Mechanisms of Centralisation towards a Post-Yugoslav Dominant Class: The Case of Slovenia

Introduction

Slovenia’s independence, formalised in June 1991, cannot be understood without considering its role as a driver of the emergence of a changing social order and, within that, of a dominant class. The beginnings of secession could already be seen in the 1980s, in a context in which the League of Communists of Slovenia (Zveza komunistov Slovenije, ZKS) and the Republic’s leadership enjoyed a high level of autonomy, built on the liberalising reforms of the 1960s which had shaped the development of Yugoslavia’s self-managed socialism. Importantly, company managers had a lot of power in the decision-making process and allocation of resources. In the context of the growing crisis of economic and interethnic relations in Yugoslavia, in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, discourses emerged in the 1980s that were linked, on the one hand, to social movements inspired by the new left and, on the other, to nationalism. Throughout the 1980s, the party–state apparatus channelled these discourses. Thereby it effectively ended up facilitating the introduction of a multiparty system, and, in alliance with the dominant economic groups, of capitalism. The growing protests of the working class were suppressed in the process. Avoiding social rupture in Slovenia was paradoxically made possible by the rupture of Yugoslavia as a state and Slovenia’s focus on national unity and independence.

Scholars have tended to agree that the nature of agency in the process leading to Slovenian independence was fundamentally voluntarist (Bebler 2002; Bibič 1993; Gow and Carmichael 2000). These works share a certain methodological primordialism, which favours a focus on identity and other “autochthonous” features (Šumi 2004, 82–3). Several take corporatism as their analytical starting point (Fink-Hafner 1998; Krašovec and Johannsen 2016) and the transition to multipartyism and capitalism as indisputable points of convergence, all packaged in a teleological view of history (Kirn 2019, 107) that allows the Yugoslav crises of the 1930s and 1980s to be integrated into a single nationalist narrative towards Slovenian statehood (Centrih 2020, 52). By focusing on the different dimensions of (inter-)personality in the exercise of power, typical of Western pluralism and elitism (Therborn 2008, 135), these studies appear to answer the question why Marxist intellectuals in Slovenia in the 1980s did not aspire to social hegemony and why Yugoslav initiatives towards cohesion came late and in a weak form (Centrih 2020, 65). From their perspective, it was down to a lack of political will in a crisis of legitimacy of socialism. Accordingly, inequality in Slovenia after independence was explained less and less in terms of the class perspective and increasingly in terms of cultural vicissitudes (Kramberger and Stanojević 2015, 652).

This tendency has been replicated in scholarly analyses. Even so, critical approaches have survived through a series of Marxist studies focused on local changes as a consequence of the evolution of global capitalism (Kramberger and Stanojević 2015, 657). These works have addressed various aspects of the Slovenian postsocialist transition, including its inclusion in world-system trends (Močnik 2017a), the role of intellectuals in the dissemination of national agendas (Centrih 2020; Močnik 2008), the position of trade unions (Breznik and Mance 2020), the question of memory (Breznik and Močnik 2022), citizenship and identity (Breznik and Močnik 2011; Kosi 2016), as well as ideological mechanisms of socioeconomic reproduction (Močnik 2021a). From this perspective, the agency in the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the restoration of capitalism in the successor states cannot be understood without addressing dynamics of class reproduction.

Paradoxically, the Slovenian process was set in motion in the absence of a class to reproduce (Močnik 2021b). This problem is related to the evolution of postcapitalist social formations (Samary 2017) in which there was neither a determining mode of production (Kržan 2017, 216) nor a class worthy of the name, that is one capable of matching the logic of its own reproduction to that of the social formation over which it exercised dominance. Accordingly, Močnik (2021b, 410) points out that the political bureaucracy that established itself as the representative of the working class in the various Yugoslav republics could not be considered a class, but merely a dominant social group. Its interests did not correspond to those of any of the modes of production that coexisted in Yugoslavia – especially after the liberal reforms of 1965 (Kirn 2019, 130). Therefore, it maintained a “separate and relatively autonomous political sphere” for the reproduction of its bureaucratic monopoly, exercised through periodic ideological operations and occasional violence (Močnik 2021b, 411). This dominant political-bureaucratic group reorganised its ideological and administrative operations throughout the 1980s in order to maintain the passivity of the subaltern classes, but at the same time this had consequences for the group’s own composition and function. It integrated new political actors and allied social groups that brought ideological contributions of their own (Gramsci 1975, 40–54).

Therefore, at the republican level, the unity of political elites acquired a broader meaning. The way in which the political bureaucracy was reproduced in Slovenia led to the creation of a dominant class which sought to preserve itself by means of restoring capitalism through the dissolution of the socialist state. Such an outcome was a consequence of the dominant group’s need for self-preservation in the Yugoslav systemic crisis of the 1980s. Labour unrest and unemployment (Woodward 1995a) as well as the inability of federal institutions to adopt a viable economic policy deepened the decentralising drift (González-Villa 2019). Subsequently, local political bureaucracies navigated the global economic difficulties by paralysing the federation and deepening the liberalisation–centralisation dialectic.

Ultimately, the transformation of the links between local dominant groups and other social factions resulted in the creation of a new class, formed by a coalition between the dominant economic actors and the ideological and cultural apparatuses of the state. Together, they exercised a Piedmont function of renewal (Močnik 2021b) – or a “dictatorship without hegemony” (Gramsci 1975, 1823). They disarmed the local working classes by transforming local political apparatuses, which became an instrument in the service of the new party system (González-Villa 2014) and the economic requirements of the new comprador bourgeoisie (Bembič 2017; Podvršič 2023), as well as a tool for the dissemination of nationalism (Močnik 2017b).

My study is based on the premise that, throughout the 1980s, the shift from group(s) to class(es) in Yugoslavia encompassed the three fundamental dimensions of reproduction, namely

the relations and forces of production, the character of the state apparatus, and the particular ideological superstructure with its specialized apparatuses of qualification and subjection. In all three spheres – economic, administrative–repressive and ideological – positions and processes are reproduced at the same time as suitable individuals are reproduced (or freshly recruited) in sufficient number to fill the positions (Therborn 2008, 145).

The formation of the new class was completed through the realisation of administrative and ideological operations observed in the processes of state mediation, as developed by Therborn (2008, 219) to explain the subjugation of the subordinated. Specifically, Therborn identifies two kinds of processes: those that fulfil the function of “centralization” of state resources at the service of the dominant class – the form of repression, displacement of demands, and extraction of resources – and those that fulfil the function of “totalisation” – which explain the inclusion of the dominated in the exercise of state power and emerge through the process of co-optation of the judiciary and social support. Although both can be observed throughout the process of establishing the new class as well as through its reproduction, the mechanisms of centralisation serve as a starting point for the implementation of a sovereign political programme.

Repression and Transformation of the Dominant Group

The evolution of repressive actions reflects the evolution of the political bureaucracy in Yugoslavia. While between the 1950s and the 1970s, prohibitions, restrictions, and surveillance were directed at the different forms of internal opposition, as claims of sovereignty materialised in the late 1980s, harassment targeted what was identified as the fifth column at the service of the external antagonists. This shift reflected the transition from the group which had applied coercive measures to ensure its own reproduction (Močnik 2021a) to a faction, which justified repression by means of ideological bureaucracies, part of which had themselves been subject to repression in the past. The political bureaucracy thus started to pursue more than just its own survival; it now was “striving for undivided representation” through its centralised repressive machinery vis-à-vis the subordinate groups (Therborn 2008, 221).

In the first phase, the political bureaucracy required “intensive ideological operations and occasional violent repression […] to achieve the general apathy and passivity needed to maintain the separation of the ‘autonomous’ political sphere […] and the bureaucratic monopoly within it” (Močnik 2021b, 412). The actions of the 1950s and 1970s had been carried out in a context in which the party–state “relied more on the hegemonic apparatus within civil society than on conventional repression” (Centrih 2009, 70), such as the investigations into members of the student movement, the “occasional confiscations of printed materials” (Ramšak 2019a, 281), or the imprisonment of the poet Tomaž Šalamun and sociologist and politician Jože Pučnik. From then on, indirect censorship in the ideological-cultural sphere was used as a weapon. In the case of the journal for culture and society Problemi, this amounted to the fragmentation and individualisation of the work and the appearance of different forms of self-censorship (Tomažin 2020, 201–2). In as early as the 1980s, various forms of interference could already be seen, with the creation of the Nova revija literary magazine, which favoured the interests of the dominant group against external enemies.

Years earlier, some of the leaders who had contributed to the closure of the journal Perspektive in 1964, had themselves ended up being the target of purges against liberal groups after the 1965–1972 phase of reforms and the so-called Croatian Spring (Maspok). The repression of the liberal factions in that period did not prevent the technocracy from subsequently supporting the self-management system and, more importantly, liberal ideas on the market and decentralisation being included in the constitutional changes of the 1970s. Rather than acting as an instrument of enforced social transformation, the repression, thus, served to stabilise the political bureaucracy, and was in fact directed against those who focused on advancing their republican interests in Yugoslavia in the context of the power struggles between the republics (Musić 2021, 38). The second half of the 1960s had seen an experiment with a liberal coalition of reformist leaders and the managers of the most successful companies, but the implications for state viability in a sensitive geopolitical context led to the fall of the reformist leaderships in Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. The changes in the composition of the political bureaucracy, however, did not manage to suppress the continued criticism of the system throughout the 1970s, ranging from cultural to social, that is bourgeois-democratic to nationalist criticism (Ramšak 2019b).

In the early 1980s, the repression of the punk movement revealed how difficult it was for the party – state to act outside the framework of the civil society it had defined. Punk had emerged in the late 1970s, challenging the existing order with disruptive messages in its lyrics and its presence in the public space through graffiti and other means (Tomc 1989, 130–2). Initially it had been tolerated and seen as a variant of rock, but at the end of 1981 it was ruthlessly repressed with the media having accused it of Nazism; the harassment of its members followed suit. In the years that followed, the repression of this movement channelled popular energies and displaced social demands in a context of uncertainty after president Tito’s death in May 1980. The repression of the punk scene also had a strong generational component. As recalled by philosopher and sociologist Lev Kreft, then a member of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the party was frightened by the prospect of instability and defensive about its own puritan attitudes.^[1]

The formation of a new dominant class brought with it a change in the approach to repression. By the end of the 1980s, the targets were no longer the enemies of social peace, liberal leaders flirting with nationalism, or those undermining the political bureaucracy, but predominantly (perceived) internal and external enemies of Slovenia. Thus, following the approval of amendments to the Slovenian constitution in a context of growing tension between Serbia and Slovenia, on 1 December 1989, the promoters of the so-called anti-bureaucratic revolutions called for mobilisation in Ljubljana with the aim of explaining to the Slovenians what the conveners believed to be the situation in Kosovo following the replacement of that province’s political leadership by the Serbian authorities, an event that had been condemned by the Slovene government in Ljubljana. But the authorities banned the event, as well as the entry into the republic of anyone displaying symbols related to the rally, under the pretext of maintaining public order. To implement the decision, secretary of the interior Tomaž Ertl activated a police operation by the name of “Operation North”. It was justified on the basis of a narrative according to which the nascent Slovenian democracy was to be protected by law and order (Repe 2010, 8). However, the operation was ultimately limited to the arrest of a few dozen people waving Yugoslav flags and issuing Yugoslav proclamations in front of the Slovenian Assembly. The arrests effectively violated the rights of assembly and demonstration.^[2] In fact, the promoters had called off the event immediately after it had been banned (Silber and Little 1996, 78).

