A Clarification of the Leninist Line on the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

[statecapitalist]

Many left communists and even a few left deviationist Leninists have a line on the dictatorship of the proletariat as a "mass democracy" type deal, voting on every decision, all actions being sanctioned by the community, etc. This is not at all what the purpose of the dictatorship of the proletariat is.


“[…] the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class. The whole is like an arrangement of cogwheels. Such is the basic mechanism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and of the essentials of transition from capitalism to communism.”

Lenin continues:

“It is Trotsky who is in ‘ideological confusion’, because in this key question of the trade unions’ role, from the standpoint of transition from capitalism to communism, he has lost sight of the fact that we have here a complex arrangement of cogwheels which cannot be a simple one; for the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organization. It cannot work without a number of “transmission belts” running from the vanguard to the mass of the advanced class, and from the latter to the mass of the working people.”

The dictatorship of the proletariat is best defined by the political and military domination of explicitly communist and proletarian elements, thusly we can see that the USSR until the victory of the revisionist clique in the later 50s and early 60s, the PRC until Mao's later life rightism and the victory of the Deng Xiaoping clique, Albania until the victory of counter-revolution, etc, were all dictatorships of the proletariat. The measure of proletarian power is not by the level of democratization, because if this were the case, Switzerland would be a dictatorship of the proletariat and all previously existing socialist nations would be somehow less socialist than this modern day bourgeois republic.

Overcome the revisionist notions of "mass rule" and "all the people in power", or "a party of the whole people" realize the dictatorship of the proletariat must be proletarian (duh) and must necessarily be centralized, there is no proletariat in power without a party in power.

[Blake's Baby]

What your argument comes down to is, 'Lenin's right, because Lenin said he was right'.

That's the same argument that Christians use for proving the Bible is true.

'Considering,' (in the words of the original draft resolution for the rules of the International Working Men's Association, written by Marx)

'That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves', then Lenin's assertion that it must be won by the Party instead doesn't stand. 'All power to the soviets' (which are after all organs of class rule) is not 'all power to the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B)', and nor is it 'all power to the Congress of People's Deputies'.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I don't think Bordiga could be fairly described as advocating a "mass democracy", to be honest, or anyone in the "Italian" left-communist tradition.

Nor, in fact, does anyone except the most vulgar Lihites claim that the dictatorship of the proletariat is simply "democracy", but proletarian democracy, with the class content being more important than the democratic form of course (and of course, circumstances might require that the democratic forms be curtailed in one form or another). Lenin was writing about "masses" that were mainly comprised of peasants, declassed elements and semi-peasant industrial workers.

[motion denied]

So dictatorship of the proletariat = communist party dictatorship (or 'proletarian elements'). Nice.

While, for Marx, the dictatorship of the proletariat was the positive form of the Social Republic, the Republic of Labor.

Also, lol'd at the the name.

[#FF0000]

I don't think Bordiga could be fairly described as advocating a "mass democracy", to be honest, or anyone in the "Italian" left-communist tradition.

It wouldn't just be "unfair". It'd be flat out and aggressively incorrect.

[RedWorker]

The dictatorship of the proletariat is best defined by the political and military domination of explicitly communist and proletarian elements

Of people who claim to be communists? Elected by whom?


thusly we can see that the USSR until the victory of the revisionist clique in the later 50s and early 60s

The victory of revisionism is Stalinism, and it lasted until the 90s - how did it end earlier?


were all dictatorships of the proletariat

How did a member of the proletariat have any participation in the political system, or any power, for that matter, in any of these states?


The measure of proletarian power is not by the level of democratization, because if this were the case, Switzerland would be a dictatorship of the proletariat

A member of the proletariat has more power in Switzerland than he had in the USSR.


and all previously existing socialist nations would be somehow less socialist than this modern day bourgeois republic.

How did socialism exist in the USSR? What existed is state capitalism.

Additionally, you claim that they were "dictatorships of the proletariat", but according to Lenin (who is far from "the unmistakable interpreter"), "socialism" is the phase which comes after the dictatorship of the proletariat ends.

"The way out of parliamentarism is not, of course, the abolition of representative institutions and the elective principle, but the conversion of the representative institutions from talking shops into “working” bodies." - V. I. Lenin

"If one thing is certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat" - F. Engels

"What will be the course of this [proletarian] revolution? Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat." - F. Engels

An example of what the "democratic constitution" means...

"In America, where a democratic constitution has already been established" - F. Engels

"Public control is indispensably necessary. Otherwise the exchange of experiences remains only with the closed circle of the officials of the new regime. Corruption becomes inevitable. (Lenin’s words, Bulletin No.29) Socialism in life demands a complete spiritual transformation in the masses degraded by centuries of bourgeois rule. Social instincts in place of egotistical ones, mass initiative in place of inertia, idealism which conquers all suffering, etc., etc. No one knows this better, describes it more penetratingly; repeats it more stubbornly than Lenin. But he is completely mistaken in the means he employs. Decree, dictatorial force of the factory overseer, draconian penalties, rule by terror – all these things are but palliatives. The only way to a rebirth is the school of public life itself, the most unlimited, the broadest democracy and public opinion. It is rule by terror which demoralizes. When all this is eliminated, what really remains? In place of the representative bodies created by general, popular elections, Lenin and Trotsky have laid down the soviets as the only true representation of political life in the land as a whole, life in the soviets must also become more and more crippled. Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Among them, in reality only a dozen outstanding heads do the leading and an elite of the working class is invited from time to time to meetings where they are to applaud the speeches of the leaders, and to approve proposed resolutions unanimously – at bottom, then, a clique affair – a dictatorship, to be sure, not the dictatorship of the proletariat but only the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, that is a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense, in the sense of the rule of the Jacobins (the postponement of the Soviet Congress from three-month periods to six-month periods!) Yes, we can go even further: such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shooting of hostages, etc. (Lenin’s speech on discipline and corruption.)" - Rosa Luxemburg



"Lenin and Trotsky, on the other hand, decide in favor of dictatorship in contradistinction to democracy, and thereby, in favor of the dictatorship of a handful of persons, that is, in favor of dictatorship on the bourgeois model. They are two opposite poles, both alike being far removed from a genuine socialist policy. The proletariat, when it seizes power, can never follow the good advice of Kautsky, given on the pretext of the “unripeness of the country,” the advice being to renounce socialist revolution and devote itself to democracy. It cannot follow this advice without betraying thereby itself, the International, and the revolution. It should and must at once undertake socialist measures in the most energetic, unyielding and unhesitant fashion, in other words, exercise a dictatorship, but a dictatorship of the class, not of a party or of a clique – dictatorship of the class, that means in the broadest possible form on the basis of the most active, unlimited participation of the mass of the people, of unlimited democracy." - Rosa Luxemburg

[RedWorker]

The dictatorship of the proletariat is not socialism. "Socialism" refers to a movement, Marxism being one of its interpretations ("scientific socialism"), and cannot be defined as a stage in the context of historical materialism or a mode of production, either of these being different from capitalism or communism. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is the only form that the state can take after the rise to power of the proletariat. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is so because capitalism has not yet been rooted out. Lenin clearly seems to share this view in that he defines the dictatorship of the proletariat as the transition from capitalism to communism, meanwhile stating that two phases can be seen within communism, and declaring that the word "socialism" can be used as a shorthand for the lower phase ("State and the Revolution"). According to this, the Soviet Union clearly was not communist, not "socialist", may have been a dictatorship of the proletariat at most, but we will go on to see how this is not true.

Private property of the state denotes a capitalist and private form of property. This is outlined in Engels' "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific", Part III. The capitalist nature of the productive forces cannot be removed by turning it into state ownership. But this forms the basis for later being able to be turned into true public property, and thus is one of the steps the proletariat will take once taking political power of the state. Nevertheless it does not form the basis for any kind of "socialism", it only forms the first steps which will allow the new economic system the proletariat will lay out once taking political control. State ownership is capitalism, Engels concludes, but the tools for true socialization are found, concealed, within nationalization.

The original post criticizes "mass democracy" (!), and cites Lenin. But Lenin himself says: "Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people--this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism".

And what is the "transition from capitalism to communism"? Lenin says, paraphrasing Marx: "Now the question is put somewhat differently: the transition from capitalist society--which is developing towards communism--to communist society is impossible without a "political transition period", and the state in this period can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."

There is no "socialism", but rather the transition from capitalism to communism is the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat! "Socialism in one country" cannot exist, and is a revisionist facade invented by Stalin.

But let us go back to the terminology used in the original post. The user accuses certain leftists of equating the dictatorship of the proletariat with "mass democracy". The original poster implies that, according to these leftists, such a dictatorship of the proletariat would require the organization and approval of every action of the state by all individuals which compose society. It goes on, according to the logic in use, that the realization of such an idea is ridiculous, and therefore can be ignored. But are these leftists really saying this, or is the original poster merely using one of Schopenhauer's 38 stratagems, which include "expanding" the opponent's argument to mean something different from what he is saying, and then disproving the "expanded" version?

Either way, it is to be questioned whether this is really "ridiculous" or not.

The poster concludes: "Overcome the revisionist notions of 'mass rule' and 'all the people in power', or 'a party of the whole people'". It is clear this is what he had been doing! He claims that the proponents of the actual dictatorship of the proletariat support a notion of "all the people in power" (what does this even mean?) - this seems to be ridiculous, according to his logic, and therefore, can be just ignored.

But let us go on. The original poster, in the making of his argument, implies a dichotomy between democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat (which, of course, does not actually exist). Why? Because he knows that the state capitalist states he defends had no democracy of any sort, yet meanwhile he claims that they were a "dictatorship of the proletariat" and "socialist" (both at the same time - which is impossible as we have concluded). What is utterly ridiculous, is that the dictatorship of the proletariat is anything else than the power of the working class, which means the working people, and not anyone claiming to represent them.

"The dictatorship of the proletariat is best defined by the political and military domination of explicitly communist and proletarian elements", he says. "Proletarian elements"! What is more of a proletarian element than the working class itself, the power of which the original poster, for mysterious reasons, opposes? And what is more of a "communist element" than the working class itself, which supports the development of their material interests? Here, what is clearly meant by "proletarian" and "communist" elements is obviously bureaucrats. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat establishes the armed people, rather than the regular army. Yet the original poster here supports a regular bureaucratic army, ruled by people with interests obviously opposed to that of the working class (otherwise, why would he oppose their election?).

This Stalinist conception of the vanguard and the dictatorship of the proletariat is at odds with Lenin himself, who, despite starting to write about the "vanguard", and having certain authoritarian and undemocratic notions, had a different conception.

"realize the dictatorship of the proletariat must be proletarian", the original poster says. But is the point of his whole post not opposing the participation of the proletariat? Obviously, what marks the difference between a proletarian and bourgeois state is the class in power. But what, to him, marks this difference, is the power of bureaucrats who claim to follow proletarian interests. The original poster criticizes that certain leftists uphold that the proletariat itself must be in power, while stating that they have to "realize that the dictatorship of the proletariat must be proletarian".

"There is no proletariat in power without a party in power". This is ridiculous. How can one party develop completely the interests of the working class? The notion that one party will come to power and, through unchallenged rule, develop socialism, designed from the above with law (which is utopian, idealistic and voluntaristic deviation), is ridiculous.

[Tim Redd]

Lenin himself, who, despite starting to write about the "vanguard", and having certain authoritarian and undemocratic notions, had a different conception.

It seems this conception of the dotp and socialism by Lenin are those you reject - that the dotp/socialist state is controlled by the vanguard of the proletariat, namely the party of communists consisting of the vanguard of the proletariat.


"There is no proletariat in power without a party in power". This is ridiculous. How can one party develop completely the interests of the working class? The notion that one party will come to power and, through unchallenged rule, develop socialism, designed from the above with law (which is utopian, idealistic and voluntaristic deviation), is ridiculous.The OP never said the dotp/socialism was soley a matter of what the party does, but rather that the party leads and has the final say about matters of state. A proper vanguard party is connected to the whole working class through many links. Further a proper vanguard knows that the key element to moving the dotp/socialsim process forward and on to communism requires the education and thence mobilization of the whole working class and other progressive strata to carry on mass struggle against the revisionist capitalist roaders like like Deng Xiaoping that are right in the state and party.