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11. A Popular Party The Radicals were the first political group in Serbia to organize politically , thus forcing their adversaries to organize. The Radical Party was conceived from the beginning as a massive and powerful organization , meant to literally embody the whole Serbian people.86 Svetozar Marković had provided a first blueprint for the projected Radical Party (1872), envisioning the complete destruction of the administrative system en place, the restitution of administrative, economic, educational and policing functions to local control, and broad and extensive powers of the community to regulate local affairs. It included the reform of the judicial system and its replacement by elected courts and popularly elected judges, the creation of a national bank with local branches in charge of all state finances and the cancellation of all peasant debts. Further, “in order to protect the Serbian people from proletarization, it is necessary to transform all land from private property to communal ownership. How and when this is to be achieved remains open.”87 In the same spirit, but in an essentially more popular language, the radical program of Nikola Pašić was published in 1876: The people are sovereign and have prerogative over all rights with respect to the political and economic organization of the country. The political rights of the individual citizen can be best safeguarded when the community and the district, as well as all of Serbia, are organized on the basis of self-management. Economic freedom, that is independence, can best be achieved through association, if the means for boosting industry and agriculture are entrusted not to one person, but to a cooperative (zadruga) able to demonstrate its capacity to organize capital and develop the crafts. In other words: we desire democratic freedom and decentralization, we wish to safeguard the people from the mistakes of Western industrial society, where both a proletariat and boundless wealth have emerged; rather [we desire] that industry be developed on a cooperative basis. Therefore we do not campaign with the intention of abolishing the institution of private property, but rather for the farmers to form associations to cultivate the land with the help of machines, for without associations it is impossible to utilize steam machines profitably.88 100 III. The Ambiguities of Modernity In the above quotation the democratic principle of the people’s sovereignty serves as a precondition for the establishment of selfmanagement and socialism. The people’s rights and freedoms are not regarded as a goal in themselves, but as a means, an instrument, for the achievement of the end goal. Moreover, individual rights would be “best safeguarded” in the collectivist haven. Having existed for ten years as a quasi-consolidated movement, the Radicals took advantage of the propitious conditions of 1880 to take their organization a step further. Economic exhaustion following war (1875–1878), the suspension of political freedoms due to the state of emergency, and the orientation of Serbian foreign policy towards much-feared Austria served to compromise the liberal government of Jovan Ristić. Having reached consensus on the necessity of changing the 1869 constitution, the united opposition of the Radicals and the Progressives led to the fall of the liberal regime. Once in control , the Progressives showed no inclination of sharing power with the Radicals, reserving the key state and parliamentary functions for their adherents. As a response, the Radicals accelerated both the formation of their party and their programmatic entry into the public arena. The fall of the Liberals, who had ruled with interruptions for 12 years, the intransigence of the Progressives, and also the lack of organization of both political elites, provided an ideal opportunity. Overall, the Radicals possessed more advantages over their adversaries. They had never been compromised as a ruling party and had no investment in the state apparatus. Their “outsider” status provided an additional source of inspiration , “almost to the point of religious fervor.” Moreover, they were one to two generations younger than their opponents and pursued politics with a vitality unmatched by the Liberals and Progressives.89 Having had a long gestation in political struggle and equipped both with experience and a support, the Radicals advanced a minimum program of immediate goals that, retreating from its maximalist credo, displayed pragmatism and adaptability.90 The program envisioned “popular welfare and freedom” in internal affairs and “state independence, the liberation and unification of the remaining contingents of Serbs” in external affairs. Emphasizing the primacy of the economic factor, it stressed the necessity of improving the material, intellectual and moral forces...

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