In
MarxismMarxism is the political philosophy and economic worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and an atheist view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of...
, the
dictatorship of the proletariat denotes the transitional
socialistSocialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on...
State between the
capitalistCapitalism is an economic and social system in which the means of production are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor...
class society and the classless
communistCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
society. During the transition, the
StateA sovereign state is a political association with effective internal and external sovereignty over a geographic area and population which is not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state...
can be nothing, but the revolutionary dictatorship of the
proletariatThe proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. Originally it was identified as those people who had no wealth other than their sons...
, thus the term refers to the Classical Roman
dictaturaIn the Roman Republic, the dictator , was an extraordinary magistrate with the absolute authority to perform tasks beyond the authority of the ordinary magistrate . The office of dictator was a legal innovation originally named Magister Populi , i.e...
concept — republican and constitutional — whereby the
proletarianThe proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. Originally it was identified as those people who had no wealth other than their sons...
government would replace the incumbent
capitalistCapitalism is an economic and social system in which the means of production are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor...
economic system and its socio-political supports, i.e. the “dictatorship of the
bourgeoisieHistorically, the bourgeoisie were a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and the related culture. They were a part of the middle or merchant classes of European feudalism, where their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those...
”.
Marx and Engels
On 1 January 1852, the journalist
Joseph WeydemeyerJoseph Arnold Weydemeyer was a military officer in the Kingdom of Prussia and the United States, as well as a journalist, politician and Marxist revolutionary....
published the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” article in
The New York Times newspaper. In that year, Karl Marx wrote him, saying:
“Now, as for myself, I do not claim to have discovered either the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois economists their economic anatomy. My own contribution was (1) to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production; (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; [and] (3) that this dictatorship, itself, constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society”.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05.htm Marx also used the term in the
Critique of the Gotha ProgramThe Critique of the Gotha Program is a document based on a letter by Karl Marx written in early May 1875 to the Eisenach faction of the German social democratic movement, with whom Marx and Friedrich Engels were in close association...
(1875).
In context,
dictatorshipIn the Roman Republic, the dictator , was an extraordinary magistrate with the absolute authority to perform tasks beyond the authority of the ordinary magistrate . The office of dictator was a legal innovation originally named Magister Populi , i.e...
denotes the political control (government) by a social class, not by a man (
dictator rei gerendae causa); like-wise, being a system of class rule, the
bourgeoisHistorically, the bourgeoisie were a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and the related culture. They were a part of the middle or merchant classes of European feudalism, where their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those...
State is a “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”. When the workers (the proletariat) assume State power, they become the (new)
ruling classThe term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy - assuming there is one such particular class in the given society...
, and rule in their own interests, temporarily using the State’s institution in preventing a bourgeois counterrevolution.
Karl Marx did not detail the implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, yet indicated the
Paris CommuneThe Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris, from March 28 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and socialists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class...
(March–May 1871) as a model of the transition to Communism:
This form of popular government, featuring revocable election of councilors and maximal public participation in governance, resembles contemporary
direct democracyDirect democracy, classically termed pure democracy, comprises a form of democracy and theory of civics wherein sovereignty is lodged in the assembly of all citizens who choose to participate...
.
In the 1891 postscript to
The Civil War in FranceThe Civil War in France was a pamphlet written by Karl Marx as an official statement of the General Council of the International on the character and significance of the struggle of the Parisian Communards in the French Civil War of 1871...
(1872) pamphlet,
Friedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels was a German social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of communist theory, alongside Karl Marx. Together they produced The Communist Manifesto in 1848...
said: “Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”; to avoid bourgeois political corruption, “the Commune made use of two infallible expedients. In this first place, it filled all posts — administrative, judicial, and educational — by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate at any time. And, in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates [and] to representative bodies, which were also added in profusion”; moreover noting that the State is “at best, an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the State on the scrap-heap”. Marx’s attention to the Paris Commune placed the
communeTraditionally, the revolutionary left sees the commune as a populist replacement for the elitist parliament. The far-left, despite their differences, agree that the commune would have several features...
in the centre of later
MarxismMarxism is the political philosophy and economic worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and an atheist view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of...
forms.
Lenin
Upon the destruction of the Paris Commune (1871), during Marx’s lifetime, there were no other serious attempts at implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the twentieth century,
Vladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , was the Bolshevik Leader of the 1917 October Revolution, and the first Head of State of the Soviet Union; in the course of his political career, he used the pseudonyms Lenin, V. I. Lenin, Nikolai Lenin, and N. Lenin...
developed
LeninismLeninism is the theory and practice of the dictatorship of the proletariat, led by a revolutionary vanguard party. Theoretically, Leninism comprises the political and economic communist theories of Vladimir Lenin, developed from Marxism, that were the establishing ideology of Soviet communism — in...
— the adaptation of
MarxismMarxism is the political philosophy and economic worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and an atheist view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of...
to the backward socio-economic and political conditions of
Imperial RussiaThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
(1721–1917); later the official
ideologyAn ideology is a set of aims and ideas that directs one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a...
of some Communist states.
The State and Revolution (1917) discusses the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, and proposes pragmatic means of effecting it. In Imperial Russia, the Paris Commune model form of government was realised in the
sovietsA soviet originally was a workers' local council in late Imperial Russia. According to the official historiography of the Soviet Union, the first Soviet was organized during the 1905 Russian Revolution in Ivanovo in May 1905...
(councils of workers and soldiers) established in the
Russian Revolution of 1905The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political unrest through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included terrorism, worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
, whose revolutionary task was
deposingDeposition by political means concerns the removal of a politician or monarch. It may be done by coup, impeachment, invasion or forced abdication...
the capitalist (monarchical) state to establish
socialismSocialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on...
— the dictatorship of the proletariat — the stage preceding
communismCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
.
To effect and realise the
communist revolutionA communist revolution is a proletarian revolution inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism, typically with socialism as an intermediate stage...
, the urban workers and peasants require the active leadership of a political
vanguard partyA vanguard party is a political party at the forefront of a mass action, movement, or revolution. The idea of a vanguard party was developed by Vladimir Lenin, most prominently in What is to be Done?, a political pamphlet first published in 1902....
of dedicated, professional
revolutionariesA revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavour...
to so establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the Russian Imperial case, the
BolshevikThe Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903...
Party was the “vanguard of the proletariat” — who launched and led the soviets to victory in the
October RevolutionTheOctober Revolution , also known as the Soviet Revolution or Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution. It began with an armed insurrection in Petrograd traditionally dated to 25 October 1917 Julian calendar...
of 1917. Like Marx and Engels, Lenin discounted
liberal democracyLiberal democracy is the dominant form of democracy in the 21st century. During the Cold War, liberal democracies were contrasted with the Communist People's Republics or "Popular Democracies", which claimed an alternative conception of democracy...
(the
Kerensky GovernmentThe Russian Provisional Government was the short-lived administrative body which sought to govern Russia immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917. In September 14, the State Duma of the Russian Empire officially dissolved the newly created Directorate, and the...
) as unrepresentative of the proletariat’s interests, for being a façade of the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”. Moreover, because
trade unionA trade union is an organization of workers who have banded together to achieve common goals in key areas, such as working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labor contracts with employers...
s inherently are political reformers (seeking
accommodation with the capitalists to improve the lot of the members) — therefore,
revolutionary action in the proletariat’s behalf requires that the vanguard party politically
educateEducation in its broadest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual...
the workers and peasants, helping them transcend the low political expectations of the “trade-union consciousness” and so develop the “true revolutionary class consciousness” that would allow the vanguard party’s assumption of State power, via the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In the event, the proletarian
dictaturaIn the Roman Republic, the dictator , was an extraordinary magistrate with the absolute authority to perform tasks beyond the authority of the ordinary magistrate . The office of dictator was a legal innovation originally named Magister Populi , i.e...
would eliminate the intra-class social division impeding the rational development of communism; nevertheless, despite a successful revolution, the bourgeoisie remain 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 — 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.
