BY FRANK L I N RANGE L As the first and most dominant socialist force in the world, the USSR cast all other leftist movements under its shadow, especially during the Cold War. One of these client states was Yugoslavia, located in a premium strategic point and led by a popular socialist veteran, Josip Broz Tito. Stalin and Tito’s ideological differences and Yugoslavia’s unique position in terms of foreign policy led to a public split between the two countries. Tito’s critique of classical liberalism, and the disagreements that he had with Stalinism, led the USSR and Yugoslavia down different paths both ideologically and internationally. At the time that these two leaders were forming their political identities, the US was the main power that exemplified neoliberalism, a modern defense of classical liberalism. During and after the Second World War, the US and its government prided itself on its capitalist, free-market ways. They portrayed itas the main difference between them and the Stalinist USSR. Their capitalist policies reflect the values of John Locke and property, one being “only by putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly agreeing in the use of money; for, in governments, the laws regulate the right of property”(2). The US, both back then and now, organized its economy in a capitalist, mostly free-market system. The government did step in at times to keep things relatively fair by regulating the practices of private companies, very similar to how Locke described how the capitalist system would function in a state that practices classical liberal ideals. The aspects of classical liberalism that Stalin and PAGE 9 VOL. 1, NO. 1 ZEITGEIST Tito criticize differed little in nature. After the first world war, these two men began to form the identities they would carry with them as leaders. As both Tito and Stalin derived their ideologies from Marx’s critique of classical liberalism, they had similar problems with the belief system that it holds. Locke, one of the most influential in creating classical liberalism, critiques the previous system, feudalism, by saying that people should own their own property. “Through the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has any right to but himself”(2). The Marxian critique vehemently opposes this value. In the eyes of socialists and Marxists, private property inevitably leads to the creation of the bourgeoisie, whose only function in society is to exploit the working class. If people are allowed to employ others on their land, it will lead to wage slavery, where people depend on their employers to survive (1). Today, this is known as living paycheck to paycheck. Both Tito and Stalin took these critiques and applied them in different ways for their respective countries. Stalin had another major influence that fought alongside him in the Russian Revolution as well, Vladimir Lenin. Although they agreed on most things, one important difference manifested itself in the Yugoslavian case. When it came to foreign policy, Stalin and Lenin differentiated in a key way. Lenin was instrumental in creating the Communist International, or Comintern, as a way to ensure an alliance between communist revolutions. During the Russian Civil War, he helped to establish communist-led states in Belarus, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Mongolia. Lenin very much believed in the spread of world communism, but Stalin opposed his perspective. Instead, he supported the idea of
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