1957 Djilas - The New Class

THE NEW CLASS
By
Milovan Djilas
An Analysis of the
Communist System
An Atlantic Press book published by
THAMES AND HUDSON

London
The Publishers wish to express their
gratitude for editorial assistance to
Mr. Morton Puner and Mr. Konrad Kellen.
First published in Great Britain, 1957

Preface
All this could be told in a different way: as the history of a contemporary

revolution, as the expression of a set of opinions, or finally, as the
confession of a revolutionary. A little of each of these may be found in this
document. But, even if this is an inadequate synthesis of history, opinions
and memoirs, it reflects my effort to give as complete and as brief a picture
as possible of contemporary Communism. Some special or technical
aspects may be lost, but the larger picture, I trust, will be that much
simpler and more complete.
I have tried to detach myself from my personal problems by not
submitting to them. My circumstances are, at best, uncertain and I am
therefore compelled to express my personal observations and experiences
hastily; a more detailed examination of my personal situation might some
day supplement and perhaps even change some of my conclusions.
I cannot describe all the dimensions of the conflict in the painful course
of our contemporary world. Nor do I pretend to know any world outside,
the Communist world, in which I had either the fortune or misfortune to
live. When I speak of a world outside my own, I do so only to put my own
world in perspective, to make its reality clearer.
v
Vi PREFACE
Almost everything in this book has been expressed somewhere else,
and in a different way. Perhaps a new flavor, color, and mood, and some
new thoughts, may be found here. That is something—in fact, quite
enough. Each man’s experiences are unique, worthy of communication to
his fellow men.
The reader should not seek in this book some kind of social or other
philosophy, not even where I make generalized statements. My aim has
been to present a picture of the Communist world but not to philosophize
about it by means of generalizations—even though I have sometimes
found generalization unavoidable.
The method of detached observation seemed to me the most suitable
one for presenting my material. My premises could have been
strengthened and my conclusions could have been proved by quotations,
statistics, and recitals of events. In order to be as simple and concise as
possible, I have instead expressed my observations through reasoning and
logical deduction, keeping quotations and statistics to a minimum.
I think my method is appropriate for my personal story and for my
method of working and thinking.
During my adult life I have traveled the entire road open to a
Communist: from the lowest to the highest rung of the hierarchical ladder,
from local and national to international forums, and from the formation of
the true Communist Party and organization of the revolution to the
establishment of the so- called socialist society. No one compelled me to
embrace or to reject Communism. I made my own decision according to
my convictions, freely, in so far as a man can be free. Even though I was
disillusioned, I do not belong to those whose disillusionment was sharp
and extreme. I cut myself off gradually and consciously, building up the
picture and conclusions I present in this book. As I became increasingly
estranged from the reality of contemporary Communism, I came closer to
the idea of democratic socialism. This personal evolution is also reflected
PREFACE vii
in this book, although the book's primary purpose is not to trace this
evolution.
I consider it superfluous to criticize Communism as an idea. The ideas
of equality and brotherhood among men, which have existed in varying
forms since human society began—and which contemporary Communism
accepts in word—are principles to which fighters for progress and
freedom will always aspire. It would be wrong to criticize these basic
ideas, as well as vain and foolish. The struggle to achieve them is part of
human society.
Nor have I engaged in detailed criticism of Communist theory,
although such criticism is needed and useful. I have concentrated on a
description of contemporary Communism, touching upon theory only
where necessary.
It is impossible to express all my observations and experiences in a
work as brief as this one. I have stated only the most essential of them,
using generalizations where they were unavoidable.
This account may appear strange to those who live in the non-
Communist world; it would not seem unusual to those who live in the
Communist one: I claim no exclusive credit or distinction for presenting
the picture of that world, nor for the ideas concerning it. They are simply
the picture and ideas of the world in which I live. I am a product of that
world. I have contributed to it. Now I am one of its critics.
Only on the surface is this inconsistent. I have struggled in the past, and
am struggling now, for a better world. That struggle may not produce the
desired results. Nevertheless, the logic of my action is contained in the
length and continuity of that struggle.
CONTENTS
Origins 1
Character of the Revolution 15
The New Class 37
The Party State 70
Dogmatism in the Economy 103
Tyranny over the Mind 124
The Aim and The Means 147
The Essence 164
National Communism 173
The Present-Day World 191
Origins
1.
The roots of modem Communism reach back very far, although they
were dormant before the development of modem industry in western
Europe. Communism’s basic ideas are the Primacy of Matter and the Reality
of Change, ideas borrowed from thinkers of the period just before the
inception of Communism. As Communism endures and gains strength,
these basic ideas play a less and less important role. This is understandable:
once in power, Communism tends to remodel the rest of the world
according to its own ideas and tends less and less to change itself.
Dialectics and materialism—the changing of the world independently of
human will—formed the basis of the old, classical, Marxist Communism.
These basic ideas were not originated by Communist theorists, such as Marx
or Engels. They borrowed them and wove them into a whole, thus forming,
unintentionally, the basis for a new conception of the world.
The idea of the Primacy of Matter was borrowed from the French
materialists of the eighteenth century. Earlier thinkers, including
Democritus in ancient Greece, had expressed it in a different way. The idea
of the reality of change, caused by the struggle of opposites, called
Dialectics, was taken over from
1
2 THE NEW CLASS
Hegel; the same idea had been expressed in a different way by Heraclitus
in ancient Greece.
Without going into the details of the differences between Marxist ideas
and preceding similar theories, it is necessary to point out that Hegel, in
presenting the idea of the Reality of Change, retained the concept of an
unchanging supreme law, or the Idea of the Absolute. As he expressed it,
in the last analysis there are unchangeable laws which, independently of
human will, govern nature, society, and human beings.
Although stressing the idea of the Reality of Change, Marx, and
especially Engels, stated that the laws of the objective or material world
were unchangeable and independent of human beings. Marx was certain
that he would discover the basic laws governing life and society, just as
Darwin had discovered the laws governing living creatures. At any rate,
Marx did clarify some social laws, particularly the way in which these
laws operated in the period of early industrial capitalism.
This fact alone, even if accepted as accurate, cannot in itself justify
the contention of modern Communists that Marx discovered all the
laws of society. Still less can it justify their attempt to model society
after those ideas in the same way that livestock is bred on the basis of
the discoveries of Lamarck and Darwin. Human society cannot be
compared to species of animals or to inanimate objects; it is composed
of individuals and groups which are continuously and consciously
active in it, growing and changing.
In the pretensions of contemporary Communism of being, if not the
unique and absolute, but in any case the highest science, based on
dialectical materialism, are hidden the seeds of its despotism. The origin
of these pretensions can be found in the ideas of Marx, though Marx
himself did not anticipate them.
Of course, contemporary Communism does not deny the existence of
an objective or unchanging body of laws. However, when in power, it
acts in an entirely different manner toward
ORIGINS 5
human society and the individual, and uses methods to establish its
power different from those its theories would suggest.
Beginning with the premise that they alone know the laws which
govern society, Communists arrive at the oversimplified and
unscientific conclusion that this alleged knowledge gives them the
power and the exclusive right to change society and to control its
activities. This is the major error of their system.
Hegel claimed that the absolute monarchy in Prussia was the
incarnation of his idea of the Absolute. The Communists, on the other
hand, claim that they represent the incarnation of the objective
aspirations of society. Here is more than just one difference between the
Communists and Hegel; there is also a difference between the
Communists and absolute monarchy. The monarchy did not think quite
as highly of itself as the Communists do of themselves, nor was it as
absolute as they are.
2.
Hegel himself was probably troubled by the possible conclusions to

be drawn from his own discoveries. For instance, if everything was
constantly being transformed, what would happen to his own ideas and
to the society which he wanted to preserve? As a professor by royal
appointment he could not have dared, in any case, to make public
recommendations for the improvement of society on the basis of his
philosophy.
This was not the case with Marx. As a young man he took an active
part in the 1848 revolution. He went to extremes in drawing conclusions
from Hegel’s ideas. Was not the bloody class struggle raging all over
Europe straining toward something new and higher? It appeared not
only that Hegel was right— that is, Hegel as interpreted by Marx—but
also that philosophical systems no longer had meaning and justification,
since science was discovering objective laws so rapidly, including those
applicable to society.
4 THE NEW CLASS
In science, Comte's positivism had already triumphed as a method of
inquiry; the English school of political economy (Smith, Ricardo, and
others) was at its height; epochal laws were being discovered from day
to day in the natural sciences; modern industry was carving out its
path on the basis of scientific technology; and the wounds of young
capitalism revealed themselves in the suffering and the beginning
struggle of the proletariat. Apparently this was the onset of the
domination of science, even over society, and the elimination of the
capitalistic concept of ownership as the final obstacle to human
happiness and freedom.
The time was ripe for one great conclusion. Marx had both the daring
and the depth to express it, but there were no social forces available on
which he could rely.
Marx was a scientist and an ideologist. As a scientist, he made
important discoveries, particularly in sociology. As an ideologist, he
furnished the ideological basis for the greatest and most important
political movements of modern history, which took place first in Europe
and are now taking place in Asia.
But, just because he was a scientist, economist, and sociologist, Marx
never thought of constructing an all-inclusive philosophical or ideological
system. He once said: “One thing is certain; I am not a Marxist.” His great
scientific talent gave him the greatest advantage over all his socialist
predecessors, such as Owen and Fourier. The fact that he did not insist on
ideological all-inclusiveness or his own philosophical system gave him an
even greater advantage over his disciples. Most of the latter were
ideologists and only to a very limited degree— as the examples of
Plekhanov, Labriola, Lenin, Kautsky, and Stalin will show—scientists.
Their main desire was to construct a system out of Marx’s ideas; this was
especially true of those who knew little philosophy and had even less
talent for it. As the time passed, Marx’s successors revealed a tendency to
present his teachings as a finite and all-inclusive concept of the world,
and to regard themselves as responsible for the continuation
ORIGINS 5
of all of Marx’s work, which they considered as being virtually
complete. Science gradually yielded to propaganda, and as a result,
propaganda tended more and more to represent itself as science.
Being a product of his time, Marx denied the need for any kind of
philosophy. His closest friend, Engels, declared that philosophy had
died with the development of science. Marx’s thesis was not at all
original. The so-called scientific philosophy, especially after Comte’s
positivism and Feuerbach’s materialism, had become the general
fashion.
It is easy to understand why Marx denied both the need for and the
possibility of establishing any kind of philosophy. It is harder to
understand why his successors tried to arrange his ideas into an all-
inclusive system, into a new, exclusive philosophy. Even though they
denied the need for any kind of philosophy, in practice they created a
dogma of their own which they considered to be the “most scientific”
or the “only scientific” system. In a period of general scientific
enthusiasm and of great changes brought about in everyday life and
industry by science, they could not help but be materialists and to
consider themselves the “only” representatives of the “only” scientific
view and method, particularly since they represented a social stratum
which was in conflict with all the accepted ideas of the time.
Marx’s ideas Were influenced by the scientific atmosphere of his
time, by his own leanings toward science, and by his revolutionary
aspiration to give to the working-class movement a more or less
scientific basis. His disciples were influenced by a different
environment and by different motives when they converted his views
into dogma.
If the political needs of the working-class movement in Europe had not
demanded a new ideology complete in itself, the philosophy that calls
itself Marxist, the dialectical materialism, would have been forgotten—
dismissed as something not particularly profound or even original,
though Marx’s eco
6 THE NEW CLASS
nomic and social studies are of the highest scientific and literary rank.
The strength of Marxist philosophy did not lie in its scientific elements,
but in its connection with a mass movement, and most of all in its emphasis
on the objective of changing society. It stated again and again that the
existing world would change simply because it had to change, that it bore
the seeds of its own opposition and destruction; that the working class
wanted this change and would be able to effect it. Inevitably, the influence
of this philosophy increased and created in the European working-class
movement the illusion that it was omnipotent, at least as a method. In
countries where similar conditions did not exist, such as Great Britain and
the United States, the influence and importance of this philosophy was
insignificant, despite the strength of the working class and the working-
class movement.
As a science, Marxist philosophy was not important, since it was based
mainly on Hegelian and materialistic ideas. As the ideology of the new,
oppressed classes and especially of political movements, it marked an
epoch, first in Europe, and later in Russia and Asia, providing the basis for a
new political movement and a new social system.
3
Marx thought that the replacement of capitalist society would be brought
about by a revolutionary struggle between its two basic classes, the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The clash seemed all the more likely to him
because in the capitalistic system of that time both poverty and wealth kept
increasing unchecked, on the opposite poles of a society that was shaken by
periodic economic crises.
In the last analysis, Marxist teaching was the product of the
ORIGINS 7
industrial revolution or of the struggle of the industrial proletariat for a
better life. It was no accident that the frightful poverty and brutalization of
the masses which accompanied industrial change had a powerful influence
on Marx. His most important work, Das Kapital, contains a number of
important and stirring pages on this topic. The recurring crises, which were
characteristic of the capitalism of the nineteenth century, together with the
poverty and the rapid increase of the population, logically led Marx to the
belief that revolution was the only solution. Marx did not consider
revolution to be inevitable in all countries, particularly not in those where
democratic institutions were already a tradition of social life. He cited as
examples of such countries, in one of his talks, the Netherlands, Great
Britain and the United States. However, one can conclude from his ideas,
taken as a whole, that the inevitability of revolution was one of his basic
beliefs. He believed in revolution and preached it; he was a revolutionary.
Marx’s revolutionary ideas, which were conditional and not universally
applicable, were changed by Lenin into absolute and universal principles. In
The Infantile Disorder of “Left-Wing” Communism, perhaps his most dogmatic
work, Lenin developed these principles still more, differing with Marx’s
position that revolution was avoidable in certain countries. He said that
Great Britain could no longer be regarded as a country in which revolution
was avoidable, because during the First World War she had become a
militaristic power, and therefore the British working class had no other
choice but revolution. Lenin erred, not only in his failure to understand that
“British militarism” was only a temporary, wartime phase of development,
but because he failed to foresee the further development of democracy and
economic progress in Great Britain or other Western countries. He also did
not understand the nature of the English trade-union movement. He placed
too much emphasis on his own, or Marxian, deterministic, scientific ideas
and paid too little attention to the objective social role and
8 THE NEW CLASS
potentialities of the working class in more highly developed countries.
Although he disclaimed it, he did in fact proclaim his theories and the
Russian revolutionary experience to be universally applicable.
According to Marx’s hypothesis and his conclusions on the subject, the
revolution would occur first of all in the highly developed capitalist
countries. Marx believed that the results of the revolution—that is, the new
socialist society—would lead to a new and higher level of freedom than
that prevalent in the existing society, in so-called liberal capitalism. This is
understandable. In the very act of rejecting various types of capitalism,
Marx was at the same time a product of his epoch, the liberal capitalist
epoch.
In developing the Marxist stand that capitalism must be replaced not
only by a higher economic and social form—that is, socialism—but b y
h i g h e r form of human freedom, the Social Democrats justifiably
considered themselves to be Marx’s successors. They had no less right to
this claim than the Communists, who cited Marx as the source of their idea
that the replacement of capitalism can take place only by revolutionary
means. However, both groups of Marx’s followers—the Social Democrats
and the Communists—were only partly right in citing him as the basis for
their ideas. In citing Marx’s ideas they were defending their own practices,
which had originated in a different, and already changed society. And,
although both cited and depended on Marxist ideas, the Social Democratic
and Communist movements developed in different directions.
In countries where political and economic progress was difficult, and
where the working class played a weak role in society, the need arose
slowly to make a system and a dogma out of Marxist teaching. Moreover,
in countries where economic forces and social relations were not yet ripe
for industrial change, as in Russia and later in China, the adoption and
dogmatization of the revolutionary aspects of Marxist teachings was more
rapid and complete. There was emphasis on revolution by the work
ORIGINS 9
ing-class movement. In such countries, Marxism grew stronger and stronger
and, with the victory of the revolutionary party, it became the dominant
ideology.
In countries such as Germany, where the degree of political and
economic progress made revolution unnecessary, the democratic and
reformist aspects of Marxist teaching, rather than the revolutionary ones,
dominated. The anti-dogmatic ideological and political tendencies
generated an emphasis on reform by the working-class movement.
In the first case, the ties with Marx were strengthened, at least in outward
appearance. In the second case, they were weakened.
Social development and the development of ideas led to a j severe schism
in the European socialist movement. Roughly speaking, the changes in
political and economic conditions coincided with changes in the ideas of
the socialist theorists, because they interpreted reality in a relative manner,
that is, in an incomplete and one-sided way, from their own partisan point
of view.
Lenin in Russia and Bernstein in Germany are the two extremes through
which the different changes, social and economic, and the different
“realities” of the working-class movements found expression.
Almost nothing remained of original Marxism. In the West it had died
out or was in the process of dying out; in the East, as a result of the
establishment of Communist rule, only a residue of formalism and
dogmatism remained of Marx’s dialectics and materialism; this was used for
the purpose of cementing power, justifying tyranny, and violating human
conscience. Although it had in fact also been abandoned in the East, Marx-
ism operated there as a rigid dogma with increasing power. It was more
than an idea there; it was a new government, a new economy, a new social
system.
Although Marx had furnished his disciples with the impetus for such
development, he had very little desire for such develop-
10 THE NEW CLASS
ment nor did he expect it. History betrayed this great master as it has others
who have attempted to interpret its laws.
What has been the nature of the development since Marx?
In the 1870’s, the formation of corporations and monopolies had begun
in countries where the industrial revolution had already taken place, such
as Germany, England, and the United States. This development was in full
swing by the beginning of the twentieth century. Scientific analyses were
made of it by Hobson, Hilferding, and others. Lenin, in Imperialism, the Final
Stage of Capitalism, made a political analysis, based mainly on these authors,
containing predictions which have proved mostly inaccurate.
Marx’s theories about the increasing impoverishment of the working
class were not borne out by developments in those countries from which his
theories had been derived. However, as Hugh Seton-Watson states in From
Lenin to Malenkov they appeared to be reasonably accurate for the most part
in the case of the agrarian East European countries. Thus, while in the West
his stature was reduced to that of a historian and scholar, Marx became the
prophet of a new era in eastern i Europe. His teachings had an intoxicating
effect, similar to a new religion.
The situation in western Europe that contributed to the theories of
Engels and Marx is described by André Maurois in the Yugoslav edition of
The History of England:
When Engels visited Manchester in 1844, he found 350,000 workers
crushed and crowded into damp, dirty, broken-down houses where they
breathed an atmosphere resembling a mixture of water and coal. In the
mines, he saw half-naked women, who were treated like the lowest of
draft animals. Children spent the day in dark tunnels, where they were
employed in opening and closing the primitive openings for ventilation,
and in other difficult tasks. In the lace industry, exploitation reached such
a point that four-year-old children worked for virtually no pay.
* New York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1953.

ORIGINS 11
Engels lived to see an entirely different picture of Great Britain, but he

saw a still more horrible and—what is more important—hopeless poverty
in Russia, the Balkans, Asia and Africa.
Technological improvements brought about vast and concrete changes
in the West, immense from every point of view. They led to the formation
of monopolies, and to the partition of the world into spheres of interest for
the developed countries and for the monopolies. They also led to the First
World War and the October Revolution.
In the developed countries the rapid rise in production and x the
acquisition of colonial sources of materials and markets materially
changed the position of the working class. The struggle for reform, for
better material conditions, together with the adoption of parliamentary
forms of government, became more real and valuable than revolutionary
ideals. In such places revolution became nonsensical and unrealistic.
The countries which were not yet industrialized, particularly Russia, were
in an entirely different situation. They found themselves in a dilemma; they
had either to become industrialized, or to discontinue active participation on
the stage of history, turning into captives of the developed countries and
their monopolies, thus doomed to degeneracy. Local capital and the class and
parties representing it were too weak to solve the problems of rapid
industrialization. In these countries revolution became an inescapable
necessity, a vital need for the nation, and only one class could bring it
about—the proletariat, or the revolutionary party representing it.
The reason for this is that there is an immutable law—that each human
society and all individuals participating in it strive to increase and perfect
production. In doing this they come in conflict with other societies and
individuals, so that they compete with each other in order to survive. This
increase and expansion of production constantly faces natural and social
barriers, such as individual, political, legal, and international
12 THE NEW CLASS
customs and relationships. Since it must overcome obstacles, society, that is,
those who at a given moment represent its productive forces, must
eliminate, change, or destroy the obstacles which arise either inside or
outside its boundaries. Classes, parties, political systems, political ideas, are
an expression of this ceaseless pattern of movement and stagnation.
No society or nation allows production to lag to such an extent that its
existence is threatened. To lag means to die. People never die willingly; they
are ready to undergo any sacrifice to overcome the difficulties which stand
in the way of their economic production and their existence.
The environment and the material and intellectual level determine the
method, forces, and means that will be used to bring about the
development and expansion of production, and the social results which
follow. However, the necessity for the development and expansion of
production—under any ideological banner or social force—does not
depend on individuals; because they wish to survive, societies and nations
find the leaders and ideas which, at a given moment, are best suited to that
which they must and wish to attain.
Revolutionary Marxism was transplanted during the period of
monopolistic capitalism from the industrially developed West to countries
of the industrially undeveloped East, such as Russia and China. This is
about the time when socialist movements were developing in the East and
West. This stage of the socialist movement began with its unification and
centralization in the Second International, and ended with a division into
the Social Democratic (reform) wing and the Communist (revolutionary)
wing, leading to the revolution in Russia and the formation of the Third
International.
In countries where there was no other way of bringing about
industrialization, there were special national reasons for the Communist
revolution. Revolutionary movements existed in semi-feudal Russia over
half a century before the appearance of the Marxists in the late nineteenth
century. Moreover, there
ORIGINS 13
Were urgent and specific concrete reasons—international, economic,
political—for revolution. The basic reason—the vital need for industrial
change—was common to all the countries such as Russia, China, and
Yugoslavia, where revolution took place.
It was historically inevitable that most of the European socialist
movements after Marx were not only materialistic and Marxist, but to a
considerable degree ideologically exclusive. Against them were united all
the forces of the old society: church, school, private ownership, government
and, more important, the vast power machinery which the European coun-
tries had developed since early times in the face of the constant continental
wars.
Anyone who wants to change the world fundamentally must first of all
interpret it fundamentally and “without error.”
Every new movement must be ideologically exclusive, especially if
revolution is the only way victory can be won. And if this movement is
successful, its very success must strengthen its beliefs and ideas. Though
successes through “adventurous” parliamentary methods and strikes
strengthened the reformist trend in the German and other Social
Democratic parties, the Russian workers, who could not improve their
position by one kopeck without bloody liquidations, had no choice but to
use weapons to escape despair and death by starvation.
The other countries of eastern Europe—Poland, Czecho-slovakia, Hungary,
Rumania, and Bulgaria—do not fall under this rule, at least not the first
three countries. They did not experience a revolution, since the Communist
system was imposed on them by the power of the Soviet Army. They did
not even press for industrial change, at least not by the Communist
method, for some of them had already attained it. In these countries,
revolution was imposed from the outside and from above, by foreign
bayonets and the machinery of force. The Communist movements were
weak, except in the most developed of the countries, Czechoslovakia,
where the Communist
14 THE NEW CLASS
movement had closely resembled leftist and parliamentary socialist
movements up to the time of direct Soviet intervention in the war and the
coup d'état of February 1948. Since the Communists in these countries were
weak, the substance and form of their Communism had to be identical with
that of the U.S.S.R. The U.S.S.R. imposed its system on them, and the
domestic Communists adopted it gladly. The weaker Communism was, the
more it had to imitate even in form its “big brother”—totalitarian Russian
Communism.
Countries such as France and Italy, which had relatively ! strong Communist
movements, had a hard time keeping up with the industrially better-
developed countries, and thus ran into social difficulties. Since they had
already passed through democratic and industrial revolutions, their
Communist move- : ments differed greatly from those in Russia, Yugoslavia,
and China. Therefore, in France and Italy revolution did not have \ a real
chance. Since they were living and operating in an environment of political
democracy, even the leaders of their Communist parties were not able to free
themselves entirely of parliamentary illusions. As far as revolution was
concerned, they tended to rely more on the international Communist move-
ment and the aid of the U.S.S.R than on their own revolutionary power.
Their followers, considering their leaders to be fighters against poverty and
misery, naively believed that the party was fighting for a broader and truer
democracy.
Modem Communism began as an idea with the inception of modern
industry. It is dying out or being eliminated in those countries where
industrial development has achieved its basic j aims. It flourishes in those
countries where this has not yet happened.
The historical role of Communism in the undeveloped countries has
determined the course and the character of the revolution which it has had to
bring about.
Character of the Revolution
1.
History shows that in countries where Communist revolutions have taken

place other parties too have been dissatisfied with existing conditions. The
best example is Russia, where the party which accomplished the Communist
revolution was not the only revolutionary party.
However, only the Communist parties were both revolutionary in their
opposition to the status quo and staunch and consistent in their support of the
industrial transformation. In practice, this meant a radical destruction of
established ownership relations. No other party went so far in this respect.
None was “industrial” to that degree.
It is less clear why these parties had to be socialist in their program. Under
the backward conditions existing in Czarist Russia, capitalist private
ownership not only showed itself incapable of rapid industrial
transformation, but actually obstructed it. The private property class had
developed in a country in which extremely powerful feudal relationships
still existed, while monopolies of more developed countries retained their
grip on this enormous area abounding in raw materials and markets.
Czarist Russia, according to its history, had to be a latecomer
15
16 THE NEW CLASS
with respect to the industrial revolution. It is the only European country

which did not pass through the Reformation and the Renaissance. It did not
have anything like the medieval European city-states. Backward, semi-
feudal, with absolutist monarchy and a bureaucratic centralism, with a
rapid increase of the proletariat in several centers, Russia found herself in
the whirlpool of modem world capitalism, and in the snares of the financial
interests of the gigantic banking centers.
Lenin states in his work Imperialism, the Final Stage of Capitalism that
three-fourths of the capital of the large banks in Russia was in the hands of
foreign capitalists. Trotsky in his history of the Russian revolution
emphasizes that foreigners controlled forty per cent of the shares of
industrial capital in Russia, and that this percentage was even greater in
some leading industries. As for Yugoslavia, foreigners had a decisive
influence in the most important branches of Yugoslav economy. These facts
alone do not prove anything. But they show that foreign capitalists used
their power to check progress in these countries, to develop them
exclusively as their own sources of raw materials and cheap labor, with the
result that these nations became unprogressive and even began to decline.
The party which had the historic task of carrying out the revolution in
these countries had to be anti-capitalistic in its internal policy and anti-
imperialistic in its foreign policy.
Internally, domestic capital was weak, and was largely an instrument or
affiliate of foreign capital. It was not the capitalist class but another class,
the proletariat which was arising from the increasing poverty of the
peasantry, that was vitally interested in the industrial revolution. Just as the
elimination of outrageous exploitation was a matter of life and death for
those who already were proletarians, so was industrialization a matter of
survival for those who in their turn were about to become proletarians. The
movement which represented both of these had to be anti-capitalistic, that
is, socialistic in its ideas, slogans and pledges.
CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION 17
The revolutionary party could not seriously contemplate execution of an

industrial revolution unless it concentrated all domestic resources in its
own hands, particularly those of native capitalists against whom the
masses were also embittered because of severe exploitation and the use of
inhumane methods. The revolutionary party had to take a similar stand
against foreign capital.
Other parties were unable to follow a similar program. All of them
either aspired to a return to the old system, to preservation of vested, static
relationships; or at best, to gradual and peaceful development. Even the
parties which were anti-capitalistic, as for example the SRs (Socialist-
Revolutionary Party) in Russia, aspired toward returning society to idyllic
primitive peasant life. Even the socialist parties such as the Mensheviks in
Russia did not go farther than to push for the violent overthrow of the
barriers to free capitalist development. They took the point of view that it
was necessary to have fully developed capitalism in order to arrive at
socialism later. However, the problem here was different; both a return to
the old system and unhampered development of capitalism were
impossible for these countries. Neither solution was capable, under the
given international and internal conditions, of resolving the urgent
problem of further development of these countries, i.e., their industrial
revolutions.
Only the party which was in favor of the anti-capitalist revolution and
rapid industrialization had prospects for success. Obviously that party had
to be, in addition, socialist in its convictions. But since it was obliged to
operate under prevailing conditions in general, and in the labor or socialist
movements, such a party had to depend ideologically on the concept of
the inevitability and usefulness of modern industry as well as on the tenet
that revolution was unavoidable. This concept already existed, it was
necessary only to modify it. The concept was Marxism—its revolutionary
aspect. Association with revolutionary Marxism, or with the European
socialist move-
18 THE NEW CLASS
ment, was natural for the party then. Later, with the development of the
revolution and with the organizational changes in the developed countries, it
became just as essential for it to separate itself from the reformism of European
socialism.
The inevitability of revolution and of rapid industrialization, which exacted
enormous sacrifices and involved ruthless violence, required not only
promises but faith in the possibility of the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Advancing, as others also do, along the line of least resistance, the supporters
of revolution and industrialization often departed from established Marxist
and socialist doctrine. However, it was impossible for them to shed the
doctrine entirely.
Capitalism and capitalist relationships were the proper and at the given
moment the inevitable forms and techniques by which society expressed its
needs and aspirations for improving and expanding production. In Great
Britain, in the first half of the nineteenth century, capitalism improved and
expanded production. And just as the industrialists in Britain had to destroy
the peasantry in order to attain a higher degree of production, the
industrialists, or the bourgeoisie, in Russia had to become a victim of the
industrial revolution. The participants and the forms were different, but the
law was the same in both cases.
In both instances socialism was inevitable—as a slogan and pledge, as a
faith and a lofty ideal, and, in fact, as a particular form of government and
ownership which would facilitate the industrial revolution and make possible
improvement and expansion of production.
2 .
All the revolutions of the past originated after new economic or social
relationships had begun to prevail, and the old politi-
cal system had become the sole obstacle to further development None of
these revolutions sought anything other than the destruction of the old
political forms and an opening o! the way for already mature social forces
and relationships existing in the old society. Even in those cases where the
revolutionists desired something else, such as the building of economic
and social relationships by means of force, as did the Jacobins in the
French revolution, they had to accept failure and be swiftly eliminated.
In all previous revolutions, force and violence appeared predominantly
as a consequence, as an instrument of new but already prevailing
economic and social forces and relationships. Even when force and
violence surpassed proper limits during the course of a revolution, in the
final analysis the revolutionary forces had to be directed toward a positive
and attainable goal. In these cases terror and despotism might have been
inevitable but solely temporary manifestations.
Al so-called bourgeois revolutions, whether achieved from below, i.e., with
participation of the masses as in France, or from above, i.e., by coup d'état
as in Germany under Bismarck, had to end up in political democracy. That
is understandable. Their task was chiefly to destroy the old despotic
political system, and to permit the establishment of political relationships
which would be adequate for already existing economic and other needs,
particularly those concerning the free production of goods.
The case is entirely different with contemporary Communist
revolutions. These revolutions did not occur because new, let us say
socialist, relationships were already existing in the economy, or because
capitalism was “overdeveloped.” On the contrary. They did occur because
capitalism was not fully developed and because it was not able to carry out
the industrial transformation of the country.
In France capitalism had already prevailed in the economy,
20 THE NEW CLASS
in social relationships, and even in the public conscience prior to

inception of the revolution. The case is hardly comparable with
socialism in Russia, China, or Yugoslavia.
The leaders of the Russian revolution themselves were aware of this
fact. Speaking at the Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party
on March 7, 1918, while the revolution was still in progress, Lenin said:
. . . One of the fundamental differences between bourgeois and socialist

revolutions is that in a bourgeois revolution, which arises from feudalism,
new economic organizations which gradually change all aspects of feudal
society are progressively created in the midst of the old order. In accom-
plishing this task, every bourgeois revolution accomplishes all that is
required of it: it hastens the growth of capitalism.
A socialist revolution is in an entirely different situation. To the extent
that a country which had to begin a socialist revolution, because of the
vagaries of history, is backward, the transition from old capitalist relations
to socialist relations is increasingly difficult.
The difference between socialist revolutions and bourgeois revolutions
lies specifically in the fact that, in the latter case, established forms of
capitalist relations exist, while the soviet power—the proletariat—does
not attain such relations, if we exclude the most developed forms of
capitalism, which actually encompassed a small number of top industries
and only very scantily touched agriculture.
I quote Lenin, but I could quote any leader of the Communist revolution and
numerous other authors, as confirmation of the fact that settled relationships
did not exist for the new society, but that someone, in this case the “soviet
power,” must therefore build them. If the new “socialist” relationships had
been developed to the fullest in the country in which Communist revolution
was able to emerge victorious, there would have been no need for so many
assurances, dissertations, and efforts embracing the “building of socialism.”
This leads to an apparent contradiction. Of the conditions for a new society

were not sufficiently prevalent, then who needed the revolution? Moreover,
how was the revolution possible? How could it survive in view of the fact that
the new social relationships were not yet in the formative process in the old
society?
No revolution or party had ever before set itself to the task of building
social relationships or a new society. But this was ; the primary objective of
the Communist revolution.
Communist leaders, though no better acquainted than others with the laws
which govern society, discovered that in the country in which their revolution
was possible, industrialization was also possible, particularly when it involved a
transformation of society in keeping with their ideological hypothesis. Experience
—the success of revolution under “unfavorable” conditions— confirmed this for
them; the “building of socialism” did likewise. This strengthened their illusion
that they knew the laws v of social development. In fact, they were in the position
of making a blueprint for a new society, and then of starting to build it, making
corrections here and leaving out something there, all the while adhering closely to
their plans. Industrialization, as an inevitable, legitimate necessity of society, and
the Communist way of accomplishing it, joined forces in the countries of
Communist revolutions?)
However, neither of these, though they progressed together and on parallel
tracks, could achieve success overnight. After the completion of the revolution,
someone had to shoulder the responsibility for industrialization. In the West,
this role was taken over by the economic forces of capitalism liberated from
the despotic political chains, while in the countries of Communist revolutions
no similar forces existed and, thus, their function had to be taken over by the
revolutionary organs themselves, the new authority, that is, the revolutionary
party.
In earlier revolutions, revolutionary force and violence became a hindrance
to the economy as soon as the old order was
22 THE NEW CLASS
overthrown, on Communist revolutions, force and violence are a condition

for further development and even progress. In the words of earlier
revolutionaries, force and violence were only a necessary evil and a means to
an end. In the words of Communists, force and violence are elevated to the
lofty position of a cult and an ultimate goal. In the past, the classes and forces
which made up a new society already existed before the revolution erupted.
The Communist revolutions are the first which have had to create a new
society and new social forces.
Even as the revolutions in the West had inevitably to end in democracy
after all the “aberrations” and “withdrawals,” in the East, the revolutions had
to end in despotism. The methods of terror and violence in the West became
needless and ridiculous, and even a hindrance in accomplishing the
revolution for the revolutionaries and revolutionary parties. In the East, the
case was the opposite. Not only did despotism continue in the East because
the transformation of industry required so much time, but, as we shall see
later, it lasted long after industrialization had taken place.
3.
There are other basic differences between Communist revolutions and
earlier ones. Earlier revolutions, though they had reached the point of
readiness in an economy and a society, were unable to break-out without
advantageous conditions. We now know the general conditions necessary for
the eruption and success of a revolution. However, every revolution has, in
addition to these general conditions, its peculiarites which make its planning
and execution possible.
War, or more precisely, national collapse of the state organization, was
unnecessary for past revolutions, at least for the larger ones. Until now,
however, this has been a basic condition for the victory of Communist
revolutions. This is even valid
for China; true, there the revolution began prior to the Japanese invasion,
but it continued for an entire decade to spread and finally to emerge
victorious with the end of the war. The Spanish revolution of 1936, which
could have been an exception, did not have time to transform itself into a
purely Communist revolution, and, therefore, never emerged victorious.
The reason war was necessary for the Communist revolution, or the
downfall of the state machinery, must be sought in the immaturity of the
economy and society. In a serious collapse of a system, and particularly in
a war which has been unsuccessful for the existing ruling circles and state
system, a small but well-organized and disciplined group is inevitably able
to take authority in its hands.
Thus at the time of the October Revolution the Communist Party had
about 80,000 members. The Yugoslav Communist Party began the 1941
revolution with about 10,000 members. To grasp power, the support and
active participation of at least a part of the people is necessary, but in every
case the party which leads the revolution and assumes power is a minority
group relying exclusively on exceptionally favorable conditions.
Furthermore, such a party cannot be a majority group until it becomes the
permanently established authority.
The accomplishment of such a grandiose task—the destruction of a
social order and the building of a new society when conditions for such an
undertaking are not propitious in the economy or society—is a task able to
attract only a minority, and at that, only those who believe fanatically in its
possibilities. 0pecial conditions and a particular party are basic charac-
teristics of Communist revolutions.
The achievement of every revolution, as well as of every victory in war,
demands centralization of all forces. According to the Malthusian theory,
the French revolution was the first in which “all the resources of a people at
war were placed in the hands of the authorities: people, food, clothing.”
This must be the case to an even greater degree in a Communist “im-
24 THE NEW CLASS
mature” revolution: not only all material means but all intellectual means
must fall into the hands of the party, and the party itself must become
politically, and as an organization, centralized to the fullest extent. Only
Communist parties, politically united, firmly grouped around the center,
and possessing identical ideological viewpoints, are able to carry out such a
revolution.
Centralization of all forces and means as well as some kind of political
unity of the revolutionary parties are essential conditions for every
successful revolution. For the Communist revolution these conditions are
even more important, since from the very beginning the Communists
exclude every other independent political group or party from being an ally
of their party. At the same time they demand uniformity of all viewpoints,
including practical political views as well as theoretical, philosophical, and
even moral views. The fact that the left-of-center SR’s (Socialist-
Revolutionaries) participated in the October Revolution, and that
individuals and groups from other parties participated in the revolutions in
China and Yugoslavia, does not disprove but rather confirms this
proposition: these groups were only collaborators of the Communist Party,
and only to a fixed degree in the struggle. After the revolution these
collaborating parties were dispersed, or they dissolved of their own accord
and merged with the Communist Party. The Bolsheviks routed the left-of-
center SR’s as soon as the latter wished to become independent, while the
non-Communist groups in Yugoslavia and China that had supported the
revolution had, in the meantime, renounced every one of their political
activities.
The earlier revolutions were not carried out by a single political group.
To be sure, in the course of a revolution individual groups pressured and
destroyed one another; but, taken as a whole, the revolution was not the
work of only one group. In the French revolution the Jacobins succeeded in
maintaining their dictatorship for a brief period only. Napoleon’s dictator
ship, which emerged from the revolution, signified both the end of the
Jacobin revolution and the beginning of the rule of the bourgeoisie. In
every case, although one party played a decisive role in the earlier
revolutions, the other parties did not surrender their independence.
Although suppression and dispersion existed, they could be enforced only
for a brief time. The parties could not be destroyed and would always
emerge anew. Even the Paris Commune, which the Communists take as
the foremnner of their revolution and their state, was a multi-party
revolution.
A party may have played the chief, and even an exclusive, role in a
particular phase of a revolution. But no previous party was ideologically,
or as an organization, centralized to the degree that the Communist Party
was. Neither the Puritans in the English revolution nor the Jacobins in the
French revolution were bound by the same philosophical and ideological
views, although the first belonged to a religious sect. From the organi-
zational point of view the Jacobins were a federation of clubs; the Puritans
were not even that. Only contemporary Communist revolutions pushed
compulsory parties to the forefront, which were ideologically and
organizationally monolithic.
In every case one thing is certain: in all earlier revolutions the necessity
for revolutionary methods and parties disappeared with the end of civil
war and of foreign intervention, and these methods and parties had to be
done away with. After Communist revolutions, the Communists continue
with both the methods and the forms of the revolution, and their party
soon attains the fullest degree of centralism and ideological exclusiveness.
Lenin expressly emphasized this during the revolution itself in
enumerating his conditions for acceptance in the Comintern:*
In the present epoch of acute civil war, a Communist Party will be
able to perform its duty only if it is organized in the
* Selected Works, Vol. X; New York, International Publishers, 1956.
26 THE NEW CLASS
most centralized manner, only if iron discipline bordering on military

