Milovan Djilas Nova Klasa.pdf ((free)) 🎁 🏆

“The new class... acquires its strength, its privileges, its power, and its wealth from the administration of nationalized and socialized property.” — Milovan Djilas

His realization was apocalyptic: The revolution had not created a classless society. It had merely replaced the old capitalist exploiters with a new, more voracious political elite.

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.

Djilas posited that in communist societies, the means of production are not owned by the proletariat, but by a political monopoly . He defined the "New Class" as having the following characteristics: Milovan Djilas Nova Klasa.pdf

To understand The New Class , one must first understand its author, Milovan Djilas, a figure whose life's trajectory mirrored the very betrayal he described. Born in 1911 in Montenegro, Djilas joined the Communist Party in 1932 and was a committed revolutionary. His commitment was proven during World War II, where he became a key figure in the Yugoslav Partisan movement and a close comrade-in-arms of Josip Broz Tito. In the post-war government, he rose to become a powerful figure, holding positions such as Minister for Montenegro, Minister without portfolio, and eventually Vice-President of Yugoslavia.

Crucially, Djilas argues that this class is more stable than capitalism’s bourgeoisie, because its wealth is not subject to market fluctuations; it is guaranteed by the police and the army.

The original manuscript was written in Serbo-Croatian, with the original title being Nova Klasa: Kritika Savremenog Komunizma (The New Class: A Critique of Contemporary Communism). It was first published in English in 1957 in the United States, and its impact was immediate and global. “The new class

According to Djilas, is defined by three characteristics:

| Page | Quote | |------|-------| | 37 | “The new class acquires its strength from the party and the state.” | | 67 | “Ownership is a right, not a thing. Under communism, the state possesses the right.” | | 134 | “The revolution devours its own children, but it spits out bureaucrats.” | | 179 | “After Stalin, the new class consolidated. After Tito, it will do the same.” |

Djilas broke down how this class maintained power without formal stock ownership: Djilas contends that the communist revolution, which aimed

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.

The central argument of Nova Klasa directly challenged Orthodox Marxist theory. Karl Marx predicted that a communist revolution would abolish the class system, creating a classless society where the means of production were owned collectively by the proletariat (the working class).