Marxists tell us about the dictatorship of the proletariat,
one where the land is ruled by the
people. This is a simple idea. It is usually called
Democracy, real Democracy as distinct from the
sort we have in Western Civilization,
which is called representative democracy. In the latter form the representatives can
be corrupt, incompetent, idle,
Traitors, you name it. They are bent in practice too. They
can so they do but that is not quite the point of this little article. You might
find it worth reading the
Wiki's article critically. Ask why Friedrich
Engels, a Capitalist Swine in his own
right wanted to impose Democracy by
revolution, using rifles, bayonets and cannon. Or is
this a contradiction in terms?
Bertrand Russell & George Orwell do make sense but then George Orwell was an honest socialist.
Dictatorship of the Proletariat ex Wiki
QUOTE
In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a socialist state in which the proletariat, or the working class, has control of political power.[1][2][3] The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.....Friedrich Engels, in the 19th century. In the wake of the inevitable resistance of the bourgeoisie, the change was expected to involve violence and terror.[4][5][6]
Both Marx and Engels argued that the short-lived Paris Commune, which ran the French capital for three months before being repressed, was an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the 20th century, the October Revolution in Russia overthrew the provisional government and initiated the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, which would become a founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Other revolutions in China, Vietnam, Cuba[7] and North Korea led to the establishment of state socialism modelled after the USSR with differences according to respective circumstances.[8]
UNQUOTE
Notice how the subject is changed, the real issue is sidestepped. It happened in the Paris Commune, then the Wiki drifts off to something else. The Dictatorship of the proletariat disappears down George Orwell's Memory Hole.Dictatorship of the Proletariat ex Wiki Part II
Karl Marx
QUOTE
Theoretical approaches
Karl Marx wrote little about the nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat, with his published works instead largely focusing on analysing and criticising capitalist society. In 1848 he and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto that "their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions".[9]In 1850 he highlighted importance of propaganda and social engineering directly following the revolution:
[The workers] must work to ensure that the immediate revolutionary excitement is not suddenly suppressed after the victory. On the contrary, it must be sustained as long as possible. Far from opposing the so-called excesses – instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated – the workers’ party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction.
On 1 January 1852, the communist journalist Joseph Weydemeyer published an article entitled "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" in the German language newspaper Turn-Zeitung, where he wrote that "it is quite plain that there cannot be here any question of gradual, peaceful transitions", and recalled the examples of Oliver Cromwell (England) and Committee of Public Safety (France) as examples of "dictatorship" and "terrorism" (respectively) required to overthrow bourgeoisie.[11] In that year, Karl Marx wrote to him, saying:
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
Marx expanded upon his ideas about the dictatorship of the proletariat in his short 1875 work, Critique of the Gotha Program, a scathing criticism and attack on the principles laid out in the programme of the German Workers' Party (predecessor to the SPD). The programme presented a moderate, evolutionary way to socialism, as opposed to revolutionary, violent approach of the "orthodox" Marxists. As result the latter accused the Gotha program as being "revisionist" and ineffective.[13]
Marx stated that in a proletarian-run society, the state should control the "proceeds of labour" (i.e. all the food and products produced), and take from them that which was "an economic necessity", namely enough to replace "the means of production used up", an "additional portion for expansion of production" and "insurance funds" to be used in emergencies such as natural disasters. Furthermore, he believed that the state should then take enough to cover administrative costs, funds for the running of public services, and funds for those who were physically incapable of working. Once enough to cover all of these things had been taken out of the "proceeds of labour", Marx believed that what was left should then be shared out amongst the workers, with each individual getting goods to the equivalent value of how much labour they had invested.[14] In this manner, those workers who put in more labour and worked harder would get more of the proceeds of the collective labour than someone who had not worked as hard.
In the Critique, he noted however that "defects are inevitable" and there would be many difficulties in initially running such a workers' state "as it emerges from capitalistic society" because it would be "economically, morally and intellectually... still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges", thereby still containing capitalist elements.[14]
In other works, Marx stated that he considered the Paris Commune, a revolutionary socialist government that ran the city of Paris from March to May 1871, as an example of the proletarian dictatorship. Describing the short-lived regime, he remarked that:
The Commune was formed of the municipal councilors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible, and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally workers, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive, and legislative at the same time.[15]
This form of popular government, featuring revocable election of councilors and maximal public participation in governance, resembles contemporary direct democracy.
Friedrich Engels
Force and violence played an important role in Friedrich Engels's vision of the revolution and rule of proletariat. In 1877, arguing with Eugen Dühring Engels ridiculed his reservations against use of force:That force, however, plays yet another role in history, a revolutionary role; that, in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument with the aid of which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilised political forms
—Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring, 1877[16]In the 1891 postscript to The Civil War in France (1872) pamphlet, Friedrich Engels 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.