discipline prevails in it, and if its party center is a powerful and
authoritative organ, wielding wide powers and enjoying the universal
confidence of the members of the party.
And to this, Stalin appended, in Foundations of Leninism:*
This is the position in regard to discipline in the party in the period of
struggle preceding the achievement of the dictatorship.
The same, but to an even greater degree, must be said about
discipline in the party after the dictatorship has been achieved.
(The revolutionary atmosphere and vigilance, insistence on ideological
unity, political and ideological exclusiveness, political and other centralism do
not cease after assuming control. On the contrary, they become even more
intensified.
Ruthlessness in methods, exclusiveness in ideas, and monopoly in authority
in the earlier revolutions lasted more or less as long as the revolutions
themselves. Since revolution in the Communist revolution was only the first
act of the despotic and totalitarian authority of a group, it is difficult to
forecast the duration of that authority.
In earlier revolutions, including the Reign of Terror in France, superficial
attention was paid to the elimination of real oppositionists. No attention was
paid to the elimination of those who might become oppositionists. The
eradication and persecution of some social or ideological groups in the
religious wars of the Middle Ages was the only exception to this. From theory
and practice, Communists know that they are in conflict with all other classes
and ideologies, and behave accordingly. They are fighting against not only
actual but also potential opposition. In the Baltic countries, thousands of
people were liquidated overnight on the basis of documents indicating
previously held ideological and political views. The massacre of several
* New York, International Publishers. 1939.
thousand Polish officers in the Katyn Forest was of similar character. In the
case of Communism, long after the revolution is over, terrorist and
oppressive methods continue to be used. Sometimes these are perfected and
become more extensive than in the revolution, as in the case of the
liquidation of the Kulaks. Ideological exclusiveness and intolerance are
intensified after the revolution. Even when it is able to reduce physical
oppression, the tendency of the ruling party is to strengthen the prescribed
ideology—Marxism-Leninism.
Earlier revolutions, particularly the so-called bourgeois ones, attached
considerable significance to the establishment of individual freedoms
immediately following cessation of the revolutionary terror. Even the
revolutionaries considered it important to assure the legal status of the
citizenry. Independent administration of justice was an inevitable final
result of all these revolutions. The Communist regime in the U.S.S.R. is still
remote from independent administration of justice after forty years of
tenure. The final results of earlier revolutions were often greater legal
security and greater civil rights. This cannot be said of the Communist
revolution.
There is another vast difference between the earlier revolutions and
contemporary Communist ones. Earlier revolutions, especially the greater
ones, were a product of the struggles of the working classes, but their
ultimate results fell to another class under whose intellectual and often
organizational leadership the revolutions were accomplished. The
bourgeoisie, in whose name the revolution was carried out, to a
considerable extent harvested the fruits of the struggles of the peasants and
sans-culottes. The masses of a nation also participated in a Communist
revolution; however, the fruits of revolution do not fall to them, but to the
bureaucracy. For the bureaucracy is nothing else but the party which
carried out the revolution. In Communist revolutions, the revolutionary
movements which carried out the revolutions are not liquidated.
Communist revolutions may “eat their own children,” but not all of them.
28 THE NEW CLASS
In fact, on completion of a Communist revolution, ruthless and

underhanded deals inevitably are made between various groups and
factions which disagree about the path of the future.
Mutual accusations always revolve around dogmatic proof as to who is
“objectively” or “subjectively” a greater counter-revolutionary or agent of
internal and foreign “capitalism.” Regardless of the manner in which these
disagreements are resolved, the group that emerges victorious is the one
that is the most consistent and determined supporter of industrialization
along Communist principles, i.e., on the basis of total party monopoly,
particularly of state organs in control of production. The Communist
revolution does not devour those of its children who are needed for its
future course—for industrialization. Revolutionaries who accepted the
ideas and slogans of the revolution literally, naïvely believing in their
materialization, are usually liquidated. The group which understood that
revolution would secure authority, on a social-political- Communist basis,
as an instrument of future industrial transformation, emerges victorious.
The Communist revolution is the first in which the revolutionaries and
their allies, particularly the authority-wielding group, survived the
revolution. Similar groups inevitably failed in earlier ones. The Communist
revolution is the first to be carried out to the advantage of the
revolutionaries. They, and the bureaucracy which forms around them,
harvest its fruits. This creates in them, and in the broader echelons of the
party, the illusion that theirs is the first revolution that remained true to the
slogans on its banners.
4.
The illusions which the Communist revolution creates about its real
aims are more permanent and extensive than those of earlier revolutions
because the Communist revolution resolves
relationships in a new way and brings about a new form of ownership.
Earlier revolutions, too, inevitably resulted in major or minor changes in
property relationships. But in those revolutions one form of private
ownership superseded the others. In the Communist revolution this is
not the case; the change is radical and deep-rooted, and a collective
ownership suppresses private ownership.
The Communist revolution, while still in process of development,
destroys capitalist, land-holding, private ownership, i.e., that ownership
which makes use of foreign labor forces. This immediately creates the
belief that the revolutionary promise of a new realm of equality and
justice is being fulfilled. The party, or the state authority under its
control, simultaneously undertakes extensive measures for
industrialization. This also intensifies the belief that the time of freedom
from want has finally arrived. Despotism and oppression are there, but
they are accepted as temporary manifestations, to last only until the
opposition of the expropriated authorities and counter-revolutionaries is
stifled, and the industrial transformation is completed.
Several essential changes occur in the very process of
industrialization. Industrialization in a backward country, especially if it
has no assistance and is hindered from abroad, demands concentration
of all material resources. Nationalization of industrial property and the
land is the first concentration of property in the hands of the new
regime. However, it does not, and can not, stop at this.
The newly originated ownership inevitably comes in conflict with
other forms of ownership. The new ownership-imposes itself by force
on smaller owners who do not employ someone else’s manpower, or to
whom such manpower is unessential, i.e., on craftsmen, workers, small
commercial merchants, and peasants. This expropriation of small
property owners is effected even when it is not done for economic
motives, i.e., in order to attain a higher degree of productivity.
30 THE NEW CLASS
In the course of industrialization, the property of those elements who

were not opposed to, or even assisted, the revolution is taken over. As a
matter of form, the state also becomes the owner of this property. The state
administers and manages the property. Private ownership ceases or
decreases to a role of secondary importance, but its complete disappearance
is subject to the whim of the new men in authority.
This is experienced by the Communists and by some members of the
masses as a complete liquidation of classes and the realization of a classless
society. In fact, the old pre-revolutionary classes do disappear with the
completion of industrialization and collectivization. There remains the
spontaneous and unorganized displeasure of the mass of the people—a
displeasure which neither ceases nor abates. Communist delusions and self-
deceit about the “remnants” and “influence” of the “class enemy” still
persist. But the illusion that the long-dreamed classless society arises by
these means is complete, at least for the Communists themselves.
Every revolution, and even every war, creates illusions and is conducted
in the name of unrealizable ideals. During the struggle the ideals seem real
enough for the combatants; by the end they often cease to exist. Not so in the
case of a Communist revolution. Those who carry out the Communist
revolution as well as those among the lower echelons persist in their
illusions long after the armed struggle. Despite oppression, despotism,
unconcealed confiscations, and privileges of the ruling echelons, some of the
people—and especially the Communists—retain the illusions contained in
their slogans.
Although the Communist revolution may start with the most idealistic
concepts, calling for wonderful heroism and gigantic effort, it sows the
greatest and the most permanent illusions^
Revolutions are inevitable in the lifetime of nations. They may result in
despotism, but they also launch nations on paths previously blocked to
them.
The Communist revolution cannot attain a single one of the
ideals named as its motivating force. However, Communist revolution has

brought about a measure of industrial civilization to vast areas of Europe
and Asia. In this way, material bases have actually been created for a future
freer society. Thus while bringing about the most complete despotism, the
Communist revolution has also created the basis for the abolition of des-
potism. As the nineteenth century introduced modem industry to the West,
the twentieth century will introduce modem industry to the East. The
shadow of Lenin extends over the vast expanse of Eurasia in one way or
another. In despotic form in China, in democratic form in India and Burma,
all of the remaining Asiatic and other nations are inevitably entering an
industrial revolution. The Russian revolution initiated this process. The
process remains the incalculable and historically significant fact of the
revolution.
5 .
It might appear that Communist revolutions are mostly historical
deceptions and chance occurrences. In a sense this is true: no other
revolutions have required so many exceptional conditions; no other
revolutions promised so much and accomplished so little. Demagoguery
and misrepresentation are inevitable among the Communist leaders since
they are forced to promise the most ideal society and “abolition of every
exploitation.”
However, it cannot be said that the Communists deceived the people,
that is, that they purposely and consciously did something different from
what they had promised. The fact is simply this: they were unable to
accomplish that in which they so fanatically believed. They cannot
acknowledge this even when forced to execute a policy contrary to
everything promised before and during the revolution. From their point of
view, such acknowledgment would be an admission that the
32 THE NEW CLASS
revolution was unnecessary. It would also be an admission that they had

themselves become superfluous. Anything of the sort is impossible for
them.
The ultimate results of a social struggle can never be of the kind
envisaged by those who carry it out. Some such struggles depend on an
infinite and complex series of circumstances beyond the controllable range
of human intellect and action. This is most true of revolutions that demand
superhuman efforts and that effect hasty and radical changes in society.
They inevitably generate absolute confidence that the ultimate in human
prosperity and liberty will appear after their victories. The French
revolution was carried out in the name of common sense, in the belief that
liberty, equality, and fraternity would eventually appear. The Russian
revolution was carried out in the name of “a purely scientific view of the
world,” for the purpose of creating a classless society. Neither revolution
could possibly have been created if the revolutionaries, along with a part of
the people, had not believed in their own idealistic aims.
Communist illusions as to post-revolutionary possibilities were more
preponderant among the Communists than among those who followed
them. The Communists should have known and, in fact, did know about the
inevitability of industrialization, but they could only guess about its social
results and relationships.
Official Communist historians in the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia describe
the revolution as if it were the fruit of the previously planned actions of its
leaders. But only the course of the revolution and the armed struggle was
consciously planned, while the forms which the revolution took stemmed
from the immediate course of events and from the direct action taken. It is
revealing that Lenin, undoubtedly one of the greatest revolutionaries in
history, did not foresee when or in what form the revolution would erupt
until it was almost upon him. In January 1917, one month before the
February Revolution, and only ten months before the October Revolution
which brought him
to power, he addressed a meeting of Swiss Socialist youths: “We, the older

generation, perhaps will not live to see the decisive battles of the
approaching revolution. But, I can, it seems to me, express with extreme
confidence the hope that the youth, who work in the wonderful socialist
movement of Switzerland and of the whole world, will have the good
fortune not only to fight but also to emerge victorious in the approaching
revolution of the proletariat.”
How can it then be said that Lenin, or anyone else, was able to foresee
the social results arising after the long and complex struggle of the
revolution?
But even if Communist aims per se were unreal, the Communists, as
distinct from earlier revolutionaries, were fully realistic in creating those
things that were possible. They carried it out in the only way possible—by
imposing their absolute totalitarian authority. Theirs was the first
revolution in history in which the revolutionaries not only remain on the
political scene after victory but, in the most practical sense, build social
relationships completely contrary to those in which they believed and
which they promised. The Communist revolution, in the course of its later
industrial duration and transformation, converts the revolutionaries
themselves into creators and masters of a new social state.
Marx’s concrete forecasts proved inaccurate. To an even greater degree,
the same can be said for Lenin's expectations that a free or classless society
would be created with the aid of the dictatorship. But the need that made
the revolution inevitable-industrial transformation on the basis of modem
technology—is fulfilled.
6*
Abstract logic would indicate that the Communist revolution, when it

achieves, under different conditions and by state compulsion, the same
things achieved by industrial revolutions
54 THE NEW CLASS
and capitalism in the West, is nothing but a form of state-capitalist revolution.

The relationships which are created by its victory are state-capitalist. This
appears to be even more true because the new regime also regulates all
political, labor, and other relationships and, what is more important,
distributes the national income and benefits and distributes material goods
which actually have been transformed into state property.
Discussion on whether or not the relationships in the U.S.S.R. and in other
Communist countries are state-capitalist, socialist, or perhaps something else,
is dogmatic to a considerable degree. However, such discussion is of
fundamental importance.
Even if it is presumed that state capitalism is nothing other than the
“antechamber of socialism,” as Lenin emphasized, or that it is the first phase
of socialism, it is still not one iota easier for the people who live under
Communist despotism to endure. If the character of property and social
relationships brought about by the Communist revolution is strengthened
and defined, the prospects for liberation of the people from such relationships
become more realistic. If the people are not conscious of the nature of the
social relationships in which they live, or if they do not see a way in which
they can alter them, their struggle cannot have any prospect of success.
If the Communist revolution, despite its promises and illusions, is state-
capitalist in its undertakings with state-capitalist relationships, the only
lawful and positive actions its functionaries can take are the ones that
improve their work and reduce the pressure and irresponsibility of state
administration. The Communists do not admit in theory that they are
working in a system of state capitalism, but their leaders behave this way.
They continually boast about improving the work of the administration and
about leading the struggle “against bureaucratism.”
Moreover, actual relationships are not those of state capitalism; these
relationships do not provide a method of improving the system of state
administration basically.
In order to establish the nature of relationships which arise in the course

of the Communist revolution and ultimately become established in the
process of industrialization and collectivization, it is necessary to peer
further into the role and manner of operation of the state under
Communism. At present, it will be sufficient to point out that in
Communism the state machinery is not the instrument which really
determines social and property relationships; it is only the instrument by
which these relationships are protected. In truth, everything is accom-
plished in the name of the state and through its regulations. The
Communist Party, including the professional party bureaucracy, stands
above the regulations and behind every single one of the state’s acts.
It is the bureaucracy which formally uses, administers, and controls both
nationalized and socialized property as well as the entire life of society. The
role of the bureaucracy in society, i.e., monopolistic administration and
control of national income and national goods, consigns it to a special
privileged position. Social relations resemble state capitalism. The more so,
because the carrying out of industrialization is effected not with the help of
capitalists but with the help of the state machine. In fact, this privileged
class performs that function, using the state machine as a cover and as an
instrument.
Ownership is nothing other than the right of profit and control. If one
defines class benefits by this right, the Communist states have seen, in the
final analysis, the origin of a new form of ownership or of a new ruling and
exploiting class.
In reality, the Communists were unable to act differently from any
ruling class that preceded them. Believing that they were building a new
and ideal society, they built it for themselves in the only way they could.
Their revolution and their society do not appear either accidental or
unnatural, but appear as a matter of course for a particular country and for
prescribed periods of its development. Because of this, no matter how
extensive and inhuman Communist tyranny has been,
36 THE NEW CLASS
society, in the course of a certain period—as long as industrialization

lasts—has to and is able to endure this tyranny. Furthermore, this tyranny
no longer appears as something inevitable, but exclusively as an assurance
of the depredations and privileges of a new class.
In contrast to earlier revolutions, the Communist revolution, conducted
in the name of doing away with classes, has resulted in the most complete
authority of any single new class. Everything else is sham and an illusion.
The New Class
1.
Everything happened differently in the U.S.S.R. and other Communist
countries from what the leaders—even such promi- nent ones as Lenin, Stalin,
Trotsky, and Bukharin—anticipated. They expected that the state would
rapidly wither away, that &£ democracy would be strengthened. The reverse
happened) They expected a rapid improvement in the standard of living—
there has been scarcely any change in this respect and, in the subjugated East
European countries, the standard has even declined. In every instance, the
standard of living has failed to rise in proportion to the rate of
industrialization, which was much more rapid. It was believed that the
differences between cities and villages, between intellectual and physical labor,
would slowly disappear; instead these differences have increased. Communist
anticipations in other areas—including their expectations for developments in
the non-Communist world—have also failed to materialize.
The greatest illusion was that industrialization and collectivization in
the U.S.S.R., and destruction of capitalist ownership, would result in a
classless-society. In 1936, when the new Constitution was promulgated,
Stalin announced that the “exploiting class” had ceased to exist. The
capitalist and other
87
38 THE NEW CLASS
classes of ancient origin had in fact been destroyed, but a new class
previously unknown to history, had been formed.
It is understandable that this class, like those before it, should believe
that the establishment of its power would result in happiness and freedom
for all men. The only difference between this and other classes was that it
treated the delay in the realization of its illusions more crudely. It thus
affirmed that its power was more complete than the power of any other
class before in history, and its class illusions and prejudices were
proportionally greater.
This new class, the bureaucracy, or more accurately the political
bureaucracy, has all the characteristics of earlier ones as well as some new
characteristics of its own. Its origin had its special characteristics also, even
though in essence it was similar to the beginnings of other classes.
Other classes, too, obtained their strength and power by the
revolutionary path, destroying the political, social, and other orders they
met in their way. However, almost without exception, these classes
attained power after new economic patterns had taken shape in the old
society. The case was the reverse with new classes in the Communist
systems. It did not come to power to complete a new economic order but to
establish its own and, in so doing, to establish its power over society.
In earlier epochs the coming to power of some class, some part of a
class, or of some party, was the final event resulting from its formation and
its development. The reverse was true in the U.S.S.R. There the new class
was definitely formed after it attained power. Its consciousness had to
develop .before its economic and physical powers, because the class had
not taken root in the life of the nation. This class viewed its role in relation
to the world from an idealistic point of view. Its practical possibilities were
not diminished by this. In spite of its illusions, it represented an objective
tendency toward industrialization. Its practical bent emanated from this
tendency.
The promise of an ideal world increased the faith in the ranks
THE NEW CLASS 39
of the new class and sowed illusions among the masses. At the same time
it inspired gigantic physical undertakings.
Because this new class had not been formed as a part of the economic and
social life before it came to power, it could only be created in an
organization of a special type, distinguished by a „special discipline based
on identical philosophic and ideological views of its members. A unity of
belief and iron discipline was necessary to overcome its weaknesses.
The roots of the new class were implanted in a special party, of the
Bolshevik type. Lenin was right in his view that his party was an
exception in the history of human society, although he did not suspect
that it would be the beginning of a new class.
To be more precise, the initiators of the new class are not found in the
party of the Bolshevik type as a whole but in that stratum of professional
revolutionaries who made up its core even before it attained power. It
was not by accident that Lenin asserted after the failure of the 1905
revolution that only professional revolutionaries—men whose sole
profession was revolutionary work—could build a new party of the
Bolshevik type. It was still less accidental that even Stalin, the future
creator of a new class, was the most outstanding example of such a
professional revolutionary. The new ruling class has been gradually
developing from this very narrow stratum of revolutionaries. These
revolutionaries composed its core for a long period. Trotsky noted that in
pre-revolutionary professional revolutionaries was the origin of the future
Stalinist bureaucrat. What he did not detect was the beginning of a new
class of owners and exploiters.
This is not to say that the new party and the new class are identical. The
party, however, is the core of that class, and its base. It is very difficult,
perhaps impossible, to define the limits of the new class and to identify its
members. The new class may be said to be made up of those who have
special privileges and economic preference because of the administrative
monopoly they hold.
40 THE NEW CLASS
Since administration is unavoidable in society, necessary administrative

functions may be coexistent with parasitic functions in the same person. Not
every member of the party is a member of the new class, any more than
every artisan or member of the city party was a bourgeois.
In loose terms, as the new class becomes stronger and attains a more
perceptible physiognomy, the role of the party di- minishes. The core and
the basis of the new class is created in the party and at its top, as well as in
the state political organs. The once live, compact party, full of initiative, is
disappearing to become transformed into the traditional oligarchy of the
new class, irresistibly drawing into its ranks those who aspire to join the
new class and repressing those who have any ideals.
The party makes the class, but the class grows as a result and uses the
party as a basis. The class grows stronger, while the party grows weaker;
this is the inescapable fate of every Communist party in power.
If it were not materially interested in production or if it did not have
within itself the potentialities for the creation of a new class, no party could
act in so morally and ideologically foolhardy a fashion, let alone stay in
power for long. Stalin declared, after the end of the First Five-Year Plan: “If
we had not created the apparatus, we would have failed!” He should have
substituted “new class” for the word “apparatus,” and everything would
have been clearer.
It seems unusual that a political party could be the beginning of a new
class. Parties are generally the product of classes and strata which nave
become intellectually and economically strong. However, if one grasps the
actual conditions in prerevolutionary Russia and in other countries in which
Communism prevailed over national forces, it will be clear that a party of
this type is the product of specific opportunities and that there is nothing
unusual or accidental in this being so. Although the roots of Bolshevism
reach far back into Russian history, the party is partly the product of the
unique pattern
THE NEW CLASS 41
of international relationships in which Russia found itself at the end of the
nineteenth and the begininng of the twentieth century. Russia was no
longer able to live in the modem world as an absolute monarchy, and
Russia’s capitalism was too weak and too dependent on the interests of
foreign powers to make it possible to have an industrial revolution. This
revolution could only be implemented by a new class, or by a change in
the social order. As yet, there was no such class.
In history, it is not important who implements a process, it is only
important that the process be implemented. Such was the case in Russia
and other countries in which Communist revolutions took place. The
revolution created forces, leaders, organizations, and ideas which were
necessary to it. The new class came into existence for objective reasons, and
by the wish, wits, and action of its leaders.
2 .
The social origin of the new class lies in the proletariat just as the
aristocracy arose in a peasant society, and the bourgeoisie in a commercial
and artisans’ society. There are exceptions, depending on national
conditions, but the proletariat in economically underdeveloped countries,
being backward, constitutes the raw material from which the new class
arises.
There are other reasons why the new class always acts as the champion
of the working class. The new class is anti-capitalistic and, consequently,
logically dependent upon the working strata. The new class is supported
by the proletarian struggle and the traditional faith of the proletariat in a
socialist, Communist society where there is no brutal exploitation. It is
vitally important for the new class to assure a normal flow of production,
hence it cannot ever lose its connection with the proletariat. Most
important of all the new class cannot achieve industrialization and
consolidate its power without the help of the work-
42 THE NEW CLASS
ing class. On the other hand, the working class sees in expanded industry the
salvation from its poverty and despair. Over a long period of time, the interests,
ideas, faith, and hope of the new class, and of parts of the working class and of
the poor peasants, coincide and unite. Such mergers have occurred in the past
among other widely different classes. Did not the bourgeoisie represent the
peasantry in the struggle against the feudal lords?
The movement of the new class toward power comes as a result of the
efforts of the proletariat and the poor. These are the masses upon which the
party or the new class must lean and with which its interests are most
closely allied. This is true until the new class finally establishes its power
and authority. Over and above this, the new class is interested in the
proletariat and the poor only to the extent necessary for developing
production and for maintaining in subjugation the most aggressive and
rebellious social forces.
The monopoly which the new class establishes in the name of the
working class over the whole of society is, primarily, a monopoly over the
working class itself. This monopoly is first intellectual, over the so-called
avant-garde proletariat, and then over the whole proletariat. This is the
biggest deception the class must accomplish, but it shows that the power
and interests of the new class lie primarily in industry. Without industry the
new class cannot consolidate its position or authority.
Former sons of the working class are the most steadfast members of the
new class. It has always been the fate of slaves to provide for their masters the
most clever and gifted representatives. In this case a new exploiting and
governing class is born from the exploited class.
3.
When Communist systems are being critically analyzed, it is considered
that their fundamental distinction lies in the fact
THE NEW CLASS 43
that a bureaucracy, organized in a special stratum, rules over the people.

This is generally true. However, a more detailed analysis will show that
(only a special stratum of bureaucrats, those who are not administrative
officials, make up the core of the governing bureaucracy} or, in my
terminology, of the new class. This is actually a party or political
bureaucracy. Other officials are only the apparatus under the control of
the new class; the apparatus may be clumsy and slow but, no matter
what, it must exist in every socialist society. It is sociologically possible to
draw the borderline between the different types of officials, but in
practice they are practically indistinguishable. This is true not only
because the Communist system by its very nature is bureaucratic, but
because Communists handle the various important administrative
functions. In addition, the stratum of political bureaucrats cannot enjoy
their privileges if they do not give crumbs from their tables to other
bureaucratic categories.
It is important to note the fundamental differences between the
political bureaucracies mentioned here and those which arise with every
centralization in modern economy—especially centralizations that lead to
collective forms of ownership such as monopolies, companies, and state
ownership. The number of white-collar workers is constantly increasing
in capitalistic monopolies, and also in nationalized industries in the West.
In Human Relations in Administration* R. Dubin says that state
functionaries in the economy are being transformed into a special stratum
of society.
. . . Functionaries have the sense of a common destiny for all

those who work together. They share the same interests, especially
since there is relatively little competition insofar as promotion is in
terms of seniority. In-group aggression is thus minimized and this
arrangement is therefore conceived
* New York, Prentice-Hall, 1951.

44 THE NEW CLASS
to be positively functional for the bureaucracy. However, the esprit de
corps and informal social organization which typically develops in
such situations often leads the personnel to defend their entrenched
interests rather than to assist their clientele and elected higher officials.
While such functionaries have much in common with Communist

bureaucrats, especially as regards “esprit de corps,” they are not identically
though state and other bureaucrats in non-Communist systems form a
special stratum, they do not exercise authority as the Communists^ do.
Bureaucrats in a non-Communist state have political masters, usually
elected, or owners over them, while Communists have neither masters nor
owners over them. The bureaucrats in a non-Communist state are officials
in modern capitalist economy, while the Communists are something
different and new: a new class.
As in other owning classes, the proof that it is a special class lies in its
ownership and its special relations to other classes. In the same way, the
class to which a member belongs is indicated by the material and other
privileges which ownership brings to him.
As defined by Roman law, property constitutes the use, enjoyment, and
disposition of material goods. The Communist political bureaucracy uses,
enjoys, and disposes of nationalized property.
If we assume that membership in this bureaucracy or new owning class
is predicated on the use of privileges inherent in ownership—in this
instance nationalized material goods—then membership in the new party
class, or political bureaucracy, is reflected in a larger income in material
goods and privileges than society should normally grant for such functions.
In practice, the ownership privilege of the new class manifests itself as an
exclusive right, as a party monopoly, for the political bureaucracy to
distribute the national income, to set wages, direct economic development,
and dispose of nationalized and
THE NEW CLASS 45
other property. This is the way it appears to the ordinary man who
considers the Communist functionary as being very rich and as a man who
does not have to work.
The ownership of private property has, for many reasons, proved to be
unfavorable for the establishment of the new class’s authority. Besides, the
destruction of private ownership was necessary for the economic
transformation of nations. The new class obtains its power, privileges,
ideology, and its customs from one specific form of ownership—collective
ownership-- which the class administers and distributes in the name of the
nation and society.
The new class maintains that ownership derives from a designated social
relationship. This is the relationship between the monopolists of
administration, who constitute a narrow and closed stratum, and the mass
of producers (farmers, workers, and intelligentsia) who have no rights.
However, this relationship is not valid since the Communist bureaucracy
enjoys a monopoly over the distribution of material goods.
Every fundamental change in the social relationship between those who
monopolize administration and those who work is inevitably reflected in
the ownership relationship. Social and political relations and ownership—
the totalitarianism of the government and the monopoly of authority—are
being more fully brought into accord in Communism than in any other
single system.
To divest Communists of their ownership rights would be to abolish them
as a class. To compel them to relinquish their other social powers, so that
workers may participate in sharing the profits of their work—which
capitalists have had to permit as a result of strikes and parliamentary
action—would mean that Communists were being deprived of their
monopoly over property, ideology, and government. This would be the be-
ginning of democracy and freedom in Communism, the end of Communist
monopolism and totalitarianism. Until this happens, there can be no
indication that important, fundamental
46 THE NEW CLASS
changes are taking place in Communist systems, at least not in the eyes of
men who think seriously about social progress.
The ownership privileges of the new class and membership in that class
are the privileges of administration. This privilege extends from state
administration and the administration of economic enterprises to that of
sports and humanitarian organizations. Political, party, or so-called
“general leadership” is executed by the core. This position of leadership
carries privileges with it. In his Staline au pouvoir, published in Paris in
1951, Orlov states that the average pay of a worker in the U.S.S.R in 1935
was 1,800 rubles annually, while the pay and allowances of the secretary of
a rayon committee amounted to 45,000 rubles annually. The situation has
changed since then for both workers and party functionaries, but the
essence remains the same. Other authors have arrived at the same
conclusions. Discrepancies between the pay of workers and party
functionaries are extreme; this could not be hidden from persons visiting
the U.S.S.R. or other Communist countries in the past few years.
Other systems, too, have their professional politicians. One can think
well or ill of them, but they must exist. Society cannot live without a state
or a government, and therefore it cannot live without those who fight for it.
However, there are fundamental differences between professional
politicians in other systems and in the Communist system. In extreme
cases, politicians in other systems use the government to secure privileges
for themselves and their cohorts, or to favor the economic interests of one
social stratum or another. The situation is different with the Communist
system where the power and the government are identical with the use,
enjoyment, and disposition of almost all the nation’s goods.
He who grabs power grabs privileges and indirectly grabs property.
Consequently, in Communism, power or politics as a profession is the ideal
of those who have the desire or the prospect of living as parasites at the
expense of others.
THE NEW CLASS 47
Membership in the Communist Party before the Revolution meant

sacrifice. Being a professional revolutionary was one of the highest
honors. ;Now that the party has consolidated its power, party
membership means that one belongs to a privileged class. And at the
core of the party are the all-powerful exploiters and masters.
For a long time the Communist revolution and the Communist system
have been concealing their real nature. The emergence of the new class
has been concealed under socialist phraseology and, more important,
under the new collective forms of property ownership. The so-called
socialist ownership is a disguise for the real ownership by the political
bureaucracy. And in the beginning this bureaucracy was in a hurry to
complete industrialization, and hid its class composition under that
guise.
4.
The development of modem Communism, and the emergence of the
new class, is evident in the character and roles of those who inspired it.
The leaders and their methods, from Marx to Khrushchev, have been
varied and changing. It never occurred to Marx to prevent others from
voicing their ideas. Lenin tolerated free discussion in his party and did
not think that party forums, let alone the party head, should regulate
the expression of “proper” or “improper” ideas. Stalin abolished every
type of intra-party discussion, and made the expression of ideology
solely the right of the central forum—or of himself. Other Communist
movements were different. For instance, Marx’s International Workers’
Union (the so-called First International) was not Marxist in ideology,
but a union of varied groups which adopted only the resolutions on
which its members agreed. Lenin’s party was an avant-garde group
combining
48 THE NEW CLASS
an internal revolutionary morality and ideological monolithic structure
with democracy of a kind. Under Stalin the party became a mass of
ideologically disinterested men, who got their ideas from above, but were
wholehearted and unanimous in the defense of a system that assured them
unquestionable privileges. Marx actually never created a party; Lenin de-
stroyed all parties except his own, including the Socialist Party. Stalin
relegated even the Bolshevik Party to second rank, transforming its core
into the core of the new class, and transforming the party into a privileged
impersonal and colorless group.
Marx created a system of the roles of classes, and of class war in society,
even though he did not discover them, and he saw that mankind is mostly
made up of members of discernible classes, although he was only restating
Terence’s Stoic philosophy: “Humani nihil a me alienum puto ” Lenin
viewed men as sharing ideas rather than as being members of discernible
classes. Stalin saw in men only obedient subjects or enemies. Marx died a
poor emigrant in London, but was valued by learned men and valued in
the movement; Lenin died as the leader of one of the greatest revolutions,
but died as a dictator about whom a cult had already begun to form; when
Stalin died, he had already transformed himself into a god.
These changes in personalities are only the reflection of changes which
had already taken place and were the very soul of the Communist
movement.
Although he did not realize it, Lenin started the organization of the new
class. He established the party along Bolshevik lines and developed the
theories of its unique and leading role in the building of a new society. This
is but one aspect of his many-sided and gigantic work; it is the aspect
which came about from his actions rather than his wishes. It is also the
aspect which led the new class to revere him.
The real and direct originator of the new class, however, was Stalin. He
was a man of quick reflexes and a tendency to
THE NEW CLASS 49
coarse humor, not very educated nor a good speaker. But he was a
relentless dogmatician and a great administrator, a Georgian who knew
better than anyone else whither the new powers of Greater Russia were
taking her. He created the new class by the use of the most barbaric
means, not even sparing the class itself. It was inevitable that the new
class which placed him at the top would later submit to his unbridled
and brutal nature. He was the true leader of that class as long as the
class was building itself up, and attaining power.
The new class was bom in the revolutionary struggle in the Communist
Party, but was developed in the industrial revolution. Without the
revolution, without industry, the class’s position would not have been
secure and its power would have been limited.
While the country was being industrialized, Stalin began to introduce
considerable variations in wages, at the same time allowing the
development toward various privileges to proceed. He thought that
industrialization would come to nothing if the new class were not made
materially interested in the process, by acquisition of some property for
itself. Without industrialization the new class would find it difficult to
hold its position, for it would have neither historical justification nor the
material resources for its continued existence.
The increase in the membership of the party, or of the bureaucracy,
was closely connected with this. In 1927, on the eve of industrialization,
the Soviet Communist Party had 887,233 members. In 1934, at the end of
the First Five-Year Plan, the membership had increased to 1,874,488.
This was ''a phenomenon obviously connected with industrialization:
the prospects for the new class and privileges for its members were
improving. What is more, the privileges and the class were expanding
more rapidly than industrialization itself. It is difficult to cite any
statistics on this point, but the conclusion is self-evident for anyone who
bears in mind that the standard of living has not kept pace with
industrial production, while
50 THE NEW CLASS
the new class actually seized the lion’s share of the economic and other
progress earned by the sacrifices and efforts of the masses.
The establishment of the new class did not proceed smoothly. It
encountered bitter opposition from existing classes and from those
revolutionaries who could not reconcile reality with the ideals of their
struggle. In the U.S.S.R. the opposition of revolutionaries was most
evident in the Trotsky-Stalin conflict. The conflict between Trotsky and
Stalin, or between oppositionists in the party and Stalin, as well as the
conflict between the regime and the peasantry, became more intense as
industrialization advanced and the power and authority of the new
class increased.
Trotsky, an excellent speaker, brilliant stylist, and skilled polemicist,
a man cultured and of excellent intelligence, was deficient in only one
quality: a sense of reality. He wanted to be a revolutionary in a period
when life imposed the commonplace. He wished to revive a
revolutionary party which was being transformed into something
completely different, into a new class unconcerned with great ideals
and interested only in the everyday pleasures of life. He expected
action from a mass already tired by war, hunger, and death, at a time
when the new class already strongly held the reins and had begun to
experience the sweetness of privilege. Trotsky’s fireworks lit up the
distant heavens; but he could not rekindle fires in weary men. He
sharply noted the sorry aspect of the new phenomena but he did not
grasp their meaning. In addition, he had never been a Bolshevik. This
was his vice and his virtue. Attacking the party bureaucracy in the
name of the revolution, he attacked the cult of the party and, although
he was not conscious of it, the new class.
Stalin looked neither far ahead nor far behind. He had seated
himself at the head of the new power which was being bom—the new
class, the political bureaucracy, and bureaucratism—and became its
leader and organizer. He did not preach
THE NEW CLASS 51
— he made decisions. He too promised a shining future, but one which

