I respectfully differ from the author's philosophical jump straight to Heidegger. What actually led to the bizarre trek toward Postmodernism was a major philosophical change promulgated by the Frankfurt School (circa 1923) in which class signifiers were no longer strictly economic, but could include such things as race, sex, ethnicity, etc, etc. The principal descriptor there is in terms of power relationships, clarified quite a bit later (circa 1950s) by the post-structuralist Michael Foucault (who, incidentally, denied that he was a postmodernist). It was a change anticipated by Marx himself, who furiously condemned it because he could see where it would lead. For Marx the only significant class signifier was economic. All else was false class consciousness.
Where it led was straight back to radical individualism, in which a single individual's membership in multiple classes thwarted his or her ability to advance class interests because they inevitably ended up (as they have) conflicting. That is, again in Marxian terms, a fatal internal contradiction. If one's individual identity subsumes membership in such classes as black, male, bourgeois, and Yankee fans, then the advancement of one's political interest finds itself torn between the various class interests. In fact, this is a fair working description of the real world, and the reason that the true repository of political rights resides within the individual, not in the collective. In short, as soon as class signifier becomes anything but economic, the whole collective edifice comes crashing down, as it has.
This has real-world consequences in the transformation of power relationships in the post-Communist world from Party straight to the weird Mafia seen in Russia and the heavily crony capitalism in China. Marx was wrong: the State did not wither away, it merely morphed to an openly criminal organization from a covert one. Communism never was anything more than Strong Men and their little fiefdoms. That is the New Class that Djilas mocked.
Good points.
The fact that the Democratic Party uses grievance group pandering to attract members is understood; once inside, the hardcore are like the Borg - interconnected and united - who understand their role to influence and control. They’ve become influential in media, politics and education in order to replenish and advance their agenda.
Membership seems to dwindle or remain flat, or it hibernates until triggered, while their power and influence has expanded - which appears to have contributed to the class divide and their need to blame it on free market capitalism and not on their interference and influence to co-op it.