Well, I'll attempt a quickie on this, with max generalizations and min numbers.
On political grounds Yugo looked better than other communist-ruled states in that although there was not multiparty democracy, there was generally less political repression and more tolerance of people criticizing the regime and just generally mucking about. However Tito did crack down from time to time, usually in response to upheavals of separatism especially by the violent and terroristic Croatian separtist movement. During such periods his most vocal critic, former ally Milovan Djilas would get jailed.
On the economic front it is a very mixed bag. One positive many would point to was that there was probably more influence of workers over management than any other economy in the world, although workers' management in Yugoslavia was hardly all that it was cracked up to be by the Yugoslav's propaganda machine.
Macroeconomically it did pretty well in the early post- WW II years but then did very poorly compared to the more centrally commanded socialist economies, especially in the 1980s when unemployment, inflation, and foreign indebtedness all rose sharply.
Income was generally not distributed as equally as in the Soviet bloc socialist economies, although more so than in most market capitalist economies, except for the Scandinavian social democracies.
A big problem of relevance to the current situation was that of regional inequality which worsened over the Tito period. At the end of the war the ratio of per capita incomes in the best off republic (Slovenia) to the worst off zone (province of Kosovo-Metohija) was about 3.2 to one. By the end of the 1980s it was about nine to one.
In terms of overall per capita income, this regional divergence showed. Slovenia arguably has ended up in better shape than any other nation ruled by a communist party in terms of per capita income and a lot of other measures, ahead of Poland, the Czech Republic, et al. OTOH Kosovo-Metohija ended up worse off than almost all of them, with the exception of Albania.
I leave it to others to make a bottom line out of all this (or to dispute any of the above facts). Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Saturday, May 22, 1999 9:29 PM Subject: Fwd: Tito
>[this was addressed to me rather than the list]
>
>From: "John Graf" <jgraf at jvlnet.com>
>To: <dhenwood at panix.com>
>Subject: Tito
>Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 20:15:55 -0500
>X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
>X-Priority: 3
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>
>Hello Doug and all on the LBO-talk list,
>
>I'm a relatively new reader of your exchanges, and am
>interested in finding out what any interested list members
>can report about Yugoslavia under Tito.
>
>It seems that Tito's early challenge to the Soviet Union's
>hold on the post World War II "people's democracies" of
>Eastern Europe would be to his historical credit. But I'm
>ignorant of developments in later years that would fill out
>the picture of how Yugoslavia may have been better off
>under its particular brand of socialism than what has
>developed during the years after Tito's death.
>
>Thanks in advance for your replies.
>
>John Graf
>Janesville, Wisconsin
>jgraf at jvlnet.com
>
>