bureaucracy could visualize as being real because its life was improving from
day to day and its position was being strengthened. He spoke without ardor
and color, but the new class was better able to understand this kind of realistic
language. Trotsky wished to extend the revolution to Europe; Stalin was not
opposed to the idea but this hazardous undertaking did not prevent him from
worrying about Mother Russia or, specifically, about ways of strengthening
the new system and increasing the power and reputation of the Russian state.
Trotsky was a man of the revolution of the past; Stalin was a man of today
and, thus, of the future.
In Stalin's victory Trotsky saw the Thermidoric reaction against the
revolution, actually the bureaucratic corruption of the Soviet government and
the revolutionary cause. Consequently, he understood and was deeply hurt
by the amorality of Stalin's methods. Trotsky was the first, although he was
not aware of it, who in the attempt to save the Communist movement
discovered the essence of contemporary Communism. But he was not capable
of seeing it through to the end. He supposed that this was only a momentary
cropping up of bureaucracy, corrupting the party and the revolution, and
concluded that the solution was in a change at the top, in a “palace revolu-
tion.” When a palace revolution actually took place after Stalin’s death, it
could be seen that the essence had not changed; something deeper and more
lasting was involved. The Soviet Thermidor of Stalin had not only led to the
installation of a government more despotic than the previous one, but also to
the installation of a class. This was the continuation of that other violent
foreign revolution which had inevitably borne and strengthened the new
class.
Stalin could, with equal if not greater right, refer to Lenin and all the
revolution, just as Trotsky did. For Stalin was the lawful although wicked
offspring of Lenin and the revolution.
History has no previous record of a personality like Lenin
52 THE NEW CLASS
who, by his versatility and persistence, developed one of the greatest
revolutions known to men. It also has no record of a personality like Stalin,
who took on the enormous task of strengthening, in terms of power and
property, a new class bom out of one of the greatest revolutions in one of
the largest of the world’s countries.
Behind Lenin, who was all passion and thought, stands the dull, gray
figure of Joseph Stalin, the symbol of the difficulty cruel, and unscrupulous
ascent of the new class to its final power.
After Lenin and Stalin came what had to come; namely, mediocrity in the
form of collective leadership. And also there came the apparently sincere,
kind-hearted, non-intellectual “man of the people”—new class no longer
needs the revolutionaries or dogmatists it once required; it is satisfied with
simple personalities, such as Khmshchev, Malenkov, Bulganin, and
Shepilov, whose every word reflects the average man. The new class itself
is tired of dogmatic purges and training sessions. It would like to live
quietly. It must protect itself even from its own authorized leader now that
it has been adequately strengthened. Stalin remained the same as he was
when the class was weak, when cruel measures were necessary against
even those in its own ranks who threatened to deviate. Today this is all
unnecessary. Without relinquishing anything it created under Stalin’s
leadership, the new class appears to be renouncing his authority for the
past few years. But it is not really renouncing that authority—only Stalin’s
methods which, according to Khmshchev, hurt “good Communists.”
Lenin’s revolutionary epoch was replaced by Stalin’s epoch, in which
authority and ownership, and industrialization, were strengthened so that
the much desired peaceful and good life of the new class could begin. Lenin’s
revolutionary Communism was replaced by Stalin’s dogmatic communism,
which in
THE NEW CLASS 55
turn was replaced by non-dogmatic Communism, a so-called collective
leadership or a group of oligarchs.
These are the three phases of development of the new class in the
U.S.S.R. or of Russian Communism (or of every other type of Communism
in one manner or another).
The fate of Yugoslav Communism was to unify these three phases in the
single personality of Tito, along with national and personal characteristics.
Tito is a great revolutionary, but without original ideas; he has attained
personal power, but without Stalin’s distrustfulness and dogmatism. Like
Khrushchev, Tito is a representative of the people, that is, of the middle-
party strata. The road which Yugoslav Communism has traveled—
attaining a revolution, copying Stalinism, then renouncing Stalinism and
seeking its own form—is seen most fully in the personality of Tito.
Yugoslav Communism has been more consistent than other parties in
preserving the substance of Communism, yet never renouncing any form
which could be of value to it.
The three phases in the development of the new class— Lenin, Stalin, and
"collective leadership”—are not completely divorced from each other, in
substance or in ideas.
Lenin too was a dogmatist, and Stalin too was a revolutionary, just as
collective leadership will resort to dogmatism and to revolutionary
methods when necessary. What is more, the nondogmatism of the
collective leadership is applied only to itself, to the heads of the new class.
On the other hand, the people must be all the more persistently “educated”
in the spirit of the dogma, or of Marxism-Leninism. By relaxing its
dogmatic severity and exclusiveness, the new class, becoming
strengthened economically, has prospects of attaining greater flexibility.
The heroic era of Communism is past. The epoch of its great leaders has
ended. The epoch of practical men has set in. The new class has been
created. It is at the height of its
54 THE NEW CLASS
power and wealth, but it is without new ideas. It has nothing more to tell the
people. The only thing that remains is for It to justify itself.
5 .
It would not be important to establish the fact that in contemporary
Communism a new owning and exploiting class is involved and not merely a
temporary dictatorship and an arbitrary bureaucracy, if some anti-Stalinist
Communists including Trotsky as well as some Social Democrats had not
depicted the ruling stratum as a passing bureaucratic phenomenon because of
which this new ideal, classless society, still in its swaddling clothes, must
suffer, just as bourgeois society had had to suffer under Cromwell’s and
Napoleon’s despotism.
But the new class is really a new class, with a special composition and special
power. By any scientific definition of a class, even the Marxist definition by
which some classes are lower than others according to their specific position in
production, we conclude that, in the U.S.S.R. and other Communist countries,
a new class of owners and exploiters is in existence. The specific characteristic
of this new class is its collective ownership. Communist theoreticians affirm,
and some even believe, that Communism has arrived at collective ownership.
Collective ownership in various forms has existed in all earlier societies. All
ancient Eastern despotisms were based on the pre-eminence of the state’s or
the king’s property. In ancient Egypt after the fifteenth century B.C ., arable land
passed to private ownership. Before that time only homes and surrounding
buildings had been privately owned. State land was handed over for
cultivation while state officials administered the land and collected taxes on it.
Canals and installations, as well as the most important works, were also state-
owned. The state
THE NEW CLASS 55
owned everything until it lost its independence in the first century of our
era.
This helps to explain the deification of the Pharaohs of Egypt and of the
emperors, which one encounters in all the ancient Eastern despotisms. Such
ownership also explains the undertaking of gigantic tasks, such as the
construction of temples, tombs, and castles of emperors, of canals, roads,
and fortifications.
The Roman state treated newly conquered land as state land and owned
considerable numbers of slaves. The medieval Church also had collective
property.
Capitalism by its very nature was an enemy of collective ownership until
the establishment of shareholders’ organizations. Capitalism continued to
be an enemy of collective ownership, even though it could not do anything
against new encroachments by collective ownership and the enlargement of
its area of operations.
The Communists did not invent collective ownership as such, but invented
its all-encompassing character, more widely extended than in earlier
epochs, even more extensive than in Pharaoh’s Egypt. That is all that the
Communists did.
The ownership of the new class, as well as its character, was formed over
a period of time and was subjected to constant change during the process.
At first, only a small part of the nation felt the need for all economic powers
to be placed in the hands of a political party for the purpose of aiding the
industrial transformation. The party, acting as the avant-garde of the
proletariat and as the “most enlightened power of socialism,” pressed for
this centralization which could be attained only by a change in ownership.
The change was made in fact and in form through nationalization first of
large enterprises and then of smaller ones. The abolition of private
ownership was a prerequisite for industrialization, and for the beginning of
the new class. However, without their special role as administrators over
society and as distributors of property, the
56 THE NEW CLASÄ
Communists could not transform themselves into a new class, nor could a
new class be formed and permanently established. Gradually material
goods were nationalized, but in fact, through its right to use, enjoy, and
distribute these goods, they became the property of a discernible stratum
of the party and the bureaucracy gathered around it.
In view of the significance of ownership for its power—and also of the
fruits of ownership—the party bureaucracy cannot renounce the extension
of its ownership even over small-scale production facilities. Because of its
totalitarianism and monopolism, the new class finds itself unavoidably at
war with everything which it does not administer or handle, and must
deliberately aspire to destroy or conquer it.
Stalin said, on the eve of collectivization, that the question of “who will
do what to whom” had been raised, even though the Soviet government
was not meeting serious opposition from a politically and economically
disunited peasantry. The new class felt insecure as long as there were any
other owners except itself. It could not risk sabotage in food supplies or in
agricultural raw materials. This was the direct reason for the attack on the
peasantry. However, there was a second reason, a class reason: the
peasants could be dangerous to the new class in an unstable situation. The
new class therefore had to subordinate the peasantry to itself economically
and administratively; this was done through the kolkhozes and machine-
tractor stations, which required an increase proportionate to the size of the
new class in the villages themselves. As a result, bureaucracy
mushroomed in the villages too.
The fact that the seizure of property from other classes, especially from
small owners, led to decreases in production and to chaos in the economy
was of no consequence to the new class. Most important for the new class,
as for every owner in history, was the attainment and consolidation of
ownership. The class profited from the new property it had acquired even
though the nation lost thereby. The collectivization of peasant
THE NEW CLASS 57
holdings, which was economically unjustified, was unavoidable if the
new class was to be securely installed in its power and its ownership.
Reliable statistics are not available, but all evidence confirms that
yields per acre in the U.S.S.R. have not been increased over the yields
in Czarist Russia, and that the number of livestock still does not
approach the pre-revolutionary figure.
The losses in agricultural yields and in livestock can be calculated,
but the losses in manpower, in the millions of peasants who were
thrown into labor camps, are incalculable. Collectivization was a
frightful and devastating war which resembled an insane
undertaking—except for the fact that it was profitable for the new class
by assuring its authority.
By various methods, such as nationalization, compulsory cooperation,
high taxes, and priœ inequalities, private ownership was destroyed
and transformed into collective ownership. The establishment of the
ownership of the new class was evidenced in the changes in the
psychology, the way of life, and the material position of its members,
depending on the position they held on the hierarchical ladder.
Country homes, the best housing, furniture, and similar things were
acquired; special quarters and exclusive rest homes were established
for the highest bureaucracy, for the elite of the new class. The party
secretary and the chief of the secret police in some places not only
became the highest authorities but obtained the best housing,
automobiles, and similar evidence of privilege. Those beneath them
were eligible for comparable privileges, depending upon their position
in the hierarchy. The state budgets, “gifts,” and the construction and
reconstruction executed for the needs of the state and its
representatives became the everlasting and inexhaustible sources of
benefits to the political bureaucracy.
Only in cases where the new class was not capable of maintaining
the ownership it had usurped, or in cases where such ownership was
exorbitantly expensive or politically
58 THE NEW CLASS
dangerous, the ownership surrendered to other strata or other forms of

ownership were devised. For example, collectivization was abandoned in
Yugoslavia because the peasants were resisting it and because the steady
decrease in production resulting from collectivization held a latent danger for
the regime. However, the new class never renounced the right in such cases to
seize ownership again or to collectivize. The new class cannot renounce this
right, for if it did, it would no longer be totalitarian and monopolistic.
No bureaucracy alone could be so stubborn in its purposes and aims. Only
those engaged in new forms of ownership, who tread the road to new forms of
production, are capable of being so persistent.
Marx foresaw that after its victory the proletariat would be exposed to
danger from the deposed classes and from its own bureaucracy. When the
Communists, especially those in Yugoslavia, criticize Stalin’s administration
and bureaucratic methods, they generally refer to what Marx anticipated.
However, what is happening in Communism today has little connection with
Marx and certainly no connection with this anticipation. Marx was thinking of
the danger from an increase in a parasitic bureaucracy, which is also present in
contemporary Communism. It never occured to him that today’s Communist
strong men, who handle material goods on behalf of their own narrow caste’s
interests rather than for the bureaucracy as a whole, would be the bureaucracy
he was thinking of. In this case too, Marx serves as a good excuse for the
Communists, whether the extravagant tastes of various strata of the new class
or poor administration is under criticism.
Contemporary Communism is not only a party of a certain type, or a
bureaucracy which has sprung from monopolistic ownership and excessive
state interference in the economy. More than anything else, the essential aspect
of contemporary Communism is the new class of owners and~exploiters.
THE NEW CLASS 59
6 .
No class is established by its own action, even though its ascent is
organized and accompanied by a conscious struggle. This holds true for the
new class in Communism.
The new class, because it had a weak relationship to the economy and social
structure, and of necessity had its origin in a single party, was forced to
establish the highest possible organizational structure. Finally it was forced
to a deliberate and conscious withdrawal from its earlier tenets.
Consequently the new class is more highly organized and more highly
class-conscious than any class in recorded history.
This proposition is true only if it is taken relatively; consciousness and
organizational structure being taken in relation to the outside world and to
other classes, powers, and social forces. No other class in history has been as
cohesive and single- minded in defending itself and in controlling that
which it holds—collective and monopolistic ownership and totalitarian
authority.
On the other hand, the new class is also the most deluded and least
conscious of itself. Every private capitalist or feudal lord was conscious of
the fact that he belonged to a special discernible social category. He usually
believed that this category was destined to make the human race happy,
and that without this category chaos and general ruin would ensue. A Com-
munist member of the new class also believes that, without his party,
society would regress and founder. But he is not conscious of the fact that he
belongs to a new ownership class, for he does not consider himself an
owner and does not take into account the special privileges he enjoys. He
thinks that he belongs to a group with prescribed ideas, aims, attitudes, and
roles. That is all he sees. He cannot see that at the same time he belongs to a
special social category: the ownership class.
Collective ownership, which acts to reduce the class, at the
60 THE NEW CLASS
same time makes it unconscious of its class substance, and each one of the
collective owners is deluded in that he thinks he uniquely belongs to a
movement which would abolish classes in society.
A comparison of other characteristics of the new class with those of other
ownership classes reveals many similarities and many differences. The new
class is voracious and insatiable, just as the bourgeoisie was. But it does not
have the virtues of frugality and economy that the bourgeoisie had. The new
class is as exclusive as the aristocracy but without aristocracy’s refinement
and proud chivalry.
The new class also has advantages over other classes. Because it is more
compact it is better prepared for greater sacrifices and heroic exploits. The
individual is completely and totally subordinated to the whole; at least, the
prevailing ideal calls for such subordination even when he is out seeking to
better himself. The new class is strong enough to carry out material and other
ventures that no other class was ever able to do. Since it possesses the
nation’s goods, the new class is in a position to devote itself religiously to the
aims it has set and to direct all the forces of the people to the furtherance of
these aims.
The new ownership is not the same as the political government, but is
created and aided by that government. The use, enjoyment, and distribution
of property is the privilege of the party and the party’s top men.
Party members feel that authority, that control over property, brings with
it the privileges of this world. Consequently, unscrupulous ambition,
duplicity, toadyism, and jealousy inevitably must increase. Careerism and an
ever expanding bureaucracy are the incurable diseases of Communism.
Because the Communists have transformed themselves into owners, and
because the road to power and to material privileges is open only through
“devotion” to the party — to the class, to “socialism”—unscrupulous
ambition must become one of the main
THE NEW CLASS 61
ways of life and one of the main methods for the development of Communism.
In non-Communist systems, the phenomena of careerism and unscrupulous
ambition are a sign that it is profitable to be a bureaucrat* or that owners have
become parasites, so that the administration of property is left in the hands of
employees. In Communism, careerism and unscrupulous ambition testify to the
fact that there is an irresistible drive toward ownership and the privileges that
accompany the administration of material goods and men.
Membership in other ownership classes is not identical with the ownership of
particular property. This is still less the case in the Communist system inasmuch
as ownership is collective. To be an owner or a joint owner in the Communist
system means that one enters the ranks of the ruling political bureaucracy and
nothing else.
In the new class, just as in other classes, some individuals constantly fall by
the wayside while others go up the ladder. In private-ownership classes an
individual left his property to his descendants. In the new class no one inherits
anything except the aspiration to raise himself to a higher rung of the ladder.
The new class is actually being created from the lowest and broadest strata of
the people, and is in constant motion. Although it is sociologically possible to
prescribe who belongs to the new class, it is difficult to do so; for the new class
melts into and spills over into the people, into other lower classes, and is
constantly changing.
The road to the top is theoretically open to all, just as every lone of Napoleon’s
soldiers carried a marshal’s baton in his knapsack. The only thing that is required
to get on the road is sincere and complete loyalty to the party or to the new class.
Open at the bottom, the new class becomes increasingly and relentlessly
narrower at the top. Not only is the desire necessary for the climb; also necessary
is the ability to understand and develop doctrines, firmness in struggles against
antagonists, ex
62 THE NEW CLASS
ceptional dexterity and cleverness in intra-party struggles, and talent in
strengthening the class. Many present themselves, but few are chosen.
(Although more open in some respects than other classes, the new class is
also more exclusive than other classes. Since one of the new class’s most
important features is monopoly of authority, this exclusiveness is
strengthened by bureaucratic hierarchical prejudices.
Nowhere, at any time, has the road been as wide open to the devoted
and the loyal as it is in the Communist system. But the ascent to the heights
has never at any time been so difficult or required so much sacrifice and so
many victims. On the one hand, Communism is open and kind to all; on the
other hand, it is exclusive and intolerant even of its its own adherents.
7.
The fact that there is a new ownership class in Communist countries does
not explain everything, but it is the most important key to understanding
the changes which are periodically taking place in these countries, especially
in the U.S.S.R.
It goes without saying that every such change in each separate
Communist country and in the Communist system as a whole must be
examined separately, in order to determine the extent and significance of the
change in the specific circumstances. To do this, however, the system should
be understood as a whole to the fullest extent possible.
In connection with current changes in the U.S.S.R. it will be profitable to
point out in passing what is occurring in the kolkhozes. The establishment
of kolkhozes and the Soviet government policy toward them illustrates
clearly the exploiting nature of the new class.
Stalin did not and Khrushchev does not consider kolkhozes as a “logical
socialistic” form of ownership. In practice this
THE NEW CLASS 63
means that the new class has not succeeded in completely taking over the
management of the villages. Through the kolkhozes and the use of the
compulsory crop-purchase system, the new class has succeeded in making
vassals of the peasants and grabbing a lion’s share of the peasants’ income,
but the new class has not become the only power of the land. Stalin was
completely aware of this. Before his death, in Economic Problems of Socialism
in the U.S.S.R., Stalin foresaw that the kolkhozes should become state
property, which is to say that the bureaucracy should become the real
owner. Criticizing Stalin for his excess use of purges, Khrushchev did not
however renounce Stalin’s views on property in kolkhozes. The
appointment by the new regime of 30,000 party workers, mostly to be
presidents of kolkhozes, was only one of the measures in line with Stalin’s
policy.
Just as under Stalin, the new regime, in executing its so-called
liberalization policy, is extending the “socialist” ownership of the new
class. Decentralization in the economy does not mean a change in
ownership, but only gives greater rights to the lower strata of the
bureaucracy or of the new class. If the so-called liberalization and
decentralization meant anything else, that would be manifest in the
political right of at least part of the people to exercise some influence in the
management of material goods. At least, the people would have the right
to criticize the arbitrariness of the oligarchy. This would lead to the
creation of a new political movement, even though it were only a loyal
opposition. However, this is not even mentioned, just as democracy in the
party is not mentioned. Liberalization and decentralization are in force
only for Communists; first for the oligarchy, the leaders of the new class;
and second, for those in the lower echelons. This is the new method,
inevitable under changing conditions, for the further strengthening and
consolidation of monopolistic ownership and totalitarian authority of the
new class.
The fact that there is a new owning, monopolistic, and total
64 THE NEW CLASS
itarian class in Communist countries calls for the following conclusion: All
changes initiated by the Communist chiefs are dictated first of all by the
interests and aspirations of the new class, which, like every social group,
lives and reacts, defends itself and advances, with the aim of increasing its
power. This does not mean, however, that such changes may not be impor-
tant for the rest of the people as well. Although the innovations introduced
by the new class have not yet materially altered the Communist system,
they must not be underestimated. It is necessary to gain insight into the
substance of these changes in order to determine their range and
significance.
The Communist regime, in common with others, must take into account
the mood and movement of the masses. Because of the exclusiveness of the
Communist Party and the nabsence of free public opinion in its ranks, the
regime cannot discern the real status of the masses. However, their
dissatisfaction does penetrate the consciousness of the top leaders.
In spite of its totalitarian management, the new class is not immune to every
type of opposition.
Once in power, the Communists have no difficulty in settling their
accounts with the bourgeoisie and large-estate owners. The historical
development is hostile to them and their property and it is easy to arouse
the masses against them. Seizing property from the bourgeoisie and the
large-estate owners is quite easy; difficulties arise when seizure of small
properties is involved. Having acquired power in the course of earlier ex-
propriations, the Communists can do even this. Relations are rapidly
clarified: there are no more old classes and old owners, society is “classless,”
or on the road to being so, and men have started to live in a new manner.
Under such conditions, demands to return to the old prerevolutionary
relations seem unrealistic, if not ridiculous. Material and social bases no
longer exist for the maintenance of such relations. The Communists meet
such demands as if they were jests.
THE NEW CLASS 65
The new class is most sensitive to demands on the part of the people for a
special kind of freedom, not for freedom in general or political freedom. It is
especially sensitive to demands for freedom of thought and criticism, within
the limits of present conditions and within the limits of “socialism”; not for de-
mands for a return to previous social and ownership relations. This sensitivity
originates from the class’s special position.
The new class instinctively feels that national goods are, in met, its property,
and that even the terms “socialist,” “social,” and “state” property denote a
general legal fiction. The new class also thinks that any breach of its totalitarian
authority might imperil its ownership. Consequently, the new class opposes
any type of freedom, ostensibly for the purpose of preserving “socialist”
ownership. Criticism of the new class’s monopolistic administration of
property generates the fear of of a possible loss of power. The new class is
sensitive to these criticisms and demands depending on the extent to which
they expose the manner in which it rules and holds power.
This is an important contradiction. Property is legally considered social and
national property. But, in actuality, a single group manages it in its own
interest. The discrepancy between legal and actual conditions continuously
results in obscure and abnormal social and economic relationships. It also
means that the words of the leading group do not correspond to its actions;
and that all actions result in strengthening its property holdings and its
political position.
This contradiction cannot be resolved without jeopardizing the class’s
position. Other ruling, property-owning classes could not resolve this
contradiction either, unless forcefully deprived of monopoly of power and
ownership. Wherever there has been a higher degree of freedom for society as
a whole, the ruling classes have been forced, in one way or another, to
renounce monopoly of ownership. The reverse is true also: wherever
monopoly of ownership has been impossible, freedom, to some degree, has
become inevitable.
66 THE NEW CLASS
In Communism, power and ownership are almost always in the Same

hands, but this fact is concealed under a legal guise.? In classical capitalism,
the worker had equality with the capitalist before the law, even though the
worker was being exploited and the capitalist was doing the exploiting. In
Communism, legally, all are equal with respect to material goods. The
formal owner is the nation. In reality, because of monopolistic
administration, only the narrowest stratum of administrators enjoys the
rights of ownership.
Every real demand for freedom in Communism, the kind of demand that
hits at the substance of Communism, boils down to a demand for bringing
material and property relations into accord with what the law provides.
A demand for freedom—based on the position that capital goods
produced by the nation can be managed more efficiently by society than by
private monopoly or a private owner, and consequently should actually be
in the hands or under control of society exercised through its freely elected
representatives— would force the new class either to make concessions to
other forces, or to take off the mask and admit its ruling and exploiting
characteristics. The type of ownership and exploitation which the new class
creates by using its authority and its administrative privileges is such that
even the class itself must deny it. Does not the new class emphasize that it
uses its authority and administrative functions in the name of the nation as a
whole to preserve national property?
This makes the legal position of the new class uncertain and is also the
source of the new class’s biggest internal difficulties. The contradiction
discloses the disharmony between words and actions: While promising to
abolish social differences, it must always increase them by acquiring the
products of the nation's workshops and granting privileges to its adherents.
It must proclaim loudly its dogma that it is fulfilling its historical mission of
“final” liberation of mankind from every misery and calamity while it acts in
exactly the opposite way.
THE NEW CLASS 67
The contradiction between the new class’s real ownership position and its
legal position can furnish the basic reason for criticism. This contradiction
has within it the ability not only to incite others but also to corrode the
class’s own ranks, since privileges are actually being enjoyed by only a
few. This contradiction, when intensified, holds prospects of real changes
in the Communist system, whether the ruling class is in favor of the
change or not. The fact that this contradiction is so obvious has been the
reason for the changes made by the new class, especially in so-called
liberalization and decentralization.
Forced to withdraw and surrender to individual strata, the new class
aims at concealing this contradiction and strengthening its own position.
Since ownership and authority continue intact, all measures taken by the
new class—even those democratically inspired—show a tendency toward
strengthening the management of the political bureaucracy. The system
turns democratic measures into positive methods for consolidating the
position of the ruling classes. Slavery in ancient times in the East
inevitably permeated all of society’s activities and components, including
the family. In the same way, the monopolism and totalitarianism of the
ruling class in the Communist system are imposed on all the aspects of
social life, even though the political heads are not aiming at this.
Yugoslavia’s so-called workers’ management and autonomy, conceived
at the time of the struggle against Soviet imperialism as a far-reaching
democratic measure to deprive the party of the monopoly of
administration, has been increasingly relegated to one of the areas of
party work. Thus, it is hardly possible to change the present system. The
aim of creating a new democracy through this type of administration will
not be achieved. Besides, freedom cannot be extended to the largest piece
of the pie. Workers’ management has not brought about a sharing in
profits by those who produce, either on a national level or in local
enterprises. This type of administration has increasingly turned into a safe
type for the regime. Through various taxes
68 THE NEW CLASS
and other means, the regime has appropriated even the share of the profits
which the workers believed would be given to them. Only crumbs from the
tables and illusions have been left to the workers. Without universal freedom
not even workers' management can become free. Clearly, in an unfree society
nobody can freely decide anything. The givers have somehow obtained the most
value from the gift of freedom they supposedly handed the workers.
This does not mean that the new class cannot make concessions to the people,
even though it only considers its own interests. Workers' management, or
decentralization, is a concession to the masses. Circumstances may drive the
new class, no matter how monopolistic and totalitarian it may be, to retreat
before the masses. In 1948, when the conflict took place between Yugoslavia and
the U.S.S.R., the Yugoslav leaders were forced to execute some reforms. Even
though it might mean a backward step, they set up reforms as soon as they saw
themselves in jeopardy. Something similar is happening today in the eastern
European countries.
In defending its authority, the ruling class must execute reforms every time it
becomes obvious to the people that the class is treating national property as its
own. Such reforms are not proclaimed as being what they really are, but rather
as part of the “further development of socialism” and “socialist democracy.”
The groundwork for reforms is laid when the discrepancy mentioned above
becomes public. From the historical point of view the new class is forced to
fortify its authority and ownership constantly, even though it is running away
from the truth. It must constantly demonstrate how it is successfully creating a
society of happy people, all of whom enjoy equal rights and have been freed of
every type of exploitation. The new class cannot avoid falling continuously into
profound internal contradictions; for in spite of its historical origin it is not able
to make its ownership lawful, and it cannot renounce ownership without
undermining itself. Consequently, it is
THE NEW CLASS 69
forced to try to justify its increasing authority, invoking abstract and unreal
purposes.
This is a class whose power over men is the most complete known to
history. For this reason it is a class with very limited views, views which are
false and unsafe. Closely ingrown, and in complete authority, the new class
must unrealistically evaluate its own role and that of the people around it.
Having achieved industrialization, the new class can now do nothing more
than strengthen its brute force and pillage the people. It ceases to create. Its
spiritual heritage is overtaken by darkness.
While the new class accomplished one of its greatest successes in the
revolution, its method of control is one of the most shameful pages in human
history. Men will marvel at the grandiose ventures it accomplished, and will
be ashamed of the means it used to accomplish them.
When the new class leaves the historical scene—and this must happen —
there will be less sorrow over its passing than there was for any other class
before it. Smothering everything except what suited its ego, it has condemned
itself to failure and shameful ruin
The Party State
1.
The mechanism of Communist power is perhaps the simplest which can be

conceived, although it leads to the most refined tyranny and the most brutal
exploitation. The simplicity of this mechanism originates from the fact that one
party alone, the Communist Party, is the backbone of the entire political,
economic, and ideological activity. The entire public life is at a standstill or
moves ahead, falls behind or turns around according to what happens in the
party forums.
Under the Communist systems the people realize quickly what they are and
what they are not permitted to do. Laws and regulations do not have an
essential importance for them. The actual and unwritten rules concerning the
relationship between the government and its subjects do. Regardless of laws,
everyone knows that the government is in the hands of the party committees
and the secret police. Nowhere is “the directing role” of the party prescribed,
but its authority is established in all organizations and sectors. No law provides
that the secret police has the right to control citizens, but the police is all-
powerful. No law prescribes that the judiciary and prosecutors should be
controlled by the secret police and the party committee, but they are. Most
people know that this is the case. Everyone
70
THE PARTY STA TE 71
knows what can and what cannot be done, and what depends on whom. People
adjust to the environment and to actual conditions, turning to party forums or to
organs under the party’s control in all important matters.
The direction of social organizations and social organs is accomplished
simply by this method: the Communists form a unit, which turns to
authorized political forums in all matters. This is theoretical; actually it
operates in this way: In cases where the social organ or organization is
managed by a person who also has power in the party, he will not refer to
anyone regarding lesser matters. Communists become familiar with their
system and with the relationships created by it; they accustom themselves to
distinguish between the important and the unimportant, and refer to party
forums only in especially important matters. The unit exists only potentially,
important decisions being made by the party; the opinion of those who have
elected the government or administration of some organization is totally
unimportant.
Communist totalitarianism and the new class took root when the
Communist Party was preparing for the revolution; their method of
administering and maintaining authority also goes back to that time. The
“directing role” in organs of government and social organizations is merely
the former Communist unit which has since branched out, developed, and
perfected itself. The second “directing role” of the party in the “building of
socialism” is nothing but the old theory regarding the avant-garde role of the
party with respect to the working class, with the difference that the theory
then had a different significance for society than it has now. Before the
Communists usurped power, this theory was necessary in order to recruit
revolutionaries and revolutionary organs; now it justifies the totalitarian
control of the new class. One springs from the other, but one is also different
from the other. The revolution and its forms
72 THE NEW CLASS
were unavoidable and were even needed by that part of society which
irresistibly aspired to technical and economic progress.
The totalitarian tyranny and control of the new class, which came into
being during the revolution, has become the yoke from under which the
blood and sweat of all members of society flow. Particular revolutionary
forms were transformed into reactionary ones. This was also the case with
the Communist units.
There are two essential methods through which Communist control of
the social machine is accomplished. The first is the unit, the main method in
principle and in theory. The second, actually more practical one, restricts
certain government posts to party members. These jobs, which are essential
in any government but especially in a Communist one, include assignments
with police, especially the secret police; and the diplomatic and officers
corps, especially positions in the information and political services. In the
judiciary only top positions have until now been in the hands of
Communists. The judiciary, subordinated to the party and police
establishments, is generally poorly paid, and is unattractive to Communists.
However, the tendency now is for judiciary posts to be considered as a
privilege open only to party members, and for members of the judiciary to
have increasing privileges. Thus, control over the judiciary could be
relaxed, if not completely abolished, with the assurance that it will continue
to rule according to the intentions of the party or “in the spirit of socialism.”
Only in a Communist state are a number of both specified and
unspecified positions reserved for members of the party. The Communist
government, although a class structure, is a party government; the
Communist army is a party army; and the state is a party state. More
precisely, Communists tend to treat the army and the state as their
exclusive weapons.
The exclusive, if unwritten, law that only party members can become
policemen, officers, diplomats, and hold similar positions, or that only they
can exercise actual authority, creates
THE PARTY STATE 73
a special privileged group of bureaucrats and simplifies the mechanism of
government and administration. In this manner the party unit expanded
and more or less took in all these services. As a result, the unit has
disappeared while these services have become an essential area for party
activity.
There is no fundamental difference in the Communist system between
governmental services and party organizations, as in the example of the
party and the secret police. The party and the police mingle very closely
in their daily functioning; the difference between them is only in the
distribution of work.
The entire governmental structure is organized in this manner.
Political positions are reserved exclusively for party members. Even in
non-political governmental bodies Communists hold the strategic
positions or oversee administration. Calling a meeting at the party center
or publishing an article is sufficient to cause the entire state and social
mechanism to begin functioning. If difficulties occur anywhere, the party
and the police very quickly correct the “error.”
2.
The particular character of the Communist Party has already been
discussed. There are other special features, too, which help reveal the
essence of a Communist state.
The Communist Party does not have its unique character solely
because it is revolutionary and centralized and observes military
discipline and other definite goals, or has other characteristics. There are
other parties with similar features, even though these features may be
stronger in the Communist Party.
However, only in the Communist Party is “ideological unity” or an
identical concept of the world and of the development of society
obligatory for its members} This applies only to persons who function in
the higher forums of the party. The others, those in lower positions, are
obligated only to give lip service
74 THE NEW CLASS
to identical ideological views, while they execute orders handed down
from above. The tendency, however, is to have those in lower positions
adjust their ideological level to that of the leaders.
Lenin did not consider that party members were all obliged to hold the
same views. However, in practice, he refuted and explained away every
view which did not appear ’’Marxist” or “the party’s”; that is, every view
that did not strengthen the party in the manner which he had originally
conceived. His settling of accounts with various opposition groups in the
party was different from Stalin’s, because Lenin did not kill his subjects,
“merely” quelled them. While he was in power both freedom of expression
and voting privileges were in effect. Total authority over everything had
not yet been established.
Stalin required ideological unity—obligatory philosophic and other
views—in addition to political unity as a meeting ground for all party
members. This is actually Stalin’s contribution to Lenin’s teaching about
the party. Stalin formed the concept of obligatory ideological unity in his
early youth: in his time, unanimity became the unwritten requirement of
all Communist parties, and it remains so to the present day.
Yugoslav leaders held and still hold the same views. They are still under
Soviet “collective leadership” and the forums of other Communist parties.
This insistence on the obligatory ideological unity of the party is a sign that
no essential changes have occurred, and only confirms the fact that free
discussion is not possible, or possible only in a very limited way, under
today’s “collective leadership.”
What does obligatory unity in the party mean and where does it lead?
Its political consequences are very serious. The power in every party,
especially in the Communist Party, resides in its leaders and higher
forums. Ideological unity as an obligation, especially in the centralized and
militarily disciplined Communist Party, inevitably brings with it the power
of the central
the party state 75
body leadership over the thoughts of its members. Although ideological
unity was attained in Lenin’s time through discussion held at the top,
Stalin himself began to regulate it. Today, post-Stalin “collective
leadership” is satisfied to make it impossible for new social ideas to
appear. Thus, Marxism has become a theory to be defined exclusively by
party leaders. There is no other type of Marxism or Communism today,
and the development of another type is hardly possible.
The social consequences of ideological unity have been tragic: Lenin’s
dictatorship was strict, but Stalin’s dictatorship became totalitarian. The
abolition of all ideological struggle in the party meant the termination of
all freedom in society, since only through the party did the various strata
find expression. Intolerance of other ideas and insistence on the presum-
ably exclusive scientific nature of Marxism were the beginning of
ideological monopoly by party leadership, which later developed into
complete monopoly over society.
Party ideological unity makes independent movements impossible
within the Communist system and within society itself. Every action
depends on the party, which has total control over society; within it
there is not the slightest freedom.
Ideological unity did not arise suddenly but, like everything in

Communism, developed gradually, reaching its greatest height during
the struggle for power between various party factions. It is not at all
accidental that, during Stalin’s ascendancy to power in the mid-1920’s, it
was openly demanded of Trotsky for the first time that he reject all ideas
other than those formulated by the party.
Party ideological unity is the spiritual basis of personal dictatorship.
Without it personal dictatorship cannot even be imagined. It begets and
strengthens the dictatorship, and vice versa. This is understandable; a
monopoly over ideas, or obligatory ideological unity, is only a
complement and a theoretical mask for personal dictatorship. Although
personal dictatorship and ideological unity were already evident in the
76 THE NEW CLASS
beginnings of contemporary Communism or Bolshevism, both are firmly
establishing themselves with Communism’s full power, so that they, as
trends and often as prevailing forms, will never again be abandoned
until the fall of Communism.
The suppression of ideological differences among the leaders has also
abolished fractions and currents, and thus has abolished all democracy in
Communist parties. Thus began the period of the Führer-principle in
Communism: ideologists are merely people with power in the party
regardless of inadequate intellectual ability.
The continuance of ideological unity in the party is an unmistakable
sign of the maintenance of a personal dictatorship, or the dictatorship of a
small number of oligarchs who temporarily work together or maintain a
balance of power, as is the case in the U.S.S.R. today. We find a tendency
toward ideological unity in other parties also, especially in socialist parties
in their earlier stages. However, this is only a tendency in these parties; in
Communist parties it has become obligatory. One is obliged not only to be
a Marxist, but to adopt the type of Marxism desired and prescribed by the
leadership. Marxism has been transformed from a free revolutionary
ideology into a prescribed dogma. As in ancient Eastern despotism, the
top authority interprets and prescribes the dogma, while the emperor is
the archpriest.
The obligatory ideological unity of the party, which has passed through
various phases and forms, has remained the most essential characteristic
of Bolshevik or Communist parties.
If these parties had not at the same time been the beginning of new
classes, and if they had not had a special historical role to play, obligatory
ideological unity could not have existed in them. Except for the
Communist bureaucracy, not a single class or party in modem history has
attained complete ideological unity. None had, before, the task of
transforming all of society, mostly through political and administrative
means. For such a task, a complete, fanatical confidence in the righteous
THE PARTY STATE 77
ness and nobility of their views is necessary. Such a task calls for
exceptional brutal measures against other ideologies and social groups.
It also calls for ideological monopoly over society and for absolute unity
of the ruling class. Communist parties have needed special ideological
solidarity for this reason.
Once ideological unity is established, it operates as powerfully as
prejudice. Communists are educated in the idea that ideological unity,
or the prescription of ideas from above, is the holy of holies, and that
factionalism in the party is the greatest of all crimes.
Complete control of society could not be accomplished without
coming to terms with other socialist groups. Ideological unity, too, is
only possible through a reconciliation within the party’s own ranks.
Both the one and the other occur approximately simultaneously; in the
minds of the adherents of totalitarianism they appear as “objectively”
identical, although the first is a reconciliation of the new class with its
opponents, and the second is a reconciliation within the ruling class. In
fact, Stalin knew that Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, and others were not
foreign spies and traitors to the “socialist fatherland.” However, since
their disagreement with him obviously delayed the establishment of
totalitarian control, he had to destroy them. His crimes within the party
consist of the fact that he transformed “objective unfriendliness”—the
ideological and political differences in the party—into the subjective
guilt of groups and individuals, attributing to them crimes which they
did not commit.
3 .
But this is the inescapable road of every Communist system. The
method of establishing totalitarian control, or ideological unity, may be
less severe than Stalin’s, but the essence is always the same. Even where
industrialization is not the form or con
78 THE NEW CLASS
dition for establishing totalitarian control, as in Czechoslovakia and
Hungary, the Communist bureaucracy is inevitably compelled to establish
the same forms of authority in underdeveloped countries as those
established in the Soviet Union. This does not occur simply because the
Soviet Union imposed such forms on these countries as subordinates, but
because it is within the very nature of Communist parties themselves and
of their ideologies to do so. Party control over society, identification of the
government and governmental machinery with the party, and the right to
express ideas dependent on the amount of power and the position one
holds in the hierarchy; these are the essential and inevitable characteristics
of every Communist bureaucracy as soon as it attains power.
The party is the main force of the Communist state and government. It
is the motive force of everything. It unites within itself the new class, the
government, ownership, and ideas.
For this reason, military dictatorships have not been possible under
Communism, although it seems that military conspiracies have occurred
in the U.S.S.R. Military dictatorships would not be able to encompass all
phases of life, nor even convince the nation temporarily of the need for
exceptional efforts and self- sacrifice. Such can be accomplished only by
the party, and then only by a party with belief in such vast ideals that its
despotism appears to its members and adherents as necessary, as the
highest form of state and social organization.
Viewed from the standpoint of freedom, a military dictatorship in a
Communist system would denote great progress. It would signify the
termination of totalitarian party control, or of a party oligarchy.
Theoretically speaking, however, a military dictatorship would be possible
only in case of a military defeat or an exceptional political crisis. Even in
such a case it would initially be a form of party dictatorship or it would
have to conceal itself in the party. But, this would inevitably lead to a
change in the entire system.
The totalitarian dictatorship of the Communist Party oli
THE PARTY STATE 79
garchy in the Communist system is not the result of momentary political

