MILOVAN DJILAS.  The New Class:  Analysis of the Communist System. 
New York:  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957.  Pp.  vii, 214.


Read together, Milovan Djilas' The New Class and Wartime seem like
a cultural-economic preface and a main work of philosophical
introspections in the competent guise of history.  It is certainly
understandable that Djilas' earlier work, The New Class was brief
and did not address, on the personal level, the pain, suffering,
and psychic disruption that war can causes.  In The New Class
Djilas offers his readers an intelligent analysis of the Communist
system.
     Perhaps because of the temporal proximity to his Balkan war
experience, Djilas is perhaps too hard on those intellectuals who
wholeheartedly embraced Marxism without serious criticism.  He
berates the communist regimes for being totalitarian and rolling
callously over human rights (3).  Having properly, if identified
the main theoretical basis for modern Communism, he nails down the
socioeconomic matrix that lent itself to the wholesale adoption of
this 'wholly scientific' system.  The mid-19th century was a time
of incredible change, and a seemingly limitless scientific
progress.  Progress, though, had to be measured against the
radically changing social environment: whistle-stop cities and
urban factories placed strange new demands on the worker.  Djilas
realizes that Marxism found a willing audience for these reasons,
but his purpose is not to critique the philosophy of Marx, Engels,
Lenin or Stalin but to show how the philosophy was adopted and
change to fit the needs of power politics.
     Djilas admits that these higher functionaries may have been
facing an impossible task.  The concept of large-scale social
engineering was untested, uncharted area.  As Djilas says, the
communist leader were no better acquainted than others about the
laws that govern society (21)."  In the face of the rapidly growing
certainty in the sciences and progress in general, this ambitious
undertaking does not seem so unreasonable.
     Djilas' main thrust is that the theoretically possible
classless society evolved (or was subverted) into a strictly
divided, classed society.  The people, stripped of the right of
personal property, are on the bottom.  Then those nationalized
spoils are consumed, in the Veblenian sense, by the privileged
bureaucracy and party functionaries.  Djilas attributes the
creation of this new class directly to Stalin (49).  
     Djilas brilliantly discerns the importance of the lack of
"inherited position" to the maintenance of this special stratum
(61).  The result is toadyism and sycophantism in the extreme.  It
is in this manner that the new class procreates, supplying
sufficient manpower for survival.  Later, Djilas addresses a
different type of single-minded pursuit:  the wholesale adoption of
a unified, almost sacred, ideology.  The ladder-climber do not
voice unorthodox opinions, and as Djilas says, the abolition of all
ideological struggle in the party meant the termination of all
freedom in society... (75)."  This kind of analysis, although it
may seem elementary, is useful for students raised in a non-
communist political society.  It helps them develop an
understanding for a system totally different from their own.
     When Djilas discusses how Communist propaganda works to change
and limit the way its subjects think, he begins to lose a bit of
his objectivity.  Admittedly, it is fair for a dissident author to
be violently anti-censor, but this emotion leads Djilas astray
occasionally.  For example:  "Communist materialism is possibly
more exclusive than any other contemporary view of the world
(124)."  He rules out other forms of political orthodoxy and
certainly overlooks fanatical religious systems.  Djilas notes that
this censorship results in a set of intellectual blinders, an il-
logical positivism, if you will.  If it is not party doctrine it
cannot hold Truth, or be of any use (comparison with Southern
Fundamentalism here might be instructive for modern students).
     Even given the built-in censorial and political machinations
developed to protect Communism from 'counter-revolutionary'
behaviors and thoughts, Djilas is guardedly optimistic.  He sees,
like the 19th century historians, a constant and morally correct
progression towards freedom and human rights.  In 1957, these
comments would have seemed impossible; today it is only unlikely. 
     
          Jason Carr
          University of Texas at Arlington
          Arlington


http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/