In the first political analysis of unemployment in a socialist
country, Susan Woodward argues that the bloody conflicts that are
destroying Yugoslavia stem not so much from ancient ethnic hatreds
as from the political and social divisions created by a failed
socialist program to prevent capitalist joblessness. Under
Communism the concept of socialist unemployment was considered an
oxymoron; when it appeared in postwar Yugoslavia, it was dismissed
as illusory or as a transitory consequence of Yugoslavia's
unorthodox experiments with worker-managed firms. In Woodward's
view, however, it was only a matter of time before countries in the
former Soviet bloc caught up with Yugoslavia, confronting the same
unintended consequences of economic reforms required to bring
socialist states into the world economy.
By 1985, Yugoslavia's unemployment rate had risen to 15 percent.
How was it that a labor-oriented government managed to tolerate so
clear a violation of the socialist commitment to full employment?
Proposing a politically based model to explain this paradox,
Woodward analyzes the ideology of economic growth, and shows that
international constraints, rather than organized political
pressures, defined government policy. She argues that unemployment
became politically "invisible," owing to its redefinition in terms
of guaranteed subsistence and political exclusion, with the result
that it corrupted and ultimately dissolved the authority of all
political institutions. Forced to balance domestic policies aimed
at sustaining minimum standards of living and achieving
productivity growth against the conflicting demands of the world
economy and national security, the leadership inadvertently
recreated the social relations of agrarian communities within a
postindustrial society.
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