Sujeto con baja puntuación en ítem sobre la incomodidad con el alto ritmo cardíaco y de respiración.

Throughout the four decades of its existence (1950 – 1991) social ownership and self-management were reformed repeatedly, sometimes substantially, but the basic idea remained unchanged. The workers in a company elect a workers’ council from among their own members, which nominates and confirms the executive director, or the members of the executive body, and all of them together, the workers and directors, run the company. The company can itself chose output policy and set prices, it autonomously makes contracts for the sale of its outputs and the purchase of its raw materials (Ward 1958, p. 567). This is basically the self-management component of the arrangement.

As for the social ownership component, it was described (Horvat 1993) that the collective borrows its entire capital stock from society, which remains the collective owner. Over time society was represented by different local, regional and national public bodies. Most often these public bodies included representatives of the Communist Party, unions, war veterans, youth organizations and so on, but the

5 _{“The leasehold firm, like the TVEs in China, or the self managed firms in Yugoslavia, were far from}

perfect by Western standards. A large literature had detailed both the strengths and weaknesses of the Yugoslavian model, and suggested reforms that would improve their performance. A priori, one would have thought that the chances of improving upon the flawed decentralized ownership forms were at least as good as the chances of designing new privatization schemes, de novo.”(Stiglitz 1999)

influence of the Party was decisive. The responsibilities of the public bodies were changing continuously as well; sometimes they only endorsed the election of the president of the management board but sometimes they affected the allocation of profit. It was explained that in this system “labour hires capital rather than capital hiring labour or an entrepreneur hiring both fact ors” (Estrin 1983, p. 12). In the early stages the working collectives (enterprises) paid for the use of social assets; this was abolished at the beginning of the Seventies. Given that this payment was transferred into the public funds it in fact represented only a form of taxation. Society protected its assets by formal rules. Companies were ordered to subtract (before distributing wages) a few percent of their income for obligatory savings and investment into the business fund to preserve the value of their capital. The business fund is in fact a separate account which the firm could use only for investment in capital. The idea was to restrict consumption and stimulate investment. It was controlled whether a percentage of income was allocated to the fund, but the choice among business options was left to the firm. Hence, companies were forced by formal rules to invest in the existing enterprise or in new plants and new activities. The law guaranteed a minimum level of wages. The banking system was an additional source of short-term and long-term financing for companies’ activities. A framework for the use of financial and natural resources was prescribed, and if a collective failed to achieve what it was supposed to accomplish then the community (the above described public body) replaced the management or placed the resources with another collective. The key fact was that socially owned property, “may not be sold since it belongs to society as a whole” (Grapinski at al 1989, p. 33). Therefore, the placement of capital into the most productive use was restricted. Ward (1958, p. 568) summed all of this up by saying that under this system, then, costs would be the sum of material costs, “regular contributions” to the state (interest charge on fixed capital, ground rent, excise tax on sales…), the wage fund and interest on outstanding loans. If a firm were no longer able to pay duties to the state and to pay wages it would become bankrupt. Revenue less costs, i.e. profit, became the measure of success of the firm. Generally speaking, profit belonged to the firm, though the community very often powerfully affected its placement.

It was rarely decided that firms in financial difficulty had to go bankrupt. Usually it was decided, after consultation with the unions, the Communist Party and the local assembly that the company would be bailed out by the government or by other companies with the support of the Government. The old management was usually

replaced and if banks or other companies invested in the rescuing of the company they got interest on their investment.6 _{The influence of investors on the company in which}

they invested wasn’t direct but it was mediated through the public body. In the process of the election of management bodies (workers councils), voting rights were usually distributed according to the principle one employee - one vote. In the case of a labour managed firm (LMF) in capitalism, the voting rights depend on the amount of shares in the ownership held by an employee (Uvalić 1992).7

A company’s legal duties and obligations toward society were frequently changed over the forty years of existence of social ownership. These changes to a large extent influenced the behaviour of the firm, executives and employees and shaped ownership rights. There were two opposing explanations for the constant regulatory reforms. According to the first understanding it was a consequence of the fact that the basic structure of self-management wasn’t viable without strong regulatory support (Furubotn & Pejovich 1973, 1974; Grapinski et al 1989). On the other side, the advocates of self-management claimed that the ruling communist ideology wasn’t capable of accepting the autonomy of companies, producers and the market (Horvat 1982; Uvalic 1992). The relationship between regulatory constraints and ownership rights, between the public and private sphere, i.e. between the state and companies deserves a brief comment.