390 The Presidential Years
the system of self-management and to prevent civil war and avoid Soviet mili-
tary intervention. Actually, frightened by the chaotic liberalization of the econ-
omy, of society, and of policy, they found a comfortable shelter under the shield
of ideological orthodoxy. As Kavčič wrote in a passionate closing speech, in this
way they brought an end to a period when the generation of revolutionaries
met that of their sons, who wanted to implement a more modern conception
of policy and society. The “old guard,” unable to accept the new values, rebelled
and won thanks to Tito’s authority, unseating the generation of sons and associ-
ating themselves instead with the generation of grandsons, who had not taken
part in the Partisan war but had been trained to obey in party-run schools.
Thus the operation was completed: “The old guard rules, the middle guard
keeps quiet, and the young ones administer.”^697 On another note, Kavčič added
this bitter consideration: “The Bolshevik system has won. The new ideological
content that was needed was provided by Kardelj and Bakarić, the political
authority by Tito. I think that the progressive role of the troika defaulted just
in that time, because of their backward-looking attitude toward current prob-
lems. Here begins the dawn of the gods and with it, the great crisis of our
society. In its time, something similar happened during the French Revolution,
in the Russian and Chinese ones.”^698
Slogans and concepts in use for the last twenty years disappeared from the
party lexicon: “withering away of the state,” “relegation of the party from power,”
“democratization of society.”^699 To testify to the assertion of the most orthodox
brand of Marxism, the old values were seen as relevant again: “democratic cen-
tralism,” “dictatorship of the proletariat,” “union of thought and action,” “ideo-
logical monolithism,” “planned economy.” The CC reiterated the need to redis-
cover the Bolshevik soul of the party, believing that only in this way would it be
possible to improve relations with the working class, with which the “vanguard”
in power was more and more out of touch. In recent years workers had begun
deserting the party en masse, resorting to strikes in order to strengthen their
requests and showing their opinion of the system of self-management. Tito and
his entourage believed, however, that everything would be resolved if they could
lay the blame for their defeat on those who had not repudiated reformist ideas
and who had bet on the middle class, which had profited the most by them. In
giving more weight to professionalism than to party loyalty, the liberals had in
fact favored the technical and managerial intelligentsia, a group that it was now
easy to accuse of being the standard-bearers of “bourgeois” values and errors. It
was said that the strengthening of “techno-bureaucratic trends” in enterprises
had robbed the workers of their rights, transforming self-management into a
farce. This course had to change to allow the proletariat to regain power. The
slogan of the day was ethical and political “suitability,” a rediscovered dogma