relations, but of a long and complex social progress. A change in it
would not mean a change in the form of government in one and the
same system, but a change in the system itself, or the beginning of a
change. Such a dictatorship is itself the system, its body and soul, its
essence.
The Communist government very rapidly becomes a small circle of
party leaders. The claim that it is a dictatorship of the proletariat
becomes an empty slogan. The process that leads to this develops with
the inevitability and uncontrollability of the elements, and the theory
that the party is an avant-garde of the proletariat only aids the process.
This does not mean that during the battle for power the party is not
the leader of the working masses or that it is not working in their
interests. But then, the party’s role and struggles are stages and forms
of its movement toward power. Although its struggle aids the working
class, it also strengthens the party, as well as the future power-holders
and the embryonic new class. As soon as it attains power, the party
controls all power and takes all goods into its hands, professing to be
the representative of the interests of the working class and the working
people. Except for short periods during the revolutionary battle, the
proletariat does not participate or play a greater role in this than any
other class.
This does not mean that the proletariat, or some of its strata, are not
temporarily interested in keeping the party in power. The peasants
supported those who professed the intention to rescue them from
hopeless misery through industrialization.
While individual strata of the working classes may temporarily
support the party, the government is not theirs nor is their part in the
government important for the course of social progress and social
relations. In the Communist system nothing is done to aid the working
people, particularly the working class, to attain power and rights. It
cannot be otherwise.
The classes and masses do not exercise authority, but the
80 THE NEW CLASS
party does so in their name. In every party, including the most
democratic, leaders play an important role to the extent that the party’s
authority becomes the authority of the leaders. The so-called
“dictatorship of the proletariat,” which is the beginning of and under the
best circumstances becomes the authority of the party, inevitably evolves
into the dictatorship of the leaders. In a totalitarian government of this
type, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a theoretical justification, or
ideological mask at best, for the authority of some oligarchs.
Marx envisioned the dictatorship of the proletariat as democracy
within and for the benefit of the proletariat; that is, a government in
which there are many socialist streams or parties. The only dictatorship
of the proletariat, the Paris Commune of 1871, on which Marx based his
conclusions, was composed of several parties, among which the Marxist
party was neither the smallest nor the most significant. But a
dictatorship of the proletariat which would be directly operated by the
proletariat is a pure Utopia, since no government can operate without
political organizations. Lenin delegated the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat to the authority of one party, his own. Stalin delegated the
dictatorship of the proletariat to his own personal authority —to his
personal dictatorship in the party and in the state. Since the death of the
Communist emperor, his descendants have been fortunate in that
through “collective leadership” they could distribute authority among
themselves. In any case, the Communist dictatorship of the proletariat is
either a Utopian ideal or a function reserved for an elite group of party
leader.
Lenin thought that the Russian soviets, Marx’s “ultimate discovery,”
were the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the beginning, because of
their revolutionary initiative and because of the participation of the
masses, the soviets did seem to be something of this kind. Trotsky also
believed that the soviets were a contemporary political form just as
parliaments, bom in the struggle against absolute monarchs, have been.
However, these were illusions. The soviets were transformed from revo
THE PARTY STATE 81
lutionary bodies into a form suitable for the totalitarian dictatorship of

the new class, or the party.
This was also the case with Lenin’s democratic centralism, including
both that of the party and of the government. As long as public
differences are tolerated in the party, one can still speak of centralism—
even though it is not a very democratic form of centralism. When
totalitarian authority is created, centralism disappears and the naked
despotism of the oligarchy takes over.
We may conclude from this that there is a constant tendency to
transform an oligarchic dictatorship into a personal dictatorship.
Ideological unity, the inevitable struggle at the top of the party, and the
needs of the system as a whole tend toward personal dictatorship. The
leader who succeeds in getting to the top, along with his assistants, is the
one who succeeds in most logically expressing and protecting the
interests of the new class at any given time.
There is a strong trend toward personal dictatorship in other historical
situations: for instance, all forces must be subordinated to one idea and
one will when industrialization is being pressed or when a nation is at
war. But there is a specific and pure Communist reason for personal
dictatorship: authority is the basic aim and means of Communism and of
every true Communist. The thirst for power is insatiable and irresistible
among Communists. Victory in the struggle for power is equal to being
raised to a divinity; failure means the deepest mortification and disgrace.
The Communist leaders must also tend to personal extravagance —
something which they cannot resist because of human frailty and
because of the inherent need of those in power to be recognizable
prototypes of brilliance and might.
Careerism, extravagance, and love of power are inevitable, and so is
corruption. It is not a matter of the corruption of public servants, for this
may occur less frequently than in the state which preceded it. It is a
special type of corruption caused
82 THE NEW CLASS
by the fact that the government is in the hands of a single political group
and is the source of all privileges. “Care of its men” and their placement in
lucrative positions, or the distribution of all kinds of privileges, becomes
unavoidable. The fact that the government and the party are identical with
the state, and practically with the holding of all property, causes the
Communist state to be one which corrupts itself, in that it inevitably creates
privileges and parasitic functions.
A member of the Yugoslav Communist Party very picturesquely
described the atmosphere in which a regular Communist lives: “I am
really torn into three parts: I see those who have a better automobile than I
have, yet it seems to me that they are not more devoted to the party and to
socialism than I am; I look down from the heights on those who have no
automobile, for they haven’t really earned any. So I’m lucky that I have
the one I have.”
Obviously, he was not a true Communist, but was one of those who
became a Communist because he was an idealist, and then being
disillusioned, tried to be satisfied with what might come to him in a
normal bureaucratic career. The true Communist is a mixture of a fanatic
and an unrestrained power-holder. Only this type makes a true
Communist. The others are idealists or careerists.
Since it is based on administration, the Communist system is
unavoidably bureaucratic with a strict hierarchical organization. In the
Communist system, exclusive groups are established around political
leaders and forums. All policy-making is reduced to wrangling in these
exclusive groups, in which familiarity and cliquishness flower. The
highest group is generally the most intimate. At intimate suppers, on
hunts, in conversations between two or three men, matters of state of the
most vital importance are decided. Meetings of party forums, conferences
of the government and assemblies, serve no purpose but to make
declarations and put in an appearance.
THE PARTY STATE 83
They are only convened to confirm what has previously been cooked up in
intimate kitchens.
The Communists have a fetishist relation toward the state or the
government, exactly as if it were their own property. The same men, the
same groups, which are intimate and familiar inside the party become stiff,
formal, and pompous individuals when they act as representatives of the
state.
This monarchy is anything but enlightened. The monarch himself, the
dictator, does not feel himself to be either a monarch or a dictator. When
he was called dictator, Stalin ridiculed the idea. He felt that he was the
representative of the collective party will. He was right to a degree—since
probably no one else in history ever had as much personal power. He, like
every other Communist dictator, was aware that a retreat from the
ideological bases of the party, from the monopolism of the new class, from
ownership of the nation’s goods, or from the totalitarian power of the
oligarchy, would result in his inevitable downfall. Indeed, no such retreat
was even considered by Stalin, as he was the foremost representative and
creator of the system. However, even he was dependent on the system
created under his administration, or on the opinions of the party oligarchy.
He could do nothing against them nor could he pass over them.
The fact emerges that in the Communist system no one is independent,
neither those at the top nor the leader himself. They are all dependent on
one another and must avoid being separated from their surroundings,
prevailing ideas, controls, and interests.
Is there, then, any sense in talking about the dictatorship of the
proletariat under Communism?
4 .
The Communist theory of the state, a theory worked out in detail by
Lenin and supplemented by Stalin and others,
84 THE NEW CLASS
favors the totalitarian dictatorship of the party bureaucracy. Two

elements are fundamental in the theory: the theory of the state alone and
the theory of the withering away of the state. Both of these elements are
mutually related and together represent the entire theory. Lenin’s theory
of the state is most completely presented in his document The State and
Revolution, which was written while he was hiding from the Provisional
Government on the eve of the October Revolution. Like everything else of
Lenin’s, the theory leans toward the revolutionary aspects of Marxist
teaching. In his discussion of the state Lenin developed this aspect further
and carried it to extremes, utilizing particularly the experience of the
Russian revolution of 1905. Considered historically, Lenin’s document
was of much greater significance as an ideological weapon of the
revolution than it was as a base for development of a new authority built
according to its ideas.
Lenin reduced the state to force, or more precisely, to the organ of
tyranny which one class employs for the sake of oppressing the other
classes. Trying to formulate the nature of the state in the most forceful
way, Lenin noted, “The state is a club.”
Lenin perceived other functions of the state too. But in these functions
he also uncovered what was for him the most indispensable role of the
state — the use of brute force by one class against the others.
Lenin’s theory calling for the destruction of the old state apparatus
was, in fact, far from being a scientific one. This document of Lenin’s —
extremely significant from the historic point of view — would make valid
all that is typical of all Communist theories. In proceeding from
immediate needs, the parties create generalities, ostensibly scientific
conclusions and theories, and proclaim half-truths as truths. The fact that
force and violence are basic characteristics of every state authority, or the
fact that individual social and political forces employ the machinery of
state, particularly in armed clashes, cannot be
THE PARTY STATE 85
denied. However, experience shows that state machinery is necessary to

society, or the nation, for still another reason— for the development and
uniting of its various functions. Communist theory, as well as that of
Lenin, ignores this aspect.
There were, long ago, communities without states and authorities.
They were not social communities, but something in transition between
the semi-animal and human forms of social life. Even these most
primitive communities had some forms of authority. With increasingly
complex forms of social life, it would be naïve to try to prove that the
need for the state would disappear in the future. Lenin, in support of
Marx who agreed with the anarchists about this, contemplated and tried
to establish precisely such a stateless society. Without entering into a
discussion on the extent to which his premises were justified, we must
remember that he contemplated this society as his classless society.
According to this theory there will be no classes and no class struggles;
there will be no one to oppress and to exploit others; and there will be no
need for the state. Until that time, then, the “most democratic” state is
the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” for the reason that it “abolishes”
classes, and by so doing, ostensibly makes itself gradually unnecessary.
Therefore, everything that strengthens that dictatorship, or leads to the
“abolishing” of classes, is justified, progressive, and liberal. In those
places where they are not in control the Communists are pleaders in
behalf of the most democratic measures because this facilitates their
struggles; in those places where they manage to get control, they become
opponents of every democratic form as allegedly a “bourgeois” form.
They currently proclaim the preposterous classification of democracy
into “bourgeois” and “socialist,” although the only proper and fair
distinction must be drawn solely on the basis of the quantity of freedom,
or the universality of freedom.
In the entire Leninist or Communist theory of the state, there are gaps
in the scientific as well as the practical points
86 THE NEW CLASS
of view. Experience has demonstrated that the results are completely
contrary to those envisaged by Lenin. The classes did not disappear under
the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and the “dictatorship of the
proletariat” did not begin to wither away. Actually, the creation of the
total authority of the Communists, and the liquidation of the classes of the
old society, was meant to look like the liquidation of classses in general. But
the growth of state power or, more precisely, of the bureaucracy through
which it enforced its tyranny did not stop with the dictatorship of the
proletariat. Instead it increased. The theory had to be patched up
somehow; Stalin had conceived a still higher “educational” role of the
Soviet state before it “withered.” If Communist theory of the state, and
especially its practice, is reduced to its very essence, i.e., to force and co-
ercion as the principal or only function of the state, Stalin’s theory might
be said to be that the police system has this high or “educational” role to
play. Understandably, only a malicious interpretation could lead to such a
conclusion. And in this theory of Stalin’s there is one of the Communist
half-truths: Stalin did not know how to explain the obvious fact that the
power and might of the state machinery continually grew in the already
“established socialist society.” So he took one of the functions of the
state—the educational function—as the main function. He was not able to
use tyranny since there no longer were any opposition classes.
The situation is the same with the Yugoslav leaders’ theories
concerning “autonomy.” In the clash with Stalin, they had to “rectify” his
“deviations” and do something so that the state would soon begin to
“wither away.” It did not matter to Stalin or to them that they were
further promoting and strengthening that function of the state—force—
which for them was the most important function and one on which they
based their theory of the state.
Stalin’s ideas on how the state withers away while growing stronger,
i.e., the way that the state’s functions continually ex
THE PARTY STATE 87
pand and draw an ever increasing number of citizens into themselves, is
extremely interesting. Perceiving the ever greater and expanding role of
the state machine, despite the already “started” transition into a
“completely classless” Communist society, Stalin thought that the state
would disappear by having all the citizenry rise to the state’s level and
take charge of its affairs. Lenin, moreover, talked about the time when
“even housewives will admininster the government.” Theories resembling
that of Stalin circulate in Yugoslavia, as we have seen. Neither these nor
Stalin’s are able to bridge the ever increasing chasm between the
Communist theories of the state, with the “disappearance” of classes and
the “withering away” of the state in their “socialism” on the one hand, and
the realities of the totalitarian authority of the party bureaucracy on the
other.
5 .
The most important problem for Communism, in theory and practice,
is the question of the state; the question is a constant source of difficulties
since it is such an obvious contradiction inside Communism.
Communist regimes are a form of latent civil war between the
government and the people. The state is not merely an instrument of
tyranny; society as well as the executive bodies of the state machine is in a
continuous and lively opposition to the oligarchy, which aspires to reduce
this opposition by naked force. In practice, the Communists are unable to
attain the goal of a state existing solely on naked force, nor are they able to
subordinate society completely. But they are able to control the organs of
force, that is, the police and party, which in turn control the entire state
machine and its functions. The opposition of the organs and functions of
the state against the “irrationalities” of the party and police, or of
individual polit-
88 THE NEW CLASS
ical functionaries, is really the opposition of society carried over into the
state machine. It is an expression of dissatisfaction because of the
oppression and crippling of society’s objective aspirations and needs.
In Communist systems, the state and state functions are not reduced to
organs of oppression, nor are they identical with them. As an organization
of national and social life, the state is subordinated to these organs of
oppression. Communism is unable to solve this incongruity, for the reason
that by its own totalitarian despotism it inevitably comes in conflict with
dissimilar and opposite tendencies of society, tendencies which are
expressed even through the social functions of the state.
Because of this contradiction, and the unavoidable and constant need of
the Communists to treat the state predominantly as an instrument of force,
the Communist state cannot become a lawful state, or a state in which the
judiciary would be independent of the government and in which laws
could actually be enforced. The whole Communist system is opposed to
such a state. Even if the Communist leaders wished to create a lawful state,
they could not do so without imperiling their totalitarian authority.
An independent judiciary and the rule of law would inevitably make it
possible for an opposition to appear. For instance, no law in the
Communist system opposes the free expression of opinion or the right of
organization. Laws in the Communist system guarantee all sorts of rights
to citizens, and are based on the principle of an independent judiciary. In
practice, there is no such thing.
Freedoms are formally recognized in Communist regimes, but one
decisive condition is a prerequisite for exercising them: freedoms must be
utilized only in the interest of the system of “socialism,” which the
Communist leaders represent, or to buttress their rule. This practice,
contrary as it is to legal regulations, inevitably had to result in the use of
exceptionally severe and unscrupulous methods by police and party
bodies.
THE PARTY STATE 89
Legal forms must be protected on the one hand while the monopoly of
authority must be insured at the same time.
For the most part, in the Communist system, legislative authority cannot
be separated from executive authority. Lenin considered this a perfect
solution. Yugoslav leaders also maintain this. In a one-party system, this is
one of the sources of despotism and omnipotence in government.
In the same way, it has been impossible in practice to separate police
authority from judicial authority. Those who arrest also judge and enforce
punishments, The circle is closed: the executive, the legislative, the
investigating, the court, and the punishing bodies are one and the same.
Why does the Communist dictatorship have to use laws to the great
extent that it does? Why does it have to hide behind legality?
Foreign political propaganda is one of the reasons. Another important
one is the fact that the Communist regime must insure and fix the rights of
those upon whom it depends— the new class — to maintain itself. Laws are
always written from the standpoint of the new class’s or party’s needs or
interests. Officially the laws must be written for all citizens, but citizens
enjoy the rights of these laws conditionally, only if they are not “enemies of
socialism.” Consequently the Communists are constantly concerned that
they might be forced to carry out the laws that they have adopted.
Therefore, they always leave a loophole or exception which will enable
them to evade their laws.
For instance, the Yugoslav legislative authorities stand on the principle
that no one can be convicted except for an act which has been exactly
formulated by the law. However, most of the political trials are held on the
grounds of so-called “hostile propaganda,” although this concept is
purposely not defined but, instead, left up to the judges or secret police.
For these reasons political trials in Communist regimes are mostly
prearranged. The courts have the task of demonstrating
90 THE NEW CLASS
what the power-wielders need to have demonstrated; or have the task of

giving a legal cloak to the political judgment on the “hostile activity” of
the accused.
In trials conducted by this method the confession of the accused is
most important. He himself must acknowledge that he is an enemy. Thus,
the thesis is confirmed. Evidence, little as there may be of it, must be
replaced by confession of guilt.
The political trials in Yugoslavia are only pocket editions of the
Moscow trials. The so-called Moscow trials are the most grotesque and
bloody examples of judicial and legal comedies in the Communist system.
The majority of other trials are similar insofar as acts and punishments are
concerned.
How are political trials handled?
First, upon the suggestion of party functionaries, the party police
establish that someone is an “enemy” of existing conditions; that, if
nothing else, his views and discussions with close friends represent
trouble, at least for the local authorities. The next step is the preparation
of the legal removal of the enemy. This is done either through a
provocateur, who provokes the victim to make “embarrassing statements,”
to take part in illegal organizing, or to commit similar acts; or it is done
through a “stool pigeon” who simply bears witness against the victim
according to the wishes of the police. Most of the illegal organizations in
Communist regimes are created by the secret police in order to lure
opponents into them and to put these opponents in a position where the
police can settle accounts with them. The Communist government does
not discourage “objectionable” citizens from committing law violations
and crimes; in fact it prods them into such violations and crimes.
Stalin generally operated without the courts, using torture extensively.
However, even if torture is not used and the courts are used instead, the
essence is the same: Communists settle accounts with their opponents not
because they have committed crimes, but because they are opponents. It
can be said that most political criminals who are punished are innocent
from
THE PARTY STATE 91
a legal point of view, even though they are opponents of the regime. From
the Communist point of view, these opponents are punished by “due
process of law,” although there may be no legal basis for their being
convicted.
When citizens spontaneously turn against the regime’s measures, the
Communist authorities handle them without regard to constitutional and
legal regulations. Modern history has no record of actions against the
opposition of the masses which are as brutal, inhuman, and unlawful as
those of Communist regimes. The action taken in Poznan is the best
known, but not the most brutal. Occupying and colonial powers seldom
take such severe measures, even though they are conquerors and
accomplish their actions by the use of extraordinary laws and measures.
The Communist power-wielders accomplish them in their very “own”
country by trampling on their own laws.
Even in non-political matters, the judiciary and the legislative
authorities are not safe from the despots. The totalitarian class and its
members cannot help but mix into the affairs of the judiciary and the
legislative authorities. This is an everyday occurrence.
An article in the March 23, 1955, issue of the Belgrade newspaper
Politika (Politics) offers this suitable illustration of the real role and position
of the courts in Yugoslavia (although there has always been a higher
degree of legality in Yugoslavia than in other Communist countries):
In a discussion of problems connected with criminals operating

in the economy, at a 2-day annual conference, presided over by
public prosecutor Brana Jevremovic, the public prosecutors of the
republics, of the Vojvodina, and of Belgrade announced that
cooperation between the judiciary organs and the autonomous
organs in the economy and all political organizations is necessary
for complete success in the battle against criminals operating in the
economy and all political organizations....
The public prosecutors think that society has not yet reacted
92 THE NEW CLASS
with sufficient vigor with regard to ridding itself of such criminals.
...
The prosecutors agreed that society’s reaction must be more
effective. According to the thinking of the prosecutors, more severe
penalties and more severe methods of executing penalties are only
some of the measures that should be taken. . . .
The examples cited in the discussions confirm the opinions that
some hostile elements which have lost the battle on the political field
have now entered the economic field. Consequently, the problem of
the criminal in the economy is not only a legal problem, but also a
political one, which requires the cooperation of all government
agencies and social organizations. . . .
Summing up the discussion, federal public prosecutor Brana
Jevremovic emphasized the significance of legality in conditions
resulting from the decentralization that has taken place in
Yugoslavia, and pointed out the justification for the severity with
which our highest leaders have sentenced individuals guilty of
criminal action against the economy.
It is obvious that prosecutors decide that the courts shall judge and that
penalties shall be imposed according to the intent of the “highest leaders.”
What then is left of the courts and of legality?
In the Communist system legal theories change according to
circumstances and the needs of the oligarchy. Vishinsky’s principle which
calls for a sentence to be based on “maximum reliability,” that is, on
political analysis and need, has been abandoned. Even if more humane or
more scientific principles are adopted, the substance will not change until
the relationship between the government and the judiciary and the law
itself is changed. Periodic campaigns for “legality,” and Khrushchev’s
bragging that the party has “now” succeeded in putting the police and the
judiciary under control, only reveal changes in the form of increased
needs of the ruling class for legal security. They do not show changes in
the ruling class’s position toward society, the state, the courts, or the laws.
THE PARTY STATE 93
6.
The Communist legal system cannot free itself of formalism, nor abolish
the decisive influence of party units and the police in trials, elections, and
similar events. The higher up one goes, the more legality becomes a mere
ornament, and the greater the role of government in the judiciary, in
elections, and the like becomes.
The emptiness and pomposity of Communist elections is generally well
known; if I remember correctly, Attlee wittily called them “a race with one
horse.” It seems to me that something should be said: Why is it that
Communists cannot do without elections, even though they have no effect
on political relations; and cannot do without such a costly and empty
undertaking as a parliamentary establishment?
Again, propaganda and foreign policy are among the reasons. There is
also this: no government, not even a Communist one, can exist without
everything being legally constituted. Under contemporary conditions this
is done by means of elected representatives. The people must formally
confirm everything the Communists do.
Besides this there is a deeper and more important reason for the
parliamentary system in Communist states. It is necessary that the top
party bureaucracy, or the political core of the new class, approve the
measures taken by the government, its supreme body. A Communist
government can ignore general public opinion, but every Communist
government is bound by the public opinion of the party, and by
Communist public opinion. Consequently, even though elections have
scarcely any meaning for Communists, the selection of those who will be
in the parliament is done very carefully by the top party group. In the
selection, account is taken of all circumstances, such as services, role and
function in the movement and in society, the professions represented, etc.
From the intra-party point of view, elections for leadership are very
important: the leaders dis-
94 THE NEW CLASS
tribute those party powers in the parliament which they think are most
important. Thus the leadership has the legality it needs to operate in the
name of the party, class, and people.
Attempts to allow two or more Communists to contend for the same seat
in parliament have had no constructive results. There were several instances
where this was attempted in Yugoslavia, but the leadership decided that
such attempts were “disrupting.” News has recently been received of a large
number of Communist candidates competing for the same positions in the
eastern European countries. The intention may be to have two or more
candidates for every office, but there is little possibility that this will be done
systematically. It would be a step forward, and might even be the beginning
of a turning toward democracy by the Communist system. However, it
seems to me that there is still a long way to go before such measures will be
realized and that development in eastern Europe will first turn in the
direction of the Yugoslav system of “workers’ management,” instead of
becoming a political democracy with its attendant changes. The despotic
core still holds everything in its hands, conscious of the fact that
relinquishment of its traditional party unity would prove very dangerous.
Every freedom within the party imperils not only the authority of the
leaders, but totalitarianism itself.
Communist parliaments are not in a position to make decisions on
anything important. Selected in advance as they are, flattered that they have
been thus selected, representatives do not have the power or the courage to
debate even if they wanted to do so. Besides, since their mandate does not
depend on the voters, representatives do not feel that they are answerable to
them. Communist parliaments are justifiably called “mausoleums” for the
representatives who compose them. Their right and role consist of
unanimously approving from time to time that which has already been
decided for them from the wings. Another type of parliament is not required
for this system of
THE PARTY STATE 95
government; indeed, the reproach could be made that any other type would
be superfluous and too costly.
7 .
Founded by force and violence, in constant conflict with its people, the
Communist state, even if there are no external reasons, must be militaristic.
The cult of force, especially military force, is nowhere so prevalent as in
Communist countries. Militarism is the internal basic need of the new class;
it is one of the forces which make possible the new class’s existence, strength,
and privileges.
Under constant pressure to be primarily and, when necessary, exclusively
an organ of violence, the Communist state has been a bureaucratic state since
the beginning. Maintained by the despotism of a handful of power-wielders,
the Communist state wields more power than any other state organization
does with the aid of diverse laws and regulations. Soon after its establish-
ment, the Communist state becomes replete with so many regulations that
even judges and lawyers have difficulty in finding their way through them.
Everything has to be accurately regulated and confirmed, even though little
profit is derived thereby. For ideological reasons Communist legislators
often issue various laws without taking the real situation and practical
possibilities into consideration. Immersed in legal and abstract “socialist”
formulas, not subject to criticism or opposition, they compress life into
paragraphs, which the assemblies mechanically ratify.
The Communist government is non-bureaucratic, however, where a
question of the needs of the oligarchy and the working methods of its
leaders is involved. Even in exceptional cases state and party heads do not
like to fetter themselves with regulations. Policy-making and the right of
political determination
96 THE NEW CLASS
are in their hands, and these cannot bear procrastination or too strict
formalization. In decisions concerning the economy as a whole and in all
other matters except unimportant, representational, and formal
questions, the heads function without excessive restrictions. The creators
of the most rigid type of bureaucratism and political centralism are not as
individuals bureaucrats nor are they bound by legal regulations. For ex-
ample, Stalin was not a bureaucrat in any respect. Disorder and delay
prevail in the offices and establishments of many Communist leaders.
This does not prevent them from temporarily taking a stand “against
bureaucratism,” that is, against both unscrupulousness and slowness in
administration. They are today battling against the Stalinist form of
bureaucratic administration. However, they have no intention of
eliminating the real, fundamental bureaucratism rampant in the
management of the political apparatus inside the economy and state.
In this “battle against bureaucratism,” Communist leaders usually refer
to Lenin. However, a very careful study of Lenin reveals that he did not
foresee that the new system was moving toward political bureaucracy. In
the conflict with the bureaucracy inherited partly from the Czar’s
administration, Lenin attributed most of the difficulties to the fact that
“there are no apparatuses composed from a list of Communists or from a
list of members of Soviet party schools.” The old officials disappeared
under Stalin, and Communists from the “list” stepped into their places,
and in spite of this, bureaucratism grew. Even in places like Yugoslavia
where there was a considerable weakening of bureaucratic
administration, its essence, the monopoly of political bureaucracy and the
relations resulting from it, was not abolished. Even when it is abolished as
an adminstrative method of management, bureaucratism continues to
exist as a political-social relation.
The Communist state, or government, is working toward the complete
impersonalization of the individual, the nation, and
THE PARTY STATE 97
even of its own representatives. It aspires to turn the entire state into a
state of functionaries. It aspires to regulate and control, either directly or
indirectly, wages, housing conditions, and even intellectual activities. The
Communists do not distinguish people as to whether or not they are
functionaries—all persons are considered to be functionaries—but by the
amount of pay they receive and the number of privileges they enjoy. By
means of collectivization, even the peasant gradually becomes a member
of the general bureaucratic society.
However, this is the external view. In the Communist system social
groups are sharply divided. In spite of such differences and conflicts,
though, the Communist society is as a whole more unified than any
other. The weakness of the whole lies in its compulsory attitudes and
relationships and the conflicting elements of its composition. However,
every part is dependent on every other part, just as in a single, huge
mechanism.
In a Communist government, or state, just as in an absolute monarchy,
the development of human personality is an abstract ideal. In the period
of the absolute monarchy, when mercantilists imposed the state upon the
economy, the crown itself— for example, Catherine the Great—thought
that the government was obliged to re-educate the people. The
Communist leaders operate and think in the same way. However, during
the time of the absolute monarchy, the government did this in an attempt
to subordinate existing ideas to its own. Today, in the Communist
system, the government is simultaneously the owner and the ideologist.
This does not mean that the human personality has disappeared or that it
has been changed into a dull, impersonal cog which rotates in a large,
merciless state mechanism, in accordance with the will of an omnipotent
sorcerer. Personality, by its own nature both collective and individual, is
indestructible, even under the Communist system. Of course it is stifled
under this system more than under other systems, and its individuality
has to be manifested in a different way.
98 THE NEW CLASS
Its world is a world of petty daily cares. When these cares and wishes
collide with the fortress of the system, which holds a monopoly over the
material and intellectual life of the people, even this petty world is not free
or secure. In the Communist system, insecurity is the way of life for the
individual. The state gives him the opportunity to make a living, but on
condition that he submit. The personality is torn between what it desires
and what it can actually have. It is free to recognize the interests of the
collective and to submit to them, just as in every other system; but also it
may rebel against the usurping representatives of the collective. Most of the
individuals in the Communist system are not opposed to socialism, but op-
posed to the way in which it is being achieved—this confirms the fact that
the Communists are not developing any sort of true socialism. The
individual rebels against those limitations which are in the interest of the
oligarchy, not against those which are in the interest of society.
Anyone who does not live under these systems has a hard time grasping
how human beings, particularly such proud and brave peoples, could have
given up their freedom of thought and work to such an extent. The most
accurate, though not the most complete, explanation for this situation is the
severity and totality of tyranny. But at the root of this situation, there are
deeper reasons.
One reason is historical; the people were forced to undergo the loss of
freedom in the irresistible drive toward economic change. Another reason is
of an intellectual and moral nature. Since, industrialization had become a
matter of life or death, socialism, or Communism, as its ideal expression,
became the ideal and hope, almost to the point of religious obsession
among some of the population at large as well as the Communists. In the
minds of those who did not belong to the old social classes, a deliberate and
organized revolt against the party, or against the government, would have
been tantamount to treason against the homeland and the highest ideals.
THE PARTY STATE 99
The most important reason why there was no organized resistance to
Communism lies deep in the all-inclusiveness and totalitarianism of the
Communist state. It had penetrated into all the pores of society and of the
personality—into the vision of the scientists, the inspiration of poets, and
the dreams of lovers. To rise against it meant not only to die the death of a
desperate individual, but to be branded and excommunicated from
society. There is no air or light under the Communist government’s iron
fist.
Neither of the two main types of opposition groups—that stemming
from the older classes and that stemming from original Communism
itself—found ways and means of combating this encroachment on their
liberty. The first group was tugging backward, while the second group
carried on a pointless and thoughtless revolutionary activity, and engaged
in quibbling about dogma with the regime. Conditions were not yet ripe
for the finding of new roads.
Meanwhile, the people were instinctively suspicious of the new road
and resisted every step and small detail. Today, this resistance is the
greatest, the most real threat to Communist regimes. The Communist
oligarchs no longer know what the masses think or feel. The regimes feel
insecure in a sea of deep and dark discontent.
Though history has no record of any other system so sucess- ful in
checking its opposition as the Communist dictatorship, none ever has
provoked such profound and far-reaching discontent. It seems that the more
the conscience is crushed and the less the opportunities for establishing an
organization exist, the greater the discontent.
Communist totalitarianism leads to total discontent, in which all
differences of opinion are gradually lost, except despair and hatred.
Spontaneous resistance—the dissatisfaction of millions with the everyday
details of life—is the form of resistance that the Communists have not been
able to smother. This was confirmed during the Soviet-German war. When
the Germans
100 THE NEW CLASS
first attacked the U.S.S.R., there seemed to be little desire for resistance among
the Russians. However, Hitler soon revealed that his intentions were the
destruction of the Russian state and the changing of the Slavs and other
Soviet peoples into impersonal slaves of the Herrenvolk. From the depths of
the people there emerged the traditional, unquenchable love for the
homeland. During the entire war Stalin did not mention either the Soviet
government or its socialism to the people; he mentioned only one thing—the
homeland. And it was worth dying for, in spite of Stalin’s socialism.
8 .
The Communist regimes have succeeded in solving many problems that
had baffled the systems they replaced. They are also succeeding in solving the
nationality problem as it existed up to the time they came to power. They
have not been able to resolve the conflict of national bourgeoisie completely,
however. The problem has reappeared in the Communist regimes in a new
and more serious form.
National rule is being established in the U.S.S.R. through a highly
developed bureaucracy. In Yugoslavia, however, disputes are arising because
of friction between national bureaucracies. Neither the first nor the second
case concerns national disputes in the old sense. The Communists are not
nationalists; for them, the insistence on nationalism is only a form, just like
any other form, through which they strengthen their powers. For this purpose
they may even act like vehement chauvinists from time to time. Stalin was a
Georgian, but in practice and in propaganda, whenever necessary, he was a
rabid Great Russian. Among Stalin’s errors, even Khrushchev admitted, was
the terrible truth of the extermination of entire peoples. Stalin and Company
used the national prejudices of the largest nation—the Russian nation—just as
if it had been
THE PARTY STATE 10l
composed of Hottentots. The Communist leaders will always take recourse

to anything they find useful, such as the preaching of equality of rights
among the national bureaucracies, which is practically the same to them as
the demand for equality of rights among nationalities.
National feelings and national interest, however, do not lie at the basis of
the conflict between the Communist national bureaucracies. The motive is
quite different: it is supremacy in one’s own zone, in the sphere which is
under one’s administration. The struggle over the reputation and powers of
one’s own republic does not go much further than a desire to strengthen
one’s own power. The national Communist state units have no significance
other than that they are administrative divisions, on the basis of language.
The Communist bureaucrats are vehement local patriots on behalf of their
own administrative units, even though they have not been trained for the
part on either a linguistic or a national basis. In some purely administrative
units in Yugoslavia (the regional councils), chauvinism has been greater
than in the national republic governments.
Among the Communists one can encounter both shortsighted
bureaucratic chauvinism and a decline of national consciousness, even in
the very same people, depending upon opportunities and requirements.
The languages which the Communists speak are hardly the same as
those of their own people. The words are the same, but the expressions, the
meaning, the inner sense—all of these are their very own.
While they are autarchical with regard to other systems and localistic
within their own system, the Communists can be fervent internationalists
when it is to their interest to be so. The various nations, each of which once
had its own form and color, its own history and hopes, stand virtually still
now, gray and languid, beneath the all-powerful, all-knowing, and
essentially non-national oligarchies. The Communists did not
102 the new class
succeed in exciting or awakening the nations; in this sense they also failed to
solve nationality questions. Who knows anything nowadays about
Ukrainian writers and political figures? What has happened to that nation,
which is the same size as France, and was once the most advanced nation in
Russia? You would think that only an amorphous and formless mass of
people could remain under this impersonal machine of oppression.
However, this is not the case.
Just as personality, various social classes, and ideas still live, so do the
nations still live; they function; they struggle against despotism; and they
preserve their distinctive features undestroyed. If their consciences and
souls are smothered, they are not broken. Though they are under
subjugation, they have not yielded. The force activating them today is more
than the old or bourgeois nationalism; it is an imperishable desire to be their
own masters, and, by their own free development, to attain an increasingly
fuller fellowship with the rest of the human race in its eternal existence.
Dogmatism in the Economy
1 .
The development of the economy in Communism is not the basis for,
but a reflection of, the development of the regime itself from a
revolutionary dictatorship to a reactionary despotism. This development,
through struggles and disputes, demonstrates how the interference of
government in the economy, necessary at first, has gradually turned into a
vital, personal interest on the part of the ruling bureaucrats, (jnitially, the
state seizes all means of production in order to control all investments for
rapid industrialization. Ultimately, further economic development has
come to be guided mainly in the interests of the ruling class.
Other types of owners do not act in an essentially different manner;
they are always motivated by some sort of personal interest. However, the
thing that distinguishes the new class from other types of owners is that it
has in its hands, more or less, all the national resources, and that it is
developing its economic power in a deliberate and organized manner. A
deliberate system of unification is also used by other classes, such as polit-
ical and economic organizations. Because there are a number of owners
and many forms of property, all in mutual conflict, spontaneity and
competition have been preserved in all econ-
103
104 THE NEW CLASS
omies preceding the Communist one, at least under normal or peaceful

conditions.
Even the Communist economy has not succeeded in repressing
spontaneity, but in contrast to all others, it constantly insists that
spontaneity should be achieved.
This practice has its theoretic justification. The Communist leaders really
believe that they know economic laws and that they can administer
production with scientific accuracy. The truth is that the only thing they
know how to do is to seize control of the economy. Their ability to do this,
just like their victory in the revolution, has created the illusion in their
minds that they succeeded because of their exceptional scientific ability.
Convinced of the accuracy of their theories, they administer the economy
largely according to these theories. It is a standard joke that the Communists
first equate an economic measure with a Marxist idea and then proceed to
carry out the measure. In Yugoslavia, it has been officially declared that
planning is conducted according to Marx; but Marx was neither a planner
nor a planning expert. In practice, nothing is done according to Marx.
However, the claim that planning is conducted according to Marx satisfies
people’s consciences and is used to justify tyranny and economic
domination for “ideal” aims and according to “scientific” discoveries.
Dogmatism in the economy is an inseparable part of the Communist
system. However, the forcing of the economy into dogmatic molds is not the
outstanding feature of the Communist economic system. In this economy
the leaders are masters in “adapting” theory; they depart from theory when
it is to their interest to do so.
In addition to being motivated by the historical need for rapid
industrialization, the Communist bureaucracy has been compelled to
establish a type of economic system designed to insure the perpetuation of
its own power. Allegedly for the sake of a classless society and for the
abolition of exploitation,
DOGMATISM IN THE ECONOMY 105
it has created a closed economic system, with forms of property which
facilitate the party’s domination and its monopoly. At first, the
Communists had to turn to this “collectivistic” form for objective reasons.
Now they continue to strengthen this form—without considering whether
or not it is in the interest of the national economy and of further
industrialization—for their own sake, for an exclusive Communist class
aim. They first administered and controlled the entire economy for so-
called ideal goals; later they did it for the purpose of maintaining their
absolute control and domination. That is the real reason for such far-
reaching and inflexible political measures in the Communist economy.
In an interview in 1956, Tito admitted that there are “socialist elements”
in Western economies, but that they are not “deliberately” introduced into
the economies as such. This expresses the whole Communist idea: only
because “socialism” is established “deliberately”—by organized
compulsion—in the economics of their countries must the Communists
preserve the despotic method of governing and their own monopoly of
ownership.
This attribution of great and even decisive significance to
“deliberateness” in the development of the economy and society reveals
the compulsory and selfish character of Communist economic policy.
Otherwise, why would such an insistence on deliberateness be necessary?
The strong opposition of Communists to all forms of ownership except
those which they consider to be socialist indicates, above all, their
uncontrollable desires to gain and maintain power. They abandoned or
altered this radical attitude, however, when it was against their interest to
hold to it; thus they treated their own theory badly. In Yugoslavia, for
instance, they first created and then dissolved the kolkhozes in the name of
“error-free Marxism” and “socialism.” Today they are pursuing a third,
and confused, middle-of-the-road line in the same matter. There are similar
examples in all Communist coun
106 THE NEW CLASS
tries. However, the abolition of all forms of private ownership except their
own is their unchanging purpose.
Every political system gives expression to economic forces and
attempts to administer them. The Communists cannot attain complete
control over production, but they have succeeded in controlling it to such
an extent that they continuously subordinate it to their ideological and
political goals. In this way, Communism differs from every other political
system.
2.
The Communists interpret the special role of those who produce in
terms of their total ownership and, even more important, often in terms
of the overriding role of ideology in the economy.
Immediately after the revolution, freedom of employment was
curtailed in the U.S.S.R. But the need of the regime for rapid
industrialization did not bring about complete curtailment of such
freedom. This took place only after the victory of the industrial revolution
and after the new class had been created. In 1940 a law was passed
forbidding freedom of employment and punishing people for quitting
their jobs. In this period and after World War II, a form of slave labor
developed, namely, the labor camps. Moreover, the borderline between
work in the labor camps and work in factories was almost completely
eliminated.
Labor camps and various kinds of “voluntary” work activities are only
the worst and most extreme forms of compulsory labor. This can be of a
temporary character in other systems but under Communism
compulsory labor has remained a permanent feature. Although
compulsory labor did not take the same form in other Communist
countries nor develop there to the extent that it has in the U.S.S.R., none
of these countries has completely free employment.
Compulsory labor in the Communist system is the result of
monopoly of ownership over all, or almost all, national property. The
worker finds himself in the position of having not only to sell his labor;
he must sell it under conditions which are beyond his control, since he
is unable to seek another, better employer. There is only one employer,
the state. The worker has no choice but to accept the employer’s terms.
The worst and most harmful element in early capitalism from the
worker’s standpoint—the labor market—has been replaced by the
monopoly over labor of the ownership of the new class. This has not
made the worker any freer.
In the Communist system the worker is not like the ancient type of
slave, not even when he is in compulsory labor camps: the ancient slave
was treated both theoretically and practically as an object. Even the
greatest mind of antiquity, Aristotle, believed that people were bom
either freemen or slaves. Though he believed in humane treatment of
slaves and advocated the reform of the slavery system, he still regarded
slaves as took of production. In the modem system of technology, it is
not possible to deal this way with a worker, because only a literate and
interested worker can do the sort of work required. Compulsory labor
in the Communist system is quite different from slavery in antiquity or
in later history. It is the result of ownership and political relationships,
not, or only to a slight extent, the result of the technological level of
production.
Since modem technology requires a worker who can dispose of a
considerable amount of freedom, it is in latent conflict with compulsory
forms of labor, or with the monopoly of ownership and the political
totalitarianism of Communism. Under Communism the worker is
technically free, but his possibilities to use his freedom are extremely
limited. The formal limitation of freedom is not an inherent
characteristic of Communism, but it is a phenomenon which occurs
under Communism. It is especially apparent with regard to work and
the labor force itself.
108 THE NEW CLASS
Labor cannot be free in a society where all material goods are

