Here is why this text remains essential reading and what you need to know before you download it.
How central planning serves the political survival of the bureaucracy rather than genuine economic efficiency.
: While private ownership was abolished, this "New Class" exercised absolute control over nationalized resources, effectively becoming the de facto owners. Totalitarian Power
For those seeking the original Serbo-Croatian text, the manuscript "Nova Klasa: Kritika Savremenog Komunizma" is preserved in the at Stanford University's Hoover Institution Archives. While the primary text is accessible, locating scans of the original 1957 Praeger edition (214 pages) can be more challenging. A key search term for library databases is the book's detailed subtitle: "The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System." milovan djilas nova klasa pdf
Instead of a classless society, the revolution had simply ushered in a new, more powerful ruling class. This "new class" was not the industrial bourgeoisie of old, but the communist political bureaucracy—the nomenklatura . He argued that this class, composed of high-ranking party officials, state administrators, and secret police chiefs, had seized control of the means of production and political power for its own self-serving ends.
The publication of The New Class in 1957 was a seismic event that sent shockwaves through the global political landscape. Its impact was immediate and profound for several reasons.
Đilas detailed how this new class enjoyed exclusive material privileges—such as luxury villas, special stores, and elite vacations—hidden behind a facade of egalitarian rhetoric. To maintain these privileges, the new class required an absolute monopoly on political, economic, and ideological power, ruthlessly crushing any form of dissent. 3. Ideology as a Weapon Here is why this text remains essential reading
: Scholars still use Djilas's model to analyze modern post-Soviet political and administrative elites, particularly in Russia. Digital Resources
To understand The New Class ( Nova Klasa ), one must understand the man who wrote it. Born in Montenegro in 1911, Milovan Đilas was a brilliant intellectual, a passionate revolutionary, and a key commander in Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslav Partisans during World War II.
How to read it
Today, researchers, historians, and political scientists frequently search for to study this foundational text. Understanding its historical context, core arguments, and enduring legacy reveals why this book shook the foundations of the Eastern Bloc and cost its author his freedom. Who Was Milovan Đilas?
In a standard capitalist society, economic power grants political power. In the communist system, the reverse happened: political power (membership in the party apparatus or nomenklatura ) granted economic ownership and privilege. 2. Dogmatism and Ideology
Here is the breakdown of his argument:
Milovan Đilas’s The New Class did not just diagnose the problems of 20th-century Eastern Europe; it provided a conceptual framework that remains highly relevant today.