Page 167 - Mellinato, Giulio, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime Port Cities: The Northern Adriaticin a Comparative Perspective. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
P. 167
Workers of the Port of Koper and the Economic Reform Period in 1960s Slovenia
attractive opportunities for their children (Petrinja 1993, 212). But he was
also proud to remember that he and his closest associates in those days
‘took the path of the market economy. By doing so, the Port was liberating
itself from the state-bureaucratic management methods’ (Petrinja 1999,
9). Petrinja also recalled the following experiment: a group of workers re-
ceived a certain amount of money per tonne of goods transshipped and
it was entirely up to them how to divide the sum. According to Petrinja it
was ‘the highest peak of development of self- management’, while others
labelled it as a ‘capitalist system’ and so it was abolished (Ugrin 2000, 13).
To be sure, these assessments came not only long after the reforms
of 1965, but also at a time when socialism itself was dead and the (fully
capitalist) market economy was perceived as the only imaginable option.
It is still safe to assume that Petrinja did firmly advocate for reforms in
the 1960s. There is also little reason to question his attitude about his low
salary and the contribution of workers to the production of value, even
if it is an attitude that is even less comprehensible today than the idea of
strikes was under socialism. After all, Petrinja started his life as a car-
penter and later joined the partisans and became a communist, a person
committed to national and social liberation at a time when the outcome
of the war was far from certain (1943, 1944). Nevertheless, these two ar-
guments, taken together, appear to contradict each other.
In the present Slovenian historiography, the economic reforms that
began in 1965 and their aura of ‘liberalism’ are mostly perceived as pos-
itive yet highly inconsistent, ‘burdened with the ideology and politics
from which it arose’ (Repe 1992, 931). Explaining the goals of reforms in
Koper in 1965, Kavčič candidly addressed this ‘burden’. But doubts and
reservations persisted. In 1967, the Commission for socio-political rela-
tions and ideopolitical problems of the CC LCS addressed the fact that
most Party members still did not have a clear impression of what the re-
forms were about. Even worse, a part of the membership was reported-
ly afraid that, with the reforms, the Party was deviating from some basic
principles of socialism: ‘the issue of equality, increasing social inequality
…’. Other members had serious doubts about the goal of making the dinar
a convertible currency: ‘the dinar was convertible in pre-war Yugoslavia, a
low standard, unemployed workers and intellectuals, searching for work
abroad were the consequences’ (AS 1589/III, t. e. 218, Povzetek z razprave
o reformi, 26 July 1967).
167
attractive opportunities for their children (Petrinja 1993, 212). But he was
also proud to remember that he and his closest associates in those days
‘took the path of the market economy. By doing so, the Port was liberating
itself from the state-bureaucratic management methods’ (Petrinja 1999,
9). Petrinja also recalled the following experiment: a group of workers re-
ceived a certain amount of money per tonne of goods transshipped and
it was entirely up to them how to divide the sum. According to Petrinja it
was ‘the highest peak of development of self- management’, while others
labelled it as a ‘capitalist system’ and so it was abolished (Ugrin 2000, 13).
To be sure, these assessments came not only long after the reforms
of 1965, but also at a time when socialism itself was dead and the (fully
capitalist) market economy was perceived as the only imaginable option.
It is still safe to assume that Petrinja did firmly advocate for reforms in
the 1960s. There is also little reason to question his attitude about his low
salary and the contribution of workers to the production of value, even
if it is an attitude that is even less comprehensible today than the idea of
strikes was under socialism. After all, Petrinja started his life as a car-
penter and later joined the partisans and became a communist, a person
committed to national and social liberation at a time when the outcome
of the war was far from certain (1943, 1944). Nevertheless, these two ar-
guments, taken together, appear to contradict each other.
In the present Slovenian historiography, the economic reforms that
began in 1965 and their aura of ‘liberalism’ are mostly perceived as pos-
itive yet highly inconsistent, ‘burdened with the ideology and politics
from which it arose’ (Repe 1992, 931). Explaining the goals of reforms in
Koper in 1965, Kavčič candidly addressed this ‘burden’. But doubts and
reservations persisted. In 1967, the Commission for socio-political rela-
tions and ideopolitical problems of the CC LCS addressed the fact that
most Party members still did not have a clear impression of what the re-
forms were about. Even worse, a part of the membership was reported-
ly afraid that, with the reforms, the Party was deviating from some basic
principles of socialism: ‘the issue of equality, increasing social inequality
…’. Other members had serious doubts about the goal of making the dinar
a convertible currency: ‘the dinar was convertible in pre-war Yugoslavia, a
low standard, unemployed workers and intellectuals, searching for work
abroad were the consequences’ (AS 1589/III, t. e. 218, Povzetek z razprave
o reformi, 26 July 1967).
167