On the other hand, when liberal democracy was introduced, so, too, was the institutionalisation of restrictions on the participation of actors who did not strictly limit themselves to Slovenian political activity. Thus, the Political Associations Act passed in December 1989 required all party members to be permanent residents of Slovenia, whilst a new electoral law gave republican institutions absolute power in this matter, making it impossible for the federal authorities to engage with their citizens through elections. If a federal election was called – something that federal prime minister Ante Marković unsuccessfully attempted in 1990 – it could only have taken place if the republican administrations had organised it (González-Villa 2019, 96, 115).

The final push towards independence led to the deployment of various forms of repression. This included the repression of media activity, despite the fact that since 1984, after legal expert Matevž Krivic’s (2000, 16) initiative to uphold before the Supreme Court the constitutional right of citizens to express their opinions in public, it had been made more difficult for the authorities to prevent opinions from being published. Thus, the road to independence was marked by the return of censorship. For example, an article written by Rastko Močnik in November 1990 that was critical of the independence referendum was ultimately only partially published in the national daily Delo after negotiations with the authorities.^[3] Other instances of media-related repression included the institutionalised harassment of Primož Kališnik, the first journalist to publish details about the arrival of armaments in the republic in December 1990 (Frangež 2008; González-Villa 2019, 155), and the removal of Milan Meden as editor of the daily Dnevnik in the midst of the Slovenian war of independence in June–July 1991 (González-Villa 2019, 172).

Repression also took the form of harassment of members of other Yugoslav national groups. The adoption of the Citizenship Act of 25 June 1991 ultimately resulted in at least 25,671 persons of other Yugoslav nationalities residing in Slovenia being removed from the citizenship register, while making it easier for people who had never been associated with the SFRY to adopt Slovenian citizenship. This was done by implementing the principle of “constitutional nationalism” (Hayden 1999, 15, 76–7). The Citizenship Law required citizens of the other Yugoslav republics to apply for citizenship within six months of arrival. As this was an administrative procedure, the administration enjoyed very broad power to interpret the law on a case-by-case basis (Breznik and Močnik 2011, 84). Thus, behind this administrative action was a barely concealed political intentionality.

In a written exchange I had with him in 2009, writer Boris Pahor stated that “it was mainly an administrative complication, although it is true that many of them did not believe in the emergence of a Slovenian state, and were even against it!”^[4] The then interior minister Igor Bavčar noted, regarding the consequences of the new regulation, that many of the individuals who had been removed from the register had been outspoken opponents of Slovenia’s independence (González-Villa 2019, 191). The violation of the human rights of those deleted from the register resulted from the application of a “fascist conception” of citizenship, as public debates on the issue effectively normalised hatred and discrimination against non-Slovenes (Zorn 2005, 149). Moreover, as Breznik and Močnik (2011, 52–3) point out, this case coincided with a dramatic rise in unemployment in the preceding years.

Displacement through Ideological Bureaucracies

Displacement mechanisms are aimed at the deferral or reorientation of popular demands in the least costly way possible, while avoiding ruptures that endanger the reproduction of the dominant class (Therborn 2008, 224–6). Before the onset of Yugoslavia’s systemic crisis, the dynamics of displacement tended to be subordinate to those of repression. Over time, however, the deployment of repression became an extension of displacement mechanisms. The latter became increasingly important as the political bureaucracy incited the formation of a dominant class which was at the command of the state as the unitary representative of the different factions, thus maintaining the submission of the subordinates and “harness[ing] popular energies to the expanded reproduction of the system by channelling them into the existing political, economic and ideological processes” (Therborn 2008, 226). The evolution of two ideological currents in the 1980s brought convergence between ideological-cultural groups and the political bureaucracy. In particular, intra-systemic alternatives emerged, which made it possible to address the system’s contradictions while maintaining the subordination of the working class.