monopolized by one group. The labor force is indirectly the property of that
group, although not completely so, since the worker is an individual human
being who himself uses up part of his labor. Speaking in the abstract, the
labor force, taken as a whole, is a factor in total social production. The new
ruling class with its material and political monopoly uses this factor almost
to the same extent that it does other national goods and elements of
production and treats it the same way, disregarding the human factor.
Dealing with labor as a factor in production, working conditions in
various enterprises, or the connection between wages and profits, are of no
concern to the bureaucracy. Wages and working conditions are determined
in accordance with an abstract concept of labor, or in accordance with
individual qualifications, with little or no regard for the actual results of
production in the respective enterprises or branches of industry. This is
only a general rule; there are exceptions, depending on conditions and
requirements. But the system leads inevitably to lack of interest on the part
of the actual producers, i.e., the workers. It also leads to low quality of
output, a decline in real productivity and technological progress, and
deterioration of plant. The Communists are constantly struggling for
greater productivity on the part of the individual workers, paying little or
no attention to the productivity of the labor force as a whole.
In such a system, efforts to stimulate the worker are inevitable and
frequent The bureaucracy offers all kinds of awards and allowances to
counteract lack of interest. But as long as the Communists do not change the
system itself, as long as they retain their monopoly of all ownership and all
government, they cannot stimulate the individual worker for long, much
less stimulate the labor force as a whole.
Elaborate attempts to give the workers a share in the profits have been
made in Yugoslavia and are now being contemplated in the East European
countries. These quickly result in the
retention of “excess profits” in the hands of the bureaucracy who justify

this action by saying that they are checking inflation and investing the
money wisely. All that remains for the worker are small, nominal sums
and the “right” to suggest how they should be invested through the
party and trade union organization—through the bureaucracy. Without
the right to strike and to decide on who owns what, the workers have not
had much chance to obtain a real share of the profits. It has become clear
that all these rights are mutually interwoven with various forms of
political freedom. They cannot be attained in isolation from each other.
In such a system, free trade union organizations are impossible, and
strikes can happen very rarely, such as the explosions of worker
dissatisfaction in East Germany in 1954 and in Poznan in 1956.
The Communists explain the enforced absence of strikes by saying that
the “working class” is in power and owns the means of production
through its state, so that if it did strike, it would be striking against itself.
This naïve explanation is based on the fact that in the Communist system
the owner of property is not a private individual, but, as we know,
camouflaged by the fact that he is collective and formally unidentifiable.
Above all, strikes under the Communist system are impossible
because there is only one owner who is in charge of all goods and of the
entire labor force. It would be hard to take any effective action against
him without the participation of all the workers. A strike of one or more
enterprises—supposing that such a thing could happen at all under a
total dictatorship —cannot really threaten that owner. His property does
not consist of those individual enterprises but of the production machine
as a whole. The owner is not harmed by losses in individual enterprises,
because the producers, or society as a whole, must make up for such
losses. Because of this, strikes
110 THE NEW CLASS
are more of a political than an economic problem for the Communists.
While individual strikes are almost impossible, and hopeless as far as
potential results are concerned, there are no proper political conditions
for general strikes and they can occur only in exceptional situations.
Whenever individual strikes have taken place, they have usually
changed into general strikes and have taken on a distinctly political
character. In addition, Communist regimes constantly divide and disrupt
the working class by means of paid functionaries, raised from its ranks,
who “educate” it, “uplift it ideologically,” and direct it in its daily life.
Trade union organizations and other professional organizations,
because of their purpose and function, can only be the appendages of a
single owner and potentate—the political oligarchy. Thus, their “main”
purpose is the job of “building socialism” or increasing production. Their
other functions are to spread illusions and an acquiescent mood among
the workers. These organizations have played only one important role—
the lifting of the cultural level of the working classes.
Workers’ organizations under the Communist system are really
“company” or “yellow” organizations of a special kind. The expression
“of a special kind” is used here because the employer is at the same time
the government and the exponent of the predominant ideology. In other
systems those two factors are generally separate from each other, so that
the workers, even though unable to rely on either one of them, are at least
able to take advantage of the differences and conflicts between them.
It is not accidental that the working class is the main concern of the
regime; not for idealistic or humanitarian reasons, but simply because
this is the class on which production depends and on which the rise and
the very existence of the new class depends.
3 .
In spite of the fact that there is no free employment or free workers’
organizations, there is a limit to exploitation, even in the Communist
system. The search for this limit would require a deeper and more
concrete analysis. We will concern ourselves here only with its most
important aspects.
In addition to political limits—fear of dissatisfaction among the
workers and other considerations which are subject to change—there
are also constant limits to exploitation: the forms and degrees of
exploitation which become too costly for the system must sooner or
later be discontinued.
Thus, by the decree of April 25, 1956, in the U.S.S.R., the
condemnation of workers for tardiness or for quitting their jobs was
canceled. Also a great many workers were released from labor camps;
these were cases in which it was impossible to distinguish between
political prisoners and those whom the regime had thrown into labor
camps because it needed a labor force. This decree did not result in a
completely freed labor force, for considerable limitations still remained
in force, but it did represent the most significant progress made after
Stalin’s death.
Compulsory slave labor brought political difficulties to the regime
and also became too costly as soon as advanced technology was
introduced in the U.S.S.R. A slave laborer, no matter how little you
feed him, costs more than he can produce when you count the
administrative apparatus needed to assure his coercion. His labor
becomes senseless and must be discontinued. Modem production
limits exploitation in other ways. Machinery cannot be operated
efficiently by exhausted compulsory labor, and adequate health and
cultural conditions have become an indispensable prerequisite.
The limits to exploitation in the Communist system are paralleled by
limits to the freedoms of the labor force. These
112 THE NEW CLASS
freedoms are determined by the nature of ownership and government.
Until ownership and government are changed, the labor force cannot
become free and must remain subject to moderate or severe forms of
economic and administrative coercion.
Because of its production needs, a Communist regime regulates labor
conditions and the status of the labor force. It takes many-sided and all-
encompassing social measures: it regulates such things as working hours,
vacations, insurance, education, the labor of women and children. Many of
these measures are largely nominal; many are also of a progressively
harmful character.
In a Communist system the tendency to regulate labor relations and to
maintain order and peace in production is constant. The single and
collective owner solves labor-force problems on an all-encompassing scale.
It cannot support “anarchy” in anything, and certainly not in the labor
force. It must regulate it just as much as every other aspect of production.
The great boast that there is full employment in Communist systems
cannot hide the wounds which become evident as one looks more closely.
As soon as all material goods are controlled by one body, these goods, like
manpower needs, must become the subject of planning. Political necessities
play an important role in planning and this unavoidably results in the
retention of a number of branches of industry, which survive at the expense
of others. Thus planning hides actual unemployment. As soon as sectors of
the economy can engage in freer play, or as soon as it becomes unnecessary
for the regime to sustain and strengthen one branch at the expense of
another, unemployment will recur. More extensive ties with the world
market can also cause this trend.
Consequently, full employment is not the result of Communist
“socialism” but of an economic policy carried out by command; in the final
analysis, full employment is the result of disharmony and production
inefficiency. It does not reveal
the power but the weakness of the economy. Yugoslavia was short of
workers until it achieved a satisfactory degree of production efficiency. As
soon as it did, there was unemployment Unemployment would be even
higher if Yugoslavia attained maximum production efficiency.
In Communist economies full employment conceals unemployment.
The poverty of all conceals the unemployment of some, just as the
phenomenal progress of some sectors of the economy conceals the
backwardness of others.
By the same token, this type of monopoly ownership and government is
able to prevent economic collapse, but incapable of preventing chronic
crises. The selfish interests of the new class and the ideological character of
the economy make it impossible to maintain a healthy and harmonious
system.
4 .
Marx was not the first to visualize the economy of future society on a
planned basis. But he was the first, or among the first, to recognize that a
modem economy unavoidably tends toward planning because, in addition
to social reasons, it is being established on the basis of scientific technology.
Monopolies were the first to plan on a gigantic national and international
scale. Today, planning is a general phenomenon and an important element
of the economic policy of most governments, even though it has a different
character in industrially developed countries from that in industrially
undeveloped ones. Planning becomes necessary when production reaches
an advanced stage and when social, international, and other conditions are
subject to similar trends. It does not have much connection with anyone’s
theories, let alone those of Marx, which were constructed on a far lower
level of social and economic relations.
H4 THE NEW CLASS
When the U.S.S.R. became the first country to embark upon national
planning, its leaders, who were Marxists, connected this planning with
Marxism. The truth is this: although Marx’s teachings were the idealistic basis
of the revolution in Russia, his teachings also became the cover for later
measures taken by the Soviet leaders.
All of the historical and specific reasons for Soviet planning were
attributed to corresponding theories. Marx’s theory was the closest and most
acceptable because of the social basis and the past of the Communist
movement.
Although leaning heavily on Marx in the beginning, Communist planning
has a more profound idealistic and material background. How can an
economy be administered other than as a planned economy when it has or is
going to have a single owner? How could such tremendous investments be
made for the purpose of industrializing if they were not planned? Something
must be needed before it can become an ideal. So it is with Communist
planning. It is dedicated to the development of those branches of the economy
which will insure the strengthening of the regime. This is the general rule,
although in every Communist country, especially those which become
independent of Moscow, there are exceptions to this rule.
Of course, the development of the national economy as a whole is
important for the strengthening of the regime, for it is impossible permanently
to separate progress in one branch of production from another. Planning
emphasis in every Communist system is always directed toward branches of
the economy that are considered to be of decisive importance in maintaining
the political stability of the regime. These branches are ones that enhance the
role, power, and privileges of the bureaucracy. They also are the ones that
strengthen the regime in its relations to other countries and make it possible
for the regime to industrialize to a greater degree. Up to now, they have been
branches of heavy and war industries. This does not mean that the situation
cannot change in individual countries.
Recently atomic energy, especially in the U.S.S.R., has begun to take first
place in the plan; I should say that this is happening because of military,
foreign and political considerations rather than for any other.
Everything is subordinated to these aims. Consequently, many
branches of the economy are lagging and working inefficiently;
disproportions and difficulties are inevitable; and excessive production
costs and chronic inflation are rampant According to André Philipe (in
the New Leader, October 1, 1956), investments in heavy industry in the
U.S.S.R. increased from the 53.3 per cent of total investments in 1954 to 60
per cent of total investments in 1955. Twenty-one per cent of the net
national income is being invested in industry, with a concentration on
heavy industry, although heavy industry only contributed 7.4 per cent to
the increase in income per capita, 6.4 per cent of which was due to
increased production.
It is understandable why, under such conditions, the standard of living
is the last concern of the new owners, even though, as Marx himself
maintains, men are the most important factor in production. According to
Edward Crankshaw, who is close to the British Labour Party, a desperate
battle for survival must be fought in the U.S.S.R. by those who earn less
than 600 rubles monthly. Harry Schwartz, the New York Times expert on
the Soviet Union, has estimated that approximately eight million workers
earn less than 300 rubles monthly, and the Tribune, representing the point
of view of the British Labour Party’s left wing, adds the comment that
this, and not the equality of sexes, is the reason for the large number of
women employed at heavy labor. The recent 30-per-cent wage increase in
the U.S.S.R. has applied to these low-wage categories.
This is the way it is in the U.S.S.R. It is not much different in other
Communist countries, not even in countries like Czechoslovakia which
are technologically very advanced. Once an exporter of agricultural
products, Yugoslavia now imports them. According to official statistics,
the standard of living of
116 THE NEW CLASS
blue- and white-collar workers is lower than before World War II, when
Yugoslavia was an undeveloped capitalist country.
Communist planning, devoted to political class interests, and totalitarian
dictatorship supplement each other. For ideologic reasons, Communists
invest intensively in certain branches of the economy. All planning revolves
around these branches. This leads to deep displacements in the economy
which cannot be paid for by income from nationalized farms taken over
from capitalists and large landowners, but must be paid for mainly through
the imposition of low wages and the pillaging of peasants through the
compulsory crop-purchase system.
It might be said that if the U.S.S.R. had not done such planning, or if it
had not concentrated on the development of heavy industry, it would have
entered World War II unarmed and would have been the easily conquered
slave of the Hitler invasion. This is correct, but only to a certain degree. For
guns and tanks are not the only strength of a country. If Stalin had not had
imperialistic aims in his foreign policy and tyrannical aims in his internal
policy, no grouping of powers would have left his country standing alone
before the invader.
This is clear: the ideological approach to planning and development of
the economy was not essential for the development of a war industry. It was
put into action because of the power-holders’ need to be independent
internally and externally; defense needs were only associate needs, even
though they were inevitable. Russia could have obtained the same quantities
of armaments, proceeding under different plans, linking her more closely
with foreign markets. Greater dependency on foreign markets would have
necessitated a different foreign policy. Under present-day conditions, where
world interests are interlaced and where wars are total, butter is almost as
important as guns in the waging of war. This was confirmed even in the case
of the U.S.S.R. Food from the United States was almost as important for
victory as war matériel.
The same is true with regard to agriculture. Under present- day
conditions, progressive agriculture also means industrialization. Progressive
agriculture does not insure that a Communist regime will be independent of
the outside. Internally it makes the regime dependent on the peasant, even
though the peasants are members of free cooperatives. Consequently steel
has been given priority in the plan, right beside kolkhozes with low
production. The planning of political power had to come ahead of economic
progress.
Soviet, or Communist, planning is of a special kind. It has not evolved as
the result of the technological development of production nor as the result of
the “socialist” consciousness of its initiators. Instead it has evolved as the
result of a special type of government and ownership. Today, technical and
other factors are influencing this type of planning, but these other factors
have not ceased to have their effect on the evolution of this type of planning.
It is very important to note this, for it is the key to understanding the
character of this type of planning, and of the capabilities of a Communist
economy.
The results achieved by such an economy and by such planning are
varied. The concentration of all means to achieve a specific purpose make it
possible for the power-wielders to progress with extraordinary speed in
certain branches of the economy. The progress that the U.S.S.R. has achieved
in some branches has heretofore never been achieved anywhere in the
world. However, when one considers the backward conditions existing in
other branches the progress achieved is not justified from the over-all
economic point of view.
Of course, once-backward Russia has attained second place in world
production as far as its most important branches of the economy are
concerned. It has become the mightiest continental power in the world. A
strong working class, a wide stratum of technical intelligentsia, and the
materials for consumer goods production have been created. The
dictatorship has not
118 THE NEW CLASS
been essentially weakened because of this, nor are there any reasons to
believe that the standard of living cannot be improved in proportion to the
country’s economic capabilities.
Ownership and political considerations for which the plan is only an
implement have made it impossible to weaken the dictatorship to any
extent or to raise the standard of living. The exclusive monopoly of a single
group, in the economy as well as in politics, planning that is directed
toward increasing its power and its interests in the country and throughout
the world, continuously postpones the improvement of the standard of
living and harmonious development of the economy. The absence of
freedom is undoubtedly the final and most important reason for the
postponement. In Communist systems freedom has become the main
economic and general problem.
5 .
The Communist planned economy conceals within itself an anarchy of a
special kind. In spite of the fact that it is planned, the Communist economy
is perhaps the most wasteful economy in the history of human society. Such
claims may seem strange, especially if one has in mind the relatively rapid
development of individual branches of the economy, and of the economy as
a whole. However, they have a solid basis.
Wastefulness of fantastic proportions was unavoidable even if this had
not been a group which considered everything, including the economy,
from its own narrow ownership and ideological point of view. How could a
single group of this kind administer a complex modem economy effectively
and thriftily—an economy which, in spite of the most complete planning,
showed varied and often contradictory internal and external tendencies
from day to day? The absence of any type of criticism, even of any type of
important suggestion, inevitably leads to waste and stagnation.
Because of this political and economic omnipotence, wasteful
undertakings cannot be avoided even with the best of intentions. Very
little attention is paid to what the cost of these undertakings is to the
economy as a whole. How great are the costs to a nation of an
agriculture which is stagnant because of the superstitious Communist
fear of the peasant and unreasonable investments in heavy industry?
What is the cost of capital invested in inefficient industries? What is the
cost of a stagnant transportation system? What is the cost of poorly
paid workers, who consequently “goldbrick” and work slowly? What
is the cost of poor-quality production? There is no counting these costs,
nor can they be calculated.
Just as they administer the economy, the Communist leaders handle
everything in a way contrary to their own teaching; that is, from their
personal viewpoint. The economy is just an area which least tolerates
arbitrariness. Even if they wished to do so, the leaders could not take
into consideration the interests of the economy as a whole. For political
reasons the ruling group determines what is “vitally necessary,” “of
key importance,” or “decisive” in a movement. Nothing stands in the
way of its carrying out the matter in question, for the group is not
afraid of losing its power or property.
Periodically the leaders indulge in criticism or self-criticism and cite
experience when there is evidence that something is not progressing or
when tremendous waste has become apparent. Khrushchev criticized
Stalin for his agricultural policy. Tito criticized his own regime for
excessive capital investments and the waste of billions. Ochab criticized
himself for this “conditional” neglect of the standard of living. But the
essence remains the same. The same men prolong the same system by
about the same method, until breaches and “irregularities” become
apparent. Losses incurred can no longer be restored, so the regime and
the party do not take the responsibility for the losses. They have
“noted” the errors and these errors will be “corrected.” So let’s begin all
over again!
120 THE NEW CLASS
There is no evidence that a single Communist leader has suffered because
of unproductively expended or fantastically wasted means. But many have
been deposed because of “ideological deviations.”
In Communist systems, thefts and misappropriations are inevitable. It is
not just poverty that motivates people to steal the “national property”; but the
fact that the property does not seem to belong to anyone. All valuables are
somehow rendered valueless, thus creating a favorable atmosphere for theft
and waste. In 1954, in Yugoslavia alone, over 20,000 cases of theft of “socialist
property” were discovered. The Communist leaders handle national property
as their own, but at the same time they waste it as if it were somebody else’s.
Such is the nature of ownership and government of the system.
The greatest waste is not even visible. This is the waste of manpower. The
slow, unproductive work of disinterested millions, together with the
prevention of all work not considered “socialist,” is the calculable, invisible,
and gigantic waste which no Communist regime has been able to avoid. Even
though they are adherents of Smith’s theory that labor creates value, a theory
which Marx adopted, these power-wielders pay the least attention to labor
and manpower, regarding them as something of very little value which can
be readily replaced.
The fear which Communists have of “the renewal of capitalism,” or of
economic consequences that would arise from narrow class “ideological”
motives, has cost the nation tremendous wealth and put a brake on its
development. Entire industries are destroyed because the state is not in a
position to maintain or develop them; only that which is the state’s is
considered “socialist.”
How far and how long can a nation carry on like this? The moment is
approaching when industrialization, which first made Communism
inevitable, will through further development make the Communist form of
government and ownership superfluous.
The waste is tremendous because of the isolation of Communist

economies. Every Communist economy is essentially autarchic. The
reasons for this autarchy lie in the character of its government and
ownership.
No Communist country—not even Yugoslavia, which was obliged to
cooperate to a greater extent with non-Communist countries because of its
conflict with Moscow—has been successful in developing foreign trade
beyond the traditional exchange of goods. Planned production on a larger
scale in cooperation with other countries has not been attained.
Communist planning, among other things, takes very little account of
the needs of world markets or of the production in other countries. Partly
as a result of this, and partly as a result of ideological and other motives,
Communist governments take too little account of natural conditions
affecting production. They often construct industrial plants without having
sufficient raw materials available for them, and almost never pay attention
to the world level of price and production. They produce some products at
several times the production cost in other countries. Simultaneously, other
branches of industry which could surpass the world average in
productivity, or which could produce at lower prices than the world
average, are neglected. Entire new industries are being developed, even
though world markets are surfeited with the items they will produce. The
working people have to pay for all this in order to make the oligarchs
“independent.”
This is one aspect of the problem common to Communist regimes.
Another is the senseless race of the “leading Socialist country”—the
U.S.S.R.—to overtake and pass the most highly developed countries. What
does this cost? And where does it lead?
Perhaps the U.S.S.R. can overtake some branches of the economy of the
most highly developed countries. By infinite waste of manpower, by low
wages, and by neglect of the other
122 THE NEW CLASS
branches of industry, this may be possible. It is quite another question
whether this is economically justifiable.
Such plans are aggressive in themselves. What does the non- Communist
world think of the fact that the U.S.S.R. is determined to hold first place in
the production of steel and crude oil at the cost of a low standard of living?
What is left of “coexistence” and “peace-loving cooperation” if they consist
of competition in heavy industry and of very small trade exchanges? What is
left of cooperation if the Communist economies develop autarchically, but
penetrate the world mostly for ideological reasons?
Such plans and relations waste domestic and world manpower and
wealth and are unjustified from every viewpoint except that of the
Communist oligarchy. Technical progress and changing vital needs make
one branch of the economy important one moment and another the next;
this is true for nations and for the world. What will happen if, fifty years
from now, steel and petroleum lose the significance they hold today? The
Communist leaders take no account of this and many other things.
Efforts at linking the Communist economies, the Soviet first of all, to the
rest of the world, and at the penetration of the world by these economies, are
far behind the actual technical and other capabilities of these economies. At
their present stage these economies could cooperate with the rest of the
world to a much greater degree than they actually do. The failure to use
their capabilities for cooperation with the outside world and the rush to
penetrate the outer world for ideological and other reasons are caused by
the monopoly that the Communists hold over the economy and by their
need to maintain power.
Lenin was largely right when he stated that politics is a “concentrated
economy.” This has been reversed in the Communist system; economy has
become concentrated politics; that is, politics play an almost decisive role in
the economy.
Separation from the world market, or the creation of a “world
socialist” market, which Stalin inaugurated and to which Soviet leaders

still pledge allegiance, represents perhaps the major reason for world
strain and world-wide waste.
Monopoly of ownership, antiquated methods of production— no
matter whose or what kind—are in conflict with the world economic
needs. Freedom vs. ownership has become a world problem.
The abolishment of private, or capitalist, ownership in the backward
Communist states has made possible rapid, if not smooth, economic
progress. The states have become uncommonly great physical powers,
new and resistant, with a self- righteous and fanatical class which has
tasted the fruits of authority and ownership. This development cannot
solve any of the questions that were of concern to classic socialism of the
nineteenth century, nor even those that were of concern to Lenin; still less
can it insure economic advancement without internal difficulties and
convulsions.
Despite its powerful concentration of forces in one pair of hands and
its rapid if unbalanced successes, the Communist economic system has
been showing deep fissures and weaknesses since the moment of its
complete victory. Even though it has not yet reached the height of its
power it is already running into difficulties. Its future is less and less
secure; the Communist economic system will have to battle furiously,
inside and outside, for its existence.
Tyranny over the Mind
1.
There is only partial justification for seeking, in Communist philosophy,
the sources of tyranny over the mind, a tyranny which the Communists
exercise with clinical refinement when they come to power. Communist
materialism is possibly more exclusive than any other contemporary view
of the world. It pushes its adherents into the position which makes it
impossible for them to hold any other viewpoint. If this view were not
connected with specific forms of government and ownership, the monstrous
methods of oppression and destruction of the human mind could not be
explained by the view itself.
Every ideology, every opinion, tries to represent itself as the only true
one and complete one. This is innate in man’s thinking.
It was not the idea itself but the method by which the idea was applied
that distinguished Marx and Engels. They denied every scientific and
progressive socialist value in the thinking of their contemporaries, usually
lumping such ideas into “bourgeois science,” thus banning every serious
discussion and study in advance.
The idea that was especially narrow and exclusive with Marx and Engels,
the idea from which Communism later could draw
124
TYRANNY OVER THE MIND 125
substance for its ideological intolerance» was that of the inseparability of
the political views of a contemporary scientist, thinker, or artist from his
real or scientific value as a thinker or artist. If one was found in the
opposite camp politically, his every other objective or other work was
opposed or disregarded.
This position of Marx and Engels can be only partially explained as the
result of the furious opposition of the owners and power-holders agitated
by the “specter of Communism” from the very beginning.
The exclusiveness of Marx and Engels was born and intensified by
something else that was at the roots of what they had learned: convinced
that they had plumbed the depths of every philosophy, they thought that
it was impossible for anyone to attain anything significant without taking
their own view of the world as the basis. Out of the scientific atmosphere
of the epoch and out of the needs of the socialist movement, Marx and
Engels came to think that anything that was not important to them, or to
the movement, was not important, even objectively; that is, if it was
independent of the movement, it was not important.
Consequently, they proceeded practically unaware of the most
important minds of their time, and disdained the views of opponents in
their own movement. The writings of Marx and Engels contain no
mention of such a well-known philosopher as Schopenhauer or of an
aestheticist like Taine. There is no mention of the well-known writers and
artists of their period. There is not even any reference to those who were
caught up in the ideological and social stream to which Marx and Engels
belonged. They settled their accounts with their oppositionists in the
socialist movement in a fierce and intolerant manner. This was perhaps
not important for the sociology of Proudhon, but it was very important
for the development
126 THE NEW CLASS
of socialism and social struggles, especially in France. The same may be

said of Bakunin. Slaughtering Proudhon’s ideas, Marx, in his Misery of
Philosophy, scornfully went beyond his real role. He and Engels did the
same with the German socialist, Lassalle, as well as with other
oppositionists inside their own movement.
On the other hand, they carefully noted the significant intellectual
phenomena of their time. They accepted Darwin. They particularly grasped
the currents of the past—ancient and Renaissance—from which European
culture had developed. In sociology they borrowed from English political
economy (Smith and Ricardo) ; in philosophy, from classic German
philosophy (Kant, Hegel) ; and in social theory, from French socialism, or
from the currents that emerged after the French revolution. These were the
great scientific, intellectual, and social currents that created the democratic
and progressive climate of Europe and the rest of the world.
There is logic and consistency in the development of Communism. Marx
was more of a scientist, more objective than Lenin, who was above all a
great revolutionary, formed under the conditions of Czarist absolutism,
semi-colonial Russian capitalism, and world conflicts by monopolists for
spheres of influence.
Leaning on Marx, Lenin taught that materialism was progressive as a
rule throughout history, and that idealism was reactionary. This was not
only one-sided and incorrect, but it intensified Marx’s exclusiveness. It also
emanated from insufficient knowledge of historical philosophy. In 1909,
when Lenin wrote his Materialism and Empiro-Criticismy he was not closely
acquainted with any great philosopher, classical or modem. Because of the
need to overcome oppositionists whose views hindered the development of
his party, Lenin rejected everything that was not in accord with Marxist
views. To him, anything was erroneous and valueless if it was not in accord
with original Marxism. It must be acknowledged that, in this respect,
his works are outstanding examples of logical and persuasive dogmatism.
Believing that materialism had always been the ideology of
revolutionary and subversive social movements, he drew the one-sided
conclusion that materialism was generally progressive—even in the fields
of research and in the development of man’s thought—while idealism
was reactionary. Lenin confused form and method with content and with
scientific discovery. The fact that anyone was idealistic in his thinking was
sufficient for Lenin to disregard his real value and the value of his dis-
coveries. Lenin extended his political intolerance to practically the entire
history of human thought.
By 1920, Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher who welcomed the
October Revolution, had accurately noted the essence of Leninist, or
Communist, dogmatism:*
There is, however, another aspect of Bolshevism from which I

differ more fundamentally. Bolshevism is not merely a political
doctrine; it is also a religion, with elaborate dogmas and inspired
scriptures. When Lenin wishes to prove some proposition, he does
so, if possible, by quoting texts from Marx and Engels. A full-
fledged Communist is not merely a man who believes that land
and capital should be held in common, and their produce
distributed as nearly equally as possible. He is a man who
entertains a number of elaborate and dogmatic beliefs—such as
philosophic materialism, for example—which may be true, but are
not, to a scientific temper, capable of being known with any
certainty. This habit, of militant certainty about objectively
doubtful matters, is one from which, since the Renaissance, the
world has been gradually emerging, into that temper of
constructive and fruitful skepticism which constitutes the scientific
outlook. 1 believe the scientific outlook to be immeasurably
important to the human race. If a more just economic system were
only attainable by closing men’s minds against free inquiry, and
plunging them back into the intellectual prison of the middle
* From Bolshevism: Practice and Theory; New York, Harcourt, Brace & Howe.
128 THE NEW CLASS
ages, I should consider the price too high. It cannot be denied that,
over any short period of time, dogmatic belief is a help in fighting.
But this was Lenin’s period.
Stalin went further; he “devoloped” Lenin, but without having Lenin’s
knowledge or depth. Careful research would lead to the conclusion that
this man, whom Khrushchev himself today acknowledges to have been the
“best Marxist” of his time, had not even read Marx’s Das Kapital, the most
important work on Marxism. Practical soul that he was, and supported by
his extreme dogmatism, it was not even necessary for him to be acquainted
with Marx’s economic studies to build his brand of “socialism.” Stalin was
not closely acquainted with any philosopher. He behaved toward Hegel as
he would toward a “dead dog,” attributing to him the “reaction of Prussian
absolutism to the French revolution.”
But Stalin was uncommonly well acquainted with Lenin. He always
sought support in him, to a greater extent than Lenin did in Marx. Stalin
had considerable knowledge of political history only, especially Russian,
and he had an uncommonly good memory.
Stalin really did not need any more than this for his role. Anything that
did not coincide with his needs and his views, he simply proclaimed as
“hostile” and forbade it.
The three men—Marx, Lenin, and Stalin—are contrasts as men and are
contrasts in their methods of expression. In addition to being a
revolutionary, Marx was a somewhat simple scientist. His style was
picturesque, baroque, unrestrained, and witty in an Olympian sort of way.
Lenin seemed to be the incarnation of the revolution itself. His style was
flamboyant, incisive, and logical. Stalin thought his power lay in the satis-
faction of all human desires, and believed his thinking to be the supreme
expression of human thought. His style was colorless and monotonous, but
its oversimplified logic and dogmatism were convincing to the conformists
and to common people.
It contained simplicities from the writings of the Church fathers, not so

much the result of his religious youth as the result of the fact that his was
the way of expression under primitive conditions, and of dogmatized
Communists.
Stalin’s followers do not have even his crude internal cohesiveness nor
his dogmatic powers and convictions. Average men in everything, they
possess an uncommonly strong sense of reality. Unable to generate new
systems or new ideas because of their commitment to vital bureaucratic
realities, they are able only to stifle or make impossible the creation of
anything new.
Thus is the evolution of the dogmatic and exclusive aspect of
Communist ideology. The so-called “further development of Marxism”
has led to the strengthening of the new class and the sovereignty not only
of a single ideology, but the sovereignty of thought of a single man or
group of oligarchs. This has resulted in the intellectual decline and
impoverishment of the ideology itself. Along with this, intolerance of
other ideas, and even of human thought as such, has increased. The
ideology’s progress, its elements of truth, have declined in proportion to
the increase of physical power of its disciples.
Becoming increasingly one-sided and exclusive, contemporary
Communism more and more creates half-truths and tries to justify them.
At first sight, it seems as if its views, individually, were true. But it is
incurably infected with lies. Its half- truths are exaggerated and debased
to the point of perversion; the more rigid and the more inspired it is with
lies, the more it strengthens the monopolism of its leaders over society,
and thus over Communist theory itself.
2 .
The proposition that Marxism is a universal method, a proposition
upon which Communists are obliged to stand, must in practice lead to
tyranny in all areas of intellectual activity.
ISO THE NEW CLASS
What can the unfortunate physicists do, if atoms do not behave
according to the Hegelian-Marxist struggle or according to the uniformity
of opposites and their development into higher forms? What of the
astronomers, if the cosmos is apathetic to Communist dialectics? What of
the biologists, if plants do not behave according to the Lysenko-Stalinist
theory on harmony and cooperation of classes in a “socialist” society?
Because it is not possible for these scientists to lie naturally, they must
suffer the consequences of their “heresies.” To have their discoveries
accepted they must make discoveries “confirming” the formulas of
Marxism-Leninism. Scientists are in a constant dilemma as to whether their
ideas and discoveries will injure official dogma. They are therefore forced
into opportunism and compromises with regard to science.
The same is true of other intellectuals. In many ways contemporary
Communism is reminiscent of the exclusiveness of religious sects of the
Middle Ages. The observations on Calvinism written by the Serbian poet,
Jovan Dučič, in his Tuge i vedrine (Sorrows and Calms), seem to relate to the
intellectual atmosphere in a Communist country:
. . . And this Calvin, jurist and dogmatician, what he did not burn
on the funeral pyre, he hardened in the soul of the people of Geneva.
He introduced religious tribulation and pious renunciation in these
homes which are even today filled with this cold and darkness;
planted a hatred of all merriment and rapture, and damned poetry
and music by decree. As a politician and tyrant at the head of the
republic, he forged, like shackles, his iron laws over life in the state,
and even regulated family feelings. Of all the figures which the
Reformation fostered, Calvin is probably the most calloused of the
revolutionary figures, and his Bible is the most depressing textbook
for living. . . . Calvin was not a new Christian apostle who wished to
restore the faith to its pristine purity, simplicity, and sweetness, as it
was when it sprung forth from the parabola of Nazareth. This Calvin
was the Aryan ascetic, who, severing himself from the regime, also
severed himself
from love, the basic principle of his dogma. He created a people,

