Sotiris Kostopoulos, Αυτοδιαχείριση, Athens: Stochastis (Στοχαστής), 1984, 272 pp.
Αυτοδιαχείριση (Self-Management) is a comprehensive study that examines self-management comparatively through the forms it has taken in different economic and political systems. Kostopoulos approaches self-management not merely as a technical model for the organization of enterprise management, but as a question connected to workers’ position in production and decision-making processes, property relations, and the structure of the economic system. The opening section of the book discusses the meaning of the concept of self-management, its significance from the perspective of workers, its relationship with the cooperative movement, and the different forms it assumes within capitalist and socialist systems.
The first part of the study comparatively examines models of participation, cooperativism, and self-management that emerged in different parts of the world. It discusses the Mitbestimmung system in West Germany, Israeli kibbutzim, Ujamaa villages in Tanzania, Algerian self-management, experiments in enterprise self-management in Czechoslovakia, collective and state farms (kolkhozes and sovkhozes) in the Soviet Union, and Chinese people’s communes. In doing so, the book establishes a broad international framework demonstrating that organizations considered under the heading of “self-management” may in fact rest on quite different relations of ownership, management, and decision-making.
The main focus of the book, however, is the system of workers’ self-management developed in Yugoslavia. Starting from the historical and political background of the Yugoslav experience, the book examines in detail the management structure of enterprises and the relationships among workers’ councils, management committees, enterprise managers, and workers’ participation in decision-making processes. It also investigates the extent of workers’ formal and effective control over production through issues such as the distribution of income within enterprises, wages, economic decision-making, and the everyday functioning of self-management institutions.
Kostopoulos’s approach is not limited to presenting the Yugoslav model as an ideal system of self-management. The book also discusses the tensions between workers’ genuine participation in decision-making and the influence of bureaucratic, managerial, and political structures. How the powers of workers’ councils are exercised in practice, the position of specialists and managerial personnel, the influence of the state and political organizations over enterprises, and the extent to which workers actually participate in decision-making are treated as central questions for assessing the real functioning of self-management.
The final sections of the book move beyond the Yugoslav case to examine the relationship of self-management to socialism, democracy, and economic organization. Through questions such as whether Yugoslav self-management could constitute a model for a socialist society, whether a similar system could be implemented in capitalist countries, and what the future of self-management might be, the book evaluates both the potential and the limitations of workers’ management. Self-management is thus approached not simply as a technique of enterprise-level management, but as a broader problem concerning how economic and political power is distributed within society.
In this respect, Αυτοδιαχείριση constitutes a comprehensive comparative source for understanding the historical experiences of workers’ self-management and, in particular, the Yugoslav model of workers’ management. By examining within a common framework models developed in different countries under the headings of “self-management,” “participation,” and “cooperativism,” the book demonstrates that these concepts are not identical and that workers’ actual control over production must be assessed through concrete institutional and social relations. Its extensive bibliography also provides an important point of reference for exploring the international literature of the period on twentieth-century debates over self-management and, especially, the Yugoslav experience.