Deindustrijalizacija i radnički otpor - Pokret za slobodu

Of course, while the new owners are technically obliged by law todisclose and share their profits with other shareholders, the reality isthat for the corrupt Serbian authorities, worker-shareholders are almostuniformly seen as embarrassing ‘leftovers of communism,’ ‘enemiesof reform,’ and even as ‘Stalinists.’ On the other hand, the new70% majority shareholder is seen as an important pillar upon whichthe success of Serbia’s ‘democratic’ reforms depends. That is to say,these reforms depend on former communist or nationalist apparatchiksand nouveau riche ‘tycoons’ who got rich by either plundering thesocial property now being privatized or who managed to accumulatewealth through the wars waged in the 1990s (wars that the workers ofthe newly privatized firms had to bear the costs of).In these conditions, strong pressure has been exerted in recentyears on those small-shareholders that managed to hold onto majorityownershipin some of the best Serbian companies as a result of the 1997privatization law. These shareholders have been ‘encouraged,’ throughcorruption and poverty, to enter a process of ‘secondary privatization’– i.e. to sell their shares on the stock market (because this was the onlyaspect of their property rights that the new neoliberal regime recognized).Few of these small-shareholders dared to use their shares toactually run their own factories in the new conditions. The few workerswho have elected to do so – mainly those gathered around the Jugoremedijapharmaceutical plant in Zrenjanin – could be one of the onlyhopes left for greater democracy in Serbia.And yes, the ‘social acceptance’ of privatization was finally achievedlast year, when all the adult citizens of Serbia who had never exercisedtheir ‘democratic right to free shares of former held social property,’received their own chance to avail themselves of this ‘right’ via theprivatization of public sector firms – i.e. the Serbian telecom, oil andelectricity providers. In this way the vast majority of the impoverishedpopulation in Serbia became accomplices in their own long-term destruction,hoping to get a few hundred Euros from the sale of publicgoods.That is what neoliberals call popular support.Ivan Zlatić320