Dictatorship of the proletariat
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 (
working class) would supplant the current political situation controlled by the
bourgeoisie (propertied class). It does not refer to the repressive situation associated with the contemporary meaning of the term "
dictatorship."
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 class. 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, Friedrich 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 qualified the 1871 Commune as the first "dictatorship of the proletariat".
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 believed that, even after a successful proletarian revolution overthrows capitalism in one country, the bourgeoisie still remains stronger than the proletariat, because:
For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property â€" often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth. [
2]
For these reasons, Lenin argued that a "class dictatorship" was necessary in Russia. Lenin advocated the use of force to suppress the former ruling class and the removal of their voting rights, while quoting statements by Marx and Engels to support his policies against the criticism of other Marxists (such as
Karl Kautsky), who argued that Lenin was being overly undemocratic. At the same time, however, Lenin stated that the system of
soviet democracy did guarantee voting rights to the majority of the population. The principle of soviet democracy was that the local workers' soviets would elect representatives that would go on to form regional soviets, which would in turn elect representatives that would form higher soviets, and so on up to a
Supreme Soviet, the highest legislative body of the entire country.
Later, during the
Russian Civil War, non-Bolshevik political parties - including socialist ones - were banned one by one on charges of sabotage, attempted assassination of Bolshevik leaders and cooperation with the enemy. Critics of Lenin argue that he intended to ban opposition parties all along and was merely looking for excuses to do so, while supporters argue that this measure was made necessary by wartime conditions and that the charges brought against the various opposition parties were genuine (citing, for example, the attempt on Lenin's life by
Fanya Kaplan on August 30,
1918, and the successful assassination of
Moisei Uritsky the same day). What is certain is that the Bolsheviks were the only political party left standing by the end of the Civil War, and Lenin died shortly thereafter.
In accordance with the principle of
democratic centralism, the Communist (Bolshevik) Party contained numerous factions with significant differences of opinion at the time of Lenin's death, and this continued for a few years afterwards. However, following the ascension of
Joseph Stalin in the late
1920s, dissent was gradually suppressed and freedom of speech was abolished.
Critics, including
anti-communists but also
Trotskyist communists (which defend the historical need for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat),
Marxists,
anarcho-communists, and virtually all
communists and
socialists who were/are anti-Stalinist contend that Stalin's Soviet Union and the countries that followed its
Stalinist model used the notion of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" to justify what was in effect a dictatorship of a new ruling elite, although of a different nature than the previous ruling elite. Some also say that the degeneration of the Russian revolution began before Lenin's death, and that he and Trotsky played a crucial role in it (for example, by crushing the
Kronstadt uprising and eliminating opposing factions like the
Workers' Opposition).
* "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* "This dictatorship consists in the
manner of applying democracy, not in its
elimination, but in energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-entrenched rights and economic relationships of bourgeois society, without which a socialist transformation cannot be accomplished. This dictatorship must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class â€" that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses; it must be under their direct influence, subjected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the growing political training of the mass of the people." - Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution
*
Marxism*
Marxism-LeninismCritique of the Gotha ProgramThe Civil War in FranceThe State and Revolution*
Fidel Castro*
Vladimir Lenin*
Mao Zedong*
Ho Chi Minh*
Critique of the Gotha Programme*
The Civil War in France*
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