IIRE Notebook no. 62 is edited by Catherine Samary & Fred Leplat, with contributions from Samuel Farber, Silvia Federici, Franck Gaudichaud, Zagorska Golubović, Ernest Mandel, Goran Marković, Svetozar Stojanović and Raquel Varela.
How far did the Bolsheviks introduce a ‘decolonial communism’, later destroyed by Stalin’s ‘socialism in one country’? Did the Tito-Stalin break in 1948 and the other revolutions transform these objectives? How far did the struggles and debates in the Yugoslavia of ‘market socialism’ in the mid 1960s follow a path towards democracy and the commons?
The contributors in this book review past and present experiences and Catherine Samary reconsiders the debates in the light of current thinking.
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''Catherine Samary applies an appropriately international and historical perspective to reclaim marginalised traditions of workers control at a very opportune moment. Samary provides an invaluable intellectual resource for the task of carrying through a project of popular control in today's conditions of corporate and financial rule. Bravo!'' - Hilary Wainwright, co-editor Red Pepper.
''This is a fascinating text that discusses the relationship and sometimes the contradictions between commons, socialism and self-management, it helps us to better understand the practice and politics of moving to an ecological society, a society that moves beyond markets and states to create genuine alternatives for neoliberalism'' - Derek Wall, author of Elinor Ostrom's Rules for Radicals.
''Vivid historical memory, global outreach and emancipatory nerve are all present in this necessary compendium that guides us through our current situation and arms us with heavy intellectual artillery in face of dramatic challenges ahead. Under the guidance of Catherine Samary, whose erudition, perseverance and energy are legendary, she and other authors leave no stones unturned: from October 1917 to the Left's new dilemmas and imperatives hundred years later, from socialist Yugoslavia and its self-management to the new Balkan rebels, via Prague in 1968, Chile and Portugal in the 1970s, and the 1989 'velvet' revolutions, all the way to the Zapatistas and the worldwide defence of the commons.'' - Igor Štiks, author of Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav State and co-editor of Welcome the Desert of Post-Socialism.
Table of Contents:
Author’s note ................................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction, Catherine Samary ...................................................................................................... 3
GENERAL OUTLOOK ................................................................................................................ 22
October 1917-2017: From a decolonial communism to the of the commons,
Catherine Samary ......................................................................................................................... 23
From the October Revolution to Stalinisation ............................................................................. 27
Pursuit of the permanent revolution after Stalin .......................................................................... 40
From the ‘great debate’ in Cuba to a self-managed system ......................................................... 53
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 75
THE YUGOSLAV EXPERIENCE ............................................................................................... 98
Yugoslavia since the revolution: a few key dates ......................................................................... 99
Yugoslav self-management: a balance sheet, Catherine Samary ................................................ 103
Socialism and humanism, Zagorka Pešić-Golubović ................................................................. 132
The June student movement and social in Yugoslavia, Svetozar Stojanović .............................. 149
From post-revolutionary dictatorship to socialist, Svetozar Stojanović ..................................... 164
Workers’ councils in Yugoslavia: successes and failures, Goran Markovic ............................... 201
Historical background of the creation of workers’ councils ...................................................... 201
Legal solutions ........................................................................................................................... 206
Workers’ councils and reforms of the system ............................................................................ 209
Successes ................................................................................................................................... 213
Failures ...................................................................................................................................... 218
Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 220
OTHER POST-CAPITALIST EXPERIENCES ......................................................................... 232
Plan, Market and Democracy: the experience of the so-called socialist countries, Catherine Samary
Introduction: theoretical, political and methodological questions ............................................. 233
Social relations and the plan ...................................................................................................... 253
Yugoslav ‘market socialism’ with self-management ................................................................. 256
Updating the Soviet debate on the ‘law of value’ ..................................................................... 267
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 290
Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 307
The law of value in relation to self-management and investment in the economy of the workers states, Ernest Mandel .................................................................................................................. 315
Building socialism in Cuba, Samuel Farber ............................................................................... 335
SUMMING UP AND FURTHER DEBATES ............................................................................ 349
Chile and Portugal in the 1970s: the left, nationalisations and ‘workers’ control’ in the
revolutionary processes, Franck Gaudichaud & Raquel Varela ................................................. 350
Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 350
The debate about ‘workers' control’, nationalisations and ‘people's power’ ............................ 354
Chile 1970-1973: Allende’s government and the nationalisations ............................................ 360
Portugal 1974-1975: nationalisations against workers’ control ................................................ 366
Co-administration and ‘battle for production’ versus cordones industriales and people’s power?
................................................................................................................................................... 369
The struggle for political power: workers’ control in the Portuguese Revolution .................... 377
Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 386
Latin America: state, popular power and class struggle, Franck Gaudichaud ........................... 395
Eastern Europe: revisiting the ambiguous revolutions of 1989, Catherine Samary ................... 419
Ideological bias of Cold War concepts ...................................................................................... 420
Democratic revolutions or opaque ‘refolutions’? ...................................................................... 432
‘Transition to democracy’? The German symbol: what about ‘Ostalgia’? ............................... 444
The repressed ‘third way’ .......................................................................................................... 448
From the Prague Autumn of workers councils (1968) to the Velvet Revolution (1989):
continuity or antipodes? ............................................................................................................. 455
The struggles for the commons in the Balkans, The Balkan Forum Commons Working Group 463
Concepts, history and evolution ................................................................................................ 463
A radical critical conception of the commons ........................................................................... 467
Balkans as the European periphery ........................................................................................... 468
Existing commons struggles in the Balkans .............................................................................. 472
Commoning the struggle ........................................................................................................... 480
Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 484
Feminism and the politics of the Commons, Silvia Federici ...................................................... 488
EPILOGUE ................................................................................................................................. 504
Decolonial communism: Analytical, political and democratic dimensions,
Catherine Samary ....................................................................................................................... 505
ABOUT THE AUTHORS .......................................................................................................... 517
About Resistance Books and the IIRE ........................................................................................ 521