The Failure of Liberalism

One notices two catastrophic tendencies on Serbia's political scene that will prevent modernizing trends and the long-term emergence of both a modern left and modern liberalism. On the one hand, thanks to Slobodan Milosevic, there is a continuation of the ruling apparatus from communist times, despite all political changes. On the other hand, in the understanding of the political, there exists a direct continuity from the period of self-managing socialism - reduction of the totality of politics to the ethno-national. Not only have the ruling party, structures and people remained - the only change is that the ideology of socialist self-management was simply substituted with ethno-nationalism - but it also seems as if the ruling structure chose its opposition itself.

An especially tragic fact is that the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) is the only real political party in Serbia. It has members, organization, a structure of interests, a clear program (maintaining power at any cost) and is always able to mobilize its members and sympathizers to vote for party candidates at all levels. Of course, the SPS controls the army, police, state and para-state apparatus, including public administration, at all levels. As a means by which one enters the state and quasi-state apparatus in this highly centralized state, the SPS is also a party of cadres, while the key cadres were of course inherited from the League of Communists of Serbia. As a party through which one enters executive boards and appears on cadre lists from diplomacy to economics, this is a party of directors, head judges, the police, the army and leading functionaries in public and state administration.

The SPS is not just the real heir to the property of the League of Communists of Serbia, but also to the informal, non-electoral, non-institutionalized and socially irresponsible power structure that brought about the breakup of Yugoslavia and the series of three internal wars. The SPS thereby also became the heir to UDBA (State Security under the Communists) and the Yugoslav Peoples' Army (JNA), their incapability of preventing a bloody civil war, their capability of trampling upon elementary human rights and, after defeat in three internal wars, connections to the war mafia and organized crime. In the short-term, this strengthened the power of Slobodan Milosevic, who is the basic source of power and legitimation for the SPS. In the long-term, in the future peace-time Serbia, i.e. after sanctions, this will most likely lead to a loss of power and the collapse of the SPS. The SPS cannot lose even one election: its power lies in undivided rule. The sources of SPS power are: continuity, sanctions and its capability of articulating local and particular group interests. The sanctions have thus far homogenized the Serb majority (in the Republic of Serbia) around Slobodan Milosevic and the continuity of the power apparatus marginalizes the effects of social pluralism and political democracy. All of this makes the power structure as a whole the fundamental obstacle to modernization and democratization.

The homogenization of citizens of Serb nationality around Slobodan Milosevic is a natural consequence of sanctions and the struggle to establish an ethno-national state on the territory of the former Yugoslav federation. The end of sanctions will bring about the end of their impact. This opens the process of pacification and as this process progresses so will the process of modernization, and the SPS has nothing to gain from it. Not because it is allegedly a socialist or social-democratic party, but exactly because it is not.

The situation in the liberal wing of the political spectrum is no better than in the socialist. All parties and groups that legitimized themselves as liberal-democratic either compromised that position or were practically prevented from having relevant political weight in public opinion.

First, a group of democratic and pro-Yugoslav oriented Zagreb intellectuals gathered around the journal Praxis and the interdisciplinary group "Man and System" founded the Association for Yugoslav Democratic Initiative (UJDI) in 1989. The UJDI program sought a democratic federal Yugoslavia: legalization of a multi-party system and direct elections to the Chamber of Citizens in the federal parliament - immediately. A year later, when it became clear that these elections would not occur, and after the elections in Slovenia and Croatia, federal prime minister Ante Markovic founded the Reform Alliance. Like his federal government, the Reform Alliance did not have a clear stand regarding the organization of Yugoslavia. They counted upon the extraordinary popularity of the federal prime minister. The Reformists did indeed become a parliamentary party at the parliamentary elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, but they actually suffered a strong defeat. They marked success only in Macedonia, but this party completely changed its orientation there after one year.

With great ambitions, a group of liberal Belgrade intellectuals founded the Democratic Party (DS) in 1990. The party was conceived to be the carrier of political liberalism and to continue the tradition of the pre-war Yugoslav party with the same name. The initial fundamental dilemma of this party - liberal or nationalist - could already be seen in its name (it does not specify what it is the Democratic Party of - Serbia, Serbs, Yugoslavia). It did not succeed in resolving this dilemma, despite the fact that some of the nationalist oriented party leaders split away and created the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS). With the replacement of the party leadership, the tendency to constantly vacillate between nationalism and liberalism was replaced by political demagogy, vagueness and the absence of any kind of clear orientation. To be sure, this brought the party four times as many votes at the 1993 elections, but at the cost of alignment in the nationalist block ("Union of Serb lands"). Its pre-election nationalist orientation, combined with demagogy, has continued, while the only law that this party has successfully sponsored is the law on the reinvestigation of the privatization of public property. The position of this party is extremely unclear, as well as its future. The only thing that is clear is the ambitions of its leader and the fact that he will resort to every kind of demagogy, and that the party follows him in this for now. With regard to the key question - the national - the DSS is an extreme nationalist party which is closest to the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), a proto-bolshevik, extreme nationalist, anti-liberal party. The political similarity between the two Vojislavs (Kostunica of the DSS and Seselj of the SRS) is evident, despite personal intolerance and the completely different political philosophy of a liberal political philosopher and a Sarajevan bolshevik converted into an authoritarian nationalist.

The Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), the largest opposition party, is a story in and of itself. This is more of a movement than a political party and follows all of the whims of its charismatic leader - Vuk Draskovic. It is hard to figure out his political orientation, which lately seems to be some strange combination of liberalism, peacemaking and radical nationalism. The actual influence of Draskovic and his party, which has seen constant splits and creation of new coalitions, is also unclear.

Two antagonistic parties - New Democracy and Slobodan Rakitic's wing of DEPOS - have been formed out of the coalition party DEPOS (Democratic Movement of Serbia), which is Draskovic's creation. New Democracy was founded in 1990 by the then deputy prime minister of Serbia and basically served as a para-state youth organization. New Democracy - Movement for Serbia was completely insignificant until after the elections in December 1993, when it entered the Serbian parliament through the DEPOS coalition. Completely against the will of those who voted for DEPOS, the party entered a coalition with Slobodan Milosevic and enabled a peaceful parliamentary existence for republican prime minister Marjanovic's government. In return, New Democracy and its leader receive generous exposure in the state electronic and para-state printed media. Like New Democracy, Rakitic's DEPOS, as a nationalistic antipode to Draskovic, is not a political party with a party base, but rather a (now already former) deputy group with an uncertain future. Both of these parties owe their current influence to DEPOS and, considering election law, have no chance to create a new centristic coalition. As far as Rakitic's DEPOS fraction is concerned, the crowd in the nationalist wing is too large for this group to hope for a successful independent political future without a party apparatus, organization, propaganda possibilities and a convincing leader.

Liberalism did have a chance in Serbian politics. This is best shown by the very good results achieved by the defeated presidential candidate in the 1992 elections - Milan Panic. However, the national question proved to be an unbridgable obstacle for most Serbian liberals. The minority, whose roots are in UJDI and the Reform Alliance, did indeed overcome this important political obstacle, but the people who led these organizations, or later the remains of their remains, proved to be incapable of creating mass organizations, as well as political activity. Not only did they repel people from themselves, but they also put all of their remaining political capital to work toward their personal affirmation, even at the price of compromising their own organizations. This also falls into the matrix of the old-new order which used the disintegration of Yugoslavia, war and the sanctions to extend the existence of the ruling structures for which the communist party was the old, but by political pluralism manipulated by ethnonationalism - new means of maintaining social power. Until now (autumn 1994), the liberal political agitators have fit into these rules of the game.