barany_the ‘volatile’ marxian concept of the

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ZOLTAN BARANY

THE VOLATILE MARXIAN CONCEPT OF THE

DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT*

ABSTRACT. The thesis of this paper is that even some of the most fundamentalconcepts of Marxism have been used and abused to fit their advocates purposes.More specifically, the interpretation of the concept of the dictatorship of theproletariat has been subject to a dual development. First, the dictatorship of theproletariat has come to denote an increasingly violent regime. Second, the termhas been used to refer to a rule exercised by an ever smaller segment of society.This paper seeks to analyze and elucidate this much disputed and frequentlymisunderstood Marxist concept. In the first part Marxs use of the term is examined.The second section explores how the same concept was explicated in the writings

of some of the most important first generation Marxist thinkers and practitionerslike Engels, Lenin, Kautsky, Bukharin, and Stalin. Following the summary of myfindings I attempt to formulate some meaningful generalizations about the usageof the concept by Marxist thinkers.

KEY WORDS: dictatorship of the proletariat, Marx, Lenin, Stalin

Those who recognize only the class struggle are not yet Marxists: : : Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class

struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.1

All things are relative, all things flow, and all things change, opined

Lenin in 1905. If anything, Marxist thought has amply confirmed

his wisdom; its various and swiftly multiplying interpretations,

justifications, and utilizations have been as diverse as the aims of its

champions. The effects of this phenomenon have presented a serious

dilemma to many contemporary Marxists: is Marxism, in spite

of its countless variations, still a fundamentally cohesive theory

or is it infinitely catholic, todays orthodoxy being yesterdays

heresy?2

The thesis of this paper is that even some of the most fundamental

concepts of Marxism have been used and abused to fit their advo-

cates purposes. More specifically, the interpretation of the concept

of the dictatorship of the proletariat (die Diktatur des Proletar-

iats) has been subject to a dual development. First, the dictatorship

Studies in East European Thought 49: 121, 1997.c

1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.


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2 ZOLTAN BARANY

of the proletariat has come to denote an increasingly violent regime.

Second, the term has been used to refer to a rule exercised by an ever

small segment of society. This paper seeks to analyze and elucidatethis much disputed and frequently misunderstood Marxist concept.

First, I will examine Marxs use of the term. In the second section

the focus shifts to explore how the same concept was explicated in

the writings of some of the most revered first generation Marxist

thinkers like Engels, Lenin, Kautsky, Bukharin, and Stalin. The con-

cluding section summarizes my findings and attempts to formulate

some meaningful generalizations about the usage of the concept byMarxist thinkers.

The dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist thought was predi-

cated upon the notion that there will be a period of transition between

the defeat of capitalism and the victory of socialism. Marx assumed

that the ranks of the working class would continuously expand as

ever larger segments of the bourgeoisie lost their battle for survival

and became impoverished proletars, forced to sell their labor for theirlivelihood. Thus, Marx anticipated that by the time the proletarian

revolution was to take place the vast majority of the people would be

workers and relatively few bourgeois elements would remain. But

how many are a few? What form would the transition take? How

long will the transition period between capitalism and socialism last?

It is noteworthy that even during Marxs lifetime there was no con-

cord among Marxists on these and other similarly crucial practicaland theoretical issues.

MARXS CONCEPT OF PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP

Out of the large body of Marxs contribution to political thought,

probably the dictatorship of the proletariat has had the most

profound implication for actual governance. In order to understand

the meaning of this concept, first it ought to be broken down to

its components: the notions of proletariat or working class,

and to that of dictatorship, and must be separately defined. The

intrinsic significance of aprecise definition of the proletariat has been

recognized by many sociologists. Nevertheless, no widely accepted

meaning has been agreed upon for an adequate definition must incor-

porate the notions of class-consciousness, productive physical labor,


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VOLATILE MARXIAN CONCEPT OF THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT 3

and industrial employment. In the context of the materialist con-

cept of politics it is clear why the boundary problem is considered

to be a crucial one. It involves political questions of the greatestimportance concerning the role of the working class and of alliances

in the transition period.3 Still, there is no agreement about who

should and who should not be regarded a member of the working

class. In the view of Poulantzas, for instance, it is necessary for the

problem of all salaried workers to be posed in class terms, rather than

in terms of stratification. Therefore, he would include white-collar

workers in the working class while the French and other communistparties have traditionally denied the proletarian character of such

employees.4

For two reasons, at the center of the debate on the member-

ship in or composition of the proletariat lies the notion of produc-

tive labor as an important clue to the definition of the proletariat.

First, it is instrumental in establishing a rigorous connection between

Marxs writings on value and exploitation and the concept of socialclass. Second, free labor is, for Marx, the hallmark of an authentic

existence. Since Marx and Engels never provided an unambiguous

definition of the proletariat, the question whether commercial and/or

white-collar workers are members of the working class could never

be resolved ex cathedra.

