By Todor Kuljić, sociologist and university professor
Elections are approaching, and the political actors are jostling for position. One needs to be sufficiently recognisable and distinct, whilst simultaneously taking into account the steadfast inclinations of the electorate. Even the most consistent politics is not always a balanced blend of firm principles and pragmatism.
In 2000, could Milošević have been overthrown without the pragmatism of the motley Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS)? Why did the then-leading Democratic Party include both nationalists and autonomists in the DOS alliance? Can today’s student movement exercise a similar pragmatism? And should it be regarded as opportunism or as a necessary, if reluctant, adaptation to a nationally sensitive electorate?
How much defense of the national interest is necessary when fighting state corruption? And how harmful is anti-capitalism if it is impossible to contest an election without a financial sponsor? Can liberal anti-nationalists march separately but strike together alongside the conservative right, or does only a unified front of ideologically diverse opposition forces promise electoral victory?
These electoral dilemmas already foreshadowed national rifts within the protest movement by mid-2025. Ideological churn and a partial conversion of the protests became visible after St Vitus’ Day (Vidovdan) 2025, when the protest organizers invited nationalists to their rallies as well.
Did the prospect of upcoming elections demand flexibility even back then – that is, shifting the protest rhetoric to suit the tastes of ethnocentric voters? It should be stated immediately that not every national demand is nationalist, nor are all changes inconsistent.
The evolution of the demands made by student and civic protests in Serbia over the past half-century has been both normal and desirable.
“Transience is life; that which does not pass is dead” (Ivo Andrić). The changes brought about by various generational blends of experience and expectation were all the more natural. Hence, the diversity of visions of a desirable society (past futures) across the protest movements of 1968, 1991, 2000, and 2024 is entirely understandable.
The visions of rebellious generations have always been constrained by the varying boundaries of the dominant epochal consciousness. The pluralism of these protests is pluralism of historical eras, of shifting balances of class power, and of the diverse spirit of the times. Despite this historical caution, new artistic performances or demands for fairer procedures and elections cannot constitute the historically authentic signature of the current protesting generation. That signature can only be a synthesis of new experience and social expectations.
In this respect, however, the protest movement does not differ greatly from the ruling authorities in Serbia. The absence of a strong social dimension in the protests may lead voters to assume there are no major differences at all. What we are witnessing is a potent procedural, performative, and plenum-based resistance to corruption, but not to the socio-economic whole -capitalism.
“We are not chasing office” is not a system-threatening demand, any more than is resistance to politics as an inherently corrupt trade. Environmental protection cannot be the ceiling of social demands, nor is blocking roads and streets a sufficient barrier to the movement of capital.
In the clamour over procedure, the social question has remained unspoken. This is not a betrayed expectation, as capitalism was normalised long ago. Profit has not merely become moral; it has become super-moral. The spirit of the times has narrowed the social self-awareness of the younger generation.
This is no irony of history, but the result of a new balance of class forces. The rich are no longer afraid. Greed has been normalised. The spirit of the times dictates boundaries to every generation, but within those limits, breakthroughs of universal values are uneven.
There are also restorative generations. To establish the necessary distance from the regime, the electoral platform of the protest movement must be socially radicalised. This is no easy task, as the left within the protest movement is weak. The politically Other has been submerged into the economically One. The economically One (honest capitalism as the shared objective of both opposing sides) stifles the active politically Other (the fight against corruption).
How can one combat corruption that is inevitable in a system where the moral status of profit is unchallenged? With difficulty. The protest movement has not tackled this issue, and consequently, it has been unable to distance itself sufficiently from the regime, despite intense political animosities and clashes in the public squares.
Stark political differences have not been sufficiently antagonised in economic terms. The bourgeois One (not the civic One) encompasses both the protest movement and the regime beneath its canopy. The visions and objectives of the system spill over into the visions of the protest. There is no social clash. Yet the ruling power holds the advantage, because without a financial sponsor, no election campaign can succeed.
Can students, as a “part with no part”, enter a campaign without money? Or are their rallies to date sufficient, rendering a sponsor superfluous?
Be that as it may, it is futile today in Serbia to highlight the antagonism between having and being, between mind and power, between the spiritual individual and the economically insatiable one.
In Germany and France, this tension has not been forgotten. Here, it does not resonate. Even the moral destruction of the ruling power is insufficient; what is required is a creative, operational destruction of a system that amounts to socialism—but only for capital reliant on state budget subsidies.
To operationally convert unprogressive instability into a progressive state means recognising the contemporaneity of the non-contemporary in a new way. Not theoretically, but practically. This is not merely the co-existence of digitalism and the church, of smartphones and priestly processions, but the art of finding financiers for an alternative, secular, non-ethnocentric social justice.
If behind the republic of the digital market lies the despotism of moralised profit, and behind employers, investors, and entrepreneurs stand morally laundered exploiters, can an election campaign be conducted without their help?
A bifocal lens is required to recognise social evil. Alongside procedural matters, the social dimension must not be forgotten. This is no easy feat in an era when the rich are emboldened. Can rebellious students form a vanguard that will also trigger resistance to social evil, rather than just corrupt procedures?
If they cannot alter the system, can they at least make a dent in it by appealing to an electorate that considers profit to be immoral? Perhaps they can, for the unspoken social question should not be underestimated. But how can a financial ally be found to activate anti-profit sentiments? Are there any suicidal capitalists?
There are none, yet it must be said that it is a powerful delusion to believe that free media will resolve everything without incorporating a social optic. They will not – partly because, by opening new foreign factories to exploit the domestic workforce, the regime is capable of neutralizing the protest’s demands with: “Don’t you want to be rich too?” Honest capitalism (contradictio in adjecto) is the moral pivot of the One, the exclusive moralism of the whole from which the protest movement fails to separate itself.
The fact that domestic entrepreneurs are pygmies compared to foreign giants in Serbia’s peripheral capitalism changes nothing here. Although talking about trade unions at Linglong is laughable, the protest movement nevertheless lacks an alternative vision of a social economy in response to the Arab-funded Belgrade Waterfront and Chinese investments. The precariat has not descended to the riverfront.
Therefore, a clearer economic – rather than procedural – demarcation from the regime is required: through social-democratisation, the welfare state, and a social economy, rather than a liberal rule-of-law state that is essentially capital-parliamentarism. It is clear that it is not a fairer, but a more social economy that acts as the “barbed wire” between two worlds: work, unions, and ecological social housing on one side, and tycoons and investor urbanism on the other.
A fairer procedure does not help here, as the laws are tailored to capital. Not to mention that there can be no free media if the unrestricted purchase of TV channels is permitted.
If unemployed students lack media capacity, how are they to find an electoral sponsor for their demands? How can a solvent financier be convinced that the sovereignty of unlimited acquisition is not a guarantee of freedom, but rather the foundation of that rule-of-law state in which the citoyen (citizen) is mere decoration, whilst the bourgeois (the wealthy person) is its true owner? There is no chance of that.
To what extent do all the aforementioned non-profit principles remain academic in relation to the financial foundation of elections? Do elections not, therefore, demand different, concrete slogans? To attract voters, it is not enough to say that students have shaken up socio-chauvinism without opening the “cluster” of the social economy.
It is harder to answer the question of what measure of defense of the national interest is reasonable for students entering an election, and what price for the support of financial sponsors in the campaign is necessary? Elections demand realistic answers, not striking performances or abstract theory. One must not forget that the national pole is crowded, whereas the social field remains unoccupied.
(Danas, 26.08.2026)
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