Social Values and Planning of Social Development

The basic characteristic of the Yugoslav system of planning is that it is becoming less the planning »in the name of people for people« but more planning »by people for people«. In such a system the analysis of attitudes and value orientations becomes a particularly important assignment not only for theory but also for practical action. The including of attitudes and orientations of population, which as a final result determines the aims of the plan (and through this its strategies), speaks about »reality« — i. e. me possibility of realization of aims themselves, as well as about the potential conflicts between aims (of single groups or the whole population) and conflicts between groups with regard to their various aims. The author of this study presents the first results of investigations carried out at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy in Ljubljana upon a representative sample of Slovenian population (N = 2014). The opinion of the absolute majority is that the support given to the underdeveloped should either be decided in agreement (66 percent) or by the one who gives the support (19 percent). Further on, the inquired persons are unsatisfied by the support given to the underdeveloped districts and even 43 percent consider the support not adequately used by the underdeveloped, while even 50 percent think that the underdeveloped districts should in the first place »help themselves«, and only after they can show some results should they ask for the support of the developed. Secondly, the absolute domination of egalitarianism in attitudes towards distribution has been established. 75 percent of the tested persons think that the differences in personal incomes should be decreased, and 83 percent think it is not righteous that incomes should vary according to the successfulness of the firm. As far as the readiness for the increased contributions from the personal income for single sections of social activities is concerned, the highest one is for the support of the schooling system (71 percent), for health service (66 percent) and disability and pension insurance (64 percent), while it is relatively the lowest for culture (47 percent). The results presented here are only preliminary, and they do not enter more deeply into the causal analysis and more detailed discussion about which segments of population represent which attitude. They can therefore be used only as the primary orientation about basic directions of Slovenian population in the sense of establishing of aims of the social plan or the readiness for accepting the already established aims