And many are under no illusion how difficult this fight will be. The IMF has already put forward its demands for welfare cuts, price rises and privatisation of industry. The government wants to be more cautious because it fears resistance on a local and regional level, since there still exist in some places quite far-reaching elements of workers' control in the enterprises. This is a big problem given the most important element of the coming attacks will be to enforce mass layoffs, restructuring or closure. Privatisation will be more important in the infrastructure and energy.
Workers are likely to resist lay-offs or closures.
The coming year will be vital for an emerging left in Serbia. The IMF will keep up the pressure for market reforms that will spell job losses for many. During this fluid period a revolutionary left can get a hearing and grow provided it defends the elements of workers' control won during the revolution. The left must hammer own the idea that this control will only work and make sense if relations between the factories are organised around a democratic national plan. Allowing the market to develop and dictate priorities for investment in the country as a whole and to govern relations between enterprises will lead, sooner or later, to the end of workers' control inside the plants and mines.