T H E M A KI N G O F A STRATEGY F O R C H A N G E 61
receipts certifying that they had fulfilled their tax obligations and said to be redeemable with their local g overnm ent after the war. As in Slovenia, citizens were encouraged to volunteer donations above their quota.
Conditions did not allow these authorities to effect econom ic policy through price regulation, as the Slovene front could. Efforts to set prices so as to control distribution and limit inflation only led farm ers to w ith draw their produce from peasant markets and to complain so loudly that on January 15, 1943, the all-national provisional gov ernm ent ordered that the principle of free markets should b e protected and that com m ittees should find political rather than econ om ic rem edies to the problem o f price inflation. Persuasion rather than a money price had to govern in shortage conditions. In M ontenegro, com m ittees established co m m is sions of three persons— two delegates from the army and one from the people's committee— to supervise peasant markets, rem inding farmers of their “patriotic duty” to keep prices low. I f that did not work, they would flood the market with money to effect a rapid local devaluation. In lib er ated areas of Serbia and Bosnia, com m ittees also organized merchants into associations for the d irect purchase and collection o f produce at freely negotiated prices. Some efforts w ere made to organize marketing co o p e r atives among peasants them selves in the hope o f stimulating production and achieving a marketed surplus without speculation, but the base for such efforts was far less developed than in the highly cooperativized polit ical traditions of Slovenia and Croatia (as the party had discovered in the 1930s). As in Slovenia, the co m m ittee s also attem pted to increase produc tion with public labor, organizing collective-labor teams to cultivate the land of families who could not do so them selves b ecau se o f the war.
In contrast to the north, the countryside in the predominantly Partisan held territories faced overw helm ing dem ands arising from the war itself, a local economy that even in good times was far closer to subsistence, and less-developed public institutions for econom ic cooperation and administration— all exacerbated by enem y occupation o f the towns. C o m mittees understandably fell back on a natural econom y, adjusted policies and demands to specific local circum stances, and interwove civilian and military needs and personnel in the basic tasks o f governing. W ith fewer instruments, they had to accomplish more in their com m on “struggle for national defense and liberation, such as actually im plem enting an agrar ian reform, rationing food, and creating supply depots. D istributive egali tarianism and cooperation might have b e e n natural to this setting, b u t the ambitions of rational planning, monetary stability, popular assem blies, and civilian control belonged to another w orld.78
™ It would be unwise to think ol the situation in the southern th eater o f war and its Foca principles in terms o f the system o f war comm unism in 1 9 1 9 -2 3 , for the comm unist elem en t
Co n c l u s i o n
In Scandinavian social dem ocracy— the classic case of necessary political c o m m itm e n t to full e m p lo y m e n t— electoral victories and governmental coalitions under e conom ic circum stances of mass unem ploym ent (the G re a t D epression) w ere the conditions that led to the definition o f a new approach to u n em plo ym en t by governmental p olicies.79 T h e conditions that defined most e le m e n ts o f the Yugoslav Com m unist party’s strategy for e co n o m ic and social transformation w ere different. T h e Yugoslav royal g ov ern m e n t had declared the party illegal in 1921 and prohibited elec toral participation by its various front organizations. As a result, party m e m b ersh ip declined, and leaders went into exile or underground con spiracy. A m inuscule party o f 6 ,6 0 0 m e m b ers with an affiliated youth wing of 1 7 ,8 0 0 at the last party conference (in O cto b er 1940) before war i n te r v e n e d ,80 it had little opportunity to test its strategy against a voting public or to refine it in repeated electoral contests. In contrast, the Aus trian Social D em ocrats, who also cam e to power after W orld W ar II com m itted to full em p loym ent, w ere largely trade unionists who won sizeable electoral space b ecau se o f their postwar purge of Fascists, policy of neu trality, and close ties to the United S ta te s .81 W hile the Austrian Social D em o crats had won the contest against the Com m unist party by the 1920s and their formative political experiences w ere the struggle against mass u n em p lo ym en t in the 1930s (for which they were jailed) and the s u b seq u e n t civil war, the Yugoslav Com m u nist party was still engaged in the conflict with the Social D em ocrats in 1 9 3 7 - 4 0 (with the state being a significant interm ediary in the corporatist exclusions after 1937 and in the outright ban on the U nited Unions organization in 1940, when the Com munists w ere making advances with labor militancy). M oreover, in con trast to Austria, the p e rce n t o f the Yugoslav population classified as
was based in conditions, not ideology. But th ere are parallels in the debate o ver ideology and exp ed ien ce in the Soviet case as well; see Malle, The Econom ic Organization o f War
Co7nmunism, introduction.
79 T ilton, “A Sw edish Road to Socialism .” Esping-Andersen, Politics against Markets, is