Many contemporary analysts use Djilas’ lens to explain the rise of oligarchs in post-Soviet Russia (where party bosses became billionaire capitalists) and the current state of the Chinese Communist Party. The question "Is the CCP a New Class?" is a direct intellectual descendant of Djilas.
Perhaps the most prescient chapter, Djilas predicts that the Soviet bureaucracy would eventually either collapse or reform into a fascist-corporatist state. He did not foresee the 1991 collapse, but he correctly predicted the rise of security-state elites over ideological idealists. Milovan Djilas Nova Klasa.pdf
No paper on Djilas is complete without addressing central critiques: Many contemporary analysts use Djilas’ lens to explain
Djilas’s model predicted that when the party’s monopoly on force collapses, the new class simply converts political power into private property. The Russian oligarchs of the 1990s—former party secretaries who bought state assets for kopecks—are the perfect Djilasian type. He did not foresee the 1991 collapse, but