Equality, Participation, Transition: Essays in Honour of Branko Horvat

x Foreword
institution most dear to Horvat’s heart has been worker management.
I believe most of the contributors to this volume share Horvat’s belief
that some form of industrial democracy can be found that can be made
to work. This is not a widely popular view these days and I am among
those who have been critical of the forms that it has taken in the former
Yugoslavia. However, the ten years that I spent at the beginning of
my worklife as a merchant seaman gave me some sense of its problems
and possibilities at a practical level, and that has left me with a fixed
desire to keep this option open. Perhaps most important was this:
when I moved from the sea to academia I found my new colleagues to
be far more articulate than my old shipmates; but I found no increase
in wisdom.
Horvat has made some efforts to try and meld central ideas of Marxism
with those of neoclassical political economy. For many these days,
including myself, Marxism is clearly a spent intellectual force. But in
our century, Marxism has been the only intellectual force that has been
anchored firmly in an attempt to understand and defend the interests
of the wretched of the earth. The latter, this underclass, is probably
larger today than it has ever been, and it will acquire a voice. Those
interested in developing that voice can do no better than to build on
the humane, informed, analytic, and committed elements provided by
the works and career of Branko Horvat.
Berkeley, California BENJAMIN WARD