New class

The new class is used as a polemic term by critics of countries that followed the Soviet type of communism to describe the privileged ruling class of bureaucrats and Communist Party functionaries which arose in these states. Generally, the group known in the Soviet Union as the Nomenklatura conforms to the theory of the new class. Earlier the term was applied to other emerging strata of the society.

Milovan Đilas' New Class theory was also used extensively by anti-communist commentators in the West in their criticism of the Communist states during the Cold War.

The term Red bourgeoisie is a pejorative synonym for the term new class, crafted by leftist critics and movements (like the 1968 student demonstrations in Belgrade).

New class is also used as a term in late 1960s post-industrial sociology.

A theory of the new class was developed by Milovan Đilas the Vice President of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito, who participated with Tito in the Yugoslav People's Liberation War, but was later purged by him as Đilas began to advocate democratic and egalitarian ideals (which he believed were more in line with the way socialism and communism should look like). However, there were also personal antagonisms between the two men, and Tito felt Đilas undermined his leadership. The theory of the new class can be considered to oppose the theories of certain ruling Communists, such as Joseph Stalin, who argued that their revolutions and/or social reforms would result in the extinction of any ruling class as such. It was Đilas' observation as a member of a Communist government that Party members stepped into the role of ruling class – a problem which he believed should be corrected through revolution. Đilas' completed his primary work on his new class theory in the mid-1950s. While Đilas was in prison, it was published in 1957 in the West under the title The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System.

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