What, in detail, would Proletarian Dictatorship look like?

[Grayson Walker]

We must, obviously, make sure that the transitional state is democratic to the core to allow for real worker's democracy. Without democracy it is not a worker's state; a bureaucracy will grow and assert itself as the new ruling class. So what would this state look like? Centralized or decentralized? Authoritarian or libertarian? Would it need a military? How long would it last? I'd like to know the details since Marx wrote so little about it.

[Red Star Rising]

It is impossible to know in detail and generally pointless to discuss what abstract concepts like DotP will be like in practice. We can explain the basic ideas but it is often counter-productive to try to get into the specifics of something that we can't really understand or observe from a capitalist perspective.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

There is no single answer; depending on the specific social, political and geographic context , transitions will obviously take on a different form, over different time-scales.

[RedWorker]

According to Marxism, contradictions within capitalism produce class antagonisms between the working class and capitalist class which will result, at some point, in a revolutionary situation wherein the working class forms organs of workers' power -- such as workers' councils, workers' associations, committees, communes -- to try and conquer political power. These organs, part of a revolutionary body -- the workers' state or revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat -- is organised from below with power in the lowest organs, and mandated, recallable, rotating workers' deputies in higher organs executing decisions. These decisions are binding on all organs by virtue of the lower organs accepting the decisions of the higher organs. This is important since the revolutionary working class needs to generalise its conditions to consolidate victory. The revolutionary state is a temporary one where councils and such organs will wield political power, while workers' associations will assume control of production. Through this process, socialised production under private property is transformed into social ownership. The state will use violence, pressure, and coercion where necessary to consolidate power and carry the revolution to victory. This violence is directed at the reaction, those using violence to restore property rights and to restore the bourgeois class to the position of ruling class. As the social revolution progresses the reaction is beaten and defeated, and the process of socialisation is completed, revolutionary violence is obsolete and will necessarily disappear -- it's not a matter of giving up power, it's matter of it becoming obsolete. What remains of the workers' state -- the workers' state stripped of its coercive functions -- is the associations of producers and social ownership. In other words, the result is the free association of equal producers and consumers administrating commonly owned productive resources: communism.

.

[Red Star Rising]

Everyone on RevLeft probably has a different opinion. It is good to share our ideas but asking for a really detailed model is not feasible. We can understand + agree/disagree with what Marx said about it but we can't say for sure how DotP will affect human society as it could go various ways. We can speculate, and discussion is always good but a very specific idea right now is unattainable. It is important to consider potential problems and ways to prevent them - if we bind ourselves to a particular version we might end up being unable to compromise or rectify any difficulties.

[tuwix]

We must, obviously, make sure that the transitional state is democratic to the core to allow for real worker's democracy. Without democracy it is not a worker's state; a bureaucracy will grow and assert itself as the new ruling class. So what would this state look like? Centralized or decentralized? Authoritarian or libertarian? Would it need a military? How long would it last? I'd like to know the details since Marx wrote so little about it.

I can only answer the question: How long would it last? Until the higher phase of communism. Where there is no scarcity in the most products and services and almost all is done by machines, and everyone chooses what to do, then the rest of class antagonisms disappear which means there is no proletariat at all.

The rest are speculations dependent on circumstances after revolution.

[Tim Cornelis]

I can only answer the question: How long would it last? Until the higher phase of communism. Where there is no scarcity in the most products and services and almost all is done by machines, and everyone chooses what to do, then the rest of class antagonisms disappear which means there is no proletariat at all.

The rest are speculations dependent on circumstances after revolution.

The revolutionary dictatorship lasts until we have communism, the first phase of it. Not a higher phase.

[consuming negativity]

It looks exactly like society now except the social relations are drastically changed. The sky will still be blue, we will still have medicine, and your car will still break down at the most inopportune of times. But the rules won't be made by a parliament of ex-lawyers, lobbyists, and state-sanctioned murderers.

[Ritzy Cat]

Dictatorship of the proletariat means the bourgeois state has been overthrown in favor of a worker's or proletarian state. The proletarian class hold the political power instead of the bourgeoisie. There isn't really a way to predict what this society would look like. It's just a fancy term for a step on the road to communism.

