The Postwar Period 239
him, in Yugoslavia, socialist and revolutionary conscience was strong with regards
to problems that were no longer present, such as nationalization, unity of the
country, and its defense. Those problems encountered daily, which were related
to the class struggle, the implementation of law, the role of the administration
and political and social organizations, and cultural freedom and criticism of
“bureaucracy,” remained unresolved. “Today we can see social consciousness
even outside the official and Communist organizations,” he wrote. “Yes, outside
them and in spite of so many bureaus and Communist functionaries. We can
find these so-called ‘subjective forces’ not only among the Communists and
workers with developed class consciousness, but among all those who want an
independent, socialist and democratic Yugoslavia.”^447 In an article that appeared
in Borba on 19 December, he even declared that “today, no party or group, and
even less a class, can express the objective needs of society. Nobody can claim
the right to direct the action of the productive forces [working people], without
paralyzing and oppressing them.”^448
These affirmations found a vast echo in public opinion, not just in bourgeois
circles but also in the party, especially in the middle ranks, where people were
immediately eager to engage in “self-criticism,” (part of the Communist fash-
ion, to show how in line they were.) In Djilas’s writings they saw the prelude to
a prudent but inevitable democratization of the regime, presumably with Tito’s
blessing. Evidently Djilas had hit the mark, articulating the general malaise. It
is interesting, in this context, that Borba, in its Letters to the Editor, published
only favorable opinions on his writing. It was Djilas who called attention to
criticism of his work, stressing in the article of 24 December that there had
been four main objections: he was simply a philosopher and therefore a stranger
to reality; he wrote only in order to make a good impression abroad; he departed
from dialectical materialism and Leninism; and he played into the hands of
reactionaries who took advantage of his writing in order to denigrate the party
and the state institutions. In reply to these critics, he declared that his medi-
tations surely were neither completely correct nor original. He had hoped to
emphasize topical questions and start a discussion dictated by the objective
development of contemporary society. After all, new ideas were never mass
ideas. This inevitably precipitated a clash between new ideas, such as the ones
being denounced today as “anarchic,” “petit bourgeois,” and “Western,” and the
old ideas, which were criticized as “bureaucratic,” “Stalinist,” and “dogmatic.”^449
The article “League or Party” caused quite a stir. It was published in Borba
on 4 January 1954, a day after Djilas’s election to the presidency of the Federal
Assembly. In it, Djilas called attention to the transformation of the party be-
tween the Fifth (1948) and the Sixth (1952) Congresses, a transformation imposed
by circumstances. In his view, such radical changes were no longer necessary,