SOCIALISM AND LIBERATION
511
ments it embodies cannot be introduced in other ways. 'Obviously,
a system which aims at a maximum of efficiency cannot pennit any
really great independence to the economic decisions of the workers'
councils. But maximum efficiency need
not
be the highest desideratum
of a socialist society or any society. Further, bureaucracy without any
semblance of workers' control or participation may be inefficient
too--perhaps more inefficient than a relatively anarchic, non-bureau–
cratic system. Human beings normally appraise an economy by other
than strictly economic norms.
The most significant thing about the ideological position of the
Yugoslav regime is that, if it is taken seriously, it spells the end of
the political monopoly of the Communist Party. In actual fact, there
is less workers' control in Yugoslavia than in Poland, where even
Gomulka views the workers' councils suspiciously. One of the reasons
is that the Communist Party in Yugoslavia is more monolithic, less
democratic, and closer to the Stalinist model than the Polish party.
Workers' control, to the modest extent that it actually exists in Yu–
goslavia, was not a spontaneous demand made by the workers them–
selves, as in Poland and most conspicuously in Hungary, but was
carried through under the tutelage and control of the Yugoslav
Communist Party.
A "workers' control" which is in tum controlled by a party fac–
tion with the secret police behind it collapses of itself-it dies of
boredom and disinterest, like the Russian soviets and local trade
unions. Some semblance of power, no matter how fearfully guarded
by the party watchdogs, must be given to the workers. This power
in time either grows from what it feeds upon or becomes atrophied.
It
is the natural form through which, where it exists, opposition can
be "legitimately" channeled.
That Kardelj, for all his lack of clarity, his inconsistencies and
backtracking, is on the right road, from the point of view of intensi–
fying the struggle between the democratic and totalitarian potentials
of socialism, is evidenced in part by the character of the embit–
tered reply made to him by A. Rumjanzew in the Moscow
Kom–
munist.
Rumjanzew recognizes that in effect Kardelj is charging
that the Soviet Union is a new form of class state in which, al–
though the legal title of ownership has been transferred to the
workers and peasants, the latter are in fact being exploited by the
