User:Cdjp1/sandbox/Pre-Marx

Pre-Marxist communism

31 October 2022

Chiefs of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee, a vital influence on and precursor to Marxist communism.

While Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels defined communism as a political movement, there were already similar ideas in the past which one could call communist experiments. Marx himself saw primitive communism as the original hunter-gatherer state of humankind. Marx theorized that only after humanity was capable of producing surplus did private property develop.

Pre-history

An artist's rendering of a temporary wood house, based on evidence found at Terra Amata (in Nice, France) and dated to the Lower Paleolithic (c. 400,000 BP)

Main article: Primitive communism

Karl Marx and other early communist theorists believed that hunter-gatherer societies as were found in the Paleolithic through to horticultural societies as found in the Chalcolithic were essentially egalitarian and he, therefore, termed their ideology to be primitive communism. Since Marx, sociologists and archaeologists have developed the idea of and research on primitive communism. According to Harry W. Laidler, one of the first writers to espouse a belief in the primitive communism of the past was the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca who stated, "How happy was the primitive age when the bounties of nature lay in common...They held all nature in common which gave them secure possession of the public wealth." Because of this he believed that such primitive societies were the richest as there was no poverty. According to Erik van Ree, other Greco-Roman writers that expressed a belief in a prehistoric humanity that had a communist-like societal structure include Diodorus Siculus, Virgil, and Ovid.

Due to the strong evidence of an egalitarian society, lack of hierarchy and lack of economic inequality, historian Murray Bookchin has argued that Çatalhöyük was an early example of anarcho-communism, and so an example of primitive communism in a proto-city.

Bronze Age

It has been argued that the Indus Valley civilisation is an example of a primitive communist society, due to its perceived lack of conflict and social hierarchies. Others argue that such an assessment of the Indus Valley civilisation is not correct.

Classical antiquity

See also: History of communism § Origins of communism, and History of socialism § In antiquity

The 1st century BC Roman philosopher Seneca believed that humans had fallen from a Golden Age of primitive communism

The idea of a classless and stateless society based on communal ownership of property and wealth also stretches far back in Western thought long before The Communist Manifesto. There are scholars who have traced communist ideas back to ancient times, particularly in the work of Pythagoras and Plato. Followers of Pythagoras, for instance, lived in one building and held their property in common because the philosopher taught the absolute equality of property with all worldly possessions being brought into a common store.

It is argued that Plato's Republic described in great detail a communist-dominated society wherein power is delegated in the hands of intelligent philosopher or military guardian class and rejected the concept of family and private property. In a social order divided into warrior-kings and the Homeric demos of craftsmen and peasants, Plato conceived an ideal Greek city-state without any form of capitalism and commercialism with business enterprise, political plurality, and working-class unrest considered as evils that must be abolished. While Plato's vision cannot be considered a precursor of communist thinking, his utopian speculations are shared by other utopian thinkers later on. An important feature that distinguishes Plato's ideal society in the Republic is that the ban on private property applies only to the superior classes (rulers and warriors), not to the general public.

Roman imperial period to late antiquity

Further information: Religious communism, Christian communism, and Intentional community

Biblical scholars have argued that the mode of production seen in early Hebrew society was a communitarian domestic one that was akin to primitive communism.

The early Church Fathers, like their non-Abrahamic predecessors, maintained that human society had declined to its current state from a now lost egalitarian social order. There are those who view that the early Christian Church, such as that one described in the Acts of the Apostles (specifically Acts 2:44–45 and Acts 4:32–45) was an early form of communism. The view is that communism was just Christianity in practice and Jesus Christ was himself a communist. This link was highlighted in one of Marx's early writings which stated: "As Christ is the intermediary unto whom man unburdens all his divinity, all his religious bonds, so the state is the mediator unto which he transfers all his Godlessness, all his human liberty". Furthermore, the Marxist ethos that aims for unity reflects the Christian universalist teaching that humankind is one and that there is only one god who does not discriminate among people. Later historians have supported the reading of early church communities as communistic in structure.

Pre-Marxist communism was also present in the attempts to establish communistic societies such as those made by the ancient Jewish sects the Essenes and by the Judean desert sect.

Post-classical history

Inside the urban centre Kuélap of the Chachapoya culture.

Europe

Peter Kropotkin argued that the elements of mutual aid and mutual defense expressed in the medieval commune of the middle ages and its guild system were the same sentiments of collective self-defense apparent in modern anarchism, communism and socialism. From the High Middle Ages in Europe, various groups supporting Christian communist and communalist ideas were occasionally adopted by reformist Christian sects. An early 12th century proto-Protestant group originating in Lyon known as the Waldensians held their property in common in accordance with the Book of Acts, but were persecuted by the Catholic Church and retreated to Piedmont. Around 1300 the Apostolic Brethren in northern Italy were taken over by Fra Dolcino who formed a sect known as the Dulcinians which advocated ending feudalism, dissolving hierarchies in the church, and holding all property in common. The Peasants' Revolt in England has been an inspiration for "the medieval ideal of primitive communism", with the priest John Ball of the revolt being an inspirational figure to later revolutionaries and having allegedly declared, "things cannot go well in England, nor ever will, until all goods are held in common."

South America

See also: Pre-Columbian era

The Chachapoya culture indicated an egalitarian non-hierarchical society through a lack of archaeological evidence and a lack of power expressing architecture that would be expected for societal leaders such as royalty or aristocracy.

Asia

Mazdak, a Sasanian prophet who founded the eponymous Zoroastrian offshoot of Mazdakism, is argued by various historical sources, including Muhammad Iqbal, to have been a proto-communist. This view originates from Mazdak's belief in the abolition of private property, advocacy of social revolution, and criticism of the clergy.

Researchers have commented on the communistic nature of the society built by the Qarmatians around Al-Ahsa from the 9th to 10th centuries.

Early modern period

Europe

Woodcut from a Diggers document by William Everard

Thomas Müntzer led a large Anabaptist communist movement during the German Peasants' War. Engels' analysis of Thomas Müntzer work in and the wider German Peasants' War lead Marx and Engels to conclude that the communist revolution, when it occurred, would be led not by a peasant army but by an urban proletariat.

In the 16th century, English writer Sir Thomas More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property in his treatise Utopia, whose leaders administered it through the application of reason. Several groupings in the English Civil War supported this idea, but especially the Diggers who espoused communistic and agrarian ideals. Oliver Cromwell and the Grandees' attitude to these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile. Engels considered the Levellers of the English Civil War as a group representing the proletariat fighting for a utopian socialist society. Though later commentators have viewed the Levellers as a bourgeois group that did not seek a socialist society.

