In a previous post I noted Marx’s statement that 

‘Now as for myself, I do not claim to have discovered either the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois economists their economic anatomy. My own contribution was 1. to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production; 2. That the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3. that this dictatorship itself constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.’ (Marx letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, Marx Collected Works Vol 39, p62 & 65)

If we quote Lenin on this, he puts it in his typically forthright way:

‘The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the fundamental question of the modern working-class movement in all capitalist countries without exception… Whoever has failed to understand that dictatorship is essential to the victory of any revolutionary class has no understanding of the history of revolutions, or else does not want to know anything in this field.’ – Lenin, “A Contribution to the History of the Question of the Dictatorship”.

‘Those who recognise only the class struggle are not yet Marxists; they may be found to be still within the boundaries of bourgeois thinking and bourgeois politics. To confine Marxism to the doctrine of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie.’

‘Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested’. (Lenin, The State and Revolution.)

It is almost universal that when introducing this question, it is felt necessary to explain what is meant by the word “dictatorship”.  The feeling is justified. The history of Stalinist regimes that repudiated the common understanding of (bourgeois) democracy has made these statements appear as early political endorsement of later practice. This explanation of its meaning is ahistorical, and it is necessary to present the very different understanding of the term as it was understood by Marx.

This usually starts by noting that the word ‘dictatorship’ has a long history, going back to the ancient Roman Republic, denoting various specific political ideas that are not the same as the current conception of it – as a form of government in which absolute power is exercised by a dictator, or as signifying absolute, imperious, or overbearing power or control.  Like so many other political or philosophical thinkers, terms routinely employed by Marx often have a specific meaning which it is necessary to know to correctly understand his work.  In Marx’s case the use of the word dictatorship during his time was not confined to him and was widely understood.

For Marx it denoted not the overthrown or denial of democracy but its achievement, as put forward in The Communist Manifesto, which he generally subscribed to for the rest of his life:

“We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.” In doing so “the working class can not simply lay hold of the ready made state machinery, and wield its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police bureaucracy, and judicature for its own purposes.’

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.” (Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto)

The dictatorship of the proletariat therefore refers to the period after the working class achieves political power, so that this power becomes that of the majority.  At this time Marx set out that the state would lead this process, but he subsequently emphasised the working class itself carrying out this task, initially through the growth of workers cooperatives and then through their forming a national (and international) cooperative economy.  This would be distinguished not so much by its planning as by the governance and control by the working class. (See note below)

Subsequent history has demonstrated that without this working class control socialism cannot be built, which is in many ways a truism, since socialism is (loosely) the name for the working class becoming the ruling class.  History also confirms Marx’s analysis of the position of the state: ‘the government machine or the state insofar as it forms a special organism separated from society through division of labour.’ (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Collected Works Vol 24 p 96)

In creating this ‘dictatorship’, society is radically changed and the previous economic and political power of the capitalist class – through their ownership and control of the means of production defended by the instrument of the state – is replaced by that of cooperative ownership and a state machinery, composed of workers, and controlled by the working class as a whole.  

Note: ‘That the workers desire to establish the conditions for co-operative production on a social scale, and first of all on a national scale, in their own country, only means that they are working to revolutionise the present conditions of production, and it has nothing in common with the foundation of co-operative societies with state aid. But as far as the present cooperative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not proteges either of the governments or of the bourgeois’. (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Collected Works Vol 24 p 93-4)

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