Dictatorship of the Bourgeios?

[Apoi_Viitor]

I've always felt this was an incredibly over-simplistic theory, so in case I'm misunderstanding this, can someone explain it to me?

[Black Sheep]

Dictatorship of the bourgeois = the socioeconomic system, in which the capitalist class (=bourgeois) is the dominant one, owning the means of production and thus making the rules.
Dictatorship, because it rules over the other class(es), since economic dominance brings political, ethical, military dominance.
In short, in class based societies, the ruling class imposes a dictatorship upon the rest, using the apparatus of the economic basis' superstructure.

[Zanthorus]

I'm not sure how 'dictatorship of the bourgeoisie' is a 'theory'. It's not like it was some fully worked out theoretical proposition that Marx developed, it was just sort of a throwaway polemical remark in The Class Struggles in France: 1848-50 that the establishment of a 'bourgeois republic' was the consolidation of 'bourgeois dictatorship':


By making its burial place the birthplace of the bourgeois republic, the proletariat compelled the latter to come out forthwith in its pure form as the state whose admitted object it is to perpetuate the rule of capital, the slavery of labor. Having constantly before its eyes the scarred, irreconcilable, invincible enemy – invincible because its existence is the condition of its own life – bourgeois rule, freed from all fetters, was bound to turn immediately into bourgeois terrorism. With the proletariat removed for the time being from the stage and bourgeois dictatorship recognized officially, the middle strata of bourgeois society, the petty bourgeoisie and the peasant class, had to adhere more and more closely to the proletariat as their position became more unbearable and their antagonism to the bourgeoisie more acute. Just as earlier they had to find the cause of their distress in its upsurge, so now in its defeat.

Marx's actual theory of the modern state is a bit more nuanced than just saying it is an instrument through which the bourgeoisie consciously dominate society.

[Apoi_Viitor]

Marx's actual theory of the modern state is a bit more nuanced than just saying it is an instrument through which the bourgeoisie consciously dominate society.

Where does he best explain his theory of the modern state?

[Zanthorus]

Where does he best explain his theory of the modern state?

A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right is his longest and most in depth work on the subject. It also goes along fairly well with the essays On the Jewish Question and Critical Notes on the Article "The King of Prussia and Social Reform, by a Prussian".