In the same year he criticised "anti-authoritarian socialists", again referring to the methods of the Paris Commune:
A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois?
—Friedrich Engels,On Authority, 1872[17]Marx's attention to the Paris Commune placed the commune in the centre of later Marxist forms.
Lenin
In the 20th century, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin developed Leninism—the adaptation [ perversion? ] of Marxism to the backward socio-economic and political conditions of Imperial Russia (1721–1917). This body of theory later became the official ideology of some Communist states.The State and Revolution (1917) explicitly discusses the practical implementation of "dictatorship of the proletariat" through means of rule of red terror and "violent revolution".[18] Lenin denies any reformist interpretations of Marxism, such as the one of Kautsky's. Lenin especially focuses on Engels' phrase of the state "withering away", denying that it could apply to "bourgeois state" and highlighting that Engels work is mostly "panegyric on violent revolution". Based on these arguments, he denounces reformists as "opportunistic", reactionary and points out the red terror as the only[19] method of introducing dictatorship of the proletariat compliant with Marx and Engels work.[20]
In Imperial Russia, the Paris Commune model form of government was realised in the soviets (councils of workers and soldiers) established in the Russian Revolution of 1905, whose revolutionary task was deposing the capitalist (monarchical) state to establish socialism—the dictatorship of the proletariat—the stage preceding communism.
In Russia the Bolshevik Party (described by Lenin as the "vanguard of the proletariat") elevated the soviets to power in the October Revolution of 1917. Throughout 1917, Lenin argued that the Russian Provisional Government was unrepresentative of the proletariat's interests because, in his estimation, they represented the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". He argued that because they continually put off democratic elections, they denied the prominence of the democratically constituted soviets, and all of the promises made by liberal-bourgeois parties prior to the February revolution remained unfulfilled, the soviets would need to take power for themselves.
Proletarian government Lenin argued that in an underdeveloped country such as Russia, the capitalist class would remain a threat even after a successful socialist revolution.[21] As a result, he advocated the repression of those elements of the capitalist class that took up arms against the new soviet government, writing that as long as classes existed, a state would need to exist to exercise the democratic rule of one class (in his view, the working class) over the other (the capitalist class).[21]The use of violence, terror and rule of single communist party was criticised by Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Mikhail Bakunin. In response Lenin accused Kautsky of being a "renegade" and "liberal"[22] and these socialist movements that did not support the Bolshevik party line were condemned by the Communist International and called social fascism.
Soviet democracy 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. Capitalists were disenfranchised in the Russian soviet model. However, according to Lenin, in a developed country it would be possible to dispense with the disenfranchisement of capitalists within the democratic proletarian dictatorship; as the proletariat would be guaranteed of an overwhelming majority. [Notes on Plenkhanov's Second Draft Programme. Lenin Collected Works. Vol. 6, p.51]
The Bolsheviks in 1917–1924 did not claim to have achieved a communist society; in contrast the preamble to the 1977 Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (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." [1]
Banning of opposition parties and factions....Dictatorship does not necessarily mean the abolition of democracy for the class that exercises the dictatorship over other classes; but it does mean the abolition of democracy (or very material restriction, which is also a form of abolition) of democracy for the class over which, or against which, the dictatorship is exercised. [ An ingenious perversion of truth - Ed. ]
During the Russian Civil War (1918–22), all of the major opposition parties either took up arms against the new Soviet Government, took part in sabotage, collaboration with the deposed Tsarists, or made assassination attempts against Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders. When opposition parties such as the Cadets and Mensheviks were democratically elected to the Soviets in some areas, they proceeded to use their mandate to welcome in Tsarist and foreign capitalist military forces. In one incident in Baku, the British military, once invited in, proceeded to execute members of the Bolshevik party (who had peacefully stood down from the Soviet when they failed to win the elections). As a result, the Bolsheviks banned each opposition party when it turned against the Soviet government. In some cases, bans were lifted. This banning of parties did not have the same repressive character as later bans under Stalin would.[25]Internally, Lenin's critics argued that such political suppression always was his plan; supporters argued that the reactionary civil war of the foreign-sponsored White Movement required it—given Fanya Kaplan's unsuccessful assassination of Lenin on 30 August 1918, and the successful assassination of Moisei Uritsky, the same day.
After 1919, the Soviets had ceased to function as organs of democratic rule, as the famine induced by forced grain requisitions led to the Soviets emptying out of ordinary people. Half the population of Moscow and a third of Petrograd had, by this stage, fled to the countryside to find food. Political life ground to a halt.[25]
The Bolsheviks became concerned that under these conditions—the absence of mass participation in political life, and the banning of opposition parties—counter-revolutionary forces would express themselves within the Bolshevik party itself (some evidence existed for this in the mass of ex-opposition party members who signed up for Bolshevik membership immediately after the end of the Civil War).