[Zoroaster]

We must, obviously, make sure that the transitional state is democratic to the core to allow for real worker's democracy. Without democracy it is not a worker's state; a bureaucracy will grow and assert itself as the new ruling class. So what would this state look like? Centralized or decentralized? Authoritarian or libertarian? Would it need a military? How long would it last? I'd like to know the details since Marx wrote so little about it.

To quote Friedrich Engels: "Look to the commune of Paris! That was the Dictatorahip of the Proletariat".

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

What would it look like?

Well, obviously we're not sorcerers or anything. We can't predict the future or anything. The best we can do is make some educated (and admittedly idealistic) guesses of what the DOTP will look like.

Marx and Engels both pointed to the influential but short lived Paris Commune of 1871 as an example of what the DOTP is. It was based on universal suffrage, with delegates at every level who could be recalled at anytime. The majority of its members were workers who were also 'legislators' on the side. There was no separation between legislative and executive bodies...they were one in the same.

That, ideally, is what the DOTP will look like. Others disagree (like Bordiga), but they tend to be in the minority.

But it must also be pointed out that the DOTP isn't just a form of governance. It's also an idea that spreads to every part of life. It is the bludgeon that the proletariat will use to club the heads of the oppressors and the reactionaries who wish to re-establish their former tyranny.

[Thrasymachus]

It would look like something you wouldn't want to live under and there were many examples of it. Think of the socialist police states like the Democratic Republic of Germany, the USSR, the Khmer Rogue, etc.

[Blake's Baby]

Why? What do they possibly have to do with 'the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat'? They were all states of military-bureaucratic one-party regimes. Where was the 'revolutionary ... proletariat'?

[Thrasymachus]

There is no such as a revolutionary proletariat, period. If you were interested in reality you would have seen that a long-time ago. Proletarians are a formation and class under capitalism. The problem is too many of you communards, socialist wannabes are stick with crappy, dusty and most of all obsolete 19th Century ideologies. Back then you have to realize Hegelianism was very popular and this philosophy had an immature, simplistic, dialectic formula, hidden by dense words used to ineptly analyze the world that went essentially: thesis + antithesis = synthesis.

Marx a thorough product of the 19 Century believed in Hegelianism, you could say he felt:
capitalist class(thesis) + proletariat(alleged anti-thesis) lead to communism(alleged synthesis). But again it is the 21st Century and none of that nonsense proved useful either for analysis, making tea leave readings on future events or in any other way. People lionizing work under capitalism or a group of workers because they are on the comparative bottom of the ladder under this system, aren't really interested in over-throwing the system.

[Red Star Rising]

It would look like something you wouldn't want to live under and there were many examples of it. Think of the socialist police states like the Democratic Republic of Germany, the USSR, the Khmer Rogue, etc.

The Khmer Rouge? Even if you insist on saying that the USSR was communist the Khmer Rouge were absolutely not. It was an anomaly that cannot be called Communist because it was a one party dictatorship founded on removing all human progress, reversing the evolution of society, ethnic cleansing, the enslavement of most of Cambodia and the deaths of one quarter of the population. Hell, it was the Vietcong who liberated Cambodia from Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The KR has no real place on the political spectrum and calling that a Dictatorship of the Proletariat is uneducated insanity.

[Zoroaster]

It would look like something you wouldn't want to live under and there were many examples of it. Think of the socialist police states like the Democratic Republic of Germany, the USSR, the Khmer Rogue, etc.

You really have no idea what the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is, do you?

In Marxian sense, it means a government which replaces the bourgeoise class government with a proletarian class government. That doesn't necessarily mean dictatorship. These countries weren't Marxist. Maybe the Soviet Union in it's early years, but otherwise, no.

[Blake's Baby]

There is no such as a revolutionary proletariat, period...

Welcome to RevLeft, close the door on your way out.

If there is no revolutionary proletariat then do you think that 1-there is no revolutionary subject at all and we are stuck with capitalism, or 2-the revolutionary subject is another group in society? If it's the second, could you explain which group in society (also created in conditions of capitalism) is going to overthrow it, and also, why?

[Thrasymachus]

@Paul Lafargue:
Marx was essentially what we could term a bookish geek from the 19th Century. He mostly studied in the library of london, wrote, theorized and sometimes organized workerist organizations. But the people who were influenced by his crude ideological and philosophical formations and actually participated in revolutions formed some of the most notably brutal governments we have seen.

What you guys are saying is the same as saying that we cannot attribute to Christianity, Christians or Christian doctrine the blood history of actually practiced Christianity. You want to make a similar argument for Marxism as well and relegate it to the same type of fairyland: let us judge by most the allegorical fairy like interpretations of a dead book, and not the actual historical attempts at implementing said doctrine. I am sorry, but your arguments are totally weak and immature. This is again, the 21st Century not the 19th. The immature Hegelianism and technology positivism of Marx is totally out of place today. I don't think it is an accident that everyone who was influenced by Marxism formed an authoritarian state, I am dead sure the hideous verbiage of dictatorship of the proletariat is the justification and reason.

[Thrasymachus]

@Blake's Baby:
I am not an immature Hegelian type and I don't think I can tea leaf read the future using some immature.

However in general, I feel if capitalism collapses it will not be due to Marxist-Leninist loving Hegelian types. Infact all such people are highly influenced by capitalism and believe in naive crap like a formative class under capitalism being its alleged anti-thesis, that the same type of technological progress that capitalism touts is desirable if only workers could share more, etc,. To wit these now very out of date, dead Hegelian, analyses just produced a tweaked bastard child of capitalism, a state capitalism if you will. If capitalist society collapses all indications will be it will because of its deadly assumption of infinite growth and not taking into factor enough the actual ecological and real world underpinnings of actually lived reality, which are devalued in preference of invented economic models. In other words, the resources we depend on for our way of life are getting harder to obtain, because we already have mined and drilled the easiest to obtain examples. In a few decades such assumptions will lead to local and regional collapses.

[Zoroaster]

@Paul Lafargue:
Marx was essentially what we could term a bookish geek from the 19th Century. He mostly studied in the library of london, wrote, theorized and sometimes organized workerist organizations. But the people who were influenced by his crude ideological and philosophical formations and actually participated in revolutions formed some of the most notably brutal governments we have seen.

What you guys are saying is the same as saying that we cannot attribute to Christianity, Christians or Christian doctrine the blood history of actually practiced Christianity. You want to make a similar argument for Marxism as well and relegate it to the same type of fairyland: let us judge by most the allegorical fairy like interpretations of a dead book, and not the actual historical attempts at implementing said doctrine. I am sorry, but your arguments are totally weak and immature. This is again, the 21st Century not the 19th. The immature Hegelianism and technology positivism of Marx is totally out of place today. I don't think it is an accident that everyone who was influenced by Marxism formed an authoritarian state, I am dead sure the hideous verbiage of dictatorship of the proletariat is the justification and reason.

What the hell are you smoking?

Brutal Governments? What, like the citizens of Paris in 1871? Or the workers and peasants of 1917, who, for a short time, ran a free and fair democratic republic? Men like Stalin and Mao had less to do with Marxism and more to do with tyranny.

Weak and immature? Why is that? The term "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" simply states that the bourgeoise must be expropriated and replaced with a working class government, built upon popular assemblies and elected delegates. What happened after the revolution was not the DotP.

Hegel and technological positivism out of place? How is smart analysis and human progress a bad thing?

And we Marxists do look at history, just a bit differently then the normal viewer.

[Tim Cornelis]

Oh noes. Bourgeois political rule is almost 2 centuries old. That proves socialism will never happen. It's not like feudalism and slave society existed for this long, they were all abolished in under 2 centuries.

[Thrasymachus]

@Paul Lafargue:
Dictatorship implies dictatorship and he used that construct because he didn't trust the working people after all. Marx and his supporters got into lots of arguments with Bakunin and the anarchist faction of the Workingmen's Internationale over this. (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/bio/robertson-ann.htm)

Your apologia reminds me too much of Christians trying to absolve themselves of their sins, so to say. They have the same type of argument: "look at our rosy hagiography all those crimes throughout history were not committed by true Christians™." Same way with Marxism, we must look at the actual results people influenced by it have achieved thus far in human history and go forward from there.

[motion denied]

You do know Marx criticized Hegel's dialectic and broke with him in 1844, right? You do know that thesis + antithesis = synthesis have nothing to do with Hegel or Marx, right?

Then again, you're just a troll.

[Zoroaster]

Dictatorship implies dictatorship and he used that construct because he didn't trust the working people after all. Marx and his supporters got into lots of arguments with Bakunin and the anarchist faction of the Workingmen's Internationale over this. (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/bio/robertson-ann.htm)

Your apologia reminds me too much of Christians trying to absolve themselves of their sins, so to say. They have the same type of argument: "look at our rosy hagiography all those crimes throughout history were not committed by true Christians™." Same way with Marxism, we must look at the actual results people influenced by it have achieved thus far in human history and go forward from there.

What? Didn't trust working people? What about his famous quote, "The victory of the working class will be conquered by the workers themselves"?. And we do look at actual results. We realize that what happened in the Soviet Union, Cuba and other states was not Marxism, but "state capitalism", and that the workers must form new formations on an international basis in order to overthrow modern states and create a free society. We are not trying to differ ourselves from the sins of the dictators because we didn't commit them, and that Marxism had nothing to do with Stalinist Russia, Maoist China or any so-called "Marxist" state.

[Zukunftsmusik]

Man I must be bored replying to this.


There is no such as a revolutionary proletariat, period.

Then why is the proletariat thrown into struggles against their very conditions of existence every now and then?


Proletarians are a formation and class under capitalism.

Yes. However, they are also a class capable of conducting its own struggle, theory and so on. This is in fact quite obvious, if you're able to get only a slight overlook of the present and (relatively close) history of modern capitalism.


The problem is too many of you communards, socialist wannabes are stick with crappy, dusty and most of all obsolete 19th Century ideologies. Back then you have to realize Hegelianism was very popular and this philosophy had an immature, simplistic, dialectic formula, hidden by dense words used to ineptly analyze the world that went essentially: thesis + antithesis = synthesis.

First of all, that's the Fichtian dialectic, not the Hegelian. Secondly, I don't think neither this "simplistic formula" nor Hegelianism was as important as you think it was. Sure, Hegel was important to Marx and so on, but he eventually broke from the young Hegelians. Other theorists came to a materialist conception (which in fact is the opposite of Hegelianism) without touching on Hegel at all. And historic materialism and so on as an explanation of society and the humans acting in it is in fact pretty complex and has nothing to do with this "formula" (which again isn't even Hegel's, but that's beside the point).


Marx a thorough product of the 19 Century believed in Hegelianism, you could say he felt:
capitalist class(thesis) + proletariat(alleged anti-thesis) lead to communism(alleged synthesis).

Not really. Have you read anything by Marx? Cause it sure seems like you're talking out of your ass.


But again it is the 21st Century and none of that nonsense proved useful either for analysis

You're right, which is why the Marxists didn't use that nonsense you wrote above as basis for their analysis.


making tea leave readings on future events or in any other way.

Not the point of Marxism. On the contrary, even.


People lionizing work under capitalism or a group of workers because they are on the comparative bottom of the ladder under this system, aren't really interested in over-throwing the system.

Weird, cause there have been periods where they were pretty close to actually overthrowing that very system.

[Thrasymachus]

@Get a Job, Hippie!:
Do you have a source to support any of your apparently made up claims? I can find no info on a "break" between Hegel and Marx, especially because far as I know they never meet or had any type of relationship(other than like most of Germans of his time, Marx was a follower and highly influenced by Hegelian philosophy). Far as your claim that thesis + anti-thesis = synthesis, have nothing to do with Hegel or Marx look at the excellent chapters in History of Western Philosophy(PDF) (http://www.ntslibrary.com/PDF%20Books/History%20of%20Western%20Philosophy.pdf) by Bertrand Russell. Page 729(722 in my PDF reader) is on Hegel and Marx is on page 782(but 773 in my PDF reader).

@Paul Lafargue:
I seriously suspect you would not have us judge Barrack Obama by what he says or writes instead of his actions. Likewise I suspect in regards to Christians you don't accept arguments like, "but those were not true Christians®." Marx had many historically documented battles with anarchists and the famous Bakunin who took him to task over the dictatorship of the proletariat and that matters more than nicety he may have written.

