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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: What is socialism? (Dictatorship of the Proletariat)
Message-ID: <334@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Feb-85 14:28:44 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.334
Posted: Tue Feb 12 14:28:44 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Feb-85 04:14:57 EST
References: <325@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> <21248@lanl.ARPA> <>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 40

J. Giles writes:
>> 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.

I agree with Jeff Myers' response to this, except that it was actually Marx
who first used the term "dictatorship of the proletariat," in a letter
written in 1852.  However, Marx never explained exactly what he meant by it,
and he only used it a few times in his writings.  Most likely he was
thinking of the dictatorship in the Roman Republic, a constitutional office
held for a limited time.  One can get an idea of what he had in mind from
his pamphlet *The Civil War in France* on the Paris Commune of 1871; in fact
Engels later claimed that the Commune was an example of the DotP.  

The significance of the Paris Commune for Marx was that, in contrast to all
previous revolutions, it had begun to dismantle the state apparatus and
given power to the people.  Marx saw it as an attempt to give power to the
working class and to create a regime as close to DIRECT DEMOCRACY as
possible.  Thus, by the "DotP" Marx meant not only a form of REGIME, in
which the working class would have the power hitherto possessed by the
bourgeoisie, but also a form of GOVERNMENT, with the working class actually
governing and taking over some of the functions hitherto performed by the
state.  

Lenin adopted this concept in *State and Revolution*, but he did not address
the question of the role of the party -- clearly, there is a big difference
between the "DotP" and the "DotP under the guidance of the Party."  Lenin
also interpreted the DotP to mean the ruthless suppression by the
proletariat of its enemies:  "The revolutionary DotP is power won and
maintained by the violence of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, power
that is unrestricted by any laws."  Thus Marx's fundamentally democratic
concept of the DotP came to be employed by the followers of Lenin as a
rationale for state repression.  Small wonder the concept has acquired a bad
name, even in many communist parties.  

I am anxiously awaiting J. Giles' quotation showing that Marx believed that
totalitarianism was necessary for socialism, since I thought I had a better
understanding of Marx's political thought than this would imply.

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes