If you are writing a thesis or conducting serious research, purchase the official ebook to support the preservation of dissident literature. If you are a curious citizen, seek out the PDF through your local library’s interlibrary loan system. The truth, as Djilas learned, is worth the effort.
Djilas contends that the communist revolution, which aimed to eliminate social inequality and create a classless society, ultimately led to the emergence of a new ruling class. This new class, comprising high-ranking party officials, government bureaucrats, and managers of state-owned enterprises, exploited their positions to accumulate power, wealth, and privileges.
In 1957, a manuscript smuggled out of a Yugoslav prison arrived in New York, destined to become one of the most influential political documents of the 20th century. , once the heir apparent to Josip Broz Tito, published The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (Nova Klasa). It was the first time a high-ranking Communist official provided a systematic Marxist critique of why the revolution had failed to deliver a classless society. The Core Thesis: A New Form of Ownership Milovan Djilas Nova Klasa.pdf
: The Communist Party acts as the "backbone" of all activity, where law is secondary to the decisions of party committees and secret police. Tyranny over the Mind
"The New Class" was a significant critique of Soviet-type socialism, and it had a substantial impact on Western thought about communism. The book was widely read and discussed in the 1950s and 1960s and remains an important work in the study of communist systems. If you are writing a thesis or conducting
Because Djilas wasn’t just talking about Yugoslavia. His model of the "New Class" has become the standard lens for analyzing post-Soviet oligarchs, Chinese party-state capitalism, and even bureaucratic welfare states.
Milovan Djilas's "The New Class" (1957) argues that communist revolutions inevitably create a privileged political bureaucracy that monopolizes power and controls nationalized property for its own benefit. This analysis highlights the ideological contradiction between socialist theory and the reality of a parasitic, self-serving elite. Access the English edition on or a Russian PDF on Vtoraya Literatura RCIN.org.pl Djilas contends that the communist revolution, which aimed
Djilas' work has had a lasting impact on the critique of communist systems and the study of elites in socialist societies. His analysis remains relevant today, as many countries continue to grapple with issues of corruption, inequality, and the concentration of power.
The book accurately predicted the economic stagnation, moral bankruptcy, and eventual collapse of the Soviet-style bureaucratic command economies decades before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Djilas’s core argument was deceptively simple yet devastating. Karl Marx predicted a revolution by the proletariat leading to a “dictatorship of the proletariat” and ultimately a stateless, classless society. Djilas observed that in the USSR and Eastern Europe, this had not happened.