Since the book appeared in the USA in 1957 Milovan Đilas "New Class - One Analysis of the Communist System" - better known under the propaganda and cunningly shortened name "New Class" - the author of this book is the voice of a great anti-communist. The narrative about Djilas as an anti-communist comes from several sources, the CIA being one of the first. If not the first.
She (CIA) has long followed the ideational, ideological and political revaluation of Milovan Đilas since 1947. (Today, the thick CIA "Đilas files" are easily accessible to the Internet public.) The American secret service concluded that Đilas' political analysis presented in "New Class" can effectively serve as a crowning tool in the anti-communist struggle between the political East and the political West.
Thus, the CIA presented the book "New Class" to the world public in a down-to-earth, banal, forceful and "professional" way as an "anti-communist bomb" and "anti-communist manifesto". The author was "naturally" labeled an anti-communist. The trick with the label won the Planet very quickly, because the book was a worldwide success.
Sharpening knives for war
In the Yugoslav public, the gimmick about Đilas as an anti-communist took hold even more easily. The goal of the trick was that M.Đ. he is labeled by the people (primarily) as a traitor to his people, an immoral, fickle, unreliable man because he became an anti-communist.
Perhaps all that about Đilas's (alleged) "anti-communism" would be unimportant, if the modern political scene in Montenegro was not still based on the deadly "anti" narrative (us-them, good-bad, Serb-Montenegrin, etc.) . It is very forbidden in any society. Especially in Montenegrin. Because the "anti" policy easily leads to the polarization of society, harsh words, and that means the sharpening of knives, which is the vestibule of war. If not the "silent war" itself.
Today's Montenegro is on the path of an abyss led by politics based on an "anti" narrative (national, ideological, religious, intra-familial, etc.)
Let's briefly conclude here.
Centuries of historical experience in the Balkans has shown - including Đilas's experience - that denying someone (a nation, for example) the right to distinguish and exercise that right means that that nation (actually) does not exist. And that further means that that people should: be appeased, expelled or some similar abomination should be done.
Đilas's wartime experience - with the NDH, for example - or the experience of all large-national ideas and practices in the Balkans since 1848, clearly point in the direction of the perniciousness of "anti-politics" as a humane recipe for modern social development.
Therefore, we will present in one line, the monstrous danger that every "anti" in politics and in the spirit of culture of a society carries. On that "anti" basis, the spirit of the people resistant to modernity is created. An evil spirit is created.
The example of Đilas's "New Class" clearly shows that he was never an anti-communist, as he is accused of being. There is not even one of his books or interviews from the very beginning of the 50s where he advocates for the abolition of someone or someone's right to discrimination. Because he knew through experience and education, let me repeat, what a danger every prohibition, cocooning, "anti" carries.
In other words, the right to distinguish is the right to freedom. "Anti" is not the way to freedom. On the contrary. It is not by chance that he is wise Adam Mihnjik concluded from the Polish experience "that only anti-communists are worse than communists".
So, here is a presentation of Đilas's "anti-communism" on the example of the "New Class" with which this text began.
Analysis or rejection?
Đilas's book "A New Class - A Theoretical Analysis of the Communist System" is a theoretical articulation of his split with communist ideology and the proxy of the leading party and state bureaucracy in Yugoslavia headed by Tito. (He called this leading, privileged layer of people in Yugoslav society the "new class".)
And already here, at the start, it is important to point out that Milovan Đilas gave only "one analysis of the communist system" with the book "New Class". That's what it says in the important subtitle of the book. So, already in the sub-title of the book, he does not define himself as an anti-communist or an opponent of an idea and ideology with which he does not agree. In the title, he presents himself (only) as an analyst of one system and nothing more.
So, Đilas did not reject the communist system, or even the importance of utopias for every society. On the contrary. He (only) hygienically distances himself from the ideas, ideology and practice of communism, from Tito, from the authorities, from SKJ, from the "new class". (This last distancing was very "stupid" for him, because with it he touched the wasp's nest, the support of Tito's power, whose knife edge he would later pay dearly for.)
He considered all that power collectively and singularly, an elemental calamity that temporarily ravages the (ruling) heads of people. But also their stomachs. But it was impossible to bypass and skip all that. He knew from experience and education that fictional societies were pre-political societies. That these are temporary, transitory states of mind of a nation that should be escaped as soon as possible. But there is no escape with the help of "anti-politics" or with an "anti" view of reality. On the contrary.
The danger of anti-communism
Milovan Đilas knew what was politically realistic and what danger threatened society from anti-communism. (Nationalism, for example.) He knew which forces pull a society forward and which drag it into stagnation and regression.
In other words, Milovan Đilas awakened a "demon" in him who was "hit by an arrow of fate" as he said of him. Andre Malraux. Interpreting Malraux's remark further and deeper, it meant that Djilas understood the course of modern history and the crucial importance of the evolutionary, gradual and peaceful coexistence of different ideas, ideologies and policies in one society. But also their dialectic and mutual dependence.
So, Milovan Đilas renounced himself in "New Class" (Lenin's) revolutionary resolution of social contradictions based on anti-communism and division into: "us" or "them"; "anti"-traditions; "anti"-ideologies; "anti"-politics etc. Simply put, MĐ opposed anti-life politics. The book "New Class" is full of specific analytical examples of the conflict between fiction and reality in one system.
Against dogma
In short and in Montenegrin terms, Milovan Đilas "did not let rust get on him", let rust (dogma) defeat and overcome him. But also for the dogma to win and cocoon Yugoslav society with anti-politics, anti-life.
He knew that man is not "carved" in one piece, so everything that is different and different is the "anti" of this first one. On the contrary. Milovan Đilas in the deeper layer of the book "New Class" is clear that man and life (politics) are not just one whole, one piece, and everything that is different and different is the enemy. On the contrary.
Today's Montenegro is full of anti-politics and the "new-class" life of politicians in it and over it.
Let's conclude.
The essence of politics is that politicians and their elites do not create anti-politics, but that society meets and rises to the level of the new, coming time only through freedom and creation.
Đilas felt the roar of the coming time. He left anti-communism as a devastating howl of social negative energy.
***
Without mental habituation to the peaceful coexistence of different, opposite ideas and policies, there is no stability and happiness in Montenegrin society. Otherwise, we will always look at each other through the eyes of the fly.
Bonus video: