Das werktätige Volk ohne Arbeit: Arbeitslosigkeit und Selbstverwaltung im sozialistischen Jugoslawien als Forschungsgegenstand: eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme

Abstract

The article focuses on the question of a possible linkage between unemployment and self-management in socialist Yugoslavia. Departing from secondary sources and offering a critical literature review, the article sketches the development of unemployment in Yugoslavia from the 1950s to the beginning of the 1980s, outlines different points of discussion and explores concrete gaps in the existing interpretations. By proposing a differentiated view of self-management, the a uthors conclude that from an economic perspective the relationship between self-management and unemployment was at best an indirect one. The broader system of self-management can hardly be interpreted as an obstacle to political participation or social integration of unemployed persons. In contrast to previous interpretations of Yugoslavia's unemployment which regard it as a paradox, the authors suggest that the paradox was not the existence of unemployment in a socialist state, but the way in which the society - especially when organized on the basis of socialist self-management - reacted to it. In fact, the Yugoslav response to the problem of unemployment proved to be not really different from the way this was handled by other (capitalist) states in this period.