Yugoslavia: Workers take independent action

Following on from the collapse of the Milosevic regime, the working class of Yugoslavia have moved to reassert their class interests. While Vojislav Kostunica attempts to restore "order" after the mass movement that overthrew the old regime, miners, carworkers, lecturers and other layers turned on their old bosses.

"Strike committees, workers' committees, lock-ins and lock-outs," stated the Financial Times. "Yugoslavia was yesterday awash with reports of workers revolting against their Milosevic-era managers and taking over the directors' suites." (October 11) These dramatic scenes took place from one end of the country to the other, in a demonstration of the power of the working class, which was beginning to realise its own strength.

Bypassing the bourgeois opposition parties, the mass upheaval has moved from the streets to the factories and workshops. Workers' committees took control of scores of workplaces, ousting their former managers and asserting their own authority. The Zastava car factory, the Dunav insurance company and the big Genex trading company were amongst the state-owned industries where workers battled to establish their control. At Genex, the workers drove out the manager, the Milosevic stooge Radoman Bozovic, who was jostled and barred from taking his limousine. Meanwhile, workers froze all financial transactions and called for the return of the former boss who was forced to quit under Milosevic.

"The other bosses are like snakes," said a female bank clerk. "For the past two weeks they didn't know which side would win; now they're wriggling from their skins." In some enterprises, Milosevic-period managers, terrified of losing everything, locked themselves in their offices.

Workers took action in Novi Sad, in the state lottery company, in Nis, in the tobacco works, and in Belgrade University, where teaching staff and students expelled the rector and his administration. A security guard at Dunav insurance headquarters told a visitor: "Come back in two or three days. There is nobody in charge today."

At the faculty of political science at Belgrade University, a newly-formed teachers' council dismissed Vladimir Stambuk, a dean and member of the so-called Yugoslav Left - the party of Milosevic's wife.

Even the police were affected by the militant mood. On the outskirts of Belgrade a police station was paralysed by officers' demands for the removal of superiors who attempted to suppress the original protests.

Strikers at the Kolubara mine persuaded the Serbian electric power company to sack or suspend senior executives, including the managing director. Their comrades at the RTB mine in Bor also dismissed their managing director and dissolved the board, while strikers at the 14 Oktobar machinery plant in Krusevac took over the running of the company after purging its board.

In Nis, workers stormed the state-run textile factory, Nitex, and demanded the dismissal of the management. And so the picture continued across Yugoslavia. "Company directors are being escorted from their desks by strike committees determined to build a new country from the ground up," commented the Guardian (October 11).

The Financial Times, the organ of British finance capital, was alarmed by the speed of events, nervously pointing to the traditions of state ownership. "Workers took full advantage of Yugoslavia's social ownership traditions in which, under socialism, ownership rights were shared between the state, trade unions and workers' representatives." It continued that under Milosevic these rights were only on paper. But now workers are taking matters into their own hands. "With Milosevic's rule crumbling, the workers have taken the communist rhetoric literally and taken charge of their enterprises."

It is not correct to say that socialism existed in Yugoslavia. In reality, although capitalism was smashed by Tito's partisans, given the way in which the revolution was carried out, the regime modelled itself on Stalinist Russia. It was a deformed workers' state from the very beginning, based on state ownership of the economy. However, this required a supplementary political revolution to introduce workers' democracy and begin the movement towards socialism.

Today, the workers' committees and strike committees are the elements of workers' power in Yugoslavia. They have been created spontaneously as workers moved to assert their demands. They are a replica of the soviets created in the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 or the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. However, unlike in Russia where a Bolshevik Party existed, the workers of Yugoslavia have no revolutionary party at their head.

The so-called Democratic Opposition of Serbia, terrified by the events, warned against "excesses" and "arbitrariness". Miroljub Labus, the head of the crisis committee established by Kostunica, attempted to deflect the workers' anger away from the control of the plants. However, he was forced to bow to the growing power from below saying it was good to go back to the old system of self-management instituted by Tito after the second world war. "We can't allow chaos in the enterprises," he said. "The trade unions should decide on removing directors."

While this is absolutely correct, the Yugoslav workers can have no trust in the bourgeois politicians. They are financed and promoted by western imperialism and have a programme of wholesale privatisation of the economy. The working class must carry through an independent class policy for the workers and trade unions. As a step in this direction, the workers have moved to reassert their interests through the establishment of workers' committees and workers' councils. These committees, if they were linked up on a local, regional and national basis, could easily form the basis of a workers' democracy in Yugoslavia, as a stepping stone towards a socialist federation of the Balkans.

If only the Yugoslav working class could discover a revolutionary party, on the lines of the Bolshevik Party, then the potential for workers' power could be realised, transforming the situation not only in the Balkans but throughout Europe.