During the Age of Enlightenment in 18th century France, some liberal writers increasingly began to criticize the institution of private property even to the extent they demanded its abolition. Such writings came from thinkers such as the deeply religious philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his hugely influential The Social Contract (1762) Rousseau outlined the basis for a political order based on popular sovereignty rather than the rule of monarchs, and in his Discourse on Inequality (1755) inveighed against the corrupting effects of private property claiming that the invention of private property had led to the," crimes, wars, murders, and suffering" that plagued civilization. Raised a Calvinist, Rousseau was influenced by the Jansenist movement within the Roman Catholic Church. The Jansenist movement originated from the most orthodox Roman Catholic bishops who tried to reform the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th century to stop secularization and Protestantism. One of the main Jansenist aims was democratizing to stop the aristocratic corruption at the top of the Church hierarchy.

Victor d'Hupay's 1779 work Project for a Philosophical Community described a plan for a communal experiment in Marseille where all private property was banned. d'Hupay referred to himself as a communiste, the French form of the word "communist", in a 1782 letter, the first recorded instance of that term.

North America

Ely S. Parker, co-author of The League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee or Iroquois

Further information: Great Law of Peace and Economy of the Iroquois

Lewis Henry Morgan's descriptions of "communism in living" as practiced by the Haudenosaunee of North America, through research enabled by and coauthored with Ely S. Parker, were viewed as a form of pre-Marxist communism. Morgan's works were a primary inspiration for Marx and Engel's description of primitive communism, and has led to some believing that early communist-like societies also existed outside of Europe, in Native American society and other pre-Colonized societies in the Western hemisphere. Though the belief of primitive communism as based on Morgan's work is flawed due to Morgan's misunderstandings of Haudenosaunee society and his, since proven wrong, theory of social evolution. This, and subsequent more accurate research, has led to the society of the Haudenosaunee to be of interest in communist and anarchist analysis. Particularly aspects where land was not treated as a commodity, communal ownership and near non-existent rates of crime.

Primitive communism meaning societies that practiced economic cooperation among the members of their community, where almost every member of a community had their own contribution to society and land and natural resources would often be shared peacefully among the community. Some such communities in North America and South America still existed well into the 20th century. Historian Barry Pritzker lists the Acoma, Cochiti and Isleta Puebloans as living in socialist-like societies. It is assumed modern egalitarianism seen in Pueblo communities stems from this historic socio-economic structure. David Graeber has also commented that the Inuit have practiced communism and fended off unjust hierarchy for "thousands of years".

Age of Revolution

Louise Michel, a communard who supported the 1878 Kanak insurrection whilst exiled from France.

The Shakers of the 18th century under Joseph Meacham developed and practiced their own form of communalism, as a sort of religious communism, where property had been made a "consecrated whole" in each Shaker community.

Many Pre-Marx socialists lived, developed, and published their works and theories during this period from the late 18th century to the mid 19th century, including: Charles Fourier, Louis Blanqui, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Pierre Leroux, Thomas Hodgskin, Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, Wilhelm Weitling, and Étienne Cabet. Utopian socialist writers such as Robert Owen are also sometimes regarded as communists. The use of the term "communism" in English was popularised by advocates of Owenism.

The currents of thought in French philosophy from the Enlightenment from Rousseau and d'Hupay proved influential during the French Revolution of 1789 in which various anti-monarchists, particularly the Jacobins, supported the idea of redistributing wealth equally among the people, including Jean-Paul Marat and Francois Babeuf. The latter was involved in the Conspiracy of the Equals of 1796 intending to establish a revolutionary regime based on communal ownership, egalitarianism and the redistribution of property. Babeuf was directly influenced by Morelly's anti-property utopian novel The Code of Nature and quoted it extensively, although he was under the erroneous impression it was written by Diderot. Also during the revolution the publisher Nicholas Bonneville, the founder of the Parisian revolutionary Social Club used his printing press to spread the communist treatises of Restif and Sylvain Maréchal. Maréchal, who later joined Babeuf's conspiracy, would state it his Manifesto of the Equals (1796), "we aim at something more sublime and more just, the COMMON GOOD or the COMMUNITY OF GOODS" and "The French Revolution is just a precursor of another revolution, far greater, far more solemn, which will be the last." Restif also continued to write and publish books on the topic of communism throughout the Revolution. Accordingly, through their egalitarian programs and agitation Restif, Maréchal, and Babeuf became the progenitors of modern communism. Babeuf's plot was detected, however, and he and several others involved were arrested and executed. Because of his views and methods, Babeuf has been described as an anarchist, communist and a socialist by later scholars. The word "communism" was first used in English by Goodwyn Barmby in a conversation with those he described as the "disciples of Babeuf". Despite the setback of the loss of Babeuf, the example of the French Revolutionary regime and Babeuf's doomed insurrection was an inspiration for French socialist thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon, Louis Blanc, Charles Fourier and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon, the founder of modern anarchism and libertarian socialism would later famously declare "property is theft!" a phrase first invented by the French revolutionary Brissot de Warville.

Maximilien Robespierre and his Reign of Terror, aimed at exterminating the monarchy, nobility, clergy and conservatives, was admired among some anarchists, communists and socialists. In his turn, Robespierre was a great admirer of Voltaire and Rousseau.

By the 1830s and 1840s in France, the egalitarian concepts of communism and the related ideas of socialism had become widely popular in revolutionary circles thanks to the writings of social critics and philosophers such as Pierre Leroux and Théodore Dézamy, whose critiques of bourgeoisie liberalism and individualism led to a widespread intellectual rejection of laissez-faire capitalism on economic, philosophical and moral grounds. According to Leroux writing in 1832, "To recognise no other aim than individualism is to deliver the lower classes to brutal exploitation. The proletariat is no more than a revival of antique slavery." He also asserted that private ownership of the means of production allowed for the exploitation of the lower classes and that private property was a concept divorced from human dignity. It was only in the year 1840 that proponents of common ownership in France, including the socialists Théodore Dézamy, Étienne Cabet, and Jean-Jacques Pillot began to widely adopt the word "communism" as a term for their belief system. Those inspired by Étienne Cabet created the Icarian movement setting up communities based on non-religious communal ownership in various states across the US, the last of these communities located a few miles outside Corning, Iowa, disbanded voluntarily in 1898.

The participants of the Taiping Rebellion, who founded the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, are viewed by the Chinese Communist Party as proto-communists. Marx referred to the communist tendencies in the Taiping Rebellion as "Chinese socialism".

The Communards and the Paris Commune are often seen as proto-communists, and had significant influence on the ideas of Karl Marx, who described it as an example of the "dictatorship of the proletariat".

Karl Marx and the contemporary age

Main article: History of communism § Marxism

Marx saw communism as the original state of mankind from which it rose through classical society and then feudalism to its current state of capitalism. He proposed that the next step in social evolution would be a return to communism.

