Lenin Dictatorship

[Servia]

How much a dictator was Lenin? and how much democracy existed under his leadership?

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

You can't really call Lenin a 'dictator' in the modern sense due to the fact that he did not have any kind of supreme power that could override everything else. He had to present his ideas to the committee for debate, and he ended up losing more than once.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Lenin es muy guapo

[tuwix]

and how much democracy existed under his leadership?

Not much. All was decided by the party. And not everyone even not every worker was included to the party...

[Brutus]

Not much. All was decided by the party. And not everyone even not every worker was included to the party...

Of course not every worker was included in the party. After lenin's death, 250,000 new workers were fast tracked to membership, and these were the core of the bureaucracy's support- the 'activists' who shouted down Oppositionists, called those who said there was no longer a proletarian dictatorship "Mensheviks". The party can't just accept everyone, because that is how the careerists, the GPU officers, the censors and directors of factories were forged. Gorter wrote that "we need a party clear as crystal, hard as steel", and this is as true now as it was in 1920. The party serves as the avant-garde of the class, not a mass organisation open to all stratas of the working-class (which contains multiple reactionary elements and bourgeois influences). That the whole class should be included in the party is a recipe for disaster and plays into the hands of the opportunists.

[The Idler]

Of course not every worker was included in the party. After lenin's death, 250,000 new workers were fast tracked to membership, and these were the core of the bureaucracy's support- the 'activists' who shouted down Oppositionists, called those who said there was no longer a proletarian dictatorship "Mensheviks". The party can't just accept everyone, because that is how the careerists, the GPU officers, the censors and directors of factories were forged. Gorter wrote that "we need a party clear as crystal, hard as steel", and this is as true now as it was in 1920. The party serves as the avant-garde of the class, not a mass organisation open to all stratas of the working-class (which contains multiple reactionary elements and bourgeois influences). That the whole class should be included in the party is a recipe for disaster and plays into the hands of the opportunists.
I think the point is that all was decided by the party is the problem, not that workers where excluded from the party.

[Red Eagle]

He was for democratic centralism. Their was one party and their goal was to reach Communism, their Soviet (almost like a Congress) was made up of peasants, soldiers and workers. They would vote for what was to be done and all could offer opinion and debate. Once a vote was made everyone within the party would follow. Non-Boleshivik parties were allowed to vote like the Socialist revolutionaries but no bourgeois parties were allowed (don't quote me on that I might have gotten my facts mixed up on the last sentence.).

[G4b3n]

It was primarily a dictatorship of party bureaucracy, which had multiple outlets for the expression of political power. What matters though is that it was not a dictatorship of the working class.