In his first book - Titoism and the Cominform - published in 1952 and based on his Ph.D. thesis, he argued that the Communist focus on certain goals blinded them to the disastrous socioeconomic side effects which could weaken their hold on power.
He was accused together with his parents, who were involved in helping Slovene political emigrants across the border to the West, of "organizing an underground anti-Communist opposition and of revealing state secrets" by the Titoist regime and was in 1949 sentenced to four years in prison, but was released after two years on probation while a high school student at the Classical Grammar School of Ljubljana.
The socialist variant of workers' self-management was also adopted by the Spanish Carlist Party in the 1970s founded by Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma, a rival claimant to the Spanish throne.
As a result, Yugoslavia fell outside of the Soviet sphere of influence, and the country's brand of communism, with its independence from the Soviet line, was called Titoism by Moscow and considered treasonous.