Despite the principle of democratic centralism in the Bolshevik Party, internal factions were banned. This was considered an extreme measure, and did not fall within Marxist doctrine. The ban remained until the USSR's dissolution in 1991.[26] In 1921, vigorous internal debate and freedom of opinion were still present within Russia; the beginnings of censorship and mass political repression had not yet emerged. For example, the Workers Opposition faction continued to operate despite being nominally dissolved. The debates of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union continued to be published until 1923.
Stalinism and 'dictatorship'
Elements of the later censorship and attacks on political expression would appear during Lenin's illness, and after his death, when members of the future Stalinist clique clamped down on party democracy among the Georgian Bolsheviks and began to censor material. Pravda ceased publishing the opinions of political oppositions after 1924, and at the same time, the ruling clique (Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin) admitted large numbers of new members into the party in order to shout down the voices of oppositionists at party meetings, severely curtailing internal debate. Their policies were partly directed by the interests of the new bureaucracy that had accumulated a great deal of social weight in the absence of an active participation in politics by the majority of people. By 1927 many supporters of the Left Opposition began to face political repression, and Leon Trotsky was exiled.L. Trotsky, one of the Bolshevik leaders, in a letter to the Politburo of the CPSU (b) on 6 June 1926 agreed with that, not to take in promoting the term «dictatorship of the party» officially, but thought it quite true, «user display case so that the party only teacher and class dictatorship holds, then pidmalovuvaty that is. [ sic - just what does this mean? - search engines don't know either - Ed. ] The main instrument of the dictatorship of a party. In one class mainly performs dictatorship over the party. That is why Lenin spoke not only about the dictatorship of the class but the dictatorship of the party, in a sense, identifying them» [27]..
Some modern critics of the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat"—including various Anti-Communists, Libertarian Marxists, Anarcho-Communists, and anti-Stalinist Communists and Socialists—argue that the Stalinist USSR and other Stalinist countries used the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to justify the monopolisation of political power by a new ruling layer of bureaucrats, derived partly from the old Tsarist bureaucracy and partly created by the impoverished condition of Russia.
However, the rising Stalinist clique rested on other grounds for political legitimacy, rather than a confusion between the modern and Marxist use of the term "dictatorship". Rather, they took the line that since they were the vanguard of the proletariat, their right to rule could not be legitimately questioned. Hence, opposition parties could not be permitted to exist. From 1936 onward, Stalinist-inspired state constitutions enshrined this concept by giving the various 'Communist Parties' a "leading role" in society—a provision that was interpreted to either ban other parties altogether or force them to accept the Stalinists guaranteed right to rule as a condition of being allowed to exist.
This justification was adopted by subsequent 'communist' parties built upon the Stalinist model, such as the CCP in China, the CP in North Korea, Vietnam, and the CP (initially the 26th of July Movement) in Cuba.
Post-Stalin
At the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Nikita Khrushchev declared an end to the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' and the establishment of the All People's Government,[28] however, Khrushchev's regime (and those that followed) continued to represent a bureaucratic layer within the ruling apparatus.This was exemplified in Hungary in 1956 when Russian tanks were used to put down a rebellion that had all the features of a classical Marxist "dictatorship of the proletariat", with the setting up of new, democratic Soviets within Hungary and the beginnings of a new working class movement against the bureaucracy.
Quotations
- 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 (1875)
- Above all, during and immediately after the struggle the workers, as far as it is at all possible, must oppose bourgeois attempts at pacification and force the democrats to carry out their terroristic phrases. They must work to ensure that the immediate revolutionary excitement is not suddenly suppressed after the victory. On the contrary, it must be sustained as long as possible. Far from opposing the so-called excesses—instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated—the workers' party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction.—Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League[3] (1850)
- The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.—Manifesto of the Communist Party[2]
- If the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois?—On Authority[1] (1872)
- 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.[29]
- 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.[29]
- 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.[29]
- 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.[29]
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Friends of Russia here think of the dictatorship of the proletariat as merely a new form of representative government, in which only working men and women have votes, and the constituencies are partly occupational, not geographical. They think that "proletariat" means "proletariat", but "dictatorship" does not quite mean "dictatorship". This is the opposite of the truth. When a Russian Communist speaks of dictatorship, he means the word literally, but when he speaks of the proletariat, he means the word in a Pickwickian sense. He means the "class-conscious" part of the proletariat, i.e., the Communist Party.—The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)
- Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. ( Nineteen Eighty Four )