The Restoration of Extraction through Taxes

The creation of a dominant class requires a capitalist class capable of matching the reproduction of the productive system with its own reproduction. In the context of the restoration of capitalism, this process implies that the “working classes of every exploitative mode of production have to yield surplus labour and surplus product to their exploiters. But, in addition, they have to finance the rule of the state over them”, which, in turn, must sustain and promote the accumulation of private capital (Therborn 2008, 226–7). Thus, in order to succeed, a dominant class requires a synthesis between the political bureaucracy and the actors directly involved in the productive processes. In the socialist system, the latter, frequently referred to as the “technocratic faction”, did not form a capitalist class in the true sense of the word (Bembič 2017; Kržan and Birać 2022; Močnik 2021a), but a self-interested group that “established itself in the sphere of production, represented by the higher echelons in the industry, service sector, banks, as well as in the new ideological state apparatuses, especially science” (Kirn 2019, 132).

This situation stemmed from the complex economic set-up of socialist Yugoslavia. Throughout the 1980s, the technocratic elite alone seemed to be capable, through internal disciplinary mechanisms, of upholding production units that functioned according to the logic of capitalist accumulation (Bettelheim 2017; Močnik 2021a; Musić 2021). In their decision-making on the allocation of surplus production they relied on experts (Kirn 2019, 142–4). This practice was compounded by the austerity policies pushed by the federal government in Belgrade, and the ensuing disconnect between blue-collar workers and party activists (Musić 2021, 120). The technocracy acted as a “possessor” in production, having the “capacity to set the means of production in motion”, while the political bureaucracy exercised ownership over “economic property”, that is “the power of appropriation and use of the objects to which […] property refers”, including the power of managing work-related processes (Močnik 2021a, 104). Generally, the two are synthesised, as ownership must be linked to possession, and this happens either by “by making the agents of property also agents of possession or by making the agents of possession subordinate to the agents of property” (Močnik 2021a, 104–5).

The possession–ownership synthesis was possible thanks to the existence of a “liberal line” within the League of Communists, “which was the key propagator of the reform, decentralization, and interests of the wealthier regions in particular, and which promoted the pro-western and export-led orientation of the Yugoslav economy” (Kirn 2019, 132). Although their main representatives had been purged in 1972, in the long run they ended up benefiting from the dynamics of decentralisation and marketisation that were consolidated in the 1974 federal constitution and the 1976 Associated Labor Act. In practice, and with the energy crisis as a catalyst, the development of contractual socialism meant that the instruments of interregional solidarity were eroded, the power of technocracy in companies was strengthened, and the role of the party in reconciling workers’ concerns and management interests was undermined. By 1986, when the liberals assumed leadership of the League of Communists of Slovenia, the rationale behind the 1974 constitution “as a historical compromise between the key ideological positions and political groups that developed during the decade of market reforms” with the aim of appealing “to the extremes of the technocracy on the one hand and post-1968 leftist and rightist opposition on the other” (Kirn 2019, 175) had become outdated.

The revenue extraction mechanism favoured by Therborn is the fiscal system, by means of which the dominant class can undertake large-scale operations, including military campaigns. In the Slovenian case, the restoration of revenue extraction through the tax system was made possible by a nationalist diversion that allowed the focus of popular demands in the 1980s to shift towards a corporatist agenda. While the lowering of tax burdens was a demand shared by the technocracy and the working class, the former advocated additional extractive mechanisms through state power. This included greater freedom to introduce disciplinary measures in the workplace and to limit blue-collar workers’ ability to act (Musić 2021, 142). At the same time, the state’s fiscal power produced a paradox, as the dominant class was able to consolidate because it could channel tax revenue, directing them, during the most critical phase, towards military spending. Thus, while throughout the 1980s the nationalist, right-wing faction of the ideological-cultural bureaucracy focused on opposing contributions to the federal budget, and while the other faction, the new social movements, was committed to a pacifist agenda, the new dominant class ended up stripping the federation of its capacity to collect taxes, which had mainly comprised sales and customs duties which allowed for the financing of the Yugoslav People’s Army. Between 1990 and 1991, these financial means were invested in the republican territorial defence, transforming and rearming it so that it could become the army of the newly independent Slovenia. However, the connection between channelling taxes and the socialist republic’s means of defence had already existed much earlier:

In one of its first contests with the federal government in the 1980s, over its right to define its own tax principles and to ignore the economic reform that removed limits on landholding, the republican government had altered the basis for calculating taxation on farmers so as to encourage those with smallholdings in the Alpine borderlands to remain on their land and keep viable the system of territorial defense (Woodward 1995b, 95).