Lenin defended his proposal against accusations of his being undemocratic, by theoretician
Karl KautskyKarl Kautsky was a leading theoretician of Marxism. He became the leading promulgator of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels.- Life :...
and others, by quoting Marx and Engels in establishing the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia — to forcefully depose and suppress the Imperial ruling class:
In principle,
soviet democracySoviet democracy or sometimes council democracy is a form of democracy in which workers' councils called "soviets", consisting of worker-elected delegates, form organs of power possessing both legislative and executive power. The soviets begin at the local level and onto a national parliament-like...
granted voting rights to the majority of the populace who elected the local soviets, who elected the regional soviets, and so on until electing the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Moreover, the USSR did not claim to have achieved a communist society; the preamble to the 1977
Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist RepublicsAt the Seventh Session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Ninth Convocation on October 7, 1977, the third and last Soviet Constitution, also known as the "Brezhnev Constitution", was unanimously adopted. The official name of the Constitution was "Constitution ofthe Union of Soviet Socialist...
(the “Brezhnev Constitution”), stated that the 1917 Revolution established the dictatorship of the proletariat as “a society of true democracy”, and that “the supreme goal of the Soviet state is the building of a classless, communist society in which there will be public, communist self-government”.
http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons01.html#preamble
During the
Russian Civil WarThe Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed and the Soviets under the domination of the Bolshevik party assumed power, first in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a multi-party war that...
(1917–23), the Bolsheviks banned other political parties, to preclude sabotage,
collaborationCollaborationism describes the treason of cooperating with enemy forces occupying one's country. As such it implies criminal deeds in the service of the occupying power, including complicity with the occupying power in murder, persecutions, pillage, and economic exploitation as well as...
with the deposed
monarchistsAbsolute monarchy is a monarchical form of government where the king or queen has absolute power over all aspects of his/her subjects' lives. Although some religious authorities may be able to discourage the monarch from some acts and the sovereign is expected to act according to custom, in an...
, and further assassination attempts against Lenin (twice) and other Bolshevik leaders. Internally, Lenin’s Bolshevik critics argued that such political suppression always was his plan; supporters argued that the
reactionaryReactionary refers to any political or social movement or ideology that seeks a return to a previous state . The term originated in the French Revolution, to denote the counter-revolutionaries who wanted to restore the real or imagined conditions of the monarchical Ancien Régime...
civil warThe Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed and the Soviets under the domination of the Bolshevik party assumed power, first in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a multi-party war that...
of the foreign-sponsored
White MovementThe White movement , whose military arm was the White Army aka the White Guard , and as the Whites comprised some of the politico-military Russian forces who unsuccessfully fought the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution and...
required it — given Fanya Kaplan’s unsuccessful assassination of Lenin on 30 August 1918, and the successful assassination of
Moisei UritskyMoisei Solomonovich Uritsky was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader in Russia.He was born in the town of Cherkasy, Ukraine, to a Jewish family. His father, a merchant, died when Moisei was little and his mother raised her son by herself.Moisei studied law at the University of Kiev...
, the same day.
Critics of the concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” —
Anti-CommunistsAnti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism, especially Marxism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the growing popularity of the communist movement, and took on many forms during the 20th century....
,
Trotskyist CommunistsTrotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party...
,
Libertarian MarxistsLibertarian Marxism is a school of Marxism that takes a far less authoritarian, or in many cases anti-authoritarian view of Marxist theory than conventional currents of Marxism-Leninism such as Stalinism, Maoism, and Trotskyism. The current also has a generally less reformist view than do social...
,
Anarcho-CommunistsAnarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct or consensus democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations, workers' councils, or a gift economy...
, and anti-
StalinistStalinism was the political system and ideology of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1928–1953...
Communists and Socialists — propose that the Stalinist USSR and other Stalinist countries used the “dictatorship of the proletariat” to justify the
dictatorA dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power with military control but, without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...
ship of a (new)
ruling classThe term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy - assuming there is one such particular class in the given society...
; cf. the anti-bureaucratic
Workers' OppositionThe Workers' Opposition was a faction of the Russian Communist Party that emerged in 1920 as a response to the perceived over-bureaucratisation that was occurring in Soviet Russia. It was led by Alexander Shlyapnikov, who was also chairman of the Russian Metalworkers' Union, and it consisted of...
