Marx and Authoritarianism?

[TheSamsquatch]

I'm going to risk coming off like a complete idiot here.
Why is Karl Marx considered by some to be Authoritarian? This has never made perfect sense to me.

[Tablo]

I'm going to risk coming off like a complete idiot here.
Why is Karl Marx considered by some to be Authoritarian? This has never made perfect sense to me.
Some of the rhetoric he used sounded authoritarian. Things like "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" and such. While he was quite clearly anti-authoritarian, he is still significantly more authoritarian than the Anarchists. Also, people who have never read Marx and run into the MLers often get the idea Marx was some kinda Stalinist.

[AK]

Some of the rhetoric he used sounded authoritarian. Things like "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" and such. While he was quite clearly anti-authoritarian, he is still significantly more authoritarian than the Anarchists. Also, people who have never read Marx and run into the MLers often get the idea Marx was some kinda Stalinist.
This.

Remember, at the time when Marx wrote the manifesto and all that, the term "dictatorship" was widely used to mean "rule of". This caused many misinterpretations later.

[Zanthorus]

Remember, at the time when Marx wrote the manifesto and all that, the term "dictatorship" was widely used to mean "rule of". This caused many misinterpretations later.

Marx never used the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the Manifesto. In the manifesto the formulation used was that the workers would organise themselves as the ruling class and "win the battle of democracy". The first time that "dictatorship of the proletariat" was used was in The Class Struggles in France where it appears next to the slogan "overthrow of the bourgeoisie" as if the former was synonymous with the latter. At the time Marx was in close contact with various Blanquist's who called for an "educational dictatorship" and the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" was a useful rhetorical device for getting them on side. After some polemics about surrounding interpretation of the 1848 revolutions Marx abandoned the "dictatorship" until september 1871 in a speech to the International Workingmen's Association. The speech was after the fall of the Paris Commune when many Blanquists had sought refuge in London and started working with Marx. And again they'd taken up their slogans of educational dictatorship. So again we find Marx using the dictatorship slogan. He continues using it occasionally until the 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program which is the last time that Marx ever uses the term.

In reality the phrase never really held that much weight for Marx. At other times he simply used terms like "workers state", "revolutionary workers government", "proletariat organised as the ruling class" etc. It was really Engels who put emphasis on it during his battles with the various reformists in the SPD.

[TheSamsquatch]

This.

Remember, at the time when Marx wrote the manifesto and all that, the term "dictatorship" was widely used to mean "rule of". This caused many misinterpretations later.

I've seen people take it the complete wrong way before, but i didn't know that was one of the main reasons.

Thanks you guys!