Djilas’s core argument was deceptively simple yet devastating. Karl Marx predicted a revolution by the proletariat leading to a “dictatorship of the proletariat” and ultimately a stateless, classless society. Djilas observed that in the USSR and Eastern Europe, this had not happened.
Democracy was a threat. The New Class could not allow free elections because free elections would remove them from control of the means of production. Thus, one-party rule was not an ideology; it was a survival mechanism for the class. Milovan Djilas Nova Klasa.pdf
: A concise summary of the book’s core arguments, including the "Character of the Revolution" and the centralization of power, is available on Are you analyzing this for a political science project or a historical research Democracy was a threat
: This class consists of the political bureaucracy—the party-state officials and technocrats—who exercise a total monopoly over the state and the economy. Control vs. Ownership : A concise summary of the book’s core
If you want, I can: (1) provide a more detailed chapter-by-chapter summary; (2) compare Djilas’s thesis to a specific country (USSR, China, or Yugoslavia); or (3) draft a short critical essay taking a position for publication.
Those who enforce the regime's control through repression.