Talk by Matthias Zwack: Attempt and Failure of a Utopia – The Self-managed Socialism in Yugoslavia

The event will take place in German.

The description has been taken and translated from the event website.

“An open society, grassroots democracy, and direct worker control over firms—in the midst of the Cold War, Yugoslav communists attempted to implement something that today sounds like a distant utopia. Yugoslavia’s “socialist democracy” sought to overcome both the state and capital. The people were to decide for themselves on all matters of social life.
For decades, the Yugoslav model inspired political and economic scientists, critical thinkers, social protests, and reform movements on both sides of the Iron Curtain – until it collapsed in a series of bloody civil wars at the end of the 1980s.
Did Yugoslavia fail because of the supremacy of its communist party, which was unwilling to relinquish its power? Or did the self-management system ultimately create the causes for its own demise? Can the Yugoslav model only be evaluated in terms of its demise? Or does the focus on its failure obscure the possibilities and potential it held?
In a brief journey through time into this almost forgotten chapter of left-wing history, the lecture sets out to search for clues: What can we learn from the Yugoslav experience for today’s perspectives on a better future?”