Prospects for a Change in the Communist World

The new political thinking of Milovan Djilas is marked by a rather surprising contradiction.

The new political thinking of Milovan Djilas, as set forth in The New Class, is marked by a rather surprising contradiction. On the one hand he prophesies the “complete disintegration” of Communism and states that the unity of the “world communist movement is irremediably compromised”; on the other hand he asserts that the changes which have occurred since the death of Stalin have altered not at all “the nature of the system,” that national communism, despite increasing possibilities for emancipation from Moscow, is incapable of changing its “essence.” (This essence resides “in the control and monopoly of ideas, and the expropriation of the society by the bureaucracy of the party. “)

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