New class

The new class is a term used to describe the privileged ruling class of bureaucrats and Communist Party functionaries which typically arises in a Stalinist Communist state. Generally, the group known in the Soviet Union as the Nomenklatura conforms to the theory of the new class. Earlier the term was applied to other emerging strata of the society.

Trotskyists argue that the bureaucratic elite is not technically a class (since they do not directly own productive property), but a caste. They sometimes refer to Stalinist states ruled by such a caste as deformed or degenerated workers states, or simply state capitalism.

Milovan Djilas' New Class theory has also been used extensively by classical liberal and conservative commentators in the West, in their criticism of the Communist states.

Early theories

Theories describing the elite in the Soviet Union as a new class initially emerged in 1917. These theories were pursued most strongly by anarchist theorists and occasionally by syndicalists, left communists and council communists. This strand of analysis has remained one of the major positions within anarchism on the role of the elite in the Soviet-style societies.

Djilas' New Class

A theory of the new class was developed by Milovan Djilas the Vice President of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito, who participated with Tito in the Yugoslav People's Liberation War, but was later purged by him as Djilas began to advocate democratic and egalitarian ideals (which he believed were more in line with the way socialism and communism should look like). The theory of the new class is in contradiction to the claims of certain ruling Communists, such as Joseph Stalin, who argued that their revolutions and/or social reforms had resulted in the extinction of any ruling class as such. It was Djilas' observation as a member of a Communist government that Party members stepped into the role of ruling class - a problem which he believed should be corrected through revolution. Djilas' completed his primary work on his new class theory in the mid 1950s.

Djilas claimed that the new class' specific relationship to the means of production was one of collective political control, and that the new class' property form was political control. Thus for Djilas the new class not only seeks expanded material reproduction to politically justify its existence to the working class, but it also seeks expanded reproduction of political control as a form of property in itself. This can be compared to the capitalist who seeks expanded value through increased sharemarket values, even though the sharemarket itself does not necessarily reflect an increase in the value of commodities produced. Djilas uses this argument about property forms to indicate why the new class sought parades, marches and spectacles despite this activity lowering the levels of material productivity.

Djilas proposed that the new class only slowly came to self-consciousness of itself as a class. On arriving at a full self-consciousness the initial project undertaken would be massive industrialisation in order to cement the external security of the new class' rule against foreign or alternative ruling classes. In Djilas' schema this approximated the 1930s and 1940s in the Soviet Union. As the new class suborns all other interests to its own security during this period, it freely executes and purges its own members in order to achieve its major goal of security as a ruling class.

After security has been achieved, the new class pursues a policy of moderation towards its own members, effectively granting material rewards and freedom of thought and action within the new class so long as this freedom is not used to undermine the rule of the new class. Djilas identified this period as the period of Khrushchev's government in the Soviet Union. Due to the emergence of conflicts of policy within the new class, the potential for palace coups, or populist revolutions is possible (as experienced in Poland and Hungary respectively).

Finally Djilas predicted a period of economic decline, as the political future of the new class was consolidated around a staid programme of corruption and self-interest at the expense of other social classes. This can be interpreted as a prediction of the Leonid Brezhnev era stagnation by Djilas.

While Djilas claimed that the new class was a social class with a distinct relationship to the means of production, he did not claim that this new class was associated with a self-sustaining mode of production. This claim, within Marxist theory, argues that the Soviet-style societies must eventually either collapse backwards towards capitalism, or experience a social revolution towards real socialism. This can be seen as a prediction of the downfall of the Soviet Union.

Robert Kaplan's 1993 book Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through history also contains a discussion with Djilas, who used his model to anticipate many of the events that subsequently came to pass in the former Yugoslavia.

Similarity to other analyses

Of course, the specific notions of Djilas are his own development, however the idea that bureaucrats in a typical Marxist-Leninist style state become a new class is not his original idea. Mikhail Bakunin had made this point in his International Workingmen's Association debates with Marx in the mid to late 19th century. This idea was repeated after the Russian revolution by anarchists like Kropotkin and Makhno, as well as some communists. In 1911 Robert Michels first proposed the Iron law of oligarchy, which described the development of bureaucratic hierarchies in supposedly egalitarian and democratic socialist parties. It was later repeated by a leader of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky through his theory of degenerated workers state. Further on, Mao Zedong also had his own version of this idea developed during the Socialist Education Movement to criticize the Communist Party of China under Liu Shaoqi. Of course, this wide range of people over the decades had different perspectives on the matter, but there was also a degree of core agreement on this idea.

From the other side of the fence, the work of Friedrich Hayek also anticipated many of Djilas' New Class criticisms, without placing them in a Marxist context (see esp. The Road to Serfdom). American paleoconservatives adapted New Class analysis in their theory of the managerial state. Karl Popper's criticisms of utopian social pursuits in The Open Society and Its Enemies are markedly similar to Djilas' views, which were nonetheless developed independently.

John Kenneth Galbraith's "New Class"

Canadian-American liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith also advocated a technocratic "New Class." Galbraith believed that modern society had become too complex and required guidance by a technocratic, well educated elite.

See also

Bureaucratic collectivism

Degenerated workers state

Deformed workers state

New Soviet man

Public choice theory

State capitalism

References

Further reading

. See also the NY Times Books feature with Chapter One online, and also the May 10, 1998 NY Times book review. Leon Trotsky's famous work considers the alleged betrayal and corruption of the Russian Revolution by Stalin and the new bureaucratic ruling caste.

* A meta-list of relevant publications. Related to

Articles

Registan (October 1/06) - The "New Class": The Rise and Fall of NGOs in Central Asia. Quotes extensively from a presentation by Laurence Jarvik to the Central Eurasian Studies Society, held the University of Michigan. Founding editor Nathan Hamm was a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan.

Mutualist.org - Liberalism & Social Control: The New Class' Will to Power. Most New Class criticism comes explicitly from either the Left or the Right. Rarely does one seem to come from both at once.

The New Criterion (October 1999) - Remembering Milovan Djilas

The New York Review of Books (December 7/67) - Same Old New Class. A reply by Christopher Lasch

Category:Communist terminology Category:Social groups Category:Social classes