You cannot say that Marxist influenced revolutionaries have nothing to do with Marxism, as the theoretical provision for the dictatorship of the proletariat is exactly what likely lead to invited to their political dictatorships in the USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, China, etc. You cannot have a provisional dictatorship and expect those exercising political power over others to voluntarily give up that hard fought power just because some long-dead bookish German who loved studying capitalist economists thought so, ignoring what has actually happened again and again, since his time. You remind me alot of the arguments true believer Christians would use. They ignore reality, also, time and again to uphold the fictions of dead books and dead doctrine -- which likewise terrorize the living.

[motion denied]

Do you have a source to support any of your apparently made up claims? I can find no info on a "break" between Hegel and Marx, especially because far as I know they never meet or had a relationship. Far as your claim that thesis + anti-thesis = synthesis, have nothing to do with Hegel or Marx look at the excellent chapters in History of Western Philosophy(PDF) (http://www.ntslibrary.com/PDF%20Books/History%20of%20Western%20Philosophy.pdf) by Bertrand Russell. Page 729(722 in my PDF reader) is on Hegel and Marx is on page 782(but 773 in my PDF reader).

From the 1844's Manuscripts (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htm) From the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/ch01.htm#019) From the Holy Family (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch05.htm#5.2) (criticizing neo-hegelians, however makes clear that Marx works with categories not mere philosophical concepts) From the Afterword to the German Second Edition of Capital (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm#3b)

There are some assertions that I disagree with in the PDF (Marx's chapter). I don't think this is the place to write them, and the links I provided should prove some of said assertions wrong.

To say Marx's analysis and theories are ultimately emotional is misleading at best; the reduction of the materialist conception of history to "economics" is also misleading; criticizing Marx for conceiving "progress as a universal law" and because of that see socialism as an improvement because "it is coming" is laughable. Marx's economics are a critique of Political Economy, not an "outcome of British classical economics, changing only the motive force"; we could take Marx's conception of capital, as a historic category, not the point of departure.

Both Marx and Hegel give importance to the totality, the infamous "the truth is the whole". However, to Hegel, the whole was the process of the being, the totality was the totality of Reason. To Marx, the totality is the class society and its negativity that only can be overcome by its negation by the proletariat, the real living human beings. This part from the Grundrisse (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm#3) makes it clear that Marxian categories are historical, they are forms of being (daseinformen); they are also "unity of the diverse". In that piece he also criticizes Hegel. I took this mainly from Marcuse's Reason and Revolution.

I'm a bit busy, will add more later, if necessary.The formula (thesis+antithesis=synthesis) is just that, a formula that takes all contradictory development away.

[Blake's Baby]

@Blake's Baby:
I am not an immature Hegelian type and I don't think I can tea leaf read the future using some immature.

However in general, I feel if capitalism collapses it will not be due to Marxist-Leninist loving Hegelian types. Infact all such people are highly influenced by capitalism and believe in naive crap like a formative class under capitalism being its alleged anti-thesis, that the same type of technological progress that capitalism touts is desirable if only workers could share more, etc,. To wit these now very out of date, dead Hegelian, analyses just produced a tweaked bastard child of capitalism, a state capitalism if you will. If capitalist society collapses all indications will be it will because of its deadly assumption of infinite growth and not taking into factor enough the actual ecological and real world underpinnings of actually lived reality, which are devalued in preference of invented economic models. In other words, the resources we depend on for our way of life are getting harder to obtain, because we already have mined and drilled the easiest to obtain examples. In a few decades such assumptions will lead to local and regional collapses.

You could answer the question.

Will some group in society overthrow capitalism?

Not being a millenarian Christian, I don't have to believe in apocalypse brought on by some kind of original sin. So, no, I'd reject 'capitalism will collapse because it's bad for the planet'. Capitalism, on the contrary, can go on just about until the time the sun burns out, but in increasingly shit conditions for the inhabitants of the planet. It is the increasing shit that will compel people to struggle against their conditions. This is why the working class is revolutionary subject - because of its real conditions in capitalism.

So in your grand apocalyptic Christian schema, who will overthrowcapitalism, and why?