FROM SELF-MANAGEMENT SOCIALISM TO PRIVATIZATION: THE CASE OF THE SELF-MANAGED ENTERPRISE “RUDI ČAJAVEC”

Abstract

The paper analyzes the political, economic, and legal foundations of Yugoslav self-management socialism, with a particular focus on its practical application during the transition to privatization. Special attention is given to the internal contradictions of market socialism, including the relationship between workers’ self-management and market mechanisms, the decentralization of production, the fragmentation of social labor, and the role of political-administrative structures in constraining workers’ democracy. The study combines a theoretical analysis of the legal framework with an empirical investigation of the development and transformation of the Banja Luka SOUR “Rudi Čajavec,” based on factory periodicals and available historical sources. It demonstrates how market fluctuations, indebtedness, and the weakening of self-management institutions gradually undermined the economic and democratic potential of enterprises, laying the groundwork for their later privatization and disintegration. The paper concludes that the collapse of the self-management model was not a result of its normative foundations, but rather a consequence of the structural limitations of market socialism and the political-economic reforms of the late 1980s, which opened the way for the transformation of social property into private capital.