New class

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New class is a controversial idea used to describe a privileged ruling group of bureaucrats and Communist party officials in states that followed Soviet-style socialism. The term is closely linked to the Soviet “nomenklatura.” It was popularized by Milovan Đilas, a Yugoslav politician who later argued that a new ruling class forms inside socialist systems.

Đilas stressed that the new class gains its power not from private ownership, but from control over the means of political power. In his view, political control becomes a form of property, and the new class uses public displays and political show to justify its rule while seeking more control.

According to Đilas, the new class develops in stages. It first pushes for heavy industrialization to secure its power, then purges rivals to protect itself. After securing dominance, it moderates some privileges but keeps a firm grip on decision-making and thought within the ruling group. He pointed to periods like Khrushchev’s leadership in the Soviet Union as times when the class tried to balance control with limited concessions.

Conflict within the ruling circle could lead to palace intrigues or popular uprisings, as seen in some Eastern European countries. Đilas also warned of a coming economic decline as corruption and self-interest took precedence over broader social goals, a pattern he saw as leading toward stagnation.

He criticized Soviet dominance over Eastern Europe and predicted growing calls for sovereignty and independence, which he believed would contribute to later revolutions in 1989. While the new class was a distinct social group tied to the state’s political power, Đilas did not claim it represented a self-sustaining mode of production. He suggested such systems could eventually collapse or transform.

Đilas’s ideas sparked debate and were discussed alongside other theories about power and class, such as the idea that bureaucrats can form an elite in socialist and even capitalist societies. Critics from various traditions, including anarchists and other Marxists, questioned or refined the concept. In the 1960s and 1970s, the idea also appeared in studies of post-industrial societies, where scholars described new groups shaped by values beyond simple economic security.