Date: Sun, 29 Mar 98 16:39 LCL
From: PHILLPS
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]<
Subject: Kosovo (corrected)
I had trouble with my e-mail and the previous post was cut
off and the last part garbled. So let me please correct it.
But this relates back to Barkley's message. From what I have
been able to find out from anecdotal evidence so far there has
been little change in Yugoslavia from self-management institutions
(though I don't know aabout the state of property relations.) I
suspect that part of the American antipathy to Serbia is due to
the lack of reforms in the economic system. Yet, our evidence is
that it is (at least in part) the retention of much of the self-
management institutions in Slovenia which has eased its transition
without the gutwrenching declines that some of the other transitionary
economies have experienced. If that is the case, then to what extent
is American policy willing to accept that maintenance of some form
of self-management and workers' control or will it require an
abandonment of worker participation as an ideologically acceptable
constraint before the US will abandon sanctions. What worries me
is that when I was in Slovenia in December I attended a seminar
with the US ambassador who was leaving to take up the Yugoslav
Desk in Washington. In his talk he basically said, if I
interpreted him correctly, that even Slovenia which 'had made
great strides' had not liberalized (i.e. privatized) sufficiently
to satisfy American goals -- that is, worker participation in
management had to go! If that is the case, then one can understand
the basic 'cold-war' mentallity that is driving US-Serb relations
and the US intervention in Kosovo.
Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba
