How We Wasted the Authorities' Social Responsibility

Slovenia's economic development is being hindered by an "undefined development vision" and a lack of long-term strategy, according to an opinion piece in Delo. The author criticizes the current government for what is described as a recurring "immature" economic policy, which obstructs societal and economic progress. This situation arises from a disconnect between the complex socio-economic circumstances and the governing bodies' capacity to address them effectively.

The article draws a parallel with historical approaches to national development. It references figures like Janez Evangelist Krek and Andrej Gosar, who, in the context of imperialism and economic backwardness, established development programs based on Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. These programs emphasized cooperatives, credit institutions, education, and farmer and worker organizations. Similarly, the 1989 May Declaration is cited for its assertion that a state can only be founded on a social system ensuring spiritual and material well-being aligned with citizens' capabilities and natural resources.

With Slovenia's transition from a socialist to a capitalist society post-independence, the author argues that the country abandoned non-profit-driven social planning in favor of profit-driven corporate planning. This shift, characterized by anti-Keynesian (neo)liberalization, deregulation, privatization, and denationalization, has closed off the path to holding authorities accountable for implementing a socially consensual, humanistic, and responsible development strategy. The piece calls for a renewal of modern mixed systems that integrate market-based and planned economics, and motivational systems that combine profit and non-profit objectives.

This theoretical framework, rooted in the neoclassical synthesis of Alfred Marshall's microeconomics and John Maynard Keynes's macroeconomics, consciously integrated profit-driven market regulation with non-profit-driven public and state regulation. The author contends that this integrated approach has been dismantled by authorities dependent on financial oligarchies, leading to the "feudalization" of developed nations and the "(neo)colonization" of less developed ones. The article highlights Viktor Žakelj's book "Urejanje prihodnosti – družbena odgovornost in tržno-planska (plansko-tržna) ekonomika" as a recent, though insufficiently recognized, exploration of these complex theoretical and economic issues.