In its contemporary form, communism grew out of the workers' movement of 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for creating a class of poor, urban factory workers who toiled under harsh conditions and for widening the gulf between rich and poor.

See also

• History of socialism
• Pre-history
• Bronze Age
• Classical antiquity
• Post-classical history
• Early modern period
• Age of Revolution
• Contemporary history

References

Bibliography

• Ball, Terence (2011). "Communism". In Kurian, George Thomas; Alt, James E.; Chambers, Simone; Garrett, Geoffrey; Levi, Margaret; McClain, Paula D. (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Political Science. CQ Press. pp. 284–285. ISBN 978-1-933116-44-0.
• Campbell, Heather M., ed. (2009). The Britannica Guide to Political Science and Social Movements That Changed the Modern World. The Rosen Publishing Group. pp. 127–129. ISBN 978-1-61530-062-4 – via Google Books.
• Fried, Albert; Sanders, Ronald (1992). Socialist Thought: A Documentary History. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-08265-5 – via Google Books.
• Haller Jr., John S. (1971). "Race and the Concept of Progress in Nineteenth Century American Ethnology". American Anthropologist. 73 (3): 710–724. doi:10.1525/aa.1971.73.3.02a00120.
• Hersey, Mason (1993). "Lewis Henry Morgan and the Anthropological Critique of Civilization". Dialectical Anthropology. 18 (1). Springer: 53–70. doi:10.1007/BF01301671. JSTOR 29790527. S2CID 144701125.
• Hume, Brad D. (January 2011). "Evolutionisms: Lewis Henry Morgan, Time, and the Question of Sociocultural Evolutionary Theory". Histories of Anthropology Annual. 7 (1): 91–126. doi:10.1353/haa.2011.0009. S2CID 170478166. Archived from the original on 28 October 2021.
• Johnson, Daniel (1 December 2013). "Winstanley's Ecology: The English Diggers Today". Monthly Review. Archived from the original on 6 October 2021. Retrieved 12 September 2021.
• Lazar, Marc (2011). "Communism". In Badie, Bertrand; Berg-Schlosser, Dirk; Morlino, Leonardo (eds.). International Encyclopedia of Political Science. Vol. 2. SAGE Publications. pp. 310–314. doi:10.4135/9781412994163. ISBN 9781412959636.
• Morgan, Lewis H. (1964) [1877]. Ancient Society. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674865662.
• van Ree, Erik (22 May 2015). Boundaries of Utopia - Imagining Communism from Plato to Stalin. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-48533-8 – via Google Books.
• Service, Elman R.; Barnard, Alan; Bodemann, Y. Michal; Fleuret, Patrick; Fried, Morton; Harding, Thomas G.; Köcke, Jasper; Krader, Lawrence; Kuper, Adam; Legros, Dominique; Makarius, Raoul; Moore, John H.; Pilling, Arnold R.; Skalník, Peter; Strathern, Andrew; Tooker, Elisabeth; Whitecotton, Joseph W. (February 1981). "The Mind of Lewis H. Morgan". Current Anthropology. 22 (1): 25–43. doi:10.1086/202601. JSTOR 2742415. S2CID 163464337.
• Smith, Stuart (2009). "Lewis Henry Morgan". University of California, Santa Barbara. Archived from the original on 13 April 2021. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
• Stearns, Peter; Fairchilds, Cissie; Lindenmeyr, Adele; Maynes, Mary Jo; Porter, Roy; Radcliff, Pamela; Ruggiero, Guido, eds. (2001). Encyclopedia of European Social History: From 1350 to 2000. Vol. 3. Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 290. ISBN 0-684-80577-4.
• Winstanley, Gerrard (2002) [1649]. The True Levellers Standard ADVANCED: or, The State of Community opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men. R.S. Bear. That we may work in righteousness, and lay the Foundation of making the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both Rich and Poor, That every one that is born in the Land, may be fed by the Earth his Mother that brought him forth, according to the Reason that rules in the Creation. Not Inclosing any part into any particular hand, but all as one man, working together, and feeding together as Sons of one Father, members of one Family; not one Lording over another, but all looking upon each other, as equals in the Creation.
• Yang, Manuel (September 2012). "Specter of the commons: Karl Marx, Lewis Henry Morgan, and nineteenth-century European stadialism". Borderlands. 11 (2). Gale Academic OneFile.

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Jacques Bidet https://www.cairn-int.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=E_AMX_048_0089 Communism: Between Philosophy, Prophecy, and Theory Jacques Bidet In Actuel Marx Volume 48, Issue 2, 2010, pages 89 to 104 "Communism, which is inherent to modernity, appears along with it. There is no communism in Antiquity, among the Roman plebs, in the revolt of Spartacus, among the first Christians, or among the Qarmatians. Neither Plato nor St. Paul signal a historicity of communism. On the other hand, since the more blurred emergence of modern sociality, from the Italian commune of the thirteenth century – that ensemble of revolutions in parallel that opens modernity and ending in lasting defeats, the first in a long list – appear heretics, Cathars and others, and his enemy brother, the Franciscan friar. The city, it is said, “breathes heresy,” a heresy that spreads, without a homeland. And it continues, through a thousand fortuitous chances, from one century to the next, from the Hussites to the Anabaptists, before finding a post-religious name, that of communism."

https://middleeastpanorama.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-qarmatians-al-qaramita.html

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The Medieval Commune: The Historical Origins of Communism - An Essay on the Socio-Philosophical Interpretation of the Medieval City -

Comunismo pré-marxista

Communisme pré-marxiste

Potential sources

• Marx, A French Passion, chapter 8
• The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Politics and Theory
• Truth and Revolution in Marx's Critique of Society: Studies on a Fundamental ...

Titoism

Josip Broz Tito meeting with Bolesław Bierut and Michał Żymierski from the Polish People's Republic in 1946.

Titoism is a socialist political philosophy most closely associated with Josip Broz Tito during the Cold War. It is characterized by a broad Yugoslav identity, socialist workers' self-management, a political separation from the Soviet Union, and leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement.

Tito led the Communist Yugoslav Partisans during World War II in Yugoslavia. After the war, tensions arose between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Although these issues alleviated over time, Yugoslavia still remained largely independent in ideology and policy due to the leadership of Tito, who led Yugoslavia until his death in 1980.

Today, the term "Titoism" is sometimes used to refer to Yugo-nostalgia across political spectrum, a longing for reestablishment or revival of Yugoslavism or Yugoslavia by the citizens of Yugoslavia's successor states.

