Paul Stubbs
The Institute of Economics, Zagreb
Author of The New International Economic Order: Lives and Afterlives
This comprehensive, nuanced, in-depth study of the history of the field of professional economics in socialist Yugoslavia takes seriously the relative autonomy of the profession as it emerged after the revolution and consolidated its position subsequently. It explores the deep contradictions of Yugoslavia's supposed exceptionalism in terms of in its socio-economic system and insists on the value of a comparative methodology. It is a path-breaking, inter-disciplinary, study, valuable not only because it revisits an important, if relatively neglected, spatio-temporal conjuncture but also because of the lessons it offers for contemporary emancipatory projects. It will become a point of reference for historical analyses of socialist economics, of great interest and value to students, researchers, and activists alike.
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Branko Milanovi
Graduate Center, City University of New York
Author of Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War
In this splendid book, Marko Grdei and Mislav itko trace the intellectual history of the rise and fall of the specifically Yugoslav political economy. It was a unique political economy because the circumstances were unique: companies managed by workers, capital owned by society, and goods and services sold under market conditions. Thirty years ago at the apex of neoliberalism that theory seemed unimportant and quaint. But as some forms of labor management, workers agency, and shareholder capitalism reemerge, the discussions of Yugoslav political economy may surprisingly become relevant again.
