Yugoslavian Professor Claims Power Should Be Decentralized

A former Yugoslavian professor told a group at the Center for European Studies yesterday that self-government must "start from the rule that minimum centralization [of power] is desirable."

Separation of powers is the "great achievement of the bourgeois revolution" but it was not carried far enough, Mihailo Markovic said.

Power over all necessary functions of a socialized government should be separate, he said, citing social security as an example.

Removed From Position

Markovic, a professor of philosophy at the University of Belgrade in Yugoslavia until 1968, was removed from his position by the government following student protests in which some of his students took part.

Markovic spoke primarily on the treatment of minorities, media and decentralization of powers in his speech on the future of self-government.

He said local communities should be autonomous as possible but that there are some issues which cannot be local. Cultural development is a local concern but energy must be controlled by the federal government.

In his model of self-government, Markovic said, mass media is entirely separate from the federal government and is not held to any one ideological view. Taxes, and only taxes, taken directly out of the federal revenue must support media, he said.

Right to Vote

"When democracy is reduced to the right to vote," minorities become alienated from government, Markovic said. He advocated "self-managing agreement" by which legislation is a product of public debate and compromise rather than law.

Minorities must be protected by having veto power over federal economic policy and the power to revive any public issue for re-argument, he said.

"Underdeveloped groups" in an economy must not only have legal equality and cultural autonomy but resources must be redirected from more developed groups to underdeveloped groups.

Mihailo Markovic said after his speech yesterday that in Yugoslavia today "workers just come and go and are counted as numbers and attend meetings they have no say in."