"Communism No Longer Exists"

THE UNPERFECT SOCIETY by Milovan Djilas. 267 pages. Harcourt, Brace & World. $5.

Western commentators have professed to see International Communism in decline. But it is a practicing Communist who has now delivered the most emphatic judgment to date. "Communism no longer exists," writes Milovan Djilas in his latest book, The Unperfect Society. "Only national Communisms exist, each different in doctrine and in the policies practiced and in the actual state of affairs they have created."

The Unperfect Society is a chronicle of the disintegration of Communism written by an insider. Once Marshal Tito's chief aide in the Yugoslav hierarchy, Djilas later spent nine years in prison for his iconoclastic writings. His signal offense was The New Class, published in 1957, in which he characterized the Communist bureaucracy as every bit as oppressive, materialistic and hierarchical as capitalism. On his release in 1966, he was prohibited from engaging in "political activity"--a usefully flexible admonition not to stir up controversy. But once again Djilas has defied Tito, his old comrade-in-arms, and brought out The Unperfect Society in the U.S. The Yugoslav regime has not yet reacted.

Marxist Consummation. It can hardly be pleased. In his book, Djilas assails not only the bureaucracy but also the whole theoretical Marxist-Leninist underpinning of the Communist state. Marxism cannot be revised, he declares; it must be discarded altogether. He parts company with those moderate Marxists--including a number of American college students--who are trying to salvage what they can from Marxism after its corruption by Soviet totalitarianism. To Djilas, the two are inseparable. For him, Stalin was not a ruthless aberration but the inevitable consummation of Marxism: theory made practice. The ironclad Marxist system is all but useless for historical interpretation, thinks Djilas. It endures only as a revolutionary ideology promising instant transformation to those who are desperate, impoverished or ignorant of history.

A main reason that Communism is breaking up, writes Djilas, is the advent of a new New Class. It consists of specialists--technicians, managers, teachers, artists--who are pressing for a freer, more flexible society. In time, Djilas is convinced, they will usher in a democratic society hardly distinguishable from existing Western versions, with much the same pluralism, mixed economy and individual freedoms. The Communist bureaucracy cannot suppress this knowledgeable new class because the regime's economy more and more depends on it--just as, in Western countries, politics and the economy depend more and more on professional knowledge. If anything, Djilas suggests, Communism will disappear with less resistance than anybody could have foreseen. Earlier dominant classes--whether feudal lords or capitalists--cemented their power with durable institutions that reflected economic realities. Relying on power alone, the Communists, says Djilas, have notably failed to develop stable institutions. When their power vanishes, so will all their works.

Despite his apparently subversive opinions, Djilas plans to remain in Yugoslavia. Prohibited from lecturing or publishing there, he lives modestly on his income from books published abroad. Because he cannot afford a car, he has not been able to indulge in his favorite pastime: fishing in the mountains. Still, his status has improved somewhat since the Czechoslovak invasion. Worried about the Soviet threat to himself, Tito has made some gestures of appeasement toward the West. One was to allow Djilas to make a trip to the U.S. last fall.

For all the trials he has endured for his beliefs, Djilas has maintained a remarkable equanimity. He harbors no burning grudge against Tito or the regime and speaks of both with dispassion and sympathy. He is scarcely a revolutionary. No man more fervently desires the demise of Communism, but he wants the death to come peacefully. He contemptuously cites Gomulka's excuse for violence: "With wolves, one must howl." Writes Djilas: "Let him do his howling. I shall not, though I have snarled and snapped with my teeth in my time. Such behavior achieves less than expected; in any case, there is no end to snapping and snarling." Djilas may be the first of his kind: a Communist convert to democracy who remains in his native land to speak his mind and influence events. If he is to be believed, he will be followed by many more.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.