Class and State in a Total Society
Thomas, Norman
THE NEW CLASS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE COMMUNIST SYSTEM, by Milovan Djilas. Praeger, New York. 1957. 214 pp. $3.95. Readers of DISSENT are, or should be, already familiar with the thesis of...
...Djilas had chosen to give us a little more inside history of the outer and inner conflicts which he has experienced...
...I should have liked a clearer reconciliation of this faith with some of Djilas' criticisms...
...And that's a large order...
...In this sort of detachment Djilas has succeeded extraordinarily...
...His argument contains many quotable sentences...
...I FOUND MYSELF more than once wishing^ t--unreasonably, I grant—that Mr...
...His wish— as he tells us in his preface—is to present "a picture of the Communist world, not to philosophize about it" or to trace his own evolution toward democratic socialism...
...a more detailed examination of my personal situation might some day supplement and perhaps even change some of my conclusions...
...His book has little of the autobiographical...
...It is that the Communist revolution has resulted in the total control of the state (which is bigger than society) by the party bureaucracy which by every test itself constitutes a new class...
...IN HIS PREFACE he says: "I have tried to detach myself from my personal problems by not submitting to them...
...But the great importance of the book does not lie in what it says—others have said as much—but in the fact that Djilas says it...
...theoretician, and heir apparent, now a prisoner in Tito's jail...
...Thus, some sort of socialism he thinks was inevitable everywhere "to facilitate the industrial revolution and make possible improvement and ex pansion...
...Djilas' sound general thesis is lucidly developed...
...Djilas' hope for the future lies in his faith that "the world will change and will go in the direction in which it has been moving and must go on —toward greater unity, progress and freedom...
...he uses occasional illustrations from Yugoslavian history to illustrate a point or to distinguish Tito's national communism from Moscow's, but he is not writing history...
...He acknowledges noble ideas which communism still "accepts in word" and you will find on pages 152 and 153 an eloquent—and in its context, pathetic—eulogy of early communism before it "tasted the fruits of power...
...Meanwhile, we might show our profound gratitude to the author by arousing a public opinion to demand his release by dictator Tito who boasts that he is no Stalin.* Reports from a reliable source say that Djilas suffers gravely from a bad rheumatism in his unheated cell...
...The class has begun to split up into factions...
...Its nature is the same as that of Soviet Communism, but it aspires to detach itself into something of its own, nationally...
...I should also have liked him to give fuller explanation of various "inevitabilities" in which he believes...
...Because it had to reverence Stalin's methods, the ruling class will not be able to preserve its dogma...
...Readers of DISSENT are, or should be, already familiar with the thesis of this important book...
...Specifically he looks to great change in communism or breakup of communism...
...There have been other men who have eloquently recanted their earlier Communist faith...
...My circumstances are, at best, uncertain and I am therefore compelled to express my personal observations and experiences hastily...
...The methods were actually only the expression of that dogma, and, indeed, of the practice on which the dogma was based...
...THE NEW CLASS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE COMMUNIST SYSTEM, by Milovan Djilas...
...But none of Djilas' position in the movement and few if any with his objectivity, faith in democratic socialism and hope for mankind...
...Completely dominant, the ruling class has begun to abandon and lose the ideology, the dogma which brought it to power...
...If the picture developed into a sort of anti-communist manifesto, that was unavoidable...
...Djilas, himself a principal author of Yugoslav's national communism, declares that "National Communism per se is contradictory...
...Tito's well beloved comrade...
...This idea of the split in the all-powerful class—which Stalin kept unified by terror—Djilas does not develop...
...Communism in industrially backward countries with no experience in democracy, with all its shortcomings, filled "the need that made revolution inevitable—industrial transformation on the basis of modern technology...
...But it is unfair to criticize this admirable book for not doing in detail what its author clearly did not intend to do...
...Is it not America's business to protest to a dictator whom she has so greatly aided in his struggle for a certain independence from Moscow, in the name of the freedom we profess to cherish...
...In reality, National Communism is Communism in decline...
...This class, itelf without internal democracy, exercises such powers over the economy and over the minds of men as no other class or military dictatorship has been able to establish...
...Rather we should do all in our power to aid the circulation of The New Class wherever the Communist propaganda apparatus is active...
...In itself the book (as its jacket proclaims) "is the Anti-Communist Manifesto," written by a political theorist trained in the Marxist dialectic...
...But what a theorist is Djilas: a dedi cated revolutionist from his youth up, a hero not only in his own Yugoslavia but of the whole Communist world...
Vol. 4 • September 1957 • No. 4
