Socialist Democracy in Yugoslavia: Female Workers’ Participation at the Shop Floor

Socialist democracy was the proclaimed political system in the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia. Politically, the system emerged in 1950 with the development of self-management, a theory which criticised of the Soviet system, rejected the notion of a people’s democracy and put forward Yugoslavia’s own ideas of socialist democracy. The biggest difference between socialist democracy in Yugoslavia and the communist Soviet Union was the role of the state, as socialist democracy set on de-etatisation, with the aim of abolishing the state. Socialist democracy was based on the self-management system, workers’ participation and local self-government. In Yugoslavia, property did not belong to the state, but to society. It was assumed that through the socialisation of property—especially through the distribution of “income” according to the result of work, which meant that the income created was managed by those who produced it—socialist democracy would gradually develop. Income included not only personal wages, but also other funds managed by workers and used for building local infrastructure, public services (education, culture, health), community life, investments to accelerate the development of less developed regions in Yugoslavia or other regions in need (humanitarian aid in case of earthquakes, floods, etc.). Although it is debatable in how many factories and to what extent production workers were actually involved in income distribution, especially in determining their own wages.