Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site uwmacc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!uwvax!uwmacc!myers
From: myers@uwmacc.UUCP (Jeff Myers)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: What is socialism?
Message-ID: <708@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 8-Feb-85 12:58:22 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.708
Posted: Fri Feb  8 12:58:22 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Feb-85 04:41:11 EST
References: <325@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> <21248@lanl.ARPA>
Organization: UWisconsin-Madison Academic Comp Center
Lines: 35
Xref: watmath net.politics:7522 net.politics.theory:68

> 
> Actually, Marx thought that socialism could not work without a totalitarian
> form of government.  I will look for the exact reference, but I returned
> all the Marx writings I ever read to libraries long ago.
> 

Hm.  No doubt you're thinking of the *Critique of the Gotha Programme*,
which is the text that makes the distinction between socialism and
communism.  For Marx and Engels, EVERY state (government, loosely) is an
agent for the dominance of classes by a dominant class.  In the transition
from the capitalist state to the absence of a repressive state under
communism, there would be a period of transition in which the state would
need to act as an agent of the working class, as long as class antagonisms
remained.

Note that Marx felt that this state would be LESS (not more) dictatorial and
MORE (not less) democratic than the state under capitalism, in the sense that
people would have more control over their individual and collective lives,
including more control over government policies.

It is also important to point out that the absence of a "State" under
communism does not mean that there are no planning nor distribution
apparatuses, but that the government no longer plays the role of agent
of class oppression.

Lenin coined the term "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" in describing the
state in post-capitalist revolutionary societies.  This term has come to
have bad connotations.

-- 
Jeff Myers				The views above may or may not
University of Wisconsin-Madison		reflect the views of any other
Madison Academic Computing Center	person or group at UW-Madison.
ARPA: uwmacc!myers@wisc-rsch.arpa
uucp: ..!{ucbvax,allegra,heurikon,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!myers