Background

Initially a personal favourite of the USSR, Tito led the national liberation war to the Nazi occupation during World War II, where the Yugoslav Partisans liberated Yugoslavia with only limited help from the Red Army. Tito met with the Soviet leadership several times immediately after the war to negotiate the future of Yugoslavia. Initially aligned with Soviet policy, over time, these negotiations became less cordial because Tito had the intention neither of handing over executive power nor of accepting foreign intervention or influence (a position Tito later continued within the Non-Aligned Movement).

The Yugoslav regime first pledged allegiance, from 1945 to 1948, to Stalinism. But according to the Trotskyist (hence anti-Stalinist) historian Jean-Jacques Marie, Stalin had planned to liquidate Tito as early as the end of the 1930s, and again after the Spanish Civil War, during which Tito participated in the recruitment and to the organization of the Dimitrov Battalion, a Balkan unit of the International Brigades, some of whose ex-combatants would be assassinated by the Soviets.

Tito's agreement with Bulgarian leader Georgi Dimitrov on Greater Yugoslavia projects, which meant to merge the two Balkan countries into a Balkan Federation, made Stalin anxious. This led to the 1947 cooperation agreement signed in Bled (Dimitrov also pressured Romania to join such a federation, expressing his beliefs during a visit to Bucharest in early 1948). The Bled agreement, also referred to as the "Tito–Dimitrov treaty", was signed 1 August 1947 in Bled, Slovenia. It foresaw also unification between Vardar Macedonia and Pirin Macedonia and return of Western Outlands to Bulgaria. The integrationist policies resulting from the agreement were terminated after the Tito–Stalin split in June 1948, when Bulgaria was being subordinated to the interests of the Soviet Union and took a stance against Yugoslavia.

The policy of regional blocs had been the norm in Comintern policies, displaying Soviet resentment of the nation states in Eastern Europe and of the consequences of Paris Peace Conference. With the 1943 dissolution of Comintern and the subsequent advent of the Cominform came Stalin's dismissal of the previous ideology, and adaptation to the conditions created for Soviet hegemony during the Cold War.

Tito-Stalin split

Main article: Tito–Stalin split

Moreover, Stalin did not have free rein in Yugoslavia as he did in other countries of the Fourth Moscow Conference on the partition of Europe; the USSR had not obtained preponderance there, as it was agreed in the Percentages agreement that he would retain only 50% influence over Yugoslavia. Tito therefore benefited from a margin of maneuver far greater than that of the other Southeast European leaders.

When the rest of Eastern Europe became satellite states of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia refused to accept the 1948 Resolution of the Cominform which condemned the leaders of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia for allegedly abandoning Marxism-Leninism, and any communists who sympathised with Yugoslavia. The period from 1948 to 1955, known as the Informbiro, was marked by severe repression of opponents and many others accused of pro-Stalin attitudes being sent to the penal camp on Goli Otok in Yugoslavia. Likewise, real and accused Titoists or 'Titoites' were met with similar treatment in Eastern Bloc countries, which furthermore served to publicize the dangers of challenging subservience to Moscow, as well as to purge 'unwanted' individuals from their Communist parties.

Ideology

Tito, Nehru and Nasser in 1961, three of the five founders of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Elements of Titoism are characterized by policies and practices based on the principle that in each country the means of attaining ultimate communist goals must be dictated by the conditions of that particular country, rather than by a pattern set in another country. During Josip Broz Tito's era, this specifically meant that the communist goal should be pursued independently of and often in opposition to the policies of the Soviet Union.

In contrast to Joseph Stalin's policy of "socialism in one country", Tito advocated cooperation between developing nations in the world through the Non-Aligned Movement while at the same time pursuing socialism in whatever ways best suited particular nations. During Tito's era, his ideas specifically meant that the communist goal should be pursued independently of (and often in opposition to) what he referred to as the Stalinist and imperialist policies of the Soviet Union. Through this split and subsequent policies some commentators have grouped Titoism with Eurocommunism or reformist socialism. It was also meant to demonstrate the viability of a third way between the capitalist United States and the socialist Soviet Union.

In fact, on the economic level, Tito simply took note of the inability of the Stalinist-type centralized bureaucratic economy to meet human needs and expanded the number and power of cooperatives and workers' councils, several years before Lieberman Reform and Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR, before Imre Nagy in Hungary, Alexander Dubcek in Czechoslovakia, and Deng Xiaoping in China.

Throughout his time in office, Tito prided himself on Yugoslavia's independence from the Soviet Union, with Yugoslavia never accepting full membership in Comecon and Tito's open rejection of many aspects of Stalinism as the most obvious manifestations of this. The Soviets and their satellite states often accused Yugoslavia of Trotskyism and social democracy, charges loosely based on Tito's socialist self-management, attempts at greater democratization in the workplace, and the theory of associated labor (profit sharing policies and worker-owned industries initiated by him, Milovan Đilas and Edvard Kardelj in 1950). It was in these things that the Soviet leadership accused of harboring the seeds of council communism or even corporatism. Despite Tito's numerous disagreements with the USSR, Yugoslavia restored relations with the USSR in 1956 with the Belgrade declaration and it became an associated member of the Comecon in 1964. Therefore, Yugoslavia once again strengthened its economic and political ties with the USSR.

Additionally, Yugoslavia joined the US-sponsored Balkan Pact in July 1953, a military alliance with two NATO member states — Greece and Turkey. The pact had been signed a few days before Stalin died, and the new Soviet government failed to develop any response. However, it was continually met with opposition by Albanian leader Enver Hoxha, who accused Tito and Yugoslavia for being agents of American imperialism. Tito signed this pact to bolster the defense of Yugoslavia against a potential Soviet military invasion. It also made the option of Yugoslavia's NATO membership more plausible at its time. Under this pact, any potential Soviet invasion of Yugoslavia could also lead to NATO intervention to help defend Yugoslavia due to the NATO memberships of Greece and Turkey. However, the foreign policy disagreements between the three countries in the pact eventually crippled the alliance itself, thus ending the possibility of Yugoslavia's NATO membership.

Some Trotskyists considered Tito to be an 'unconscious Trotskyist' because of the split with Stalin. However, other Trotskyists claimed that there were no fundamental differences in principles between Stalin and Tito, despite significant evidence suggesting the contrary. Most notably, Trotskyist writer Ted Grant published several articles criticizing both leaders in the British Trotskyist newspaper, of which he was the editor.

The "Titoist" regime adopted a policy of economic "self-management", generalized from 1950, wishing to put the means of production under social ownership of direct producers, thus excluding the formation of a bureaucracy as was the case in other communist regimes.

The propaganda attacks centered on the caricature of "Tito the Butcher" of the working class, aimed to pinpoint him as a covert agent of Western imperialism, pointing to Tito's partial cooperation with western and imperialist nations. Tito and Yugoslavia were seen by Western powers as a strategic ally with the possibility to "[drive] a wedge into the Communist monolith".