In an institutional context in which taxation had a territorial rather than a sectoral logic (Woodward 1995a, 290), the tax issue was an object of nationalist self-victimisation vis-à-vis the republic’s various enemies, including regions that allegedly exploited Slovenia through the federal institutions (Huszka 2013, 33–4). From 1987 onwards, Slovenia had a certain degree of fiscal sovereignty (Woodward 1995b, 74, 82), which was ultimately underpinned by the rejection of Yugoslav prime minister Ante Marković’s reforms and the collapse of the Yugoslav tax system in late 1990. A tax system adapted to the requirements of capitalism was gradually created (Pleskovic and Sachs 1994, 204) and included the introduction of an income tax and of a system of tax exemptions for new entrepreneurs (Bartlett and Prašnikar 1995, 85). In the end, the process ended up resolving the property issue: “Combining the economic and political goals of the antifederalists, the republics argued that constitutionally they were final owners of productive assets within their territory and that this included the right to dispose of income earned by their firms and workers” (Woodward 1995b, 69).

The fundamental driving force behind the dominant class in Slovenia was thus the political and technocratic groups’ fears of the republic’s economic position being eroded and of their own subsequent decline. In fact, the deterioration of living standards in the republic meant many were at risk of losing their jobs. Thus, while the attempts of successive federal governments to adjust to international economic conditions by implementing a neoliberal economic policy implied the reform of the Yugoslav system in a recentralizing sense (for example, through the introduction of a new requirement to send foreign revenues to the National Bank of Yugoslavia), the Slovenian political actors rejected any institutional change that could endanger the republic’s autonomy (Woodward 1995a, 355–6).

In Slovenia, the two factions thus coordinated with the aim of preserving the republic’s social conditions in a context of economic adjustment and facilitation of foreign trade. They did so within the republican framework, and their activities included tackling the growing labour unrest. In 1983, a significant increase in strikes (96) was recorded in Yugoslavia in comparison to 1982 (18), marking the beginning of an escalation that peaked in the critical years of 1987 and 1988, when 227 and 228 strikes were organised, respectively (Stanojević 2003, 293), in response to the loss of purchasing power and austerity policies, including wage freezes and wages being tied to productivity (Musić 2021, 177). The strikes were mostly confined to the workplace and could frequently be managed through wage concessions, as had also been the case in Yugoslavia in the preceding decades (Woodward 1995a, 355; cf. Rutar 2015). However, in the political conditions of the 1980s, the strikes could be linked to the emerging ideological bureaucracies as workers became aware that the changes they demanded transcended their workplace (Musić 2021, 184).

Goran Musić provides two symptomatic examples of the implications of industrial action in relation to the political context of the time. In December 1987, workers at the Litostroj machinery factory in Ljubljana mobilised when news broke that their wages would not be indexed to inflation (Musić 2021, 183–4). A strike committee was formed, led by France Tomšič, a representative of the union’s engineering department. Tomšič delivered a clear political programme and, although the labour action did not bear fruit in the short term due to the absence of any link between Tomšič and the political bureaucracy, Tomšič went so far as to propose the creation of a new political party led by France Bučar, one of the authors of Nova revija’s issue 57. His proposal later came to fruition thanks to his position as an expert in the factory, which allowed him to connect both with the workers and part of the cultural bureaucracy. This initiative was the beginnings of the Social Democratic Union, led by the future presidential candidate of the DEMOS coalition in the April 1990 elections, Jože Pučnik. The episode was also the antecedent of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions, a conservative trade union created in 1992, which achieved a level of representativeness of around 10 % (Stanojević 2003).

Mušić’s second case is a strike in Maribor that paralysed the commercial vehicle manufacturer Tovarna Automobilov in Motorjev (TAM) and the city itself between 21 and 24 June 1988 (Musić 2021, 226–45). This spontaneous strike of blue-collar workers was marked by its lack of coordination (no strike committee was set up), by isolation and defeat. The uprising was not related to the chauvinist positions of the TAM management, who blamed business partners from other Yugoslav republics for TAM’s recent poor performance. The workers’ only link to a political programme was rather spontaneous, as they carried flags of the League of Communists and portraits of Tito. Thus, as Musić (2021, 235) summarises, in “comparison to the […] strike of Ljubljana’s Litostroj workers, who discussed independent trade unionism and an oppositional political party, the language in Maribor seemed frozen in time with nostalgia as the only political reference point”. The workers in Maribor were attacked by the ideological bureaucracies linked to the new social movements, which amounted to an exercise in symbolic dispossession. In particular, journalist Igor Mekina claimed on 1 July 1988 in the weekly Mladina that it “is not funny that workers answer the authorities with symbols of the ideology which is responsible for their hopeless situation” (cited in Musić 2021, 238).

This episode represented a rupture in the workplace coalition between blue-collar workers, on the one hand, and experts and management, on the other. The latter put a stop to the mobilisation with the assistance of the unions, which set up a strike committee without the workers’ consent. After Slovenia’s independence in June 1991, a sort of “liberal national capitalism” was installed centred on a social coalition established on the basis of a sui generis privatisation process that limited the presence of foreign capital, along with a monetary policy that invited the technocratic elite to reinvest domestic profits, collective bargaining at the national level and the expansion of the welfare state (Bučar and Udovič 2023; Kržan and Birač 2022). This led to the beginnings of a strong tradition of a tripartite dialogue as an institutionalised mechanism for negotiating working conditions (Breznik and Mance 2020), but in a context of dependence on the main European economies (Podvršič 2023). The latter led to the process being questioned (Kirn 2014) after integration into the European Union in 2004 and the post-2007 financial and euro crises (Slovenia introduced the euro on 1 January 2007) (Bembič 2017). This was, paradoxically, when the Slovenian dominant class had managed to reach its goal of self-preservation, amidst the looming crisis of the 1980s.

Conclusion

With the alliance between the new dominant class and workers in the 1990s, Slovenia serves as an example of a “gradualist” exception in the postsocialist transitions in Eastern Europe. In contrast to the others, its transformation was not characterised by a massive penetration of foreign capital and the support of Western financial institutions in exchange for the accelerated restructuring of the economic system. However, while Slovenia was indeed an exception, it was a circumstantial one that eventually collapsed two decades later. This collapse in the late 2000s was the result of a correlation of forces in which the working class, already stripped of its leading role in society and its symbolic value, became captive to the irreversible dynamics of the growing integration – and crisis – in the European markets.

Slovenia’s specific path resulted from the mechanisms of centralisation gradually developed by its emerging dominant class. Throughout the 1980s, three factions interacted, while still remaining more or less autonomous, in an attempt to bypass the working class and the Yugoslav federal institutions. As a result, the factions strengthened their power through increasing coordination of their administrative and ideological activities. This deepened Slovenia’s decentralising and marketising tendencies within the Yugoslav federal productive structure. The transformation of the forms of repression, displacement and extraction gave rise to the process of capitalist restoration in response to the Yugoslav systemic crisis. Independence from Yugoslavia allowed the new dominant class to establish mechanisms of reproduction that, at least temporarily, bypassed the workers’ remaining capacity for mobilisation. Together, these factions composed a class that exercised its dominance in a newly independent state, characterised by new dependencies in the context of neoliberal globalisation and an almost unconditional, albeit subordinate enthusiasm for European integration.