The book Nova Klasa: Analiza Komunističkog Sistema (The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System) was written in 1955, after Djilas had been expelled from the party and imprisoned. It was published in English in 1957 by Frederick A. Praeger, but the original Serbo-Croatian manuscript was smuggled out of Yugoslavia.
While the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Djilas’s thesis has proven remarkably durable. Political scientists argue that his model fits not just Stalinist Russia, but also: Milovan Djilas Nova Klasa.pdf
Djilas posited that in communist societies, the means of production are not owned by the proletariat, but by a political monopoly . He defined the "New Class" as having the following characteristics: The book Nova Klasa: Analiza Komunističkog Sistema (The
Djilas broke down how this class maintained power without formal stock ownership: While the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Djilas’s
The original Croatian/Serbian version ("Nova Klasa") contains linguistic and rhetorical nuances often lost in translation. Scholars hunting for the PDF version are usually seeking the original, uncensored text, or the rare 1957 first English edition, to study the precise terminology Djilas used for "bureaucratic ownership."