History

Edvard Kardelj

Aleksandar Ranković

Milovan Đilas

From 1949 the central government began to cede power to communal local governments, seeking to decentralise the government and work towards a withering away of the state. In the system of local self-government, higher-level bodies could supervise compliance with the law by lower-level bodies, but could not issue orders to them. Edvard Kardelj declared in the Assembly of Yugoslavia "that no perfect bureaucratic apparatus, however brilliant the people at the top, can build socialism. Socialism can grow only from the initiatives of the masses of the people." Rankovićism disagreed with this decentralisation, viewing it as a threat to the stability of Yugoslavia. Other socialist states also criticised this move for deviating from Marxism-Leninism with declarations that it "is an outright denial of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and the universal laws on the construction of socialism."

The League of Communists of Yugoslavia retained solid power; the legislature did little more than rubber stamp decisions already made by the LCY's Politburo. The secret police, the State Security Administration (UDBA), while operating with considerably more restraint than its counterparts in the rest of Eastern Europe, was nonetheless a feared tool of government control. UDBA was particularly notorious for assassinating suspected "enemies of the state" who lived in exile overseas. The media remained under restrictions that were onerous by Western standards, but still had more latitude than their counterparts in other Communist countries. Nationalist groups were a particular target of the authorities, with numerous arrests and prison sentences handed down over the years for separatist activities. Although the Soviets revised their attitudes under Nikita Khrushchev during the process of de-Stalinization and sought to normalize relations with the Yugoslavs while obtaining influence in the Non-Aligned Movement, the answer they got was never enthusiastic and the Soviet Union never gained a proper outlet to the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, the Non-Aligned states failed to form a third Bloc, especially after the split at the outcome of the 1973 oil crisis.

Industry was nationalized, agriculture forcibly collectivized, and a rigid industrialization program based on the Soviet model was adopted. Yugoslav and Soviet companies signed contracts for numerous joint ventures. According to the American historian Adam Ulam, in no other country in the Eastern Bloc was Sovietization "as rapid and as ruthless as in Yugoslavia".

Despite the initial thaw between the USSR and the Yugoslavian authorities following the signing of the Belgrade declaration, relations became tense again between the two countries after Yugoslavia sheltered Imre Nagy following the invasion of Hungary. Tito initially approved the Soviet military intervention in his letter to Khrushchev due to fears of Hungarian Revolution provoking a similar anti-communist and nationalist movement in Yugoslavia. Still, Tito later sheltered Nagy to prove Yugoslavia's sovereign status and non-aligned foreign policy to gain sympathy from the international community. The abduction and the execution of Nagy by the Hungarian government under János Kádár cooled the bilateral relationship between Yugoslavia and Hungary, despite Tito's initial support and recommendations of Kadar as the successor of Mátyás Rákosi and Nagy.

Leonid Brezhnev's conservative attitudes yet again chilled relations between the two countries (although they never degenerated to the level of the conflict with Stalin). Yugoslavia backed Czechoslovakia's leader Alexander Dubček during the 1968 Prague Spring and then cultivated a special (albeit incidental) relation with the maverick Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu. Titoism was similar to Dubček's socialism with a human face, while Ceaușescu attracted sympathies for his refusal to condone (and take part in) the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which briefly seemed to constitute a casus belli between Romania and the Soviets. However, Ceaușescu was an unlikely member of the alliance since he profited from the events in order to push his authoritarian agenda inside Romania.

After Brezhnev brought Czechoslovakia to heel in 1968, Romania and Yugoslavia maintained privileged connections up to the mid-1980s. Ceaușescu adapted the part of Titoism that made reference to the "conditions of a particular country", but merged them with Romanian nationalism and contrasting North Korean Juche beliefs while embarking on a particular form of Cultural Revolution. The synthesis can be roughly compared with the parallel developments of Hoxhaism and found Ceaușescu strong, perhaps unsought, supporters in National Bolshevism theorists such as the Belgian Jean-François Thiriart.

After a significant expansion of the private sector in the 1950s and 1960s and a shift towards a more market-oriented economy, the Yugoslavian leadership did put a halt to overt capitalist attempts (such as Stjepan Mesić's experiment with privatization in Orahovica) and crushed the dissidence of liberal or democratic socialist thinkers such as the former leader Milovan Đilas, while it also clamped down on centrifugal attempts, promoting Yugoslav patriotism. Although still claimed as official policies, nearly all aspects of Titoism went into rapid decline after Tito's death in 1980, being replaced by the rival policies of constituent republics. During the late 1980s, nationalism was again on the rise one decade after the Croatian Spring, and inter-republic ethnic tensions escalated.

Although still claimed as official policies, virtually all aspects of Titoism went into rapid decline after Tito's death in 1980, being replaced by the rival policies of constituent republics. During the late 1980s, with nationalism on the rise, revised Titoism was arguably kept as a point of reference by political movements caught disadvantaged by the main trends, such as civic forums in Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia.

Reception

Victims of show trials for alleged Titoism

Rudolf Slánský

László Rajk

Titoism has been perceived very differently by international figures. During Stalin's lifetime, the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries reacted against Titoism with aggressive hostility. Participants in alleged Titoist conspiracies, such as the GDR historian Walter Markov, were subjected to reprisals, and some were even put through staged show trials that ended with death sentences, such as the Rajk trial in Budapest in 1949 or the Slánský trial in Prague in 1952. About forty important trials against "Titoists" took place during the Informbiro period, in addition to persecution, arrest and deportation of thousands of less prominent individuals who were presumed to hold pro-Yugoslav sympathies. In France, the Cominform ordered the central committee of the French Communist Party to condemn "Titoism" in 1948 With prominent members such as Marcel Servin writing of the need to hunt down "Titoist spies" within the party. After Stalin's death, the Soviet conspiracy theories around Titoism subsided but continued. In the mid-1950s, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union temporarily reconciled. Nevertheless, Titoism was generally condemned as revisionism in the Eastern bloc.

In Marxist circles in the West, Titoism was considered a form of Western socialism alongside Eurocommunism, which was appreciated by left-wing intellectuals who were breaking away from the Soviet line in the 1960s. In the 1960s, political scientists understood Titoist state narrative as a form of socialist patriotism. Historian Adam Ulam was more critical of Titoism and writes that Titoism has always "retained its (albeit mild) totalitarian one-party character".

Muammar Gaddafi's Third International Theory, outlined in his Green Book which informed Libyan national policy from its formation in 1975 until Gaddafi's downfall in 2011, was heavily inspired by and shared many similarities with Titoism and Yugoslav workers' self-management.

