When Did a Transition to Capitalism Start in Serbia?

Thirty years have passed since the fall of socialism. However, the boundary between capitalism and socialism in the Serbian context is not so clear. Some authors postpone the period of capitalist restoration after the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime. Although this period was indeed marked by an accelerated economic transformation, characterized by mass privatization and market liberalization, it is still the question whether it is possible to make a clear cut between the socialist past and the capitalist present. Instead of looking at the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia or the post-Milošević era, we investigate the market reforms that marked the economy of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, and analyze socialism as a system ridden with internal contradictions. Following the analytical framework set by Michael Lebowitz in his book “The Contradictions of ‘Real Socialism’: The Conductor and the Conducted” (2012), and applying it to the analysis of Yugoslav socialism, we point out that the boundary between socialism and capitalism is much more blurred. Thus the question when does the transition to capitalism begin proves to be much more complex.