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Dictatorship of the proletariat

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Template:TotallyDisputed The "dictatorship of the proletariat" is a term employed by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program that refers to a transition period between capitalist and communist society "in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". The term refers to a concentration of power in which rule by the proletariat would supplant the current political situation controlled by propertied classes rather than a repressive situation associated with contemporary meaning of the term "dictatorship."

Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat"

Before 1875, Marx said little about what in practice would characterize a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” believing that planning in advance the details of a future socialist system constituted the fallacy of "utopian socialism." Thus, Marx used the term very infrequently.

When he did use it, the term "dictatorship" describes control by an entire class, rather than a single sovereign individual (dictator rei gerendae causa), over another class. In this way, according to Marx, the bourgeois state, being a system of class rule, amounts to a 'dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.' In the same sense, when the workers take state power into their hands, they become the new ruling classes. The workers, in other words, rule in their own interest, using the apparatuses of the courts, schools, prisons, and police in a manner required to prevent the bourgeoisie from regrouping and mounting a counterrevolution. Marx expected the victorious workers to be democratic and open in dealings with one another. Theirs is to be a dictatorship of and by, not over, the proletariat.

According to Marx, after the proletariat would take state power, it will aim to eliminate the old social relations of production, and replace these relations by placing the means of production and state apparatus under proletariat control, thus paving the way for the abolition of class distinctions and a classless communist society. He viewed the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as only an intermediate stage, believing that the need for the use of state power of the working class over its enemies would disappear once the classless society had emerged.

Although Marx did not plan out the details of how such a dictatorship would be implemented, earlier in The Civil War in France (1871), his analysis based upon the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871, Marx pointed to the Commune as a model of transition to communism.

Later, Frederick Engels, in his 1891 postscript to the Civil War in France stressed the dismantling of the state apparatus, the decentralization of power and popular democratic control over and management of civil society. The pamphlet praised the democratic features of the Paris Commune, arguing that the working class, once in power, had to "do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself," and that it must "safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment." [1] The 1891 postscript defended the concept of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" by relating it to the Commune.

The "dictatorship of the proletariat" since Lenin

The Paris Commune was short-lived, and no other serious attempt at implementing Marx's ideas was made during his lifetime. After Marx, Vladimir Lenin discussed the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in The State and Revolution (1917), elaborating his proposals for putting it into practice. Lenin believed that the political form of the Paris Commune was revived in the councils of workers and soldiers that appeared after the 1905 Russian Revolution that called themselves soviets. Their task, according to Lenin, was to overthrow the capitalist state and establish socialism, the stage preceding communism.

Meanwhile, the role of the revolutionary party, in his case the Bolsheviks, was to serve as a "vanguard of the proletariat," which would start the revolution when the time was right and lead the soviets to victory. Like Marx and Engels, Lenin did not think that a liberal democracy could represent the interests of the proletariat because it would inevitably lead to the aforementioned "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie." Lenin argued that since trade unions are inevitably reformist, seeking only an accommodation with capitalists to improve the lot of their members, revolutionary activity on behalf of the proletariat requires the vanguard of a revolutionary party. The party will then impose a "dictatorship of the proletariat," assisting the workers to transcend their 'trade-union consciousness' by developing a 'true revolutionary class consciousness,' and thus eliminate the intra-class divisions that impede the development of communism.

Lenin gave these reasons from Marx and Engels as support for not implementing a standard liberal democracy in Russia after the revolution and why class dictatorship was necessary even when the working class held the majority:

to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie
to inspire the reactionaries with fear
to maintain the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie
that the proletariat may forcibly hold down its adversaries

[2]

Lenin instead advocated the principle of democratic centralism with the idea of soviet democracy during the dictatorship of the proletariat. His regime also banned fractions within the party to maintain solidarity. [3]

Stalin later used these concepts to justify a new consolidation of power within the politburo and under himself. Critics, including anti-communists but also Trotskyist communists, non-Leninist Marxists and anarcho-communists, contend that this principle has been used as a justification for granting sweeping powers to a new ruling elite, although of a different nature than the previous ruling elite. As such consolidation of powers took place Stalinists never made any significant contributions to the idea of dictatorship of the proletariat.

Quotations

  • "The dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence." - V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution
  • "Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." - Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program
  • "The question arises, if the proletariat is ruling, over whom will it rule? This means there will remain another proletariat which will be subordinated to this new domination, this new state." -Mikhail Bakunin

See also

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