Titoism gained influence in the communist parties in the 1940s, including Poland (Władysław Gomułka), Hungary (László Rajk, Imre Nagy), Bulgaria (Traicho Kostov), Czechoslovakia (Vladimír Clementis), and Romania (Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu).

National communism or proletarian internationalism

Titoism has sometimes been referred to as a form of "national communism", an attempt to reconcile nationalism with communism, traditionally considered incompatible by Marxist social philosophers. Walker Connor posits that Titoism is more akin to "state communism", and that Tito advocated patriotism rather than nationalism, as the loyalty is to a state comprising multiple nations. Nationalism was, therefore a threat to Titoism. Tito and the Yugoslav leadership firmly rejected existence of 'national communism', describing the accusations as "attempts to stigmatise recognition of the diversity of forms in socialist processes" and asserted that Yugoslav communists too are proletarian internationalists, stating that:

... internationalism does not start where autonomy and independence end. Real revolutionary unity and socialist solidarity must be based on such a community of interests and views as arises from the full independence and responsibility of each party. Today, more than ever before, the international workers' movement needs such unity as does not conceal differences; but, on the contrary, recognized them. After all, total unity in the international workers' movement has never existed.

— Josip Broz Tito, (1965)

Yugoslav interpretation of proletarian internationalism was outlined in "The Programme of the League of Yugoslav Communists": "Proletarian internationalism demands correct relationships, and support of and solidarity with every socialist country and every socialist movement genuinely fighting for socialism, peace, and active peaceful coexistence between peoples." This posture was contrasted to Stalin's conception of proletarian internationalism "which required unity within the Communist Camp under the leadership of one party which was committed to the interest of one country, the Soviet Union."

[3] After lengthy preparations, the Independent Workers' Party of Germany (UAPD) was founded in the Federal Republic of Germany in March 1951 with Yugoslav support. As early as 1950, a preparatory conference for the founding of the company took place in Ratingen. A six-point paper with demarcations from the SPD and KPD was published there. A preparatory committee that had been set up published the "Freie Tribüne" in July 1951. The party was formally founded on March 24, 1951 in Worms. 144 delegates and 25 guest delegates were present. The founders were expelled or resigned KPD members, the Trotskyist International Communists of Germany (1933) (IKD), and Marxist intellectuals such as Theo Pirker. Among them were Josef Schappe, Georg Fischer, Georg Jungclas, Wolfgang Leonhard, and Harry Ristock were also involved in the preparations. The party had 500-900 members, the party newspaper "Freie Tribüne" had around 3,000 readers. She was only able to achieve electoral success locally, for example in Worms and Geesthacht. Nevertheless, its creation excited the press and caused a stir at the Allied High Commission. However, the party failed to garner significant support or win votes and mandates. It broke up in October 1952 after internal disputes – the Trotskyists were expelled just five months after the party was founded.

Between 1944 and 1948, under Koçi Xoxe, Titoism also played a certain role in neighboring Albania.

[4] In France, the country of Western Europe where Stalinist communism was best established, the Cominform ordered the central committee of the PCF organized from 8 toJuly 9th1948 to condemn "titism" but some members refused to obey, like the resistance fighter Mounette Dutilleul who had already protested, in the summer of 1940, against the steps taken by the PCF with the Nazi occupiers to bring about the reappearance of Humanity and to continue to administer the communist town halls in the Paris region. These protesters are not re-elected inapril 1950, during the 12th congress of the French Communist Party which saw the eviction of other suspects of “titism”, such as the Limousin resistance fighter Jean Chaintron or the biologist Marcel Prenant, a leading communist intellectual. However, in the meantime, Jean Chaintron had retracted by denouncing "the miserable clique of Tito" and had returned to the ranks by holding in 1949 the secretariat of the Patronage Committee of the exhibition in honor of the 70th anniversary of Joseph Stalin. However, in 1949 he presented a report to the PCF Foreign Affairs Committee on “the situation in Greece and Tito’s policy”, which praises Márkos Vafiádis, the former hero of the Greek Civil War removed from commandAugust 1948, then expelled from the Greek Communist Party in October on charges of “titism” and that was enough to make him suspect himself. During this XIIth Congress of the French Communist Party, the delegates were asked to “intensify revolutionary vigilance against the Titoites”.

?

It became the only country in the Balkans to resist pressure from Moscow to join the Warsaw Pact and remained "socialist, but independent" right up until the collapse of Soviet socialism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Throughout his time in office, Josip Broz Tito and party leadership took pride in Yugoslavia's independence from the Soviet Bloc, with Yugoslavia never accepting full membership of the Comecon and his open rejection of many aspects of Stalinism as the most obvious manifestations of this.

See also

• Arab socialism
• Ba'athism
• Economy of the former Yugoslavia
• Fidelism
• Goulash Communism
• Kemalism
• Nasserism
• New Economic Policy
• Market socialism
• Marhaenism
• Praxis School
• Non-Aligned Movement
• Soviet Union–Yugoslavia relations
• United States–Yugoslavia relations
• Total National Defense (Yugoslavia)
• Worker cooperative
• Yugoslavism
• Yugo-nostalgia
• Yugoslavs

References

Bibliography

• Ágh, Attila [in Hungarian] (2011). "Socialist Systems". In Badie, Bertrand; Berg-Schlosser, Dirk; Morlino, Leonardo (eds.). International Encyclopedia of Political Science. Vol. 8. SAGE Publications. pp. 2456–2461. doi:10.4135/9781412994163. ISBN 978-1-4129-5963-6.
• Bordewich, Fergus M. (13 April 1986). "Yugoslavia since Tito". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 6 February 2023.
• Domin, Thierry (25 July 2001). "Chapter 6: From the end of WWII to 1992". History of Bosnia and Herzegovina: from the origins to 1992. Archived from the original on 17 April 2006 – via European Union Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• Haug, Hilde Katrine (2012). Creating a Socialist Yugoslavia: Tito, Communist Leadership and the National Question. International Library of Twentieth Century History. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84885-051-4.
• Hoxha, Enver (1978). Yugoslav "self-administration" a capitalist theory and practice (PDF). Retrieved 2 March 2023 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
• Irwin, Zachary (2016). "The Untold Stories of Yugoslavia and Nonalignment". In Ognjenović, Gorana; Jozelić, Jasna (eds.). Revolutionary Totalitarianism, Pragmatic Socialism, Transition. Vol. One, Tito's Yugoslavia, Stories Untold. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 139–166. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-59743-4. ISBN 978-1-137-59743-4.
• Jakovina, Tvrtko (2016). "It's Either Tito or the Soviet Aparatchik: Tito's Yugoslavia and the United States of America (1945–1991)". In Ognjenović, Gorana; Jozelić, Jasna (eds.). Revolutionary Totalitarianism, Pragmatic Socialism, Transition. Vol. One, Tito's Yugoslavia, Stories Untold. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 99–138. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-59743-4. ISBN 978-1-137-59743-4.
• Lazar, Marc (2011). "Communism". In Badie, Bertrand; Berg-Schlosser, Dirk; Morlino, Leonardo (eds.). International Encyclopedia of Political Science. Vol. 2. SAGE Publications. pp. 310–314. doi:10.4135/9781412994163. ISBN 9781412959636.
• McLean, Iain; McMillan, Alistair, eds. (26 February 2009). "Titoism". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-920516-5. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
• Robertson, James (17 July 2017). "The Life and Death of Yugoslav Socialism". Jacobin. Archived from the original on 20 July 2017. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
• Turlejska, Maria [in Polish] (1972). Zapis pierwszej dekady 1945-1954 [Record of the first decade 1945-1954] (in Polish). Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza.
• Ulam, Adam Bruno (1972). "Tito, Titoismus" [Tito, Titoism]. In Kernig, Claus D. [in German] (ed.). Sowjetsystem und demokratische Gesellschaft [Soviet system and democratic society] (in German). Vol. 6. pp. 451–465.
• Unkovski-Korica, Vladimir (30 August 2016). The Economic Struggle for Power in Tito's Yugoslavia: From World War II to Non-alignment. Library of Balkan Studies. ISBN 978-1-78076-328-6.
• Wilczynski, Jozef, ed. (1981). An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Marxism, Socialism and Communism. The Macmillan Press. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-05806-8. ISBN 978-1-349-05806-8.

