СУБЈЕКТИ ДРУШТВЕНЕ СВОЈИНЕ
THE SUBJECTS OF SOCIAL OWNERSHIP

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning the author states that each type of ownership, including the social one, has two aspects, namely: (i) external, and (ii) internal aspect. (a) The external aspect of ownership comes to expression within the relations between the holders of ownership and other subjects, while reflecting the basic distribution of wealth in the society. Viewed from that stanдр oint, social ownership, according to positive law, is not organized as property right, nor it has any person as its holder. Such legal regulation is 'known in theory as the non-property conception of social ownership. Goods (property) which are included in the social ownership — and these are most significant ones related to economy and society in general, make an entirety only as contrasted to other forms of ownership, for instance in relation to individual and private property. Otherwise, these goods are distributed among numerous subjects having the status of juridical entities (persons), and more precisely social juridical persons, which excludes private ones. These subjects not only lack the right of property, but they do not have any subjective right over the „property” possessed by them as objects of social ownership; they do have only the means (resources or „property”). Such legal situation creates difficulties in explaining and understanding social ownership, but also in performing legal transactions, since it is difficult to conceive how is it possible to effect the trade of goods (resources, i.e. means) without having a simultaneous legal transaction. It is prescribed by legal norms what decisions, in relation to social ownership, can be made by state agencies and bodies, and what by self-managing bodies of social legal persons. However, in day-to-day practice, decisions concerning social ownership are enacted by bodies of political organisations, too, and more precisely — and particularly so — by executive bodies, or, as the case may be, by mighty individuals or groups within such bodies, although the are not vested with corresponding legal powers. At the same time, in practice, such individuals or groups make decisions concerning social ownership, or take part in making these decisions together with political factors, while such decisions transgress their actual legal authority. The author criticizes the existing state of affairs while pointing at the fact that it amounted, in fact, to transformation of social ownership, in essence, into state ownership. That ownership became a material basis for bureaucratic state and political apparatus. The author proposes the following, in order to change the existing social and legal state of affairs, namely: (i) social juridical persons should become the holders of the right of property over the goods (resources) within social ownership which are in their possession; these subjects are the protagonists of the self-management socialist system, so that, accordingly, they have to be also the holders of the right of property over the resources in social ownership; in such a way social ownership would not loose its social character; (ii) the basic type of economy should be the market economy; (i-ii) political and state authority factors have to be separated from the economy in terms of day-to-day operationality; and (iv) social juridical persons (legal entities), as holders of the right to social ownership, have to make decisions independently, as far as their business activity is concerned and they should, accordingly, bear all the consequences of such decisions. (b) Internal aspect of ownership indicates who is the one performing the authorities (powers) on the ground of ownership, as well as what are the corresponding grounds '(grounds related to powers out of the property right, to labour or to actual power over the property, and the like). Viewed from that standрoint, the means (goods) in social ownership are managed, according to positive law, by the workers working in social juridical persons, and within the frameworks determined by law. If the practice would be eliminated which is not in accordance to the law, they would do that even if their organisations would be recognized the right of property. And, first of all, they would effect the power out of that right through the fact of their work. Namely, even now they manage over the social ownership means and they acquire personal income on the ground of their work, so that, in essence, that solution should be kept in the future, too.

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