(1920) and the Kronstadt uprising (1921). Despite the principle of
democratic centralismDemocratic centralism is the name given to the principles of internal organization used by Leninist political parties, and the term is sometimes used as a synonym for any Leninist policy inside a political party...
in the Bolshevik Party, for organisational cohesion, internal factions were (temporarily) banned, but not debate; the ban remained until the USSR’s dissolution in 1991; the debates of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were published until 1923; internal debate ended (ca. 1927) with the Josef Stalin’s suppression of
Leon TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Leyba Davidov Bronstein , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Lenin...
and the
Left OppositionThe Left Opposition was a faction within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1927 headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with...
.
Trotsky; Trotskyists
In
The Revolution BetrayedThe Revolution Betrayed is a book by the Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky, published in 1937, analyzing and criticizing Stalinism and the post-Lenin development in the Soviet Union.Trotsky wrote the book during his exile in Norway....
(1937), a critical analysis of
StalinismStalinism was the political system and ideology of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1928–1953...
and the USSR’s post-Lenin development, Leon Trotsky proposed that the
Russian Revolution of 1917The Russian Revolution is the collective term for the series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. In the first revolution of February 1917 the Czar was deposed and replaced by a Provisional government...
, produced a workers’ state (the USSR) that then became a
degenerated workers' stateIn Trotskyist political theory the term degenerated workers' state has been used since the 1930s to describe the state of the Soviet Union after Stalin's consolidation of power in or about 1924...
after 1923; a state based upon a recruited-
casteA caste is a combined social system of occupation, endogamy, culture, social class, and political power. Caste should not be confused with class, in that members of a caste are deemed to be alike in function or culture, whereas not all members of a defined class may be so alike.Although Indian...
bureaucracy akin to the
feudalFeudalism is a decentralized sociopolitical structure in which a weak monarchy attempts to control the lands of the realm through reciprocal agreements with regional leaders...
clergyClergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. The term ultimately comes from the Greek κλῆρος - klēros, "a lot", "that which is assigned by lot" or metaphorically, "inheritence"....
— something the soviets did not inherit from the monarchical
ruling classThe term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy - assuming there is one such particular class in the given society...
. Further illustrating the betrayal of the revolution,
StalinismStalinism was the political system and ideology of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1928–1953...
and
BonapartismBonapartism is often defined as a political expression in the vocabulary of Marxism and Leninism, deriving from the career of Napoleon Bonaparte. Karl Marx was a student of Jacobinism and the French Revolution as well as a contemporary critic of the Second Republic and Second Empire...
are compared as forms of
dictatorshipA dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator, without hereditary ascension. It has three possible meanings:...
based upon specific
social classSocial classes are the hierarchical arrangements of people in society as economic or cultural groups. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political economists and social historians...
and property relations; thus Stalinism is to a workers’ democracy, as Bonapartism is to a
bourgeoisHistorically, the bourgeoisie were a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and the related culture. They were a part of the middle or merchant classes of European feudalism, where their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those...
democracyDemocracy is a system of government in which either the actual governing is carried out by the people governed , or the power to do so is granted by them...
. Despite that, the collectivized economy represented
the progressive policy to defend in the USSR, whilst, elsewhere, supporting
political revolutionA political revolution, in the Trotskyist theory, is an upheaval in which the government is replaced, or the form of government altered, but in which property relations are predominantly left intact...
aimed to establishing workers’ democracy.
After the
Second World WarWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
(1941–45) the Trotskyists ideologically described the
Socialist Federal Republic of YugoslaviaYugoslavia is a term that describes three political entities that existed successively on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century.The first country to be known by this...
(1943), the
Socialist Republic of VietnamVietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east...
(1945), the
Socialist People's Republic of AlbaniaThe People's Socialist Republic of Albania was the official name of Albania during the communist rule between 1946 and 1992. The first name of the state was the People's Republic of Albania which was used from 1946 to 1976...
(1946), the
People's Republic of ChinaThe People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately one-fifth of the world's population...
(1949), and the
Republic of CubaThe Republic of Cuba is an island country in the Caribbean. It consists of the island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city. Cuba is home to over 11 million people and is...
(1959) —
CommunistCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
states Stalin established with military conquest, occupation, and proxy guerilla warfare — as
degenerated workers’ statesIn Trotskyist political theory, deformed workers' states are states where the bourgeoisie has been overthrown through social revolution, the industrial means of production have been largely nationalized bringing benefits to the working class, but where the working class has never held political power...
with politically dispossessed working classes, thus never were true workers’ states, for having been established as
dictatorshipA dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator, without hereditary ascension. It has three possible meanings:...
s.