Further reading

• Tony Cliff. Background to Hungary (July 1958). Marxists Internet Archive. A contemporary Trotskyist perspective on Tito's clash with Moscow.
• Mircea Rusnac. "Procesul partizanilor anticomunisti din Banat 1949". Banaterra.eu.
• Mircea Rusnac. "Deportarea banatenilor Baragan 1951 din perspectiva istorica". Banaterra.eu.
• Vesna Peric Zimonjic (4 June 2009). "Balkans: Flirting With Marx, for Old Times' Sake". Inter Press Service. Ipsnews.net.
• Mike B. "Josip Broz Tito Internet Archive". Marxists Internet Archive

Đilasism

Đilasism refers to the Yugoslav communist politics of the influence of Yugoslav Communist Milovan Đilas.

Theory

Đilasism arose as a break from Titoism pursued by the Yugoslav government of Josip Broz Tito. Đilas published articles in Borba in 1950, collectively titled Savremene teme ("Modern topics"), expressing his ideas on the socialist path of Yugoslavia and his criticisms of the Soviet Union. Some within the leadership of the SKJ viewed these articles as "heresies". Several members of the Central Committee of the SKJ were in agreement with Đilas' ideas, and during later political investigations one even confessed that he had "written an article propagating Djilasism."

Đilas criticised bureaucracy as the "privileged class", where the source of this privilege came from its absolutism and it would use ideological repression to preserve this privilege. He also believed that the party and state should be separate entities, and along with Edvard Kardelj, that in time political opposition would be allowed as the state and the party withered away.

Pejorative and repression

The word was often used as pejorative, including by Tito, while Đilas himself personally denied that such an ideology existed.

Several publications were suppressed and journalists arrested on the grounds that they were "Đilasist". These included the magazines Beseda edited by Ivan Minatti, and Revija 57 edited by Veljko Rus.

See also

• New class

Bibliography

• Djilas, Milovan (1957). The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System. Thames & Hudson.
• Gabrič, Aleš (October 2019). "The Younger Generation's Magazines in the Eyes of the Communist Ideologues". Review of Croatian History. 15 (1): 35–61. doi:10.22586/review.v15i1.9738. ISSN 1845-4380. OCLC 1137264327. S2CID 212824317.
• Hammond, Thomas Taylor (January 1955). "The Djilas Affair and Jugoslav Communism". Foreign Affairs. 33 (2): 298–315. doi:10.2307/20031096. ISSN 0015-7120. JSTOR 20031096. OCLC 26780544.
• Linden, Carl A. (1975). "Dissidence and Detente: Djilas to Solzhenitsyn". GPSA Journal: The Georgia Political Science Association. 3 (1): 105–114. doi:10.1111/j.1747-1346.1975.tb00622.x.
• Režek, Mateja (November 2006). "Defeat of the First "Party Liberalism" and The Echo of "Djilasism" in Slovenia". Slovene Studies. 28 (1). Society of Slovene Studies: 67–78. doi:10.7152/ssj.v28i1.13961 (inactive 2023-01-30). ISSN 0193-1075. OCLC 456112959.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2023 (link)
• Warner Neal, Fred (1958). Titoism in action: the reforms in Yugoslavia after 1948. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

External links

• The Djilas Case Archive at Marxists Internet Archive.

New class

New class is a polemic term by critics of countries that followed the Soviet-type state socialism 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. The term was earlier applied to other emerging strata of the society. Milovan Đilas' new-class theory was also used extensively by anti-communist commentators in the Western world in their criticism of the Communist states during the Cold War.

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.

Milovan Đilas' analysis

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. 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.

Đilas posited that the new class' specific relationship to the means of production was one of collective political control, and that the new class' property form was political control. For Đilas, the new class not only seeks expanded material reproduction to politically justify its existence to the working class but also seeks expanded reproduction of political control as a form of property in itself. This can be compared to the capitalist who seeks expanded value through increased sharemarket values, even though the sharemarket itself does not necessarily reflect an increase in the value of commodities produced. Đilas used this argument about property forms to indicate why the new class sought parades, marches and spectacles despite this activity lowering the levels of material productivity. Đilas proposed that the new class only slowly came to self-consciousness of itself as a class. On arriving at a full self-consciousness the initial project undertaken would be massive industrialisation in order to cement the external security of the new class' rule against foreign or alternative ruling classes. In Đilas' schema, this approximated the 1930s and 1940s in the Soviet Union. As the new class suborns all other interests to its own security during this period, it freely executes and purges its own members in order to achieve its major goal of security as a ruling class. After security has been achieved, the new class pursues a policy of moderation towards its own members, effectively granting material rewards and freedom of thought and action within the new class, so long as this freedom is not used to undermine the rule of the new class. Đilas identified this period as the period of Khrushchev's government in the Soviet Union. Due to the emergence of conflicts of policy within the new class, the potential for palace coups, or populist revolutions is possible, as experienced in Poland and Hungary, respectively. Finally, Đilas predicted a period of economic decline, as the political future of the new class was consolidated around a staid programme of corruption and self-interest at the expense of other social classes. This can be interpreted as a prediction of the Leonid Brezhnev so-called Era of Stagnation by Đilas. Đilas also heavily criticized Soviet imperialist practices for violating the national sovereignty of Eastern European countries and the unequal price exchange in trade between the USSR and these republics. He predicted that these countries would desire more sovereignty and independence from the totalitarian communist imperialist system. This can be interpreted as the prediction of Revolutions of 1989. Djilas also predicted that the Titoist resistance of the USSR and the development of national communism would eventually lead to the renounce of communism and the demise of the international communist order as a whole.

