The conclusion from these points is that, assuming the proletariat takes political power in the next 40-50 years, there will still be a substantial period of transition which falls between the complete overthrow of the global capitalist state system and the fully collective appropriation of the means of production (communism). This period of transition is properly the dictatorship of the proletariat, the class rule of the proletariat over the surviving petty bourgeoisie and small capital, in a contradictory economic order in which those means of production which the capitalists have already ‘socialised’ are collectively appropriated, but the participants in this collective appropriation have to trade with substantial groups of petty bourgeois and some small capitalists, who are politically subordinated to the proletarian majority.
The period can also be called for short-hand ‘socialism’, as we do in the CPGB Draft programme, provided it is clear that by ‘socialism’ we mean this transitional period of working class rule over other subsisting classes, and not a separate stage standing between the dictatorship of the proletariat and communism. ‘Dictatorship of the proletariat’ is in my opinion scientifically superior because it expresses the fact that the petty bourgeoisie and small capital continue to exist in this period, but are institutionally subordinated to the proletariat as a class.