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 Djilas Nova Klasa.pdf
The New Class was not an academic exercise written from a safe distance. Djilas wrote it while being persecuted by his own system. A hero of the Partisan war against the Nazis, Djilas fell out with Tito in 1954 over demands for democratic reform. After publishing excerpts of The New Class in The New Leader (USA), he was arrested. Milovan Đilas's 1957 work, The New Class: An