Milovan: Dilas Novi Razred

For all its brilliance, The New Class suffers from the very idealism it claims to reject. Đilas writes as a disappointed believer. His critique is essentially that the revolution failed to live up to its own ethical promise of freedom and equality.

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. milovan dilas novi razred

The book’s undeniable power comes from Đilas’s credibility. This is not a Cold War tract written by a disillusioned exile from a safe distance. Đilas was the insider’s insider. He fought with Partisans, served in Tito’s highest councils, and personally helped build the system he later eviscerates. For all its brilliance, The New Class suffers

Published: 1957 (written after Đilas’s break with Tito and subsequent imprisonment) Original language: Serbo-Croatian ( Novi razred ) Đilas’s core argument is deceptively simple