Splendour, Misery, and Possibilities

Darko Suvin, Ph.D. (1970) Zagreb University, is Professor Emeritus of McGill University. He has published 21 books on Literature, Dramaturgy, Culture, and Political Epistemology, as well as poetry. Major publications include Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, To Brecht and Beyond, and Defined by a Hollow.

• List of Tables and FiguresAcknowledgementsPreface: Pro Doma SuaPART 1: FUNDAMENTS: FREEDOM AND ACCUMULATION1: Radical Emancipation and Yugoslavia: On the Founding Singularities of SFRY2: Accumulation and Its DiscontentsPART 2: CLASS INTERESTS AND POLITICS AS SFRY DOMINANTS3: On Class Relationships in Yugoslavia4: On a Hidden Ruling Class and Central Conflict5: What Has Been and What Could Have Been6: 15 Theses about Communism and Yugoslavia, Or the Two-Headed Janus of Emancipation through the State (Metamorphoses and Anamorphoses of ‘On The Jewish Question’ by Marx)7: The Communist Party of YugoslaviaPART 3: SELF-GOVERNMENT VS. ALIENATION: A TRACTATE ON YUGOSLAV ECONOMICS AND POLITICSPart 3.1: On Self-management In S.F.R. Yugoslavia: A Critical Stock-Taking (1945-72)8: Anatomy: Macro-Political Economics, Or the View from Above9: Anatomy: Micro-Political Economics, Or the View from the Workers10: Physiology: The Interests and Stakes behind the Macro-EventsPart 3.2: On the Horizon of Disalienation in S.F.R. Yugoslavia: Self-Government and Plebeian Democracy11: On the Politics of Disalienation, Inside and Outside Economic Production12: In Production: Rise and Fall of Self-management13: In Civic Life: Dis/Alienation and Oligarchy Monolithism14: Conclusion: On Failures and PotentialitiesAPPENDICESAppendix 1: Bureaucracy: A Term and Concept in the Socialist Discourse about State Power (Upstream of Yugoslavia)Appendix 2: The Discourse about Bureaucracy and State Power in Post-Revolutionary Yugoslavia 1945–72References

Suvin's Splendour, Misery and Possibilities is a landmark contribution to the scholarship on the socialist experiments of the twentieth century that should be of particular interest to all those unconvinced by the "a priori tenet of Cold War ideology...that a plebian communist revolution must necessarily end in catastrophe."