That is what Marx and Lenin mean when they say that all State power is "class dictatorship. Let us be more precise: this argument implies that, in modern society, which is based on the antagonism between capitalist bourgeoisie and proletariat, State power is held in an absolute way by the bourgeoisie, which does not share it with any other class, nor does it divide it up among its own fractions.
And this is true whatever the particular historical forms in which the political domination of the bourgeoisie is realized, whatever the particular forms which the bourgeoisie has to make use of in the history of each capitalist social formation in order to preserve its State power, which is constantly menaced by the development of the class struggle.
The first thesis has the following consequence: the only possible historical "alternative" to the State power of the bourgeoisie is an equally absolute hold on State power by the proletariat, the class of wage-labourers exploited by capital.
Just as the bourgeoisie cannot share State power, so the proletariat cannot share it with other classes. And this absolute hold on State power is the essence of all the forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat, whatever their transformations and historical variety.
To talk about an alternative, however, is really imprecise: we ought rather to say that the class struggle leads inevitably to the State power of the proletariat.
But it is impossible to predict in advance, in any certain way, either the moment at which the proletariat will be able to seize State power or the particular forms in which it will do so. Even less can we "guarantee" the success of the proletarian revolution, as if it was "automatic. You can sum it up by saying that the State power of the ruling class cannot exist in history, nor can it be realized and maintained, without taking material form in the development and functioning of the State apparatus — or, to use one of Marx's metaphors which Lenin is always borrowing, in the functioning of the "State machine," whose core the principal aspect: but not the only aspect — Lenin never said that is constituted by the State repressive apparatus or apparatuses.
These are: on the one hand, the standing army, as well as the police and the legal apparatus; and on the other hand, the State administration or "bureaucracy" Lenin uses these two terms more or less synonymously.
This thesis has the following consequence, with which it is absolutely bound up: the proletarian revolution, that is, the overthrow of the State power of the bourgeoisie, is impossible without the destruction of the existing State apparatus in which the State power of the bourgeoisie takes material form.
Unless this apparatus is destroyed — which is a complex and difficult task — the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot develop and fulfil its historical task, the overthrow of relations of exploitation and the creation of a society without exploitation or classes.
Unless this apparatus is destroyed, the proletarian revolution will inevitably be overcome, and exploitation will be maintained, whatever the historical forms in which this takes place. It is clear that Lenin's arguments have immediate bearing both on the State and on the dictatorship of the proletariat. The two problems are inseparable. In Marxism you do not have on one side a general theory of the State, and on the other side a particular theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
There is one single theory only. The first two arguments, which I have just set out, are already contained explicitly in Marx and Engels. They were not discovered by Lenin, though Lenin did have to rescue them from the deformation and censorship to which they had been subjected in the version of Marxist theory officially taught by the Social-Democratic parties.
Which does not mean that, on this point, Lenin's role and that of the Russian revolution were not decisive. But if we restrict our attention to that core of theory which I have been talking about, it is true that this role consisted above all of inserting the theory of Marx and Engels for the first time in an effective way into the field of practice.
It allowed a fusion to take place between the revolutionary practice of the proletariat and masses on the one hand and the Marxist theory of the State and of the dictatorship of the proletariat on the other — a fusion which had never, or never really taken place before.
Which means that although important progress in organization took place in the Labour Movement after Marx's time, this was accompanied by a considerable reduction in its autonomy, in its theoretical and practical independence from the bourgeoisie, and thus in its real political force.
It is the transformation of Marxism into Leninism which enabled it to overcome this historical regression by taking a new step forward. This brings us to the third argument which I mentioned. This third argument deals with socialism and communism.
It is not without its precedents, without preparatory elements in the work of Marx and Engels. It is obviously no accident that Marx and Engels always presented their position as a communist position, and only explicitly adopted the term "socialist" and even more so the term "social-democrat" as a concession. We can in fact say that in the absence of this position and of the thesis which it implies the theory of Marx and Engels would be unintelligible.
But they were not in a position to develop it at length. This task fell to Lenin, and in carrying it out he based his work on the development of the class struggles of the period of the Russian revolution, of which his work is therefore the product , in the strong sense of the term. From the fact that Blanqui conceives of every revolution as the coup de main of a small revolutionary minority, what follows of itself is the necessity of dictatorship after its success — the dictatorship, please note, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small number of those who made the coup de main and who themselves are organized beforehand under the dictatorship of one person or a few.
Locus 9. The term had cropped up, and this no doubt accounts for the fact that it was used by Marx in an important document in Marx, incensed, sent a letter to Eisenacher leaders, critically analyzing the program and attacking the Lassallean formulations and ideas.
The question comes up, then: what transformation will the state undergo in a communist society? In other words, what societal functions will remain there that are analogous to the present state functions? Between the capitalist and the communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other.
To this there corresponds a political transition period whose state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. For Marx this was a statement about the societal content of the state, the class character of the political power.
It was not a statement about the forms of the government machine or other structural aspects of government or policies. During this fifteen-year hiatus, the old Blanquist problem that had originally elicited the term had completely changed.