While Đilas posited that the new class was a social class with a distinct relationship to the means of production, he did not claim that this new class was associated with a self-sustaining mode of production. This claim, within Marxist theory, argues that the Soviet-style societies must eventually either collapse backwards towards capitalism, or experience a social revolution towards real socialism. This can be seen as a prediction of the downfall of the Soviet Union. Robert D. Kaplan's 1993 book Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through history also contains a discussion with Đilas, who used his model to anticipate many of the events that subsequently came to pass in the former Yugoslavia. Đilas also argues that a communist society has three phases: the revolutionary phase, the dogmatic phase, and the non-dogmatic phase. The new class does not perish despite attempts to moderate communist practices such as Yugoslavia’s workers' self-management or the reversal of Stalinist totalitarian policies of Khrushchev Thaw. Djilas argues these moderations are only concessions of the communist bureaucracy to appease the working class and therefore consolidate their new class rule. Marxists like Ernest Mandel have criticised Djilas for ignoring the existence of a new socio-economic system, which cannot be reconciled with the old class system.

Similarity to other analyses

Mikhail Bakunin had made a point in his International Workingmen's Association debates with Marx in the mid-to-late 19th century of bureaucrats becoming a new oppressive class in socialist states. This idea was repeated after the Russian revolution by anarchists like Peter Kropotkin and Nestor Makhno, as well as some Marxists. In 1911, Robert Michels first proposed the Iron law of oligarchy, which described the development of bureaucratic hierarchies in supposedly egalitarian and democratic socialist parties. It was later repeated by a leader of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky through his theory of degenerated workers state. Mao Zedong also had his own version of this idea developed during the Socialist Education Movement to criticize the Chinese Communist Party under Liu Shaoqi. This wide range of people over the decades had different perspectives on the matter, but there was also a degree of core agreement on this idea.

The work of Friedrich Hayek also anticipated much of Đilas' new class criticism without placing them in a Marxist context, such as in The Road to Serfdom. American neoconservatives adapted New Class analysis in their theory of the managerial state. Karl Popper's criticisms of utopian social pursuits in The Open Society and Its Enemies, especially in note 6 to Chapter 18 and related text, are markedly similar to Đilas' views, which were nonetheless developed independently.

Đilas' New Class has also been likened to the professional–managerial class seen in advanced capitalist societies.

John Kenneth Galbraith and post-industrial sociology

Canadian-American economist John Kenneth Galbraith also wrote about a similar phenomenon under capitalism, the emergence of a technocratic layer in The New Industrial State and The Affluent Society. The new-class model as a theory of new social groups in post-industrial societies gained ascendency during the 1970s as social and political scientists noted how new-class groups were shaped by post-material orientations in their pursuit of political and social goals. New-class themes "no longer have a direct relationship to the imperatives of economic security."

See also

• Bureaucratic collectivism
• Degenerated workers' state
• Deformed workers' state
• New Soviet man
• Public choice theory
• State capitalism
• State socialism

References

Bibliography

• van Ree, Erik (October 28, 2002). The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth Century Revolutionary Patriotism (hardcover) (1st ed.). Routledge. p. 138. ISBN 978-0700717491 – via Google Books.

Further reading

• Đilas, Milovan (1983) [1957]. The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (paperback ed.). San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-665489-X.
• Đilas, Milovan (1969). The Unperfect Society: Beyond the New Class. trans. Dorian Cooke. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. ISBN 0-15-693125-7.
• Đilas, Milovan (1998). Fall of the New Class: A History of Communism's Self-Destruction (hardcover ed.). ???: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-43325-2.. See also the NY Times Books feature with Chapter One online, and also the May 10, 1998 NY Times book review.
• A meta-list of relevant publications. Related to Barbrook, Richard (2006). The Class of the New (paperback ed.). London: OpenMute. ISBN 0-9550664-7-6. Archived from the original on 2018-08-01. Retrieved 2018-12-28.
• Budrys, Grace (1997). When Doctors Join Unions. Ithaca: ILR Press/Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-8354-9.
• Gouldner, Alvin Ward (1979). The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class: A Frame of Reference, Theses, Conjectures, Arguments, and an Historical Perspective on the Role of Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in the International Class Contest of the Modern Era. New York: Seabury Press. ISBN 0-8164-9358-8.
• Hayek, F. A. (1994) [1944]. The Road to Serfdom (paperback ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-32061-8.
• Kaplan, Robert D. (1993). Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-08701-2.
• Kellner, Hansfried & Heuberger, Frank W., eds. (1992). Hidden Technocrats: The New Class and New Capitalism. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0-88738-443-9.
• Lasch, Christopher (1995). The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-03699-5.
• Orwell, George (1984) [1949]. Nineteen Eighty-Four (paperback ed.). San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-166038-7.
• Pérez Soto, Carlos (2008) [2001]. Comunistas otra vez, para una crítica del poder burocrático (Communists again, for a critique of bureaucratic power). Santiago de Chile: ARCIS - LOM. ISBN 978-956-282-988-5.
• Sawer, Marian, ed. (1978). Socialism and the New Class: Towards the Analysis of Structural Inequality Within Socialist Societies. Bedford Park, Australia: Australasian Political Studies Association. ISBN 0-7258-0074-7.
• Trotsky, Leon (1991) [1937]. The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going? (paperback ed.). Detroit: Labor Publications. ISBN 0-929087-48-8. Leon Trotsky's famous work considers the alleged betrayal and corruption of the Russian Revolution by Stalin and the new bureaucratic ruling caste.

Articles

• Registan (October 1/06) – The "New Class": The Rise and Fall of NGOs in Central Asia. Quotes extensively from a presentation by Laurence Jarvik to the Central Eurasian Studies Society, held the University of Michigan. Founding editor Nathan Hamm was a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan. Published as "NGOs: A 'New Class' in International Relations" (Orbis, 2007).
• Mutualist.org – Liberalism & Social Control: The New Class' Will to Power. Most New Class criticism comes explicitly from either the Left or the Right. Rarely does one seem to come from both at once.
• The New Criterion (October 1999) – Remembering Milovan Đilas
• The New York Review of Books (December 7/67) – Same Old New Class. A reply by Christopher Lasch

External links

• Collection of writings by and on Shachtman on the Workers' Liberty website
• Max Shachtman Internet Archive at Marxists Internet Archive