earnest and full of virtue, but also full of hatred of life and full of
disbelief in happiness. There is no harsher religion or more fearful
prophet. Of the people of Geneva, Calvin made paralytics forever
incapable of any joy. There are no people in the world to whom
religion has brought as much tribulation and dreariness. Calvin
was an eminent religious writer, as important to the purity of the
French language as Luther was important to the purity of the
German language, the translator of the Bible. But he was also the
creator of a theocracy which was no less like a dictatorship than
was the Papal monarchy. While announcing that he was freeing
man's spiritual personality, he degraded man’s civil personality to
the blackest slavery. He confused the people and failed to brighten
life in any way. He changed many things, but completed nothing
and contributed nothing. Almost 300 years after Calvin, in
Geneva, Stendhal observed how young men and young women
carried on conversations only about “the pastor” and his last
sermon, and how they knew his sermons by heart.
Contemporary Communism also contains some elements of the
dogmatic exclusiveness of the Puritans under Cromwell and of the
political intolerance of the Jacobins. But there are essential differences.
The Puritans rigidly believed in the Bible and the Communists believe
in science. Communist power is more complete than that of the
Jacobins. Further, the differences emanate from the capabilities; no
religion or dictatorship has been able to aspire to such all-around and
all-inclusive power as that of the Communist systems.
The conviction of the Communist leaders that they were on the path
leading to the creation of absolute happiness and an ideal society grew
in proportion to the growth of their power. It has been said in jest that
the Communist leaders created a Communist society—for themselves.
In fact, they do identify themselves with society and its aspirations.
Absolute despotism equates itself with the belief in absolute human
happiness, though it is an all-inclusive and universal tyranny.
132 THE NEW CLASS
Progress itself has transformed the Communist power-wielders into
boosters of the “human consciousness.” Their concern for human
consciousness has increased as their power has increased, along with the
“building of socialism.”
Yugoslavia has not bypassed this evolution. Some of the Yugoslav
leaders, too, stressed the “high level of consciousness of our people” during
the revolutionary period; that is, while “our people,” or some of them,
actively supported these leaders. Now, however, the “socialist”
consciousness of the same people, according to these leaders, is very low
and, consequently, must wait for democracy in order to be raised. Yugoslav
leaders openly speak of the fact that they will bestow democracy “when
there is growth of socialist consciousness”; a kind of consciousness which
they trust will automatically be attained through industrialization. Until
then, these theoreticians of a democracy which is doled out in small doses,
men who practice something entirely contrary to democracy, maintain that
they have the right—in the name of future happiness and freedom—to
prevent even the faintest manifestations of ideas or of any consciousness
which is unlike theirs.
Perhaps only in the beginning were Soviet leaders forced to maneuver
with such shallow promises of democracy “in the future.” They now
simply maintain that this freedom has already been created in the U.S.S.R.
Of course, even they sense that freedom is at work under them. They are
constantly “elevating” consciousness; they urge men to “produce”; they
cram minds with arid Marxist formulas and the arid political views of the
leaders. Worse still, they force men constantly to acknowledge their
devotion to socialism and their beliefs in the infallibility and reality of the
promises of their leaders.
A citizen in the Communist system lives oppressed by the constant
pangs of his conscience, and the fear that he has transgressed. He is always
fearful that he will have to demonstrate that he is not an enemy of
socialism, just as in the Middle Ages a man constantly had to show his
devotion to the Church.
The school system and all social and intellectual activity work toward
this type of behavior. From birth to death a man is surrounded by the
solicitude of the ruling party, a solicitude for his consciousness and
conscience. Journalists, ideologists, paid writers, special schools,
approved ruling ideas, and tremendous material means are all enlisted
and engaged in this “uplifting of socialism.” In the final analysis, all
newspapers are official. So are the radio and other similar media.
The results are not great. In no case are they proportionate to the
means and measures employed, except for the new class which would,
in any case, be convinced. However, considerable results are attained in
making it impossible to manifest a consciousness other than the official
one, and in combatting opposing opinions.
Even under Communism, men think, for they cannot help but think.
What is more, they think differently from the prescribed manner. Their
thinking has two faces—one for themselves, their own; the other for the
public, the official.
Even in Communist systems, men are not so stupefied by uniform
propaganda that it is impossible for them to arrive at the truth or at new
ideas. In the intellectual field, however, the plan of the oligarchs results
less in production than in stagnation, corruption, and decay.
These oligarchs and soul-savers, these vigilant protectors who see to it
that human thought does not drift into “criminal thought” or “anti-
socialist lines”; these unscrupulous procurers of the cheap and actually
the only available consumer goods—these holders of obsolete,
unchangeable, and immutable ideas—have retarded and frozen the
intellectual impulses of their people. They have thought up the most
antihuman words —“pluck from the human consciousness”—and act
according to these words, just as if they were dealing with roots and
weeds instead of man’s thoughts. By stifling the consciousness of others,
and by emasculating human intellect so that it cannot take courage and
soar, they themselves become gray, barren of
134 THE NEW CLASS
ideas, and completely lacking in the intellectual enthusiasm that
disinterested meditation inspires. A theater without an audience: the actors
play and go into raptures over themselves. They think as automatically as
they eat; their brains cook thoughts in response to the most elementary
needs. This is how it is with these high priests who are simultaneously
policemen and owners of all the media which the human intellect can use to
communicate its thoughts—press, movies, radio, television, books, and the
like—as well as of all substance that keeps a human being alive—food and a
roof over his head.
Are there not reasons then for comparing contemporary Communism
with religious sects?
3 .
Nevertheless, every Communist country achieves technical progress,
even though of a special kind and in special periods.
Industrialization, rapid as it is, creates a large technical intelligentsia,
which, even if it is not especially high in quality, attracts talents and
stimulates the inventive intellect. The reasons that help to achieve
industrialization rapidly in specific branches of the economy also act as an
incentive for inventiveness. The U.S.S.R. has not lagged to any extent in war
technology either in World War II or since. The U.S.S.R. is not far behind the
United States in the development of atomic energy. Technology is advanced
in spite of the fact that a bureaucratic system makes it difficult to adopt
innovations; inventions sometimes lie for years in the warehouses of state
establishments. The disinterest of producing organizations often deadens
inventiveness still more.
Being very practical men, the Communist leaders immediately establish
cooperation with technicians and scientists, not paying much attention to
their “bourgeois” views. It is clear to the
leaders that industrialization cannot be accomplished without the
technical intelligentsia, and that this intelligentsia cannot by itself become
dangerous. As in every other field, Communists have a simplified and
generally half-correct theory with relation to this intelligentsia: some
other class always pays the specialists, while they serve it. Consequently,
why shouldn’t the “proletariat,” or the new class, also do this? Acting on
this proposition, they immediately develop a system of wages.
In spite of their technical progress, it is a fact that no great modem
scientific discovery has been achieved under the Soviet government. In
this respect, the U.S.S.R. is probably behind Czarist Russia, where there
were epochal scientific discoveries in spite of technical backwardness.
Even though technical reasons make scientific discovery difficult, the
main reasons for this difficulty are social. The new class is very interested
in seeing that its ideological monopolism is not endangered. Every great
scientific discovery is the result of a changed view of the world in the
mind of the discoverer. A new view does not fit into the form of the
already adopted official philosophy. In the Communist system every
scientist must stop short before this fact or risk being proclaimed a
“heretic” if his theories do not coincide with the confirmed, prescribed,
and desirable dogma.
Work on discoveries is made difficult to an even greater degree by the
imposition of the official view that Marxism, or dialectical materialism, is
the most effective method for all fields of scientific, intellectual, and other
activity. There has not been a single noted scientist in the U.S.S.R. who
has not had political trouble. There have been many reasons for this, but
one is due to opposition to the official line. There have been fewer
occurrences of this kind in Yugoslavia, but conversely, there are instances
of the favoring of “devoted” but poor scientists.
Communist systems stimulate technical progress but also hinder every
great research activity where undisturbed func
136 THE NEW CLASS
tioning of the mind is necessary. This may sound contradictory, but it is
so.
While Communist systems are only relatively opposed to scientific
development, they are absolutely opposed to any intellectual progress and
discovery. Based on the exclusiveness of a single philosophy, the systems
are expressly anti-philosophic. In such systems, there has not been born,
nor can there be bom, a single thinker, especially a social thinker—as long
as one does not so consider the power-wielders themselves, who are
generally also the “main philosophers” and masters for “elevating” the
human consciousness. In Communism a new thought, or a new
philosophy and social theory, must travel by very indirect roads, generally
by the way of literature or some branch of art The new thought must first
hide and conceal itself in order to reach the light and begin to live.
Of all the sciences and all thought, social sciences and the consideration
of social problems fare the worst; they scarcely manage to exist. When it is
a question of society or of a social problem, everything is interpreted
according to Marx and Lenin, or everything is monopolized by the leaders.
History, especially of its own—the Communist—period, does not exist.
Imposition of silence and falsification are not only permitted but are
general phenomena.
The intellectual inheritance of the people is also being confiscated. The
monopolists act as if all history has occurred just to let them make their
appearance in the world. They measure the past and everything in it by
their own likeness and form, and apply a single measure, dividing all men
and phenomena into “progressive” and “reactionary” classifications. In
this fashion they raise up monuments. They elevate the pygmies and
destroy the great, especially the great of their own time.
Their “single scientific” method is most suitable too in that it alone
protects and justifies their exclusive dominance over science and society.
TYRANNY OVER THE MIND 1S7
4 .
Similar things are happening in art. Here favors are extended, in
increasing measure, to already established forms and views of average
quality. This is understandable: there is no art without ideas, or without
some effect on the consciousness. Monopoly over ideas, the formation of
the consciousness, are the prerequisites of the rulers. Communists are
traditionalists in art, mostly because of the need to maintain their
monopoly over the minds of the people but also because of their
ignorance and one-sidedness. Some of them tolerate a kind of democratic
freedom in modern art; but this is only an acknowledgment that they do
not understand modern art, and therefore believe that they should
permit it. Lenin felt this way about the futurism of Mayakovsky.
In spite of this, backward peoples in Communist systems experience a
cultural renaissance along with the technical one. Culture becomes more
accessible to them, even though it comes largely in the form of
propaganda. The new class is interested in the spread of culture because
industrialization brings the need for higher-quality work and the need
for enlarging intellectual opportunities. The network of schools and
professional branches of art has spread very rapidly, sometimes even
beyond actual needs and capabilities. Progress in art is undeniable.
After a revolution, before the ruling class has established a complete
monopoly, significant works of art are generally created. This was true in
the U.S.S.R. prior to the 1930’s; it is true today in Yugoslavia. It is as if the
revolution had awakened dormant talents, even though despotism, which
is also bom in the revolution, increasingly stifles art.
The two basic methods of stifling the arts are by opposition toward the
intellectual-idealistic aspects of it and by opposition to innovations in form.
In Stalin’s time things reached the point where all forms
138 THE NEW CLASS
of artistic expression were forbidden except those that Stalin himself
liked. Stalin did not have particularly good taste; he was hard of
hearing, and liked octosyllabic and Alexandrine verse. Deutscher has
stated that Stalin’s style became the national style. The adoption of
official views on art forms became as obligatory as the adoption of
official ideas.
It has not always been like this in Communist systems, nor is it
inevitable that it should be so. In 1925, in the U.S.S.R., a resolution was
adopted stating that “the party as a whole can in no way tie devotion to
a cause in the field of literary form.” By this the party did not renounce
its so-called “ideological aid,” that is, its ideological and political control
over artists. This was the maximum democracy attained by Communism
in the field of art. Yugoslav leaders are in the same position today. After
1953, when the abandonment of democratic forms in favor of
bureaucracy began, the most primitive and reactionary elements were
encouraged; a mad hunt for “petit bourgeois” intellectuals was initiated,
which openly aimed at controlling art forms. Overnight, the whole
intellectual world turned against the regime. Consequently, the regime
had to retract, announcing through one of Kardelj’s speeches that the
party cannot prescribe form itself, but that it would not allow “anti-
socialist ideological contraband,” that is, views which the regime
considered as being “anti-socialist.” The Bolshevik parties had taken this
stand in 1925. This constituted the “democratic” limits of the Yugoslav
regime toward art. However, the internal attitudes of most of the
Yugoslav leaders were far from changed by this. They privately consider
the entire intellectual and art world as “insecure,” “petit bourgeois,” or,
putting it mildly, “ideologically confused.” Cited in Yugoslavia’s
greatest newspaper (Politika, May 25, 1954) are Tito’s “unforgettable”
words: “A good textbook is more valuable than any novel.” Periodic
hysterical onslaughts against “decadence,” “destructive ideas,” and
“hostile views” in art have continued.
Yugoslav culture, unlike Soviet culture, has at least succeeded in
concealing, rather than destroying, dissatisfied and turbulent opinions
regarding art forms. This has never been possible for Soviet culture. A
sword hangs over Yugoslav culture, but the sword has been driven
into the heart of Soviet culture.
Relative freedom of form, which the Communists can only
periodically suppress, cannot completely free the creative person. Art,
even though indirectly, must also express new ideas through form
itself. Even in Communist systems where art is allowed the greatest
freedom, the contradiction between promised free form and
compulsory control of ideas remains unresolved. This contradiction
crops out from time to time, sometimes in attacks on “contraband”
ideas, sometimes in the work of artists because they are forced to use
particular forms. It crops out essentially because of conflict between
the uncurbed monopolistic aspirations of the regime and the irresist-
ible creative aspirations of the artists. It is, actually, the same conflict
which exists between creativeness in science and Communist
dogmatism; it has merely been carried over into the field of art.
Any new thought or idea must first be examined in essence,
approved or disapproved, and fitted into a harmless frame. As with
other conflicts, the Communist leaders cannot resolve this one. But
they can, as we have seen, periodically extricate themselves, usually at
the expense of real freedom of artistic creation. In Communist systems,
it has not been possible, because of this contradiction, to develop
genuine subjects for art or to develop art theory.
A work of art, by its very nature, is usually a criticism of a given
situation and of given relations. In Communist systems, therefore,
artistic creation based on actual subjects is not possible. Only praise of
a given situation or criticism of the system’s opponents is permitted.
Under these terms art can have no value whatever.
In Yugoslavia officials and some artists conplain about the fact
140 THE NEW CLASS
that there are no works of art which can show “our socialist reality.” In the
U.S.S.R., on the other hand, tons of works of art based on actual subjects
are created; but since they do not reflect the truth, they do not have any
value and are rapidly rejected by the public, later even coming under
official criticism. The method is varied but the final result is the same.
5.
The theory of so-called “Socialist Realism” reigns in all Communist
states.
In Yugoslavia this theory has been crushed and is now held only by the
most reactionary dogmatists. In this area, as in others, the regime has been
strong enough to forestall the development of disagreeable theories but
has been too weak to impose its own views. It can be said that the same
goes for the other East European countries.
The theory of “Socialist Realism” is not even a complete system. Gorky
was the first to use this term, probably inspired by his realist method. His
views were that in rude contemporary “socialist” conditions, art must be
inspired with new or socialist ideas and must depict reality as faithfully as
possible. Everything else that this theory advocates—typicalness,
emphasis on ideology, party solidarity, etc.—has either been taken over
from other theories or thrown in because of the political needs of the
regime.
Not having been evolved into a complete theory, “Socialist Realism”
actually means ideological monopolism by Communists. It calls for efforts
to clothe the narrow, backward ideas of the leaders in art forms and for
their works to be depicted romantically and panegyrically. This has led to
a Pharisaic justificaton of the regime’s control over ideas and to bureau-
cratic censorship of the needs of art itself.
The forms of this control vary in different Communist coun
tries, from party-bureaucratic censorship to ideological influence.
Yugoslavia, for instance, has never had censorship. Control is
exercised indirectly by this method: in publishing enterprises, artist’s
associations, periodicals, newspapers, and the like, party members
submit everything they consider “suspicious” to the proper authorities.
Censorship, or really selfcensorship, has sprouted from that very
atmosphere. Even though party members may push something or other
through, the self-censorship which they and other intellectuals must
exercise over themselves forces them to dissemble everything and make
unworthy insinuations. But this is considered progress, it is “socialist
democracy,” instead of bureaucratic despotism.
Neither in the U.S.S.R. nor in other Communist countries does the
existence of censorship absolve creating artists from self-censorship.
Intellectuals are forced into self-censorship by their status and the reality
of social relations. Self-censorship is actually the main form of party
ideological control in the Communist system. In the Middle Ages men
first had to delve into the thought of the Church on their work; in the
same manner, in Communist systems, it is necessary first to imagine
what kind of performance is expected and, often, to ascertain the taste of
the leaders.
Censorship, or self-censorship, represents itself as being “ideological
aid.” In the same way, everything in Communism is represented as
being devoted to the implementation of absolute happiness.
Consequently, the expressions “the people,” “the working people,” and
similar ones—in spite of their vagueness—are used frequently in
connection with the arts.
Persecutions, prohibitions, the imposition of forms and ideas,
humiliations, and insults; the doctrinaire authority of semi-literate
bureaucrats over geniuses; all this is done in the name of the people and
for the people. Communist “Socialist Realism” is not different even in
terminology from Hider’s National Socialism. A Yugoslav author of
Hungarian origin,
142 THE NEW CLASS
Ervin Sinko, has made an interesting comparison of the “art” theoreticians
in the two dictatorships:
Timofeyev, the Soviet theorist, wrote in his Theory of Literature:
“Literature is an ideology which helps man to get acquainted with life
and to realize that he is participating in it.”
“Fundamentals of National-Socialist Cultural Policy” states: “An
artist cannot be only an artist, he is also always an educator.”
Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth, stated: “Every true
work of art applies to the entire people.” Zhdanov, member of the
Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the
U.S.S.R., stated: “Everything that is creative is accessible.”
In “Fundamentals . . . ” Wolfgang Schulz stated: “National-
Socialist policy, even that part of it which is called cultural policy, is
determined by the Führer and those to whom he has delegated
authority.”
If we wish to know what National-Socialist cultural policy is, we
must look to these men, to what they were doing and to the directives
they issued in order to educate responsible associates for themselves.
At the Eighteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R.,
Yaroslavsky said: “Comrade Stalin inspires artists; he gives them
guiding ideas. . . . The resolutions of the Central Committee of the
Soviet Communist Party and the report of A A. Zhdanov give Soviet
writers a completely prepared work program.”
Despotisms, even when they are opposing ones, justify themselves in the
same way; they cannot even avoid the use of the same words in doing so.
6 .
An enemy to thought in the name of science, an enemy to freedom in the
name of democracy, the Communist oligarchy cannot but accomplish
complete corruption of the mind. Capi-
talist magnates and feudal lords used to pay artists and scientists as they
could and wished, and thus both aided and corrupted them. In
Communist systems, corruption is an integral part of state policy.
The Communist system, as a rule, stifles and represses any
intellectual activity with which it does not agree; that is, everything that
is profound and original. On the other hand, it rewards and encourages,
and actually corrupts, all that it thinks will benefit “socialism,” that is,
the system itself.
Even overlooking such concealed and drastic means of corruptions as
“Stalin prizes,” the use of personal ties with the powers-that-be, and the
capricious demands and purchases of the top bureaucrats—all of which
represent extremes of the system—the fact remains that the system itself
corrupts intellectuals and, especially, art. Direct rewards from the
regime may be abolished, just as censorship may be, but the spirit of
corruption and oppression remains.
This spirit is established and stimulated by party-bureaucratic
monopolism over materials and mind. The intellectual has nowhere to
turn except toward this power, whether for ideas or for profit. Even
though this power may not be directly the government’s, it extends
through all establishments and organizations. In the final analysis it
makes the decisions.
It is very important to the artist that restraint and centralism be
exercised as little as possible, even though the essence of his social
position is not thereby changed. Because of this, it is much easier for him
to work and live in Yugoslavia than in the U.S.S.R.
An oppressed human mind is forced to submit to corruption. If one
seeks to know why for a quarter of a century there have been scarcely
any significant works, especially in literature, in the U.S.S.R., he would
find that corruption has played as great or greater a part than
oppression in causing this scarcity.
The Communist system persecutes, suspects, and prods into self-
criticism its really creative people. It offers its sycophants
144 THE NEW CLASS
attractive “working conditions” and lavish honorariums, rewards,
villas, vacation centers, discounts, automobiles, ambassadorial
mandates, agit-prop protections, and “magnanimous interventions.”
Thus, as a rule, it favors the untalented, dependent, and non-inventive.
It is understandable that the greatest minds have lost their direction,
faith, and power. Suicide, despair, alcoholism, and debauchery, the loss
of internal powers and integrity because the artist is forced to lie to
himself and others—these are the most frequent phenomena in the
Communist system among those who actually wish to, and could
create.
7 .
It is generally thought that Communist dictatorship practices brutal
class discrimination. This is not completely accurate. Historically, class
discrimination declines as the revolution slackens off, but ideological
discrimination increases. The illusion that the proletariat is in power is
inaccurate; so, too, is the proposition that Communists persecute
someone because he is a bourgeois. Their measures do aim most harshly
at the members of the ruling classes, especially the bourgeoisie. But those
bourgeois who capitulate, or reorient themselves, are able to assure for
themselves lucrative posts and favor. What is more, the secret police
often find able agents in their ranks, while the new power-wielders find
them able servants. Only those who do not ideologically approve the
Communist measures and views are punished without consideration as
to their class or their attitude toward nationalization of capitalist
property.
Persecution of democratic and socialist thought which is at variance
with that of the ruling oligarchy is fiercer and more complete than
persecution of the most reactionary followers
of the former regime. This is understandable: the last named are less
dangerous since they look to a past which has little likelihood of
returning and reconquering.
Whenever Communists come to power, their assault on private
ownership creates the illusion that their measures are primarily directed
against the ownership classes for the benefit of the working class.
Subsequent events prove that their measures were not taken for this
purpose but in order to establish their own ownership. This must
manifest itself predominantly as ideological rather than class
discrimination. If this were not true, if they really strove for actual
ownership by the working masses, then class discrimination actually
would have prevailed.
The fact that ideological discrimination prevails leads, at first sight, to
the conclusion that a new religious sect has risen, a sect which rigidly
sticks to its materialistic and atheistic prescriptions and forcibly imposes
them on others. Communists do behave like a religious sect even though
they are not really one.
This totalitarian ideology is not only the result of certain forms of
government and of ownership. For its part, the ideology aided in their
creation and supports them in every way. Ideological discrimination is a
condition for the continuance of the Communist system.
It would be wrong to think that other forms of discrimination—race,
caste, national—are worse than ideological discrimination. They may
seem more brutal to all outward appearances, but they are not as refined
or complete. They aim at the activities of society, while ideological
discrimination aims at society as a whole, and at every individual. Other
types of discrimination may crush a human being physically, while
ideological discrimination strikes at the very thing in the human being
which is perhaps most peculiarly his own. Tyranny over the mind is the
most complete and most brutal type of tyranny; every other tyranny
begins and ends with it.
On the one hand the ideological discrimination in Commu-
146 THE NEW CLASS
nist systems aims at prohibiting other ideas; on the other, at imposing
exclusively its own ideas. These are two most striking forms of
unbelievable, total tyranny.
Thought is the most creative force. It uncovers what is new. Men can
neither live nor produce if they do not think or contemplate. Even though
they may deny it, Communists are forced to accept this fact in practice.
Thus they make it impossible for any thought other than their own to
prevail.
Man may renounce much. But he must think and he has a deep need to
express his thoughts. It is profoundly sickening to be compelled to remain
silent when there is need for expression. It is tyranny at its worst to compel
men not to think as they do, to compel men to express thoughts that are
not their own.
The limitation of freedom of thought is not only an attack on specific
political and social rights, but an attack on the human being as such.
Man’s imperishable aspirations for freedom of thought always emerge in
concrete from. If they have not yet become apparent in Communist
systems, this does not mean that they do not exist. Today they lie in dark
and apathetic resistance, and in the unshapen hopes of the people. It is as
if totality of oppression were erasing differences in national strata, uniting
all people in the demand for freedom of thought and for freedom in
general.
History will pardon Communists for much, establishing that they were
forced into many brutal acts because of circumstances and the need to
defend their existence. But the stifling of every divergent thought, the
exclusive monopoly over thinking for the purpose of defending their
personal interests, will nail the Communists to a cross of shame in history.
The Aim and The Means
1 .
All revolutions and all revolutionaries use oppressive and unscrupulous
means in abundance.
However, earlier revolutionaries were not as conscious of their methods as
the Communists have been. They were unable to adapt and use their methods
to the degree that the Communists have done.
“You don’t need to pick and choose the means to use against enemies of the
movement. . . . You must punish not only the traitors, but also the indifferent;
you must punish all who are inactive in the republic, all who do nothing for
it.”
These words of Saint-Just might have been uttered by some Communist
leader of today. But Saint-Just flung them out in the heat of the revolution, to
preserve its destiny. The Communists speak these words and act according to
them constantly— from the beginning of their revolution until they reach com-
plete power, and even in their decline.
Although Communist methods surpass any of those of other
revolutionaries in range, duration, and severity, during a revolution the
Communists have not as a rule used all the means that their antagonists used.
However, even though the methods of the Communists might have been less
bloody, they became
147
148 THE NEW CLASS
increasingly more inhumane the farther away they got from the
revolution.
Like every social and political movement, Communism must use
methods primarily suited to the interests and relations of the powers-
that-be. Other considerations, including moral ones, are subordinated.
Here, we are interested only in the methods used by contemporary
Communism, which may, according to conditions, be mild or severe,
human or inhuman, but which are different from those used by other
political and social movements and distinguish Communism from other
movements, revolutionary or not.
This distinction does not lie in the fact that Communist methods are
perhaps the most brutal ones recorded in history. It is true that brutality
is their most obvious but not their most intrinsic aspect. A movement
which had as its aim the transformation of the economy and of society
by means of tyranny had to resort to brutal methods. But all other
revolutionary movements had and wanted to use the same methods.
Yet, the fact that their tyranny was of shorter duration was the reason
that they could not use all these methods. In addition, their oppression
could not be as total as that of the Communists, because it came about
under circumstances which did not permit it to be as total.
It would be even less justifiable to seek the reasons for Communist
methods in the fact that Communists lack ethical or moral principles.
Except for the fact that they are Communists, they are men like all others
who in relationships among themselves abide by the moral principles
customary in human societies. Lack of ethics among them is not the
reason for their methods but the result of them In principles and in
words, Communists subscribe to ethical precepts and humane methods.
They belive that they are “temporarily” forced to resort to something
contrary to their ethical views. Communists too think that it would be
much better if they did not have to act
THE AIM AND THE MEANS 149
contrary to their ethical views. In this they are not much different from
participants in other political movements, except that they have
divorced themselves from humanity in a more permanent and
monstrous form.
Numerous features which distinguish contemporary Communism
from other movements in the use of methods can be found. These
features are predominantly quantitative or are actuated by varied
historical conditions and by the aims of Communists.
However, there is an integral feature of contemporary Communism
which distinguishes its methods from those of other political
movements. At first sight this feature might seem similar to features of
some churches in the past. It stems from the idealistic aims which the
Communists will use any means to further. These means have become
increasingly reckless as the aims became unrealizable. The use of their
methods, even for the attainment of idealistic aims, cannot be justified
by any moral principle. Their use brands those who use them as un-
scrupulous and merciless power-wielders. The former classes, parties,
and forms of ownership no longer exist or have been incapacitated, yet
methods have not been changed essentially. Indeed, these methods are
just now achieving their full measure of inhumanity.
As the new exploiting class climbs to power, it tries to justify its non-
idealistic methods by invoking its idealistic aims. The inhumanity of
Stalin’s methods reached its greatest height when he built a “socialist
society.” (Because the new class must show that its interests are
exclusively and ideally the aim of society and because it must maintain
intellectual and every other type of monopoly, the new class must
proclaim that the methods it uses are not important. The end is
important, shout its representatives, everything else is trifling. What is
important is that we now “have” socialism. So do the Communists
justify tyranny, baseness, and crime.
Of course, the end must be assured by special instruments-
150 THE NEW CLASS
by the party. It becomes something dominant and supreme unto itself, like
the Church in the Middle Ages. To quote Dietrich von Nieheim, nominal
Bishop of Verden, writing in 1411: “When its existence is threatened, the
church is freed of moral edicts. Unity as an aim blesses all means: perfidy,
treachery, tyranny, simony, prisons, and death. For every holy order exists
because of the aims of society, and personality must be sacrificed to the
general good.”
These words, too, sound as if they had been uttered by some
contemporary Communist.
There is much of the feudal and fanatic in the dogmatism of
contemporary Communism. But neither are we living in the Middle Ages
nor is contemporary Communism a church.
The emphasis on ideological and other monopolism only seems to make
contemporary Communism similar to the medieval Church; the essence
of each is different. The Church was only partly owner and governor; in
the most extreme cases, it aspired to perpetuate a given social system
through absolute control of the mind. The churches persecuted heretics,
even for dogmatic reasons which were not always called for by direct
practical needs. As the Church represented it, it was attempting to save
sinful, heretical souls by destroying their bodies. All earthly means were
considered permissible for the purpose of attaining the heavenly
kingdom.
But the Communists first of all desire physical or state authority.
Intellectual control and persecution exercised for dogmatic reasons are
only auxiliary aids for strengthening the power of the state. Unlike the
Church, Communism is not the support of the system but its
embodiment.
The new class did not arise suddenly, but was developed from a
revolutionary to an ownership and reactionary group. Its methods too,
even though they seemed the same, changed in essence from
revolutionary ones to tyrannical ones, from protective to despotic ones.
Communist methods will in essence be amoral and un-
scrupulous, even, when they are especially severe in form. Because it is

completely totalitarian, Communist rule cannot allow for much choice of
means. And Communists are incapable of renouncing the essential thing—the
lack of choice of means—because of the fact that they want to retain absolute
power and their own egotistical interests.
Even if they did not so wish, Communists must be both owners and despots
and must utilize many means for that purpose. In spite of any happy theories or
good inclinations they might have, the system itself drives them to the utilization
of any means. In case of any urgency, they find themselves the moral and
intellectual champions and the actual users of any means available.
2.
Communists speak of “Communist morale,” “the new Socialist man,” and
similar concepts as if they were speaking of some higher ethical categories. These
hazy concepts have only one practical meaning—the cementing of Communist
ranks and opposition to foreign influence. As actual ethical categories, however,
they do not exist.
Since no special Communist ethics nor a Socialist Man can emerge, the caste
spirit of the Communists, and special moral and other concepts, which they
nurse among themselves, are are all the more strongly developed. These are not
absolute principles, but changing moral standards. They are embedded in the
Communist hierarchical system in which almost anything is permitted at the
top—the upper circles—while the same things are condemned if they are
practiced at lower echelons— the lower circles.
This caste spirit and these morals, changeable and incomplete, have
undergone a long and varied development, and have even often been the
stimulus for the further development
152 THE NEW CLASS
of the new class. The end result of this development has been the creation
of special sets of moral standards for various castes, always subordinated
to the practical needs of the oligarchy. The formation of these caste morals
roughly corresponds to the rise of the new class and is identical with its
abandonment of humane, really ethical standards.
These propositions require detailed exposition.
Like all other aspects of Communism, caste morals developed from
revolutionary morals. At first, in spite of the fact that they were a part of an
isolated movement, these morals were proclaimed as being more humane
than those of any sect or caste. But a Communist movement always begins
as one of highest idealism and most selfless sacrifice, attracting into its ranks
the most gifted, the bravest, and even the most noble intellects of the nation.
This statement, just as most of the others made here, relates to countries in
which Communism has developed for the most part because of national
conditions, and where it has attained full power (Russia, Yugoslavia, and
China). However, with some modifications this statement also applies to
Communism in other countries.
Everywhere, Communism begins as an aspiration toward a beautiful
ideal society. As such, it attracts and inspires men of high moral standards
and of other high distinction. But since Communism is also an international
movement, it turns, like a sunflower to the sun, to the movement which is
strongest —until now primarily in the U.S.S.R. Consequently, even the
Communists of other countries where they are not in power rapidly lose the
features they had in the beginning and take on those of the power-wielding
Communism. As a result, the Communist leaders in the West, and in other
places, have accustomed themselves to play as easily with the truth and
ethical principles as the Communists in the U.S.S.R. Every Communist
movement at first also has high moral features which isolated individuals
may retain even longer and which provoke crises
when leaders initiate amoral proceedings and arbitrary turnabouts.

History does not have many movements that, like Communism,
began their climb with such high moral principles and with such
devoted, enthusiastic, and clever fighters, attached to each other not
only by ideas and suffering, but also by selfless love, comradeship,
solidarity, and that warm and direct sincerity that can be produced only
by battles in which men are doomed either to win or die.; Cooperative
efforts, thoughts, and desires; even the most intensă effort to attain the
same method of thinking and feeling, the finding of personal happiness
and the building of individuality through complete devotion to the
party and workers’ collective; enthusiastic sacrificing for others; care
and protection for the young, and tender respect for the old—these are
the ideals of true Communists when the movement is in its inception
and still truly Communist^
Communist woman too is more than a comrade or co-fighter. It can
never be forgotten that she, on entering the movement, decided to
sacrifice all—the happiness of both love and of motherhood. Between
men and women in the movement, a clean, modest and warm
relationship is fostered: a relationship in which comradely care has
become sexless passion. Loyalty, mutual aid, frankness about even the
most intimate thoughts— these are generally the ideals of true, ideal
Communists.
This is true only while the movement is young, before it has tasted
the fruits of power.
The road to the attainment of these ideals is very long and difficult.
Communists and Communist movements are formed from varied
social forces and centers. Internal homogeneity is not attained
overnight, but through the fierce battles of varied groups and fractions.
If conditions are favorable, the group or fraction which wins the battle is
the one which has been most aware of the advance toward
Communism and which, when taking over power, is also the most
moral. Through moral crises, through political intrigues and
insinuations, mu
154 THE NEW CLASS
tual calumniation, unreasoning hatred and barbaric encounters, through
debauchery and intellectual decadence, the movement slowly climbs,
crushing groups and individuals, discarding the superfluous, forging its
core and its dogma, its morals and psychology, atmosphere, and manner
of work.
When it becomes truly revolutionary, the Communist movement and its
followers achieve, for a moment, the high moral standards described here.
This is a moment in Communism when it is difficult to separate words
from deeds, or more accurately, when the leading, most important, truest,
and ideal Communists sincerely believe in their ideals and aspire to put
them into practice in their methods and in their personal life. This is the
moment on the eve of the battle for power, a moment which occurs only in
movements which arrive at this unique point.
True, these are the morals of a sect, but they are morals on a high plane.
The movement is isolated, it often does not see the truth, but this does not
mean that the movement does not therefore aim at, or that it does not love,
truth.
Internal moral and intellectual fusion are the result of a long battle for
ideological and operational unity. Without this fusion there cannot even be
any thought of a true revolutionary Communist movement. ”Unity of
mind and action’’ is impossible without psychic-moral unity. And vice
versa. But this very psychic and moral unity—for which no statutes or
laws have been written, but which occurs spontaneously, to become a
custom and a conscious habit—more than anything else makes
Communists that indestructible family, incomprehensible and
impenetrable to others, inflexible in the solidarity and identity of its
reactions, thoughts, and feelings. More than anything else, the existence of
this psychic-moral unity—which is not attained all at once and which is
not even finally formed except as something to aspire to—is the most
reliable sign that the Communist movement has established itself and has
become irresistible to its followers and to many others, powerful be
cause it is (used into one piece, one soul, and one body. This is the proof
that a new, homogeneous movement has emerged, a movement facing a
future completely different from the future which the movement foresaw
at the beginning.
However, all this slowly fades, disintegrates, and drowns during the
course of the climb to complete power and to ownership by the
Communists. Only the bare forms and observances which have no real
substance remain.
The internal monolithic cohesion which was created in the struggle
with the oppositionists and with the half-Communist groups is
transformed into a unity of obedient counselors and robot-bureaucrats
inside the movement. During the climb to power, intolerance, servility,
incomplete thinking, control of personal life—which once was
comradely aid but is now a form of oligarchic management—
hierarchical rigidity and introversion, the nominal and neglected role of
women, opportunism, self-centeredness, and outrage repress the once-
existent high principles. The wonderful human characteristics of an
isolated movement are slowly transformed into the intolerant and
Pharisaical morals of a privileged caste. Thus, politicking and servility
replace the former straightforwardness of the revolution. Where the
former heroes who were ready to sacrifice everything, including life, for
others and for an idea, for the good of the people, have not been killed
or pushed aside, they become self-centered cowards without ideas or
comrades, willing to renounce everything—honor, name, truth, and
morals—in order to keep their place in the ruling class and the
hierachical circle. The world has seen few heroes as ready to sacrifice
and suffer as the Communists were on the eve of and during the
revolution. It has probably never seen such characterless wretches and
stupid defenders of arid formulas as they become after attaining power.
Wonderful human features were the condition for creating and
attracting power for the movement; exclusive caste spirit and complete
lack of ethical principles and virtues have become conditions for the
power and main
156 THE NEW CLASS
tenance of the movement. Honor, sincerity, sacrific, and love of the truth
were once things that could be understood for their own sakes; now,
deliberate lies, sycophancy, slander, deception, and provocation
gradually become the inevitable attendants of the dark, intolerant, and
all-inclusive might of the new class, and even affect relations between the
members of the class.
3*
Whoever has not grasped this dialectic of the development of
Communism has not been able to understand the so-called Moscow trials.
Nor can he understand why the Communists’ periodic moral crises,
caused by the abandonment of the sacred and consecrated principles of
the day before yesterday, cannot have the great significance that such
crises have for ordinary people or other movements.
Khrushchev acknowledged that truncheons played the main role in the
“confessions” and the self-condemnation of Stalin’s purges. He claimed
that drugs were not used, although there is evidence that they were. But
the most potent drugs for forcing “confessions” were in the make-up of
the criminal himself.
Common criminals, that is, those who are not Communists, do not go
into trances and make hysterical confessions and pray for death as a
reward for their “sins.” This was done only by “men of a special
stamp”—the Communists. They were first morally shocked by the
violence and amorality of the beatings and accusations leveled at them
secretly by the top party leadership, in whose complete amorality they
could not believe, even if they had occasionally found fault with them
before. Suddenly, they found themselves uprooted; their own class in the
person of Communist leadership had left them; innocent as they were, the
class itself had even nailed them to the cross as
criminals and traitors. Long ago they had been educated to believe and
had proclaimed that they were connected in every fiber of their being
to the party and its ideals. Now, uprooted, they found themselves
completely bereft. They either did not know or had forgotten or
renounced all of those outside the Communist sect and its narrow
ideas. Now it was too late to get acquainted with anything but
Communism. They were entirely alone.
Man cannot fight or live outside of society. This is his immutable
characteristic, one which Aristotle noted and explained, calling it
“political being.”
What else is left to a man from such a sect who finds himself
morally crushed and uprooted, exposed to refined and brutal torture,
except to aid the class and his “comrades” with his “confessions”?
Such confessions, he is convinced, are necessary to the class to resist
the “anti-Socialist” opposition and “imperialists.” These confessions
are the one “great” and “revolutionary” contribution left that the
victim, lost and wrecked, can make.
Every true Communist has been educated and has educated
himself and others in the belief that fractions and fractional battles are
among the greatest crimes against the party and its aims. It is true that
a Communist party which was divided by fractions could neither win
in the revolution nor establish its dominance. Unity at any price and
without consideration for anything else becomes a mystical obligation
behind which the aspirations of the oligarchs for complete power
entrench themselves. Even if he has suspected this, or even known it,
the demoralized Communist oppositionist has still not freed himself
of the mystic idea of unity. Besides, he may think that leaders come
and go, and that these too—the evil, the stupid, the egotistical, the
inconsequential and the power-loving—will disappear, while the goal
will remain. The goal is everything; has it not always been thus in the
party?
Trotsky himself, who was the most important of all the oppo-
158 THE NEW CLASS
sitionists, did not go much further in his reasoning. In a moment of self-

criticism, he shouted that the party is infallible, for it is the incarnation of
historical necessity, of a classless society. In attempting to explain, in his exile,
the monstrous amorality of the Moscow trials, he leaned on historical anal-
ogies: Rome, before the conquest of Christianity; and the Renaissance, at the
beginning of capitalism; in both of which also appeared the inevitable
phenomena of perfidious murders, calumnies, lies, and monstrous mass
crimes. So it must be during the transition to socialism, he concluded; these
were the remnants of the old class society which were still evident in the new.
However, he did not succeed in explaining anything through this; he only
succeeded in appeasing his conscience, in that he did not “betray” the
“dictatorship of the proletariat,” or the Soviets, as the one form of the
transition into the new and classless society. If he had gone into the problem
more deeply, he would have seen that, in Communism as in the Renaissance
and other periods in history, when an ownership class is breaking a trail for
itself, moral considerations play a smaller and smaller role as the difficulties of
the class increase and as its domination needs to become more complete.
In the same way, those who did not understand what sort of social
transformation was actually at stake after the Communists were victorious
had to re-evaluate the diverse moral crises among the Communists. The so-
called process of de-Staliniza- tion, or the unprincipled, somewhat Stalinist-
style, attacks on Stalin by his former courtiers are also re-evaluated as “a
moral crisis.”
Moral crises, great or small, are inevitable in every dictatorship, for its
followers, accustomed to thinking that uniformity of political thought is the
greatest patriotic virtue and the most holy civil obligation, must be disturbed
over the inevitable reversals and changes.
But the Communists feel and know that their totalitarian domination
does not weaken, but rather gets stronger, in such
reversals; that this is its inevitable path; and that moral and similar
reasons play only a secondary role, if they are not even a hindrance.
Practice very rapidly teaches them this. Consequently, their moral crises,
no matter how profound, end very quickly. Of course, the Communists
cannot be selective in the means they use if they desire to achieve the real
aim to which they aspire, and which they conceal under the cover of the
ideal aim.
4 .
Moral downgrading in the eyes of other men does not yet mean that
Communism is weak. Generally, until now, it has meant the reverse. The
various purges and “Moscow trials” strengthened the Communist
system and Stalin. In all events, certain strata—the intellectuals with Gide
as the most famous example—renounced Communism because of this
and doubted that Communism as it is today could realize the ideas and
ideals they believed in. However, Communism, such as it is, has not
become weakerf the new class has become stronger, more secure, freeing
itself from moral considerations^ wading in the blood of every adherent
of the Communist idea. Although it has been morally downgraded in the
eyes of others, Communism has actually been strengthened in the eyes of
its own class and in its domination over society.
Other conditions would be necessary for contemporary Communism
to be lowered in the estimation of the ranks of its own class. It is
necessary for the revolution not only to devour its own children, but—
one might say—devour itself. It is necessary for its greatest minds to
perceive that it is the exploiting class and that its reign is unjustified.
Concretely speaking, it is necessary for the class to perceive that in the
near future there cannot be any talk of the withering away of the state, or
talk of a Communist society—in which everyone will work according
160 THE NEW CLASS
to his capabilities and will receive according to his needs. The class must
recognize that the possibility of such a society can as well be refuted as it
can be demonstrated. Thus the means that this class used and is using to
achieve its aim and dominance would become absurd, inhumane, and
contrary to its great purpose-even to the class itself. This would mean that
there were cleavages and vacillations, which could not longer be checked,
among the ruling class. In other words, the battle for its own existence
would drive the ruling class itself, or individual fractions of it, to renounce
the current means it is using, or renounce the idea that its goals are within
sight and real.
There is no prospect of such a development here as a purely theoretic
proposition—in any of the Communist countries, least of all in the post-
Stalin U.S.S.R. The ruling class is still a compact one there; the
condemnation of Stalin’s methods has evolved, even in theory, into
protecting the U.S.S.R. from the despotism of a personal dictatorship. At
the Twentieth Party Congress, Khrushchev advocated “necessary
terrorism” against the “enemy,” in contrast to Stalin’s despotism against
“good Communists.” Khrushchev did not condemn Stalin’s methods as
such, but only their use in the ranks of the ruling class. It seems that the
relations within the class, which has become strong enough to avoid
surrender to the absolute dominance of its leader and police apparatus,
have changed since Stalin. The class itself and its methods have not
considerably changed in terms of internal cleavages with regard to moral
cohesion. The first signs of cleavage, however, are present; these are
evidencing themselves in the ideological crisis. But in spite of this it must
be realized that the process of moral disintegration has scarcely begun;
the conditions hardly exist for it to happen.
Arrogating certain rights to itself, the ruling oligarchy cannot avoid
allowing the crumbs of such rights to fall to the people. It is impossible
for the oligarchy to lecture on the lack of rights under Stalin even among
the Communists, and not at
the same time expect an echo among the masses—who are im-
measurably more deprived of their rights. The French bourgeoisie
finally rebelled against its emperor, Napoleon, when his wars and
bureaucratic despotism became intolerable. But the French people
eventually got some profit from this. Stalin’s methods, in which the
dogmatic hypothesis of a future society also played an important role,
will not return. But this does not mean that the current oligarchs will
renounce the use of all his means, even though they cannot use them,
or that the U.S.S.R. will soon or overnight become a legal, democratic
state.
However, something has changed. The ruling class will no longer
be able to justify even to itself that the end justifies the means. The
class will still lecture on the final goal—a Communist society—for if it
did otherwise it would have to renounce absolute dominance. This
will force it to resort to any means. Every time that it does resort to
them, it will also have to condemn their use. A stronger power—fear
of public opinion in the world, fear that it will bring harm to itself and
its absolute domination—will sway the class and hold back its hand.
Feeling itself sufficiently strong to destroy the cult of its creator, or the
creator of the system—Stalin—it simultaneously gave the death blow
to its own ideal basis. Completely dominant, the ruling class has
begun to abandon and lose the ideology, the dogma which brought it
to power. The class has begun to split up into fractions. At the top
everything is peaceful and smooth, but below the top, in the depths,
and even in its ranks, new thoughts, new ideas, are bubbling and
future storms are brewing;
Because it had to renounce Stalin’s methods, the ruling class will
not be able to preserve its dogma. The methods were actually only the
expression of that dogma, and, indeed, of the practice on which the
dogma was based.
It was not good will, still less humanity, which prompted Stalin’s
associates to perceive the harmfulness of Stalin’s meth
162 THE NEW CLASS
ods. It was urgent necessity that prompted the ruling class to become
more “understanding.” But, by avoiding the use of very brutal methods,
the oligarchs cannot help but plant the seed of doubt about their goals.
The end once served as moral cover for the use of any means. Renouncing
the use of such means will arouse doubts as to the end itself. As soon as
means which would insure an end are shown to be evil, the end will
show itself as being unrealizable. For the essential thing in every policy is
first of all the means, assuming that all ends appear good. Even “the road
to hell is paved with good intentions.”
5.
Throughout history there have been no ideal ends which were attained
with non-ideal, inhumane means, just as there has been no free society
which was built by slaves. Nothing so well reveals the reality and
greatness of ends as the methods used to attain them.
If the end must be used to condone the means, then there is something
in the end itself, in its reality, which is not worthy. That which really
blesses the end, which justifies the efforts and sacrifices for it, is the means:
their constant perfection, humaneness, increasing freedom.
Contemporary Communism has not even reached the beginning of
such a situation. Instead, it has stopped dead, hesitating over its means,
but always assured about its ends.
No regime in history which was democratic—or relatively democratic
while it lasted—was predominantly established on the aspiration for ideal
ends, but rather on the small everyday means in sight. Along with this,
each such regime achieved, more or less spontaneously, great ends. On the
other hand, every despotism tried to justify itself by its ideal aims. Not a
single one achieved great ends.
Absolute brutality, or the use of any means, is in accord with the

grandiosity, even with the unreality, of Communist aims.
By revolutionary means, contemporary Communism has suc-
ceeded in demolishing one form of society and despotically setting
up another. At first it was guided by the most beautiful, primordial
human ideas of equality and brotherhood; only later did it conceal
behind these ideas the establishment of its domination by whatever
means.
As Dostoyevski has his hero Shigaliev say, quoted by another
character, in The Possessed:
. . He's written a good thing in that manuscript,” Ver*

khovensky went on.... “Every member of the society spies on
the others, and it’s his duty to inform against them. Every one
belongs to all and all to every one. All are slaves and equal in
their slavery. In extreme cases he advocates slander and
murder, but the great thing about it is equality.... Slaves are
bound to be equal. There has never been either freedom or
equality without despotism. . . “
Thus, by justifying the means because of the end, the end itself
becomes increasingly more distant and unrealistic, while the frightful
reality of the means becomes increasingly obvious and intolerable.
The Essence
1 .
None of the theories on the essence of contemporary Com munism treats
the matter exhaustively. Neither does this theory claim to do so.
Contemporary Communism is the product of a series of historical, economic,
political, ideological, national, and international causes. A categorical theory
about its essence cannot be entirely accurate.
The essence of contemporary Communism could not even be perceived
until, in the course of its development, it revealed itself to its very entrails.
This moment came, and could only come, because Communism entered a
particular phase of its development—that of its maturity. It then became
possible to reveal the nature of its power, ownership, and ideology. In the
time that Communism was developing and was predominantly an ideology,
it was almost impossible to see through it completely.
Just as other truths are the work of many authors, countries, and
movements, so it is with contemporary Communism. Communism has been
revealed gradually, more or less parallel to its development; it cannot be
looked upon as final, because it has not completed its development.
Most of the theories regarding Communism, however, have
164
THE ESSENCE 165
some truth in them. Each of them has usually grasped one aspect of
Communism or one aspect of its essence.
There are two basic theses on the essence of contemporary
Communism.
The first of them claims that contemporary Communism is a type of
new religion. We have already seen that it is neither a religion nor a
church, in spite of the fact that it contains elements of both.
The second thesis regards Communism as revolutionary socialism,
that is, something which was bom of modem industry, or capitalism,
and of the proletariat and its needs. We have seen that this thesis also is
only partially accurate: contemporary Communism began in well-
developed countries as a socialist ideology and a reaction against the
suffering of the working masses in the industrial revolution. But after
having come into power in underdeveloped areas, it became something
entirely different—an exploiting system opposed to most of the interests
of the proletariat itself.
The thesis has also been advanced that contemporary Communism is
only a contemporary form of despotism, produced by men as soon as
they seize power. The nature of the modern economy, which in every
case requires centralized administration, has made it possible for this
despotism to be absolute. This thesis also has some truth in it: modern
Communism is a modem despotism which cannot help but aspire
toward totalitarianism. However, all types of modem despotism are not
variants of Communism, nor are they totalitarian to the degree that
Communism is.
Thus whatever thesis we examine, we find that each thesis explains
one aspect of Communism, or a part of the truth, but not the entire
truth.
Neither can my theory on the essence of Communism be accepted as
complete. This is, anyway, the weakness of every
166 THE NEW CLASS
definition, especially when such complex and living matters as social

phenomena are being defined.
Nevertheless, it is possible to speak in the most abstract theoretical way
about the essence of contemporary Communism, about what is most
essential in it, and what permeates all its manifestations and inspires all of
its activity. It is possible to penetrate deeper into this essence, to elucidate
its various aspects; but the essence itself has already been exposed.
Communism, and likewise its essence, is continuously changing from
one form to another. Without this change it cannot even exist.
Consequently, these changes require continuous examination and a
deeper study of the already obvious truth.
The essence of contemporary Communism is the product of particular
conditions, historical and others. But as soon as Communism becomes
strong, the essence itself becomes a factor and creates the conditions for its
own continued existence. Consequently, it is evident that it is necessary to
examine the essence separately according to the form and the conditions
in which it appears and is operating at a given moment.
2 .
The theory that contemporary Communism is a type of modem
totalitarianism is not only the most widespread, but also the most
accurate. However, an actual understanding of the term “modem
totalitarianism” where Communism is being discussed is not so
widespread.
Contemporary Communism is that type of totalitarianism which
consists of three basic factors for controlling the people. The first is power;
the second, ownership; the third, ideology. They are monopolized by the
one and only political party, or— according to my previous explanation
and terminology—by a new class; and, at present, by the oligarchy of that
party or of that class. No totalitarian system in history, not even a contem
THE ESSENCE 167
porary one—with the exception of Communism—has succeeded in

incorporating simultaneously all these factors for controlling the
people to this degree.
When one examines and weighs these three factors, power is the
one which has played and still continues to play the most important
role in the development of Communism. One of the other factors may
eventually prevail over power, but it is impossible to determine this
on the basis of present conditions.
I believe that power will remain the basic characteristic of
Communism.
Communism first originated as an ideology, which contained in its
seed Communism’s totalitarian and monopolistic nature. It can
certainly be said that ideas no longer play the main, predominant role
in Communism’s control of the people. Communism as an ideology
has mainly run its course. It does not have many new things to reveal
to the world. This could not be said for the other two factors, power
and ownership.
It can be said: power, either physical, intellectual, or economic,
plays a role in every struggle, even in every social human action.
There is some truth in this. It can also be said: in every policy, power,
or the struggle to acquire and keep it, is the basic problem and aim.
There is some truth in this also. But contemporary Communism is not
only such a power; it is something more. It is power of a particular
type, a power which unites within itself the control of ideas, authority,
and ownership, a power which has become an end in itself.
To date, Soviet Communism, the type which has existed the longest
and which is the most developed, has passed through three phases.
This is also more or less true of other types of Communism which
have succeeded in coming to power (with the exception of the Chinese
type, which is still predominantly in the second phase).
The three phases are: revolutionary, dogmatic, and non- dogmatic
Communism. Roughly speaking, the principal catchwords, aims, and
personalities corresponding to these various
168 THE NEW CLASS
phases are: Revolution, or the usurpation of power—Lenin. “Socialism,”

or the building of the system—Stalin. “Legality,” or stabilization of the
system— “collective leadership.”
It is important to note that these phases are not distinctly separate from
one another, that elements of all are found in each. Dogmatism abounded,
and the “building of socialism” had already begun, in the Leninist period;
Stalin did not renounce revolution, or reject the dogmas, which interfered
with the building of the system. Present-day, non-dogmatic Communism
is only non-dogmatic conditionally: it just will not renounce even the
minutest practical advantages for dogmatic reasons. Precisely because of
such advantages, it will at the same time be in a position to persecute
unscrupulously the minutest doubt concerning the truth or purity of the
dogma. Thus, Communism, proceeding from practical needs and
capabilities, has today even furled the sails of revolution, or of its own
military expansion. But it has not renounced one or the other.
This division into three phases is only accurate if it is taken roughly and
abstractly. Clearly separate phases do not actually exist, nor do they
correspond to specific periods in the various countries.
The boundaries between the phases, which overlap, and the forms in
which the phases appear are varied in different Communist countries. For
example, Yugoslavia has passed through all three phases in a relatively
short time and with the same personalities at the summit. This is obvious
in both precepts and method of operation.
Power plays a major role in all three of these phases. In the revolution it
was necessary to seize power; in the building of socialism, it was
necessary to create a new system by means of that power; today power
must preserve the system.
During the development, from the first to the third phase, the
quintessence of Communism—power—evolved from being the means
and became an end in itself. Actually power was always more or less the
end, but Communist leaders, thinking that
THE ESSENCE 169
through power as a means they would attain the ideal goal, did not
believe it to be an end in itself. Precisely because power served as a
means for the Utopian transformation of society, it could not avoid
becoming an end in itself and the most important aim of Communism.
Power was able to appear as a means in the first and second phases. It
can no longer be concealed that in the third phase power is the actual
principal aim and essence of Communism.
Because of the fact that Communism is being extinguished as an
ideology, it must maintain power as the main means of controlling the
people.
In revolution, as in every type of war, it was natural to concentrate
primarily on power: the war had to be won. During the period of
industrialization, concentrating on power could still be considered
natural: the construction of industry, or a “socialist society,” for which
so many sacrifices had been made, was necessary. But as all this is
being completed, it becomes apparent that in Communism power has
not only been a means but that it has also become the main, if not the
sole, end.
Today power is both the means and the goal of Communists, in
order that they may maintain their privileges and ownership. But
since these are special forms of power and ownership, it is only
through power itself that ownership can be exercised. Power is an end
in itself and the essence of contemporary Communism. Other classes
may be able to maintain ownership without a monopoly over power,
or power without a monopoly over ownerships Until now, this has
not been possible for the new class, which was formed through
Communism; it is very improbable that it will be possible in the
future.
Throughout all three of these phases, power has concealed itself as the
hidden, invisible, unspoken, natural and principal end. Its role has
been stronger or weaker depending on the degree of control over the
people required at the time. In the first phase, ideas were the
inspiration and the prime mover for the attainment of power; in the
second phase, power operated
170 THE NEW CLASS
as the whip of society and for its own maintainance; today, “collective
ownership” is subordinated to the impulses and needs of power.
Power is the alpha and the omega of contemporary Communism, even
when Communism strives to prevent this.
Ideas, philosophical principles and moral considerations, the nation and
the people, their history, in part even ownership—all can be changed and
sacrificed. But not power. Because this would signify Communism’s
renunciation of itself, of its own essence. Individuals can do this. But the
class, the party, the oligarchy cannot. This is the purpose and the meaning
of its existence.
Every type of power besides being a means is at the same time and
end—at least for those who aspire to it. Power is almost exclusively an end
in Communism, because it is both the source and the guarantee of all
privileges. By means of and through power the material privileges and
ownership of the ruling class over national goods are realized. Power de-
termines the value of ideas, and suppresses or permits their expression.
It is in this way that power in contemporary Communism differs from
all other types of power, and that Communism itself differs from every
other system.
Communism has to be totalitarian, exclusive, and isolated precisely
because power is the most essential component of Communism. If
Communism actually could have had other ends, it would have to make it
possible for other forces to spring up in opposition and operate
independently.
How contemporary Communism will be defined is secondary. Everyone
who undertakes the work of explaining Communism finds himself faced
with the problem of defining it, even if actual conditions do not compel him
to do this—conditions in which Communists glorify their system as
“socialism,” “classless society,” and “the realization of men’s eternal
dreams,” while the opposing element defines Communism as an insensi-
THE ESSENCE m
tive tyranny, the chance success of a terroristic group, and the

damnation of the human race.
Science must use already established categories in order to make a
simple exposition. Is there any category in sociology into which we can
cram contemporary Communism if we use a little force?
In common with many authors who started from other positions, I
have, in recent years, equated Communism with state capitalism or,
more precisely, with total state capitalism.
This interpretation won out among the leaders of Yugoslav
Communists during the time of their clash with the government of the
U.S.S.R. But just as Communists, according to practical needs, easily
change even their “scientific” analysis, Yugoslav party leaders changed
this interpretation after the “reconciliation” with the Soviet
government, and once more proclaimed the U.S.S.R. a Socialist country.
At the same time, they proclaimed the Soviet imperialistic attack on the
independence of Yugoslavia—in Tito’s words—a “tragic,” “incom-
prehensible” event, evoked by the “arbitrariness of individuals.”
Contemporary Communism for the most part does resemble total
state capitalism. Its historical origin and the problems which it had to
solve—namely, an industrial transformation similar to the one
achieved by capitalism but with the aid of the state mechanism—lead
to such a conclusion.
If, under Communism, the state were the owner in the name of
society and of the nation, then the forms of political power over society
would inevitably change according to the varying needs of society and
of the nation. The state by its nature is an organ of unity and harmony
in society, and not only a force over it. The state could not be both the
owner and ruler in itself. In Communism it is reversed: The state is an
instrument and always subordinate exclusively to the interests of one
and the same exclusive owner, or of one and the same direction in the
economy, and in the other areas of social life.
State ownership in the West might be considered more as
172 THE NEW CLASS
state capitalism than it is in Communist countries. The claim that

contemporary Communism is state capitalism is prompted by the “pangs of
conscience” of those who were disillusioned by the Communist system, but
who did not succeed in defining it; they therefore equate its evils with those
of capitalism. Since there is really no private ownership in Communism but
rather formal state ownership, nothing seems more logical than to attribute
all evils to the state. This idea of state capitalism is also accepted by those
who see ‘less evil' in private capitalism. Therefore they like to point out that
Communism is a worse type of capitalism.
To claim that contemporary Communism is a transition to something
else leads nowhere and explains nothing. What is not a transition to
something else?
Even if it is accepted that it has many of the characteristics of an all-
encompassing state capitalism, contemporary Communism also has so
many of its own characteristics that it is more precise to consider it a special
type of new social system.
Contemporary Communism has its own essence which does not permit
it to be confused with any other. Communism, while absorbing into itself
all kinds of other elements—feudal, capitalist, and even slave-owning—
remains individual and independent at the same time.
National Communism
1.
In essence, Communism is only one thing, but it is realized in different

degrees and manners in every country. Therefore it is possible to speak
of various Communist systems, i.e., of various forms of the same
manifestation.
The differences which exist between Communist states—differences
that Stalin attempted futilely to remove by force—are the result, above
all, of diverse historical backgrounds. Even the most cursory
observation reveals how, for example, contemporary Soviet
bureaucracy is not without a connecting link with the Czarist system in
which the officials were, as Engels noted, “a distinct class.” Somewhat
the same thing can also be said of the manner of government in
Yugoslavia. When ascending to power, the Communists face in the
various countries different cultural and technical levels and varying
social relationships, and are faced with different national intellectual
characters. These differences develop even farther, in a special way.
Because the general causes which brought them to power are identical,
and because they have to wage a struggle against common internal and
foreign opponents, the Communists in separate countries are
immediately compelled to fight jointly and on the basis of a similar
ideology. International Com-
173
174 THE NEW CLASS
munism, which was at one time the task of revolutionaries eventually

transformed itself, as did everything else in Communism, and became the
common ground of Communist bureaucracies, fighting one another on
nationalistic considerations. Of the former international proletariat, only
words and empty dogmas remained. Behind them stood the naked national
and international interests, aspirations, and plans of the various Communist
oligarchies, comfortably entrenched.
The nature of authority and property, a similar international outlook, and
an identical ideology inevitably identify Communist states with one another.
Nevertheless, it is wrong to ignore and underestimate the significance of the
inevitable di- ferences in degree and manner betwen Communist states. The
degree, manner, and form in which Communism will be realized, or its
purpose, is just as much of a given condition for each of them as is the essence
of Communism itself. No single form of Communism, no matter how similar
it is to other forms, exists in any way other than as national Communism. In
order to maintain itself, it must become national.
The form of government and property as well as of ideas differs little or
not at all in Communist states. It cannot differ markedly since it has an
identical nature—total authority. How- ever, if they wish to win and continue
to exist, the Communists must adapt the degree and manner of their
authority to national conditions.
The differences between Communist countries will, as a rule, be as great as
the extent to which the Communists were independent in coming to power.
Concretely speaking, only the Communists of three countries—the Soviet
Union, China, and Yugoslavia—independently carried out revolutions or, in
their own way and at their own speed, attained power and began “the
building of socialism.” These three countries remained independent as
Communist states even in the period when Yugoslavia was—as China is
today—under the most extreme
NATIONAL COMMUNISM 175
influence of the Soviet Union; that is, in “brotherly love” and in “eternal
friendship” with it. In a report at a closed session of the Twentieth
Congress, Khrushchev revealed that a clash between Stalin and the
Chinese government had barely been averted. The case of the clash with
Yugoslavia was not an isolated case, but only the most drastic and the
first to occur. In the other Communist countries the Soviet government
enforced Communism by “armed missionaries”—its army. The
diversity of manner and degree of the development in these countries
has still not attained the stage reached in Yugoslavia and China.
However, to the extent that ruling bureaucracies gather strength as
independent bodies in these countries, and to the extent that they
recognize that obedience to and copying of the Soviet Union weaken
themselves, they endeavor to “pattern” themselves on Yugoslavia; that
is, to develop independently. The Communist East European countries
did not1 become satellites of the U.S.S.R. because they benefited from it,
but because they were too weak to prevent it. As soon as they become
stronger, or as soon as favorable conditions are created, a yearning for
independence and for protection of “their own people” from Soviet
hegemony will rise among them.
With the victory of a Communist revolution in a country a new class
comes into power and into control. It is unwilling to surrender its own
hard-gained privileges, even though it subordinates its interests to a
similar class in another country, solely in the cause of ideological
solidarity.
Where a Communist revolution has won victory independently, a
separate, distinct path of development is inevitable. Friction with other
Communist countries, especially with the Soviet Union as the most
important and most imperialistic state, follows. The ruling national
bureaucracy in the country where the victorious revolution took place
has already become independent in the course of the armed struggle
and has tasted the blessings of authority and of “nationalization” of
property.
176 THE NEW CLASS
Philosophically speaking, it has also grasped and become conscious of its
own essence, “its own state,” its authority, on the basis of which it claims
equality.
This does not mean that this involves only a clash—when it comes to
that—between two bureaucracies. A clash also involves the revolutionary
elements of a subordinated country, because they do not usually tolerate
domination and they consider that relationships between Communist states
must be as ideally perfect as predicted in dogma. The masses of the nation,
who spontaneously thirst for independence, cannot remain unperturbed in
such a clash. In every case the nation benefits from this: it does not have to
pay tribute to a foreign government; and the pressure on the domestic
government, which no longer desires, and is not permitted, to copy foreign
methods, is also diminished. Such a clash also brings in external forces,
other states and movements. However, the nature of the clash and the basic
forces in it remain. Neither Soviet nor Yugoslav Communists stopped being
what they are—not before, nor during, nor after their mutual bickerings.
Indeed, the diverse types of degree and manner with which they insured
their monopoly led them mutually to deny the existence of socialism in the
opposite camp. After they settled their differences, they again
acknowledged the existence of socialism elsewhere, becoming conscious
that they must respect mutual differences if they wanted to preserve that
which was identical in essence and most important to them.
The subordinate Communist governments in East Europe can, in fact
must, declare their independence from the Soviet government. No one can
say how far this aspiration for independence will go and what
disagreements will result. The result depends on numerous unforeseen
internal and external circumstances. However, there is no doubt that a
national Communist bureaucracy aspires to more complete authority for
itself. This is demonstrated by the anti-Tito processes in Stalin’s time in
the East European countries; it is shown also by the current unconcealed

emphasis on “one’s own path to socialism,” which has recently come to
light sharply in Poland and Hungary? The central Soviet government
has found itself in difficulty because of the nationalism existing even in
those governments which it installed in the Soviet republics (Ukraine,
Caucasia), and still more so with regard to those governments installed
in the East European countries. Playing an important role in all of this is
the fact that the Soviet Union was unable, and will not be able in the
future, to assimilate the economies of the East European countries.
The aspirations toward national independence must of course have
greater impetus. These aspirations can be retarded and even made
dormant by external pressure or by fear on the part of the Communists
of “imperialism” and the “bourgeoisie,” but they cannot be removed. On
the contrary, their strength will grow.
It is impossible to foresee all of the forms that relations between
Communist states will assume. Even if cooperation between Communist
states of different countries should in a short time result in mergers and
federations, so can clashes between Communist states result in war. An
open, armed clash between the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia was averted not
because of the “socialism” in one or the other country, but because it was
not in Stalin’s interest to risk a clash of unforeseeable proportions.
Whatever will happen between Communist states will depend on all
those factors which ordinarily affect political events. The interests of the
respective Communist bureaucracies, expressed variously as “national”
or as “united,” along with the unchecked tendency toward ever
increasing independence on a national basis, will, for the time being,
play an important role in the relationships among the Communist
countries.
178 THE NEW CLASS
2.
2.
The concept of national Communism had no meaning until the end of
World War II, when Soviet imperialism was manifested not only with
regard to the capitalist but the Communist states as well. (This concept
developed above all from the Yugoslav-U.S.S.R. clash The renunciation of
Stalin’s methods by the “collective leadership” of Khrushchev-Bulganin
may perhaps modify relations between the U.S.S.R. and other Communist
countries, but it cannot resolve them. In the U.S.S.R. operations are not
concerned solely with Communism but are simultaneously concerned
with the imperialism of the Great Russian—Soviet—state. This
imperialism can change in form and method, but it can no more disappear
than can the aspirations of Communists of other countries for
independence.
A similar development awaits the other Communist states. According to
strength and conditions, they too will attempt to become imperialistic in
one way or another.
In the development of the foreign policy of the U.S.S.R. there have been
two imperialistic phases. Earlier policy was almost exclusively a matter of
expansion by revolutionary propaganda in other countries. At that time
there were powerful imperialistic tendencies (as regards the Caucasus) in
the policies of its highest leaders. But, in my opinion, there is no
satisfactory reason for the revolutionary phase to be categorically
considered imperialistic, since at that time it was more defensive than
aggressive.
If we do not consider the revolutionary phase as imperialistic, then
imperialism began, roughly speaking, with the victory of Stalin, or with
the industrialization and establishment of the authority of a new class in
the 1930’s. This change was clearly shown on the eve of the war when
Stalin’s government was able to go into action and leave behind pacifist
and anti-imperialistic phases. It was even expressed in the change of
foreign
policy; in place of the jovial and, to a certain extent, principled Litvinov, the
unscrupulous and reserved Molotov appeared.
The basic cause of an imperialistic policy is completely hidden in the
exploitative and despotic nature of the new class. In order that that class might
manifest itself as imperialistic, it was necessary for it to attain a prescribed
strength and to appear in appropriate circumstances. It already had this
strength when World War II began. The war itself abounded in possiblities for
imperialistic combinations. The small Baltic states were not necessary for the
security of so large a state as the U.S.S.R., particularly in modern war. These
states were non-aggressive and even allies; however, they were an attractive
morsel for the insatiable appetite of the Great Russian Communist
bureaucracy.
In World War II Communist internationalism, up to that time an integral
part of Soviet foreign policy, came into conflict with the interests of the ruling
Soviet bureaucracy. With that, the necessity for its organization ceased. The
idea of dissolution of the Communist International (Comintern) was
conceived, according to Georgi Dimitrov, after the subjugation of the Baltic
countries, and in the period of cooperation with Hitler, although it was not
effected until the second phase of the war during the period of alliance with
the Western states.
The Cominform, consisting of the East European and the French and Italian
Communist parties, was created on Stalin’s initiative in order to guarantee
Soviet domination in the satellite countries and to intensify its influence in
western Europe. The Cominform was worse than the former Communist
Inter' national which, even if it was absolutely dominated by Moscow, at least
formally represented all of the parties. The Cominform evolved in the field of
real and apparent Soviet influence. The clash with Yugoslavia revealed that it
was assigned to subordinate to the Soviet government those Communist
states and parties which had begun to weaken because of the internal growth
of national Communism. After the death of Stalin the
180 THE NEW CLASS
Cominform was finally dissolved. Even the Soviet government, desiring to
avoid major and dangerous quarrels, accepted the so-called separate path
to socialism, if not national Communism itself.
These organizational changes had profound economic and political
causes. As long as the Communist parties in East Europe were weak and
the Soviet Union was not sufficiently strong economically, the Soviet
government would have had to resort to administrative methods to
subjugate the East European countries, even if there had been no Stalinist
arbitrariness and despotism. Soviet imperialism, by political, police and
military methods, had to compensate for its own economic and other
weaknesses, imperialism in the military form, which was only an
advanced stage of the old Czarist military-feudal imperialism, also
corresponded to the internal structure of the Soviet Union in which the
police and administrative apparatus, centralized in one personality, played
a major role. Stalinism was a mixture of a personal Communist
dictatorship and militaristic imperialism.
These forms of imperialism developed: joint stock companies,
absorption of the exports of the East European countries by means of
political pressure at prices below the world market, artificial formation of a
“socialist world market,” control of every political act of subordinate
parties and states, transformation of the traditional love of Communists
toward the “socialist fatherland” into deification of the Soviet state, Stalin,
and Soviet practices.
But what happened?
A change within the ruling class was quietly completed in the Soviet
Union itself. Similar changes, in another sense, also occurred in the East
European countries; new national bureaucracies long for ever increasing
consolidation of power and property relations, but at the same time they
fall into difficulties because of the hegemonic pressure of the Soviet
government. If earlier they had had to renounce national characteristics
in order to come to power, now such action had become a hindrance to
their further ascendancy to power. In addition, it became impossible for
the Soviet government to adhere to the exorbitant and hazardous
Stalinist foreign policy of military pressure and isolation and,
simultaneously, during the period of the general colonial movements,
to hold the European countries in infamous bondage.
The Soviet leaders had to concede, after long vacillation and
indecisive argumentation, that the Yugoslav leaders were falsely
indicted as Hitlerite and American spies just because they defended the
right to consolidate and build a Communist system in their own way.
Tito became the most significant personality in contemporary
Communism. The principle of national Communism was formally
acknowledged But with that Yugoslavia also ceased to be the exclusive
creator of innovations in Communism. The Yugoslav revolution
subsided into its groove, and a peaceful and matter-of-fact rule began.
With that the love between yesterday’s enemies did not become
greater, nor were the disagreements terminated. This was merely the
beginning of a new phase.
Now the Soviet Union entered into the predominantly economic and
political phase of its imperialistic policy. Or so it appears, judging from
current facts.
Today national Communism is a general phenomenon in
Communism. To varying degrees all Communist movements— except
that of the U.S.S.R. against which it is directed—are gripped by national
Communism. In its time, in the period of Stalin’s ascendancy, Soviet
Communism also was national Communism. At that time Russian
Communism abandoned internationalism, except as an instrument of
its foreign policy. Today Soviet Communism is compelled, even if
indefinitely, to acknowledge a new reality in Communism.
Changing internally, Soviet imperialism was also compelled to alter
its views toward the external world. From predominantly
administrative controls, it advanced toward gradual
182 THE NEW CLASS
economic integration with the East European countries. This is being
accomplished by means of mutual planning in important branches of
economy, in which the local Communist governments today mainly
voluntarily concur, still sensing themselves weaker externally and
internally.
Such a situation cannot remain for long, because it conceals a
fundamental contradiction. On the one hand national forms of
Communism become stronger, but on the other, Soviet imperialism does
not diminsh. Both the Soviet government and the governments of the East
European countries, including Yugoslavia, by means of accords and
cooperation, are seeking solutions to mutual problems which influence
their very nature —preservation of a given form of authority and of
property ownership. However, even if it is possible to effect cooperation
with respect to property ownership, it is not possible with respect to
authority. Although conditions for further integration with the Soviet
Union are being realized, those conditions which lead to the independence
of the East European Communist governments are being realized even
more rapidly. The Soviet Union has not renounced authority in these
countries, nor have the governments of these countries renounced their
craving to attain something similar to Yugoslav independence. The degree
of independence that will be attained will depend on the state of
international and internal forces.
Recognition of national forms of Communism, which the Soviet
government did with clenched teeth, has immense significance and
conceals within itself very considerable dangers for Soviet imperialism.
It involves freedom of discussion to a certain extent; this means
ideological independence too. Now the fate of certain heresies in
Communism will depend not only on the tolerance of Moscow, but on
their national potentialities. Deviation from Moscow that strives to
maintain its influence in the Communist world on a “voluntary” and
“ideologic” basis cannot possibly be checked.
Moscow itself is no longer that which it was. It single- handedly lost

the monopoly of the new ideas and the moral right to prescribe the
only permissible “line.” Renouncing Stalin, it ceased to be the
ideological center. In Moscow itself the epoch of great Communist
monarchs and of great ideas came to an end, and the reign of mediocre
Communist bureaucrats began.
“Collective leadership” did not anticipate that any difficulties and
failures were awaiting it in Communism itself—either externally or
internally. But what could it do? Stalin’s imperialism was exorbitant
and overly dangerous, and what was even worse, ineffective. Under
him not only the people generally, but even the Communists,
grumbled, and they did so at the time of a very strained international
situation.
The world center of Communist ideology no longer exists; it is in the
process of complete disintegration. The unity of the world Communist
movement is incurably injured. There are no visible possibilities
whatsoever that it can be restored. However, just as the shift from Stalin
to “collective leadership” did not alter the nature of the system itself in
the U.S.S.R., so too national Communism has been unable, despite ever
increasing possibilities for liberation from Moscow, to alter its internal
nature, which consists of total control and monopoly of ideas, and
ownership by the party bureaucracy. Indeed, it significantly alleviated
the pressure and slowed down the rate of establishment of its monopoly
over property, particularly in the rural areas. But national Communism
neither desires nor is able to transform itself into something other than
Communism, and something always spontaneously draws it toward its
source—toward the Soviet Union. It will be unable to separate its fate
from that which links it with the remaining Communist countries and
movements.
National modifications in Communism jeopardize Soviet imperialism,
particularly the imperialism of the Stalin epoch, but not Communism
either as a whole or in essence. On the
184 THE NEW CLASS
contrary, where Communism is in control these changes are able to

influence its direction and even to strengthen it and make it acceptable
externally. National Communism is in harmony with non-dogmaticism,
that is, with the anti-Stalinist phase in the development of Communism. In
fact, it is a basic form of this phase.
3.
National Communism is unable to alter the nature of current
international relationships between states or within workers’ movements.
But its role in these relationships may be of great significance.
Thus, for example, Yugoslav Communism, as a form of national
Communism, played an extremely important role in the weakening of
Soviet imperialism and in the downgrading of Stalinism inside the
Communist movement. The motives for changes which are occurring in the
Soviet Union and in the East European countries are to be found, above all,
in the countries themselves. They appeared first in Yugoslavia—in the
Yugoslav way. And there, too, they were first completed. Thus Yugoslav
Communism as national Communism, in the clash with Stalin, actually
originated a new, post-Stalin phase in the development of Communism.
Yugoslav Communism significantly influenced changes in Communism
itself, but did not fundamentally influence either international relationships
or non-Communist workers’ movements.
The expectation that Yugoslav Communism would be able to evolve
toward democratic socialism or that it would be able to serve as a bridge
between Social Democracy and Communism has proved baseless. The
Yugoslav leaders themselves were in conflict over this question. During the
time of Soviet pressure on Yugoslavia they demonstrated a fervent desire
for a rapprochement with the Social Democrats. However, in 1956, during the
period of peace with Moscow, Tito announced
that both the Cominform and the Socialist International were

unnecessary, despite the fact that the Socialist International unselfishly
defended Yugoslavia while the Cominform laboriously attacked
Yugoslavia. Preoccupied with a policy of so- called active coexistence,
which for the most part corresponds to their interests of the moment,
the Yugoslav leaders declared that both organizations—the
Cominform and the Socialist International—were “immoderate”
solely because they were allegedly the product of two blocs.
The Yugoslav leaders confused their desires with reality and
confused their momentary interests with profoundly historic and
socialistic differences.
At any rate, the Cominform was the product of Stalinist efforts for
the creation of an Eastern military bloc. It is impossible to deny the
fact that the Socialist International is linked with the Western bloc, or
with the Atlantic Pact, since it operates within the framework of the
West European countries. But it would exist even without that bloc. It
is, above all, an organization of Socialists of the developed European
countries in which political democracy and similar relationships exist.
Military alliances and blocs are temporary manifestations, but the
Western Socialism and Eastern Communism reflect much more
enduring and basic tendencies.
Contrasts between Communism and a Social Democracy are not
the result of different principles only—these least of all— but of the
opposing directions of economic and intellectual forces. The clash
between Martov and Lenin at the Second Congress of Russian Social
Democrats in London in 1903 concerning the question of party
membership, and concerning the question of lesser or greater
centralism and discipline in the party—which Deutscher correctly
calls the beginning of the greatest schism in history—was of far
greater significance than even its initiators were able to anticipate.
With that began not only the formation of two movements but of two
social systems.
The schism between Communists and Social Democrats is
186 THE SEW CLASS
impossible to bridge until the very natures of these movements, or the

conditions themselves which resulted in differences between them, are
changed. In the course of a half century, despite periodic and separate
rapprochements, the differences have on the whole increased, and their
natures have become still more individualized. Today Social Democracy
and Communism are not only two movements but two worlds.
National Communism, separating itself from Moscow, has been unable
to bridge this chasm although it can circumvent it. This was demonstrated
by the cooperation of the Yugoslav Communists with the Social Democrats,
which was more seeming than actual and more courteous than sincere, and
which was without tangible important results for either side.
For completely different reasons, unity has not even been realized
between Western and Asian Social Democrats. The differences between
them were not as great in essence, or in principle, as they were in practice.
For national reasons of their own, Asian Socialists had to remain separated
from West European Socialists. Even when they are opponents of colonial-
ism, Western Socialists—though they play no leading role—are
representatives of countries which, solely because they are more developed,
exploit the undeveloped countries. The contrast between Asian and
Western Social Democrats is a manifestation of contrasts between
underdeveloped and developed countries, carried over into the ranks of the
Socialist movement. Despite the fact that concrete forms of this contrast
have to be sharply defined, proximity in essence—as far as can be deduced
today— is obvious and inevitable.
4 .
National Communism similar to that in Yugoslavia could be of immense
international significance in Communist parties of non-Communist states. It
could be of even greater signifi-
cance there than in Communist parties which are actually in power.

