Mao's "democratic dictatorship"?

[Ritzy Cat]

Reading through the little red book. I don't think I'm completely understanding what Mao means when he says democratic dictatorship. Some explanation would be greatly appreciated.

[Observational Change]

Communism is a stateless commune. Do you recall how in Ancient Rome dictators where emergency leaders? Well in a stateless commune a democratic state is the emergency dictator. Ergo, a 'democratic dictatorship [of the proletariat and peasants' is a democracy of peasants and proletarians in an otherwise stateless society for the express purpose of political resolution.

[John Nada]

It's similar to the "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" that Russia had after the February Revolution. This is where the workers and peasantry completed the bourgeois democratic revolution against semi-feudalism that overthrew the Tsar(which the bourgeoisie was too weak or unwilling to carry it out) and held de facto power via the Soviets. This then moved into the "dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with the poor peasantry" by the October Revolution, the proletarian socialist revolution.

The people's democratic dictatorship was similar, an alliance between the workers and peasantry, but also with the petit-bourgeoisie and national(middle) bourgeoisie, led by the workers. In China's case, it was semi-feudal, semi-colonial and under fascist occupation. It didn't have a bourgeois democratic revolution yet(prototypical bourgeoisie democratic revolutions would be like the French Revolution or the English Civil War) and still had some feudal leftovers like landlords, and was being colonized by imperialism and Japanese fascism, with whom the big capitalists were aligned. Rather than sit back and try waiting for the national bourgeoisie to carry out a revolution and build capitalism first, the proletariat could lead an anti-imperialist united front against imperialism, feudalism and fascism instead. First to New Democracy with something like NEP state-capitalism, then move uninterrupted to a proletarian socialist revolution, so the theory goes. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_65.htm

[Comrade Jacob]

It's basically Mao's version of dictatorship of the proletariat to work in China's semi-feudal nation.

[Luís Henrique]

Reading through the little red book. I don't think I'm completely understanding what Mao means when he says democratic dictatorship. Some explanation would be greatly appreciated.

When I think of "democratic dictatorship" I immediately recall Robespierre.

Luís Henrique

[Rafiq]

When I think of "democratic dictatorship" I immediately recall Robespierre.

Luís Henrique

And you are right to. What was the Chinese project if not a kind of romantic Jacobinism?

[Patchd]

Communism is a stateless commune. Do you recall how in Ancient Rome dictators where emergency leaders? Well in a stateless commune a democratic state is the emergency dictator. Ergo, a 'democratic dictatorship [of the proletariat and peasants' is a democracy of peasants and proletarians in an otherwise stateless society for the express purpose of political resolution.

I don't think that analogy quite works though, where the dictators being emergency leaders or not were still an apparatus of the state, and then you go onto make the claim that a democratic state will act as the dictator to a stateless society. That seems oxymoronic to me and is not an analysis of the state I take ~ as a phenomenon for the expressed purpose of maintaining the social relationship as the basis of a class society. Communism is by its virtue, a classless society, and from that and only from that, a stateless society. Political resolution by the proletariat is the abolishment of itself along with class society as a whole and as a result cannot utilise functions the state, which is inherently pro-class, to do so.