Milovan Dilas Novi Razred ((top)) -

Đilas’s core argument is deceptively simple. The revolution, he claims, was not led by the proletariat but by a small, disciplined core of intellectuals and professional revolutionaries (the Party). Once they seized power, they did not “wither away” as Marx predicted. Instead, they expropriated the means of production not to the people, but to the state—which they control absolutely.

Furthermore, Đilas’s framework has been adapted by Western thinkers to critique their own societies. Conservatives argue that a "New Class" of liberal bureaucrats, NGO directors, and media professionals has emerged in the West—a meritocratic elite that no longer represents the working class.

When The New Class was published in the West (by Praeger in 1957), the reaction was explosive. The CIA loved it (they funded its translation to undermine the USSR). Communists hated it. milovan dilas novi razred

Đilas wrote famously: "The owners of the new class are the political bureaucrats... Communism is not a reversion to capitalism, but the beginning of a new class society."

He argued that this class is actually more exploitative than the old bourgeoisie. The old capitalist exploited the worker to make a profit to buy a yacht; the New Class exploits the worker to maintain political control and comfort, and there is no election to remove them. Đilas’s core argument is deceptively simple

In 1957, Milovan Đilas, once a key architect of the Yugoslav state, published a book that would cost him his freedom but cement his legacy: The New Class

While Đilas himself would likely reject these Western analogies (he was specifically talking about totalitarian single-party states), the archetype remains powerful: wherever you find a group that controls access to resources without market competition or democratic accountability, you find the ghost of the . Instead, they expropriated the means of production not

Milovan Đilas's The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (Serbo-Croatian: Novi razred