In the German Social-Democratic Party was preparing to adopt a new party program, replacing the Gotha Program of The new program was going to be adopted by the Erfurt Congress of Locus In October , as he was pulling the critique out of the archive, he sat down to write a letter to a comrade discussing the materialist conception of history.
This is one of the letters in which Engels explained that this conception does not present economic factors as alone operative in history. Or why then do we fight for the political dictatorship of the proletariat, if political power is economically powerless? Force i. Schmidt, October 27, ]. Once again, if the term is assigned a narrower or more special meaning, this rather casual reference by Engels ceases to make sense. One leader of the parliamentary group repudiated it on the floor of the Reichstag.
In March he finished his new introduction to that analysis of the Paris Commune. This was in effect an essay on the Commune: once more he dissected the Blanquist approach to revolution —. This involved, above all, the strictest, dictatorial centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government. Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the phrase: dictatorship of the proletariat.
Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the proletariat. This emphasis was directed head-on against the trend toward reformist adaptation to the German imperial state which was developing in the party.
He wrote:. If anything is established, it is that our party and the working class can come to power only under the form of the democratic republic.
This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the great French revolution [the Paris Commune] has already shown. Plekhanov, the leader and theoretician of the relatively new Russian Marxist group, had given him a letter of recommendation. A third of a century later, A. Voden writes:. Engels asked how Plekhanov himself stood on the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat. I was forced to admit that G. There is no mystery about where Plekhanov — himself a Narodnik only a few years before — had gotten these notions: this conception of dictatorship had long been the unquestioned orthodoxy of the Blanquist and Bakuninist elements who had long provided most of the training of Russian and other revolutionaries.
And what did Engels think of this, when told by Voden? Engels remarked that Plekhanov seemed to him a Russian analogue of H.
Voden footnoted that Plekhanov took this as a compliment, and it is likely that Voden had no idea of what it meant. It is hard to exaggerate the significance of this little-known episode, as a symbol and as an educational beam of light on the meaning of the question.
The term was written into the party program by Plekhanov, who by that time was perhaps the most prestigious theoretician of Marxism outside Germany.
The Roman dictatura: In the 20th century: Survey of pre usages: The French Revolution: ; Marat: ; Robespierre: Babouvist movement: Marx and Babouvism: Blanquists; the myth of the Blanquist origin of the term: Early Utopians, esp.
Cabet: Cabet in Marx in the revolution: Military dictatorship: Bakunin: ; some Bakuninists: Lassalle: ; Schweitzer: Comte, Hyndman, Jones: Communist Manifesto: Concept of class rule: Locus 1, first chapter: Locus 1, second chapter: Locus 1, third chapter: The full text: ; discussion: On the Blanquist group involved here: Blanquists and the International: The case of Vermersch: The Blanquist pamphlets: Commotion in the party: This was composed of liberals from the propertied classes and was the party of political reform which formed the first Provisional Government of February As the revolution became more and more a social economic revolution, the Cadets grew more and more conservative; see John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, London: Penguin, , The source of authority of proletarian rule cannot be a law of the bourgeois state.
This, for Lenin, means that construction of the socialist order cannot result from legislative reforms enacted through a bourgeois parliament. Lenin also discussed the tension between the democratic form and the success of the revolution. Lenin, The State and Revolution, After all, state power entails violence and repression for the reproduction of a regime of power, property, and productive relations. Nevertheless, this is far from negating the democratic essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
What the classic texts seem to agree upon was that the democratic form of the dictatorship of the proletariat went hand in hand with the socio-economic content of proletarian rule. They emphasised the material conditions necessary for this democratic form to develop, as well as the eventual abolition of juridico-political forms.
However, Lenin understood that the force of habit is a most formidable force, one that cannot change as long as the bourgeois state and the mechanisms that reproduce bourgeois ideology persist. Dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a long historical process during which conditions develop for the democratic participation of workers in the management of social and political affairs, and subsequently for the abolition of the state and its laws. Lenin, The State and Revolution, , Therefore, according to Lenin, the essence of class dictatorship is determined not so much by issues of legality or illegality, violence or peacefulness of the path, but rather from the issue of who controls the means of production.
The central precondition is the expropriation of the expropriators—the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. Another prerequisite for a full democracy, or rather for the association of free producers that Marx defined as communist society, is the all-round development of physical and mental abilities. This can only be the result of a long and arduous process of struggle and social restructuring that affects all social relations, especially living and working conditions.
The concept of dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be grasped unless we understand it as a historical period of transition and development of the conditions for the elimination of classes, as well as the abolition of class rule and the state. The rule of the proletariat, exercised through the proletarian state, is only reproduced so as to lead to the elimination of class rule altogether. The dictatorship of the proletariat lasts as long as the state withers away. These contradictions include not just class divisions, or the contradiction between the private ownership of the means of production and the socialised labour process, but also the contradictions between mental and physical labour, town and country, etc.
Marx defines as revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat the period of political transition between capitalist and communist society. These birthmarks signify the contradictions that this first phase of communist society inherits from capitalism, including the contradiction between town and country, manual and intellectual labour, commodity and socialist production.
Such birthmarks necessitate the existence of law and the state during this first phase of immature communism.
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