date the book is available in English and French.

The lessons of Brazil The broad support in Brazil for the demands of "End All Aid to Israel-For a Democratic-Secular Palestine" is of particular importance today, when increasing pressure is being exerted on the P.L.O. to legitimize the Zionist occupation of Palestine.

It is an indication that increasing numbers of people throughout the world are beginning to understand that there can be no justice for the Palestian people so long as the repressive Zionist state remains afoot.

The efforts of the Brazilian people in support of the Palestinian struggle should energize us all to speak out more forcefully than ever in demanding: "End All Aid to Apartheid Israel, For a Democratic-Secular Palestine!"

The Brazilian signers listed in The New York Times ad are the following:

Regis de Castro Andrade, Director of Research, Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies; Raymundo Faoro, historian;

Florestan Fernandez, sociologist, PT National Deputy; Prof. Paolo Freire, author "Pedagogy of the Oppressed;" Dr. Anna Volochko, Director, Community Medicine, Sao Paulo; and Prof. Francisco Weffort, Prof. Sao Paulo University.

Other signatories whose names did not arrive in time for publication in the Times include:

Organizations-Confederation of Trade Unions (CUT); National Association of Professors of Sao Paulo; Union of Doctors of Ceará; Bankworkers Union of Sao Paulo;

Teachers Union ABC Paulista and Campinas;

Nurses Union of Sao Paulo; National Workers Front (FNT); and the National Union of Students (UNE).

Individuals—Prof. Paulo Douglas Barsotti, Univ. of Campinas; Vitor Buaiz, Nat'l. Deputy., PT; Arlindo Chignália Jr., Pres., Union of Doctors, Sao Paulo; Prof.

Mauricio Trachtenberg, Univ. of Campinas;

Hélio Bicudo, Nat'l. Directorate, PT; Jacó

----- pull-quotes -----

Michel Warschawsky SIN OK DES. PA

Action ne/Socialist Shone/So