Constitution of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

“ It is only in the interests of the working class, as the dominating "nation within the nation", that lies the dialectic unity of solution of class and national interests. Only when such social assumptions have been created, and the entire spirit of the proposed Constitution is determined by the need for the working class to assume mastery over the whole of the social process of reproduction, will all indispensable conditions for independent national life and free mutual self-management association within the framework of our multi-national communities be created. ”

“ Under conditions of socialist democracy and social self-management, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, with its guiding ideological and political action, shall be the prime mover and exponent of political activity aimed at safeguarding and further developing the socialist revolution and socialist social relations of self-management, and especially at the strengthening of socialist social and democratic consciousness, and shall be responsible therefore. ”

“ The concept of the state in the proposed Constitution is a radical criticism of both statist and petty-bourgeois reformist conceptions, the central problem being not the question of whether the state grows stronger or weaker, but of the extent to which the entire state organization performs the functions imposed upon it by the development of socialist relations of self-management. ”

“ These laws can only be circumvented through subjectivist voluntaristic violence to the economy and socio-economic relations, or rather through taking away from associated workers and their basic organizations of associated labour the entire or almost the entire surplus-labour and handing it over to the state or another alienated center for further administrative or similar kind of distribution. ”

“ Throughout this entire period we have with regard to the status of socio-political organizations and political power striven to avoid two kinds of relations which are inadequate for a society based on self-management. One was a petty­ bourgeois reformist tendency towards spontaneous and uncontrolled development of society into socialism, independently of the influence of organized socialist consciousness, and the other - the bureaucratic-statist tendency towards direct power by the party apparatus with the well-known system of "transmission". ”

“ And, although the essential and basic line of development of our political system ever since the time of people's liberation committees has entailed a negation of the representative system, significant elements of representative indirect democracy have constantly been present in it. The adoption of the Fundamental Law in 1953, marked a switch to the development of an integral system of socialist self-management. ”

“ What the working class will most need is efficient practical help so that it can carry into effect the constitutional ideas and provisions. In the coming period this will be the most important field of ideological and political struggle of all progressive forces led by the League of Communists. ”

“ They are seen as a unique experience of the working class for the solution of problems of the contemporary world. Because of its complex structure, the Yugoslav multi-national community is in a way a world in miniature. ”

“ To expand and develop every form of social self-government and socialist democracy, especially in those fields in which the functions of political power predominate; to limit coercion and promote the conditions for its elimination; and to establish relations among people based on awareness of common interests and on the unrestricted activity of man;
To contribute to the realization of human freedoms and rights, to the humanization of the social environment and man's personality, to the strengthening of solidarity and humanity between people, and respect for man's dignity ”