This is relevant above all to the Communist parties in France and Italy,
which encompass a significant majority of the working class and which
are, along with several parties in Asia, the only ones of major
significance in the non-Communist world.
Until now, the manifestations of national Communism in these
parties have been without major significance and impetus. However,
they have been inevitable. They could, in the final analysis, lead to
profound and essential changes in these parties.
These parties have to contend with the Social Democrats— who are
able to channel the dissatisfied masses toward themselves by means of
their own socialist slogans and activity. This is not the only reason for
the eventual deviation of these parties from Moscow. Lesser reasons
may be seen in the periodic and unanticipated reversals of Moscow
and of the other ruling Communist parties. Such reversals lead these
and other non- ruling Communist parties into a "crisis of conscience”—
to spit on what until yesterday they extolled, then suddenly to change
their line. Neither oppositionist propaganda nor administrative
pressure will play a fundamental role in the transformation of these
parties.
The basic causes for deviation of these parties from Moscow may be
found in the nature of the social system of the countries in which they
operate. If it becomes evident—and it appears likely—that the working
class of these countries is able through parliamentary forms to arrive at
some improvement in its position, and also to change the social system
itself, the working class will abandon the Communists regardless of its
revolutionary and other traditions. Only small groups of Communist
dogmaticists can look dispassionately at the disassociation of the
workers; serious political leaders in a given nation will endeavor to avoid
it even at the cost of weakening ties with Moscow.
Parliamentary elections which give a huge number of votes
188 THE NEW CLASS
to Communists in these countries do not accurately express the actual
strength of Communist parties. To a significant degree they are an
expression of dissatisfaction and delusion. Stubbornly following the
Communist leaders, the masses will just as easily abandon them the
moment it becomes obvious to them that the leaders are sacrificing national
institutions, or the concrete prospects of the working class, to their bureau-
cratic nature, or to the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and ties with
Moscow.
Of course, all of this is hypothesis. But even today these parties are
finding themselvs in a difficult situation. If they really wish to be adherents
of parliamentarianism, their leaders will have to renounce their anti-
parliamentary nature, or change over to their own national Communism
which would, since they are not in control, lead to disintegration of their
parties.
The leaders of Communist parties in these countries are driven to
experiment with the idea of national Communism and national forms by
all of these factors: by the strengthening of the possibility that the
transformation of society and the improvement of position of the workers
will be attained by democratic means; by Moscow’s reversals, which by the
downgrading of the cult of Stalin ultimately resulted in destruction of the
ideologic center; by concurrence of the Social Democrats; by tendencies
toward unification of the West on a profound and enduring social basis as
well as a military one; by military strengthening of the Western bloc which
offers increasingly fewer prospects for “brotherly aid” for the Soviet army;
and by the impossibility of new Communist revolutions without a world
war. At the same time fear of the inevitable result of a transition to
parliamentarianism, and of a breaking off with Moscow, prevents these
leaders from doing anything of real significance. Increasingly deeper social
differences between the East and the West work with relentless force. The
clever
NATIONAL COMMUNISM jp
Togliatti is confused, and the robust Thorez is wavering. External and

internal party life is beginning to bypass them.
Emphasizing that today a parliament can serve as a “form of
transition to socialism,” Khrushchev intended at the Twentieth
Congress to facilitate manipulation of the Ckmmranist parties in
“capitalist countries,” and to stimulate the cooperation of
Communists and Social Democrats and the formation of “People’s
Fronts.” Something like this appeared realistic to him, according to his
words, because of the changes which had resulted in the
strengthening of Communism and because of peace in the world.
With that he tacitly acknowledged to everyone the obvious
impossibility of Communist revolutions in the developed countries,
as well as the impossibility of further expansion of Communism
under current conditions without the danger of a new world war. The
policy of the Soviet state has been reduced to a status quo, while
Communism has descended to gradual acquisition of new positions
in a new way.
A crisis has actually begun in the Communist parties of the non-
Communist states. If they change over to national Communism, they
risk forsaking their very nature; and if they do not change over, they
face a loss of followers. Their leaders, those who represent the spirit of
Communism in these parties, will be forced into the most cunning
manipulations and unscrupulous measures if they are to extricate
themselves from this contradiction. It is improbable that they will be
able to check disorientation and disintegration. They have reached a
state of conflict with the real tendencies of development in the world
and in their countries that obviously lead toward new relationships.
National Communism outside of the Communist states inevitably
leads toward renunciation of Communism itself, or toward the
disintegration of the Communist parties. Its possibilities are greater
today in the non-Communist states, but obviously, only along the lines
of separation from Communism
190 THE NEW CLASS
itself. Therefore, national Communism in these parties will emerge

victorious only with difficulty and slowly, in successive outbursts.
In the Communist parties that are not in power it is evident that national
Communism—despite its intent to stimulate Communism and strengthen
its nature—is simultaneously the heresy that nibbles at Communism as
such. National Communism per se is contradictory. Its nature is the same
as that of Soviet Communism, but it aspires to detach itself into something
of its own, nationally. In reality, national Communism is Communism in
decline.
The Present-Day World
1.
In order to determine more dearly the international position of

contemporary Communism, it is necessary briefly to draw a picture
of the present-day world.
The results of the First World War led to the transformation of
Czarist Russia into a new type of state, or into a country with new
types of social relationships. Internationally the difference between
the technical level and tempo of the United States and the countries of
western Europe deepened; the Second World War was to transform
this into an unbridgeable gulf, so that only the United States did not
undergo major changes in the structure of its economy.
Wars were not the only cause of this gulf between the United States
and the rest of the world; they only accelerated its coming. The
reasons for the rapid advancement of the United States can be found,
undoubtedly, in its internal potentialities—in the natural and social
conditions and the character of the economy. American capitalism
developed in different circumstances from European capitalism and it
was in full swing at a time when its European counterpart had
already begun to decline.
Today the gulf is this wide: 6 per cent of the world popula- 191
192 THE NEW CLASS
tion, that of the United States, produces 40 per cent of the goods and
services in the world. Between the First and Second World Wars the United
States contributed 33 per cent of world production; after the Second World
War it contributed 50 per cent. The opposite was true of Europe (excluding
the U.S.S.R.), whose contribution to world production dropped from 68 per
cent in 1870, to 42 per cent in the 1925-29 period, then to 34 per cent in 1937,
and to 25 per cent in 1948 (according to United Nations data).
The development of modern industry in colonial economies was also of
special importance, and it was to make it possible for most of them,
ultimately, to gain their freedom after the Second World War.
In the period between the First and Second World Wars capitalism went
through an economic crisis so profound and with consequences so great that
only dogma-ridden Communist brains, particularly those in the U.S.S.R.,
failed to acknowledge it. In contrast to the crises of the nineteenth century,
the great crisis of 1929 revealed that such cataclysms today signify danger to
the social order itself, even to the life of the nation as a whole. The developed
countries—first of all the United States— had to find ways to emerge from
this crisis gradually. By various methods the United States resorted to a
planned economy on a national scale. The changes in connection with this
were of epochal importance for the developed countries and for the rest of
the world, although they were not recognized sufficiently from a theoretical
point of view.
In this period various forms of totalitarianism developed in the U.S.S.R.
and in capitalist countries such as Nazi Germany.
Germany, in contrast to the United States, was not capable of solving the
problem of its internal and external expansion by normal economic means.
War and totalitarianism (Nazism) were the only outlets for the German
monopolists, and they subordinated themselves to the racist war party.
As we have seen, the U.S.S.R. went over to totalitarianism
THE PRESENT-DAY WORLD m
for other reasons. It was the condition for its industrial transformation.
However, there was another, perhaps not very obvious, element which
was really revolutionary for the modern world. This element was modem
wars. They lead to substantial changes even when they do not lead to actual
revolutions. Leaving frightful devastation behind them, they change both
world relations and relations within individual countries.
The revolutionary character of modem wars is manifested not only in the
fact that they give impetus to technical discoveries, but, most of all, in the fact
that they change the economic and social structure. In Great Britain, the
Second World War exposed and affected relationships to the extent that
considerable nationalization became inevitable. India, Burma, and Indonesia
emerged from the war as independent countries. The unification of western
Europe began as a result of the war. It hurled the United States and the
U.S.S.R. to the summit as the two major economic and political powers.
Modem warfare affects the life of nations and humanity much more
deeply than did wars of earlier epochs. There are two reasons for this: First,
modern war must inevitably be total war. Not one economic, human, or other
source can remain untapped, because the technical level of production is
already so high that it makes it impossible for parts of any nation or any
branch of the economy to stand to one side. Second, for the same technical,
economic, and other reasons, the world, to an incomparably larger extent, has
become a whole; so the smallest changes in one part bring forth reactions in
other parts as well. Every modem war tends to change into a world war.
These invisible military and economic revolutions are of enormous extent
and significance. They are more spontaneous than revolutions achieved by
force; that is, they are not burdened to as great an extent with ideological and
organizational elements. Therefore, such revolutions make it possible to
194 THE NEW CLASS
register in a more orderly way the tendencies of movements in the
modern world.
The world as it is today and as it emerged from the Second World War
is obviously not the same as it was before.
Atomic energy, which man has tom out of the heart of matter and
wrested from the cosmos, is the most spectacular but not the only sign of
a new epoch.
Official Communist prognostications on the future of the human race
declare that atomic energy is the symbol of Communist society, just as
steam was the symbol and the power prerequisite of industrial
capitalism. However we interpret this naïve and biased reasoning,
another point is true: atomic energy is already leading to changes in
individual countries and in the world as a whole. Certainly these changes
do not point toward that Communism and socialism which the
Communist “theoreticians” desire.
Atomic energy, as a discovery, is not the fruit of one nation, but of a
century of work by hundreds of the most brilliant minds of many nations.
Its application is also the result of the efforts—not only scientific but
economic—of a number of countries. If the world had not already been
unified, neither the discovery nor the application of atomic energy would
have been possible.
The effect of atomic energy, in the first place, will tend toward the
further unification of the world. On the way, it will shatter inexorably all
inherited obstacles—ownership relations and social relations, but above
all exclusive and isolated systems and ideologies, such as Communism
both before and after Stalin’s death.
2 .
The tendency toward the unification of the world is the basic
characteristic of our time. This does not mean that the world
THE PRESENT-DAY WORLD 195
did not earlier have a tendency toward unity, in a different way. The
tendency toward binding the world together by means of the world
market was already dominant in the mid-nineteenth century. It, too,
was an epoch of capitalist economies and national wars. World unity
of one kind was being achieved then, through national economies
and national wan.
The further unification of the world was effected by the shattering
of pre-capitalist forms of production in the undeveloped regions and
their division among the developed countries and their monopolies.
This was the period of monopolistic capitalism, colonial conquests,
and wan in which internal connections and interests of the
monopolies often played a role more decisive than national defense
itself. The tendencies at that time toward world unity were achieved
mainly through conflicts and associations of monopolistic capital.
This was a higher level of unity than unity of the market. Capital
poured out of national sources, penetrated, took hold, and
dominated the entire world.
The present tendencies toward unity are apparent in other areas.
They may be found in a very high level of production, in
contemporary science, and in scientific and other thought Further
advancement of unity is no longer possible on exclusively national
foundations or through the division of the world into individual,
monopolistic spheres of influence.
The trends toward this new unity—unity of production- are being
built on the foundations already attained in earlieT stages—that is,
on the unity of the market and the unity of capital. They conflict,
however, with already strained and inadequate national,
governmental, and, above all, social relations. While the former
unities were achieved by means of national struggles or through
conflicts and wars over spheres of interest, contemporary unity is
being formed, and can only be formed, by the destruction of the
social relationships of previous periods.
No one can say conclusively in what manner the coordina
196 THE NEW CLASS
tion and unification of world production will be effected, whether by war

or by peaceful means. But there can be no doubt that its tendency cannot be
checked.
The first method of unification—war—would hasten unification by force,
that is, by the domination of one or another group. But it would inevitably
leave behind it the sparks of new conflagrations, discord, and injustice.
Unification by means of war would take place at the expense of the weak
and defeated. Even if war should bring order into given relationships it
would leave behind it unresolved conflicts and deeper misunderstandings.
Because the present world conflict is unfolding mainly on the basis of
opposition between systems, it has more of the character of a class conflict
than of opposition between nations and states. That is the reason for its
unusual severity and sharpness. Any future war would be more of a world
and civil war between governments and nations. Not only would the course
of the war itself be frightful; its effects on further free development would be
terrible too.
The unification of the world by peaceful means, although a slower way, is
the only steady, wholesome, and just way.
It appears that the unification of the contemporary world will be effected
through the opposition of systems, in contrast to the types of opposition
(national) through which unification was achieved in earlier periods.
This does not mean that all contemporary conflicts are merely due to
conflicts between systems. There are other conflicts, including those from
former epochs. Through the conflict of systems the tendency toward world
unity of production is revealing itself most clearly and actively.
It would be unrealistic to expect the unity of world production to be
achieved in the near future. The process will take a long time, since it will be
the fruit of the organized efforts of the economic and other leading powers of
humanity, and because complete unity of production actually cannot be
achieved.
The earlier unities were never attained as something final; this unity too is
being established only as a tendency, as something toward which production,
at least that of the most developed countries, aspires.
3 .
The ending of the Second World War had already confirmed the tendency
to division of systems on a world scale. All the countries which fell under
Soviet influence, even parts of countries (Germany, Korea), achieved more or
less the same system. It was the same on the Western side.
The Soviet leaders were fully aware of this process. I remember that at an
intimate party in 1945 Stalin said: “In modem war, the victor will impose his
system, which was not the case in past wars.” He said this before the war was
over, at a time when love, hope, and trust were at their peak among the Allies.
In February 1948 he said to us, the Yugoslavs, and to the Bulgarians: “They,
the Western powers, will make a country of their own out of West Germany
and we will make one of our own out of East Germany—this is inevitable.”
Today it is fashionable, and to some extent justifiable, to evaluate Soviet
policy as it was before and after Stalin’s death. However, Stalin did not invent
the systems, nor do those who succeeded him believe in them less than he did.
What has changed since his death is the method by which Soviet leaden
handle relations between systems, not the systems themselves. Did not
Khrushchev, at the Twentieth Party Congress, mention his “world of
socialism,” his “world socialist system,” as something separate and special? In
practice this means nothing more than insistence upon a division into systems,
into the further exclusiveness of Communism’s own system and hegemonistic
control.
Because the conflict between the West and East is essentially
198 THE NEW CLASS
a conflict of systems, it must take on the appearance of an ideological

struggle. Ideological war does not wane, even when temporary
compromises are effected, and it drugs into unconsciousness the minds in
the opposing camps. The more the conflict in the material, economic,
political, and other spheres sharpens, the more it seems as if pure ideas
themselves were in conflict.
In addition to the exponents of Communism and capitalism there is a
third type of country, that which has wrested itself from colonial
dependence (India, Indonesia, Burma, the Arab countries, etc.). These
countries are straining to construct independent economies in order to
tear themselves loose from economic dependence. In them overlap
several epochs and a number of systems, and particularly the two
contemporary systems.
These emerging nations are, principally for their own national reasons,
the most sincere supporters of the slogans of national sovereignty, peace,
mutual understanding, and similar ideas. However, they cannot
eliminate the conflict between the two systems. They can only alleviate it.
In addition they are the very fields of battle between the two systems.
Their role can be a significant and noble one but, for the present, not a
decisive one.
It is important to observe that both systems claim that the unification
of the world will be modeled on one or the other. Both take the stand,
then, that there is a need for world unity. However, these stands are
diametrically opposed. The modem world’s tendency toward unity is
being demonstrated and realized through a struggle between opposing
forces, a struggle of unheard-of severity in times of peace.
The ideological and political expressions of this struggle are, as we
know, Western democracy and Eastern Communism.
Since the unorganized tendencies toward unification are bursting forth
more strongly in the West, because of political democracy and a higher
technical and cultural level, the West
also appears as the champion of political and intellectual freedom.

One or another characteristic system of ownership in these countries may
check or stimulate this tendency, depending upon circumstances. However,
the aspiration toward unity is widespread. A definite obstacle to this
unification is the monopolies. They want unity, in their own interests, but
they want to accomplish it by an already obsolete method—in the form of
spheres of influence. However, their opponents—for example, the English
Labourites—are also adherents of unity, but in a different way. The tendency
toward unity is also strong in Great Britain, which has carried out
nationalization. Moreover, the United States is carrying out nationalization
as well, on an even vaster scale, not by changing the form of ownership, but
by putting a considerable portion of the national income into the hands of
the government. If the United States should achieve a completely
nationalized economy, tendencies toward the unification of the
contemporary world would receive still greater impetus.
4,
The law of society and man is to expand and perfect pro duction. This law
evidences itself in the contemporary level of science, technology, thought,
etc, as a tendency toward the unification of world production. This is a
tendency which, as a rule, is so much more irresistible if it involves people on
a higher cultural and material level.
Western tendencies toward world unification are the expression of
economic, technical, and other needs and, behind these, of political
ownership and other forces. The picture in the Soviet camp is different. Even
if there had not been other reasons, the Communist East, because it was
more backward, would have been compelled to isolate itself economically
and
200 THE NEW CLASS
ideologically and to compensate for its economic and other weaknesses
by political measures.
It may sound strange, but this is true: Communism’s so- called socialist
ownership is the main obstacle to world unification. The collective and
total dominance of the new class creates an isolated political and
economic system which impedes the unification of the world. This system
can and does change, but very slowly, and almost not at all in regard to
mixing and interweaving with other systems in the direction of consolida-
tion. Its changes are made solely for the purpose of increasing its own
strength. Leading to one type of ownership, government, and ideas, this
system inevitably isolates itself. It inevitably moves toward exclusiveness.
A united world which even the Soviet leaders desire can only be
imagined by them as more or less identical with their own and as being
theirs. The peaceful coexistence of systems of which they speak does not
mean to them the interweaving of various systems, but the static
continuation of one system alongside another, until the point when the
other system—the capitalist system—is either defeated or corrodes from
within.
The existence of the conflict between the two systems does not mean
that national and colonial conflicts have ceased. On the contrary, it is
through clashes of a national and colonial nature that the basic conflict of
systems is revealed. The struggle over the Suez Canal could hardly be
kept from turning into strife betwen the two systems, instead of
remaining what it was: a dispute between Egyptian nationalism and
world trade which, by a coincidence, happened to be represented by the
old colonial powers of Britain and France.
Extreme strain in all aspects of international life has been the inevitable
result of such relations. Cold war has become the normal peacetime state
of the modern world. Its forms have changed and are changing; it
becomes milder or more severe, but it is no longer possible to eliminate it
under given conditions. It is necessary first to eliminate something much
deeper, something which is in the nature of the contemporaiy world,

of contemporary systems, and especially of Communism. The cold
war, today the cause of increasing tension, was itself the product of
other, deeper, and earlieT conflicting factors.
The world in which we live is a world of uncertainty. It is a world
of stupefying and unfathomable horizons which science is revealing
to humanity; it is also a world of terrible fear of cosmic catastrophe,
threatened by modem means of war.
This world, will be changed, in one way or another. It cannot
remain as it is, divided and with an irresistible aspiration toward
unity. World relationships which finally emerge from this
entanglement will be neither ideal nor without friction. However,
they will be better than the present-day ones.
The present conflict of systems, however, does not indicate that
humanity is going in the direction of a single system. This type of
conflict demonstrates only that the further unification of the world
or, more accurately expressed, the unification of world production,
will be achieved through the conflict between systems.
The tendency toward unity of world production cannot lead
everywhere to the same type of production, that is, to the same forms
of ownership, government, etc. This unity of production expresses
the aspiration toward elimination of inherited and artificial obstacles
to the flourishing and greater efficiency of modern production. It
means a fuller adjustment of production to local, natural, national,
and other conditions. The tendency toward this unification really
leads to a greater coordination and use of the world production
potential.
It is fortunate that a single system does not prevail in the world.
On the contrary, the unfortunate thing is that there are too few
different systems. Most of all, what is really bad is the exclusive and
isolated nature of systems, of whatever kind they may be.
Increasingly greater differences between social units, state and
political systems, in addition to increasingly greater effi
202 THE NEW CLASS
ciency of production, is one of the laws of society. Peoples unite, man
conforms more and more to the world around him, but at the same time
he also becomes more and more individualized.
The future world will probably be more varied, and, as such, more
unified. Its imminent unification will be made possible by variety, not by
sameness of type and personality. At least that is the way it has been up to
this time. Sameness of type and personality would mean slavery and
stagnation; not a higher degree of freedom for production than today’s.
A nation which does not become aware of actual world processes and
tendencies will have to pay for it dearly. It will inevitably lag behind and
in the end will have to adjust to the unification of the world, no matter
what its numerical and military strength may be. None will escape this,
just as in the past not one nation could resist the penetration of capital and
the connection with other nations through the world market.
That is also the reason why today every autarchical, or exclusive,
national economy—whatever its form of ownership or political order, or
even its technical level—must fall into unresolvable contradictions and
stagnation. This holds true also for social systems, ideas, etc. The isolated
system can offer only a very modest living; it would be unable to move
forward and solve the problems brought about by modem techniques and
modern ideas.
Incidentally, world development has already demolished the
Communist-Stalinist theory of the possibility of construction of a socialist,
or Communist, society in one country, and has brought about the
strengthening of the totalitarian despotism, or the absolute dominance of a
new exploiting class.
In these circumstances the construction of a socialist, or Communist, or
any other kind of society in one country, or in a large number of countries
cut off from the world as a whole, inevitably results in autarchy and the
consolidation of despotism. It also causes the weakening of the national
potentialities for
economic and social progress of the countries concerned. It is possible
to have, in harmony with progressive economic and democratic
aspirations in the world, more bread and liberty for people generally, a
more just distribution of goods, and a normal tempo of economic
development. The condition for this is the changing of existing
property and political relationships, particularly those in Communism
since they are, because of the monopoly of the ruling class, the most
serious—although not the only—obstacle to national and world
progress.
5.
The tendency toward unification, for other reasons, has also
influenced changes in property relationships.
The increased, and even decisive, role of government organs in
the economy, and to a large extent in ownership as well, is also an
expression of the tendency toward world unification. Certainly it is
manifested in different ways in various systems and countries, and
even as an obstacle in those places whereas in the Communist
countries—formal state ownership itself conceals the monopoly and
the total domination of a new class.
In Great Britain private or, more accurately expressed, monopolist
ownership has already legally lost its sanctity and purity through
Labourite nationalization. Over twenty per cent of British productive
power has been nationalized. In the Scandinavian countries, in
addition to state ownership, a cooperative type of collective
ownership is developing.
The increasing role of government in the economy is especially
characteristic of the countries which until recently were colonies and
semi-dependent countries, without regard to whether, they have a
socialist government (Burma), a parliamentary democracy (India), or
a military dictatorship (Egypt).
204 THE NEW CLASS
The government makes most of the investments; it controls exports, seizes

a large portion of the export funds, etc. The government appears
everywhere as an initiator of economic change, and nationalization is a
more frequently occurring form of ownership.
The situation is no different in the United States, the country where
capitalism is most highly developed. Not only can everybody see the
increasing role of the government in the economy from the great crisis
(1929) to the present time, but few people deny the inevitability of this
role.
James Blaine Walker emphasizes, in The Epic of American Industry:*
“The growing intimacy between government and the economic life has
been one of the striking characteristics of the twentieth century.”
Walker cites that in 1938 about 20 per cent of the national income was
socialized, while in 1940 this percentage went up to at least 25 per cent.
Systematic government planning of the national economy began with
Roosevelt. At the same time, the number of government workers and
government functions, particularly those of the federal government, is
growing.
Johnson and Kross, in The Origins and Development of the American
Economy, † come to the same conclusions. They affirm that administration
has been separated from ownership and that the role of the government
as a creditor has grown considerably. “One of the chief characteristics of
the 20th century,” they say, “is the constant augmentation of the govern-
ment’s, especially the federal government’s, influence over economic
affairs.”
In his work The American Way,‡ Shepard B. Clough cites figures that
illustrate these statements. The expenditures and public debts of the
federal government, according to him, look like this:
* New York, Harper, 1949. t New

† York, Prentice-Hall, 1955.
‡ New York, T. Y. Crowell, 1953.
Expenditures of the Federal PublicDebts

Government (Federal)
Year (in millions of dollars) (in thousands of dollars)
1870 309.6 2,436,453
1940 8,998.1 42,967331
1950 40,166.8 256,708,000
In this work Clough speaks of the “managerial revolution,” which he

understands to be the rise of professional administrators, without
whom owners can no longer operate. Their number, role, and solidarity
are continually growing in the United States, and men of great business
genius, like John D. Rockefeller, John Wanamaker, Charles Schwab and
others, do not emerge any longer in the United States.
Fainsod and Gordon, in Government and the American Economy,*
remark that the government has already played a role in the economy
and that various social groups have tried to make use of this role in
economic life. However, there are now essential differences in this. The
regulative role of government, they write, has appeared not only in the
sphere of labor but in production—in branches of the economy as
important to the nation as transportation, natural gas, coal, and
petroleum. “Novel and far-reaching changes were also evident in the
form of an expansion of public enterprise and increased concern with
the conservation of natural and human resources. Public enterprise
became particularly important in the banking and credit field, in
electricity, and in the provision of low-cost housing.” They comment
that the government has begun to play a far more important role than it
played half a century ago, even ten years ago. “The result of these
developments has been to produce a ‘mixed economy/ an economy in
which public enterprise, partially government-controlled private en-
* New York, W. W. Norton, 1941.

206 THE NEW CLASS
terprise, and relatively uncontrolled private enterprise all exist side by
side.”
These and other authors cite various aspects of this process and the
growth of the needs of society for social welfare, education, and similar
benefits, which are being provided by government agencies, as well as the
continual increase—both relative and absolute—in the number of persons
employed by the government.
It is understandable that this process received immense impetus and
intensity during the Second World War because of military needs.
However, after the war the process did not subside but continued at a
faster tempo than during the prewar period. It was not just the fact that
the Democratic Party was in power. Even the Republican government of
Eisenhower, which was elected to power in 1952 on the slogan of a return
to private initiative, could not change anything essentially. The same
thing happened with the Conservative government in Great Britain; it did
not succeed in bringing about denationalization except in the steel
industry. Its role in the economy, by comparison with that of the Labour
government, has not essentially decreased, although it has not increased
either.
The interference of the government in the economy is obviously the
result of objective tendencies which had already penetrated the people’s
consciousness a long time ago. All serious economists, beginning with
Keynes, have advocated the intervention of the state in the economy.
Now this is more or less an actuality throughout the world. State
intervention and state ownership are today an essential and in some
places a determining factor in the economy.
One could almost conclude from this that there is no distinction or
source of conflict in the fact that in the Eastern system the state plays the
major role, while in the Western system private ownership, or ownership
by monopolies and companies, plays a major role. Such a conclusion
seems all the more war
ranted since the role of private ownership in the West is gradually declining,
the role of the state growing.
However, this is not the case. Aside from the other differences between
systems, there is an essential difference in state ownership and in the role of
the state in the economy. Though state ownership is technically present to
some extent in both systems, they are two different, even contradictory types
of ownership. This applies to the role of the state in the economy, too.
Not a single Western government acts like an owner with relation to the
economy. In fact, a Western government is neither the owner of nationalized
property nor the owner of funds which it has collected through taxes. It
cannot be an owner because it is subject to change. It must administer and
distribute this property under the control of a parliament In the course of
distribution of property, the government is subject to various influences, but it
is not the owner. All it does is administer and distribute, well or badly,
property which does not belong to it.
This is not the case in Communist countries. The government both
administers and distributes national property. The new class, or its executive
organ—the party oligarchy—both acts as the owner and is the owner. The
most reactionary and bourgeois government can hardly dream of such a
monopoly in the economy.
Surface similarities in ownership in the West and the East are in fact real
and deep differences, even conflicting elements.
6.
Even after the First World War, forms of ownership were probably an
essential reason for the conflicts between the West and the U.S.S.R.
Monopolies then played a much more important role and they could not
accept the idea that one part
208 THE NEW CLASS
of the world—specifically the U.S.S.R.—was escaping from their domain.

The Communist bureaucracy had just recently become the ruling class.
Ownership relationships have always been vital to the U.S.S.R. in its
dealings with other countries. Wherever possible its peculiar type of
ownership and political relationship was imposed by force. No matter
how much it developed its business connections with the rest of the
world, it could not go beyond the mere exchange of goods, which had
been developed during the period of national states. This was also true of
Yugoslavia in the period of its break with Moscow. Yugoslavia could not
develop any kind of significant economic cooperation except for the
exchange of goods, although she had and continues to have hopes of
achieving this. Her economy has remained isolated too.
There are other elements which complicate this picture and these
relationships. If the strengthening of Western tendencies toward world
unity of production might not mean aid to undeveloped countries, in
practice it would lead to the ascendancy of one nation—the United
States-or, at best, a group of nations.
By the very element of exchange, the economy and the national life of
the undeveloped countries are exploited and forced to be subordinated
to the developed countries. This means that the undeveloped countries
can only defend themselves by political means, and by shutting
themselves in if they wish to survive. This is one way. The other way is
to receive aid from the outside, from the developed countries. There is no
third way. Up to now there has been barely the beginning along the
second way—aid in insignificant amounts.
Today the difference between the American and the Indonesian
worker is greater than that between the American worker and the
wealthy American stockholder. In 1949 every inhabitant of the United
States earned an average of at least $1,440.00; the Indonesian worker
earned l/53rd as much, only $27.00, according to United Nations data.
And there is general
agreement that the material and other differences between developed

and undeveloped countries do not diminish; on the contrary, they
increase.
The inequality between the Western developed countries and the
undeveloped countries reveals itself as being mainly economic.
Traditional political domination by governors and local lords is
already on its way out. Now, as a rule, the economy of an
undeveloped but politically independent, national government is
subordinate to some other country.
Today no single people can willingly accept such subordinate
relationships, just as no single people can willingly renounce the
advantages made possible by greater productivity.
To ask American or West European workers—not to mention
owners—willingly to renounce the benefits offered them by a high
level of technology and more productive work is as unthinkable as it
would be to persuade a poor Asiatic that he should be happy that he
receives so little for his work.
Mutual aid between governments and the gradual elimination of
economic and other inequalities between peoples must be bom of
need in order to become the child of good will.
In the main, economic aid has thus far been extended only in those
cases where undeveloped countries, with low purchasing power and
low production, have become a burden to the developed countries.
The current conflict between the two systems is the main obstacle to
the extension of real economic aid. This is not only because huge sums
are being spent for military and similar needs; contemporary
relationships also hinder the flourishing of production, and its
tendency toward unification, thus blocking aid to underdeveloped
countries and the progress of the developed countries themselves.
Material and other differences between the developed and the
undeveloped countries have also been registered in their internal life.
It would be completely inaccurate to interpret democracy in the West
only as an expression of solidarity of rich nations in looting the poor
ones; the Western countries
210 THE NEW CLASS
were democratic long before the time of colonial extra-profits, though on a
lower level than that of today. The only connection between present-day
democracy in the Western countries and that of the period when Marx and
Lenin were alive lies in the fact of continuous development between the
two periods. The similarity between past and present democracy is not
greater than that between liberal or monopolistic capitalism and modem
statism.
In his work, In Place of Fear, the British socialist Aneurin Bevan
observed:
It is necessary to distinguish between the intention of Liberalism

and its achievements. Its intention was to win power for the new
forms of property thrown up by the Industrial Revolution. Its
achievement was to win political power for the people irrespective
of property.*
. . . The function of parliamentary democracy, under universal
franchise, historically considered, is to expose wealth- privilege to
the attack of the people. It is a sword pointed at the heart of
property-power. The arena where the issues are joined is
Parliament.†
Bevan’s observation applies to Great Britain. It could be expanded to

apply to other Western countries, but only to the Western ones.
In the West, economic means which operate toward world unification
have become dominant. In the East, on the Communist side, political
means for such unification have always been predominant. The U.S.S.R. is
capable of “uniting” only that which it conquers. From this point of view
not even the new regime could change anything essentially. According to
its ideas, oppressed peoples are only those on whom some other
government, not the Soviet one, is inflicting its rule. The Soviet
* From page 9, New York edition,

Simon & Schuster, 1952.
† From page 6, ibid.
government subordinates its aid to others, even in the case of loans,

to its political requirements.
The Soviet economy has not yet reached the point which would
drive it to world unification of production. Its contradictions and
difficulties stem mainly from internal sources. The system itself can
still survive despite its isolation from the outside world. This is
enormously expensive, but it is achieved by the widespread use of
force. But this situation cannot last long; the limit must be reached.
And this will be the beginning of the end of unlimited domination by
the political bureaucracy, or by the new class.
Contemporary Communism could help achieve the goal of world
unification most of all by political means—by internal
democratization and by becoming more accessible to the outside
world. However, it is still remote from this. Is it actually capable of
such a thing?
What kind of picture does Communism have of itself and of the
outside world?
Once, during the period of monopolies, the Marxism which Lenin
modified conceived the internal and external relationships into
which Czarist Russia and similar countries had fallen with a degree
of accuracy. With this picture to spur it on, the movement headed by
Lenin fought and won. In Stalin’s time this same ideology, again
modified, was realistic to the extent that it defined, almost accurately,
the position and role of the new state in international relations. The
Soviet state, or the new class, was in a good position externally and
internally, subordinating to itself all that it could acquire.
Now the Soviet leaders have a hard time orienting themselves.
They are no longer capable of seeing contemporary reality. The world
which they see is not the one that really exists. It is either the one that
used to exist or the one that they would wish to have exist
Holding on to obsolete dogmas, the Communist leaden thought
that all the rest of the world would stagnate and de-
212 THE NEW CLASS
stray itself in conflicts and struggles. This did not happen. The West
advanced both economically and intellectually. It proved to be united
whenever danger from another system threatened. The colonies were
freed, but did not become Com- munist, nor did this lead to a rupture
with the mother coun, tries involved.
The breakdown of Western capitalism through crises and wars did not
take place. In 1949 Vishinsky, at the United Nations, in the name of the
Soviet leadership, predicted the beginning of a great new crisis in the
United States and in capitalism. The opposite happened. This was not
because capitalism is good or bad, but because the capitalism the Soviet
leaders rant about no longer exists. The Soviet leaders could not see that
India, the Arab states, and similar countries had become independent,
until they began to approve—for their own reasons—Soviet points of
view in foreign policy. The Soviet leaders did not and do not now
understand social democracy. Instead, they measure it by the yardstick
with which they measure the fate of the Social Democrats in their own
area. Basing their thinking on the fact that their country did not reach the
development which the Social Democrats foresaw, Soviet leaders
conclude that social democracy in the West, as well, is unreal and
“treacherous.”
This is also true with regard to their evaluation of the basic conflict—
the conflict between systems, or the basic tendency toward the unification
of production. Here too their evaluation is out of focus.
They declare that this conflict is a struggle between two different social
systems. In one of them—theirs, of course—they state that there are no
classes, or that the classes are in the process of liquidation, and that theirs
is state ownership. In the other system—the foreign one—they insist that
there are raging class struggles and crises while all material goods are in
the hands of private individuals, and that the government is only the tool
of a handful of greedy monopolists. With this
THE PRESENT-DAY WORLD 21S
view of the world, they believe that the present conflicts would have
been avoided if such relationships had not been predominant in the
West.
That is where the difficulty lies.
Even if relationships in the West were the way the Communists
would like them to be—the conflict would still continue. Perhaps the
conflict would be even more severe in this case. For not only forms of
ownership would differ; it would be a matter of different, opposing
aspirations, behind which stand modem technology and the vital
interests of whole nations, in which various groups, parties, and
classes endeavor to have the same problem solved according to their
needs.
When the Soviet leaders rate the modem Western countries as blind
instruments of the monopolies, they are just as wrong as they are in
interpreting their own system as a classless society where ownership is
in the hands of society. Certainly the monopolies play an important
role in the politics of the Western countries, but in no case is the role as
great or the same as before the First World War, nor even as before the
Second World War. There is, in the background, something new and
more essential; an irresistible aspiration toward the unification of the
world. This is now expressed more strongly through statism and
nationalization—or through the role of the government in the
economy—than it is through the influence and action of the
monopolies.
To the extent that one class, party, or leader stifles criticism
completely, or holds absolute power, it or he inevitably falls into an
unrealistic, egotistical, and pretentious judgment of reality.
This is happening today to the Communist leaders. They do not
control their deeds, but are forced into them by reality. There are
advantages in this; they are now more practical men than they used to
be. However, there are also disadvantages, because these leaders
basically lack realistic, or even approximately realistic, views. They
spend more time defending
214 THE NEW CLASS
themselves from world reality and attacking it than they do in getting
accustomed to it. Their adherence to obsolete dogma incites them to
senseless actions, from which, on more mature thoughts, they
constantly retreat, but with bloody heads. Let us hope that the latter
will prevail with them. Certainly, if the Communists interpreted the
world realistically, they might lose, but they would gain as human
beings, as part of the human race.
In any case, the world will change and will go in the direction in
which it has been moving and must go on—toward greater unity,
progress, and freedom. The power of reality and the power of life have
always been stronger than any kind of brutal force and more real than
any theory.

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THE NEW CLASS

An Atlantic Press book published by

THAMES AND HUDSON

First published in Great Britain, 1957

All this could be told in a different way: as the history of a contemporary

Hegel himself was probably troubled by the possible conclusions to

* New York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1953.

Engels lived to see an entirely different picture of Great Britain, but he

History shows that in countries where Communist revolutions have taken

with respect to the industrial revolution. It is the only European country

The revolutionary party could not seriously contemplate execution of an

in social relationships, and even in the public conscience prior to

. . . One of the fundamental differences between bourgeois and socialist

This leads to an apparent contradiction. Of the conditions for a new society

overthrown, on Communist revolutions, force and violence are a condition

most centralized manner, only if iron discipline bordering on military

In fact, on completion of a Communist revolution, ruthless and

In the course of industrialization, the property of those elements who

ideals named as its motivating force. However, Communist revolution has

revolution was unnecessary. It would also be an admission that they had

to power, he addressed a meeting of Swiss Socialist youths: “We, the older

Abstract logic would indicate that the Communist revolution, when it

and capitalism in the West, is nothing but a form of state-capitalist revolution.

In order to establish the nature of relationships which arise in the course

society, in the course of a certain period—as long as industrialization

Since administration is unavoidable in society, necessary administrative

that a bureaucracy, organized in a special stratum, rules over the people.

. . . Functionaries have the sense of a common destiny for all

* New York, Prentice-Hall, 1951.

While such functionaries have much in common with Communist

Membership in the Communist Party before the Revolution meant

— he made decisions. He too promised a shining future, but one which

dangerous, the ownership surrendered to other strata or other forms of

In Communism, power and ownership are almost always in the Same

The mechanism of Communist power is perhaps the simplest which can be

Ideological unity did not arise suddenly but, like everything in

garchy in the Communist system is not the result of momentary political

lutionary bodies into a form suitable for the totalitarian dictatorship of

favors the totalitarian dictatorship of the party bureaucracy. Two

denied. However, experience shows that state machinery is necessary to

what the power-wielders need to have demonstrated; or have the task of

In a discussion of problems connected with criminals operating

composed of Hottentots. The Communist leaders will always take recourse

omies preceding the Communist one, at least under normal or peaceful

Labor cannot be free in a society where all material goods are

retention of “excess profits” in the hands of the bureaucracy who justify

The waste is tremendous because of the isolation of Communist

socialist” market, which Stalin inaugurated and to which Soviet leaders

of socialism and social struggles, especially in France. The same may be

There is, however, another aspect of Bolshevism from which I

It contained simplicities from the writings of the Church fathers, not so

from love, the basic principle of his dogma. He created a people,

scrupulous, even, when they are especially severe in form. Because it is

when leaders initiate amoral proceedings and arbitrary turnabouts.

sitionists, did not go much further in his reasoning. In a moment of self-

Absolute brutality, or the use of any means, is in accord with the

. . He's written a good thing in that manuscript,” Ver*

definition, especially when such complex and living matters as social

porary one—with the exception of Communism—has succeeded in

phases are: Revolution, or the usurpation of power—Lenin. “Socialism,”