Milovan Djilas Nova Klasa.pdf
Milovan Đilas's 1957 work, "The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System," offers a seminal critique of Soviet-style socialism, arguing that communist revolutions created a new, privileged bureaucratic elite that controls the nation's wealth. Written from within the system he analyzed, the text highlights the shift from ideological goals to a totalitarian monopoly designed to protect the ruling class's power. For more on the text's analysis of the communist system, visit CIA.gov. The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System
5.1 Post-Soviet Oligarchy: Djilas’s model predicted that when the party’s monopoly on force collapses, the new class simply converts political power into private property. The Russian oligarchs of the 1990s—former party secretaries who bought state assets for kopecks—are the perfect Djilasian type.
Key arguments
- Definition of the new class: Party-bureaucrats who centrally allocate resources, command the state apparatus, and secure privileges (housing, access, consumption) that distinguish them from ordinary workers.
- Mechanism of class formation: Revolutionary monopoly of political power creates incentives and institutions (appointments, distribution systems, secrecy) that concentrate control and reproduce a privileged caste.
- Property without ownership: Although formal private property is abolished, the new class effectively controls society’s productive assets via administrative command — a form of collective but exclusive control that functions like ownership.
- Ideology and legitimation: Official socialist ideology (equality, proletarian rule) masks the emergence of the new class. Rituals, propaganda, and party mythology legitimize elite rule while preventing democratic accountability.
- Corruption and degeneration: Bureaucratic power breeds corruption, careerism, and a detachment from revolutionary goals; revolutionaries become guardians of the system rather than its servants.
- Prospects for change: Djilas was pessimistic about internal reform under entrenched bureaucracies; he suggested that only democratization, decentralization, and the revival of civil society could check the new class.
Historical impact
The New Class helped legitimize dissident critiques across the Eastern bloc and influenced Cold War intellectual debates. It fed Western liberal and conservative thinking about communism while also inspiring noncommunist left critiques that sought democratic socialism. Djilas’s writings contributed directly to his political downfall and imprisonment, which underscored his claims about intolerance to internal critique. Milovan Djilas Nova Klasa.pdf
Milovan Đilas's 1957 work, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System, argues that socialist revolutions created a "new class" of party bureaucrats who control nationalized property, replacing private ownership with a monopoly on power. This elite, as described by the former Yugoslav official, perpetuates a totalitarian system of exploitation rather than a worker's paradise, while stifling intellectual freedom and economic innovation. The full text is available via Internet Archive.
In "The New Class", Đilas critiques the bureaucratic and authoritarian tendencies of socialist systems, arguing that they lead to the concentration of power in the hands of a privileged elite. He contends that this new class, which he calls the "red bourgeoisie," has interests that diverge from those of the working class and the broader population. Milovan Đilas's 1957 work, "The New Class: An
"The new class appropriates its privileges and economic preference in the form of material gain and social prestige. The ownership of the means of production is not the same as the control of the means of production."
However, history favored Djilas. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, archives from the GDR, Poland, and the USSR confirmed his core thesis: Nomenklatura lists (privileged party positions) were heritable. Children of party officials were vastly more likely to become party officials. The "class" was real. Definition of the new class: Party-bureaucrats who centrally
Impact and Legacy