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Freedom and Planning in Yugoslavia's Economic System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Wolfgang Friedmann
Wolfgang Friedmann*
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

Following its political break with Stalin's Russia, Yugoslavia has, since the early 1950s, increasingly turned away from the centralized socialist planning that characterizes the Soviet economic system. The main impulse for the gradual elaboration of a distinctive national system came from two directions. First, the Yugoslav conception of federalism was based on the association of six regions (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro) with very distinct national, historical, and social traditions and in different stages of economic development. This meant balancing central economic direction with concern for regional needs and interests. Second, the break with Stalinist Russia in 1948 no doubt stimulated a desire to develop, together with political and ideological independence, a distinctive national economic philosophy of communism in contrast to the overcentralized planning bureaucracy of the Soviet Union.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , December 1966 , pp. 630 - 640
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1966

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References

1 At this writing (July 1966) the 1966-70 plan has not yet been approved, but certain investment priorities have been approved and passed on to the investment banks and the authorities of the republics to guide them in their operations.

2 A negative feature of this autonomy was demonstrated recently when the six regional railway enterprises failed to agree on any one type of electric locomotive.

3 Petar Stambolić, “A Broader Base for Self-Management,” in The Economic Reform in Yugoslavia, p. 64.

4 “New Economic Measures,” ibid., p. 67.

5 Ibid., p. 70.

6 Ibid., p. 77.

7 The new tax (porez na promet), which replaced the old turnover tax, is often called “turnover tax” by Yugoslav economists but is in fact a sales tax. The only other tax levied on enterprises is a tax on capital equipment at their disposal. They also make compulsory contributions to a common reserve fund designed to help enterprises in difficulty.

8 Krajger, ibid., p. 79.

9 Ibid., p. 74.

10 See “Reform of the Credit and Banking System,” Yugoslav Survey (Belgrade), No. 22 (1965), pp. 3215-36.

11 This figure includes over twenty mixed (commercial investment) banks which are not permitted to make major investments but may finance the purchase of machinery and other equipment.

12 This means all enterprise costs, including overheads but excluding wages.

13 Stambolić, “A Broader Base for Self-Management,” p. 61 (italics added).

14 See Wolfgang G. Friedmann and George Kalmanoff, eds., Joint International Business Ventures (New York, 1961).

15 Todorović, “Current Tasks in the Development of the Economic System and Social- Economic Relations,” in Economic Reform in Yugoslavia, pp. 52-53.