Quotations
Karl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a Germanphilosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist and revolutionary, whose ideas are credited as the foundation of modern communism...
- 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. — Critique of the Gotha Program
The Critique of the Gotha Program is a document based on a letter by Karl Marx written in early May 1875 to the Eisenach faction of the German social democratic movement, with whom Marx and Friedrich Engels were in close association...
(1875)
Lenin
- The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won, and maintained, by the use of violence, by the proletariat, against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.
- A state of the exploited must fundamentally differ from such a state; it must be a democracy for the exploited, and a means of suppressing the exploiters; and the suppression of a class means inequality for that class, its exclusion from democracy.
- The proletariat cannot achieve victory without breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, without forcibly suppressing its adversaries, and that, where there is forcible suppression, where there is no freedom, there is, of course, no democracy.
- And if you exploiters attempt to offer resistance to our proletarian revolution we shall ruthlessly suppress you; we shall deprive you of all rights; more than that, we shall not give you any bread, for in our proletarian republic the exploiters will have no rights, they will be deprived of fire and water, for we are socialists in real earnest, and not in the Scheidemann or Kautsky fashion.
- 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. — The State and Revolution
The State and Revolution , by Vladimir Lenin, describes the role of the State in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies of social democracy in achieving revolution to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.Citing Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, Lenin...
Rosa LuxemburgRosa Luxemburg was a Polish-Jewish-German Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary for the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the German SPD, the Independent Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party of Germany.In 1914, after the SPD supported German...
- 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 — 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. — The Russian Revolution
Karl KautskyKarl Kautsky was a leading theoretician of Marxism. He became the leading promulgator of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels.- Life :...
- The term, “dictatorship of the proletariat”, hence, not the dictatorship of a single individual, but of a class, ipso facto precludes the possibility that Marx, in this connection, had in mind a dictatorship in the literal sense of the term. — Dictatorship of the Proletariat
See also
- Commune (Socialism)
Traditionally, the revolutionary left sees the commune as a populist replacement for the elitist parliament. The far-left, despite their differences, agree that the commune would have several features...
- Critique of the Gotha Program
The Critique of the Gotha Program is a document based on a letter by Karl Marx written in early May 1875 to the Eisenach faction of the German social democratic movement, with whom Marx and Friedrich Engels were in close association...
- Democracy in Marxism
The Marxist view is fundamentally opposed to liberal democracy believing that the capitalist state cannot be democratic by its nature, as it represents the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Marxism views liberal democracy as an unrealistic utopia...
- Direct democracy
Direct democracy, classically termed pure democracy, comprises a form of democracy and theory of civics wherein sovereignty is lodged in the assembly of all citizens who choose to participate...
- Invisible dictatorship
An invisible dictatorship was a term coined by Mikhail Bakunin to describe clandestine revolutionary leadership. Bakunin also used the terms invisible legion and invisible network to describe his concept of invisible dictatorship....
- Leninism
Leninism is the theory and practice of the dictatorship of the proletariat, led by a revolutionary vanguard party. Theoretically, Leninism comprises the political and economic communist theories of Vladimir Lenin, developed from Marxism, that were the establishing ideology of Soviet communism — in...
- Marxism
Marxism is the political philosophy and economic worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and an atheist view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of...
- The Civil War in France
The Civil War in France was a pamphlet written by Karl Marx as an official statement of the General Council of the International on the character and significance of the struggle of the Parisian Communards in the French Civil War of 1871...
- Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party...
- Tyranny of the majority
The phrase tyranny of the majority, used in discussing systems of democracy and majority rule, is a criticism of the scenario in which decisions made by a majority under that system would place that majority's interests so far above a dissenting individual's interest that that individual would be...
- The Venus Project
The Venus Project, Inc is an organization that promotes Jacque Fresco's visions of the future through a website and by distributing videos and literature with the goal to improve society by moving towards a resource-based economy and the design of sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural...
- People's democratic dictatorship
"People's democratic dictatorship" is a phrase incorporated into the Constitution of the People's Republic of China by Mao Zedong.The premise of the "People's democratic dictatorship" is that the Communist Party of China and state democratically represent and act on behalf of the people, but...
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