The very concept of dictatorship has also been subjected to

scores of various interpretations since its appearance in ancientRome, when it was considered constitutional, temporary, and limited

in many ways. It meant different things at the time of the French

Revolution, in 1848, and in 1917. Certainly, dictatorship was not

the word that commonly came to mine to describe absolute authority

even in Marxs lifetime. For Louis Blanc in 1848, dictatorship mean

the domination of the enlightened people of the cities over the

numerically superior ignorant people of the countryside, that is,the rule of a minority.5 Bakunin explained that he rejected a parlia-

mentary republic, representative rule, constitutional forms, etc. for

he

: : : thought that in Russia more than anywhere else a strong dictatorial governmentthat would be exclusively concerned with elevating and educating the popularmasses would be necessary; a government free in the direction it takes and in its

spirit, but without parliamentary forms; with the printing of books free in contentbut without the freedom of printing : : : 6


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4 ZOLTAN BARANY

These views demonstrate clearly that the definition regarding the

concepts of the proletariat (or working class) anddictatorship

have been interpreted as variedly as the individuals who set out todefine them. This is partly the result of the fact that their meaning

in Marxs texts was seldom consistent and clear. Perhaps the most

lucid statement that Marx himself made regarding the dictatorship

of the proletariat can be found in a letter he sent to his friend Josef

Wedemeyer in 1852. Discussing his own role in describing historical

developments Marx said:

What I did new was to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is only bound upwith particular historical phases of the development of production; 2) that theclass struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3) that thisdictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes andto a classless society.7

The broad outlines of Marxs ideas are discernible from this well-

known excerpt from his letter. It comes as little surprise, however,

that many have been confused about the exact meaning of Marxs

terminology. The blame is partly the authors for Marx had offered

remarkably few hints as to the precise meaning of his concepts.

In view of this notion it is apparent why the conceptual debate

surrounding the dictatorship of the proletariat has never ceased.

Nevertheless, there are two issues Marx had been clear and persis-

tent about when dealing with the notion of dictatorship in general.

First, whenever the subject of dictatorship came up in the context of

the socialist movement, Marxs comments were always pejorative.

He vehemently opposed any notion of a dictator or dictatorship in

the workers movement and equated it with tyranny; indeed, the con-

cept for Marx certainly did not imply tyrannical rule.8 As Hunt

convincingly argues, Marx and Engels conception of proletarian

dictatorship did not require all workers to support a single party, let

alone a Marxist party, still less that all other parties be suppressed.9

Second, the concept of dictatorship in Marxs mind was not

necessarily linked to the notion of dictatorship of the proletariat.

Clearly, these were two separate entries in his vocabulary.10 This

point, of course, does not resolve the issue altogether. The meaning

could have been there, even if the familiar phrase was coined later.

Draper, notwithstanding his elaborate argument, appears to be wrong

here. As Marxs letter attests, he used the phrase that for him denoted


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the end to which class struggle led. The pairing of the two concepts

dictatorship and proletariat could hardly be coincidental.

Marx first used the term the dictatorship of the proletariat in1850. Two years earlier, in the Manifesto of the Communist Party he

employed the term the rule of the proletariat but it seems that he did

not make any distinctions between the two. As a matter of fact, Marx

made it clear that he recognized no substantive difference between

his concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat as set out in The Class

Struggle in France and the formulation utilized in the Manifesto.11

While Marx had remarkably little to say about the transition periodor proletarian dictatorship, his views of the state after the successful

workers revolution are delineated with particular lucidity in The

Civil War in France, and, in a somewhat less elaborate fashion, in

the Critique of the Gotha Programme.12

Marx recognized the historical significance of the Paris Commune

as a social and political victory for the working class. Although he

regarded the Commune the political form discovered at last, innone of his writings did he ever refer to it as an example of the

dictatorship of the proletariat precisely because, for a number of

reasons, he did not consider it as such. First, Marxs reluctance to

characterize the Commune as a proletarian dictatorship followed

from the fact that he perceived this dictatorship as the product of

a socialist revolution on a national scale.13 Second, the Commune

also failed to measure up to Marxs expectations because it had takenplace against his advice and he knew that the majority of its leaders

were not communists or people to his own liking.14 Indeed, the

few Marxists participating in the Commune acted, for the most

part, out of spontaneous enthusiasm rather than driven by definite

ideas about the future.15 Thirdly, Marxs accounts of the Commune

leave no doubt that he thought it should have developed a more clear-

sighted and less ambiguously defined social and economic program.Marx was, in fact, so appalled by the direction of the Communes

affairs that at one point he even asserted that its policies were not

socialist.16 In the Critique his most direct statement referring to the

transition period is in essence a projection of the future existence of

a historical period of revolutionary transformation; during this era

the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the

proletariat.

17


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6 ZOLTAN BARANY

Although Marx had never defined exactly what he meant by the

dictatorship of the proletariat it is clear that he thought of this

concept as a temporary phenomenon that would take place duringthe brief period of transition between capitalism to socialism. Still,

Marxs ideas regarding the transition period had been characterized

by a great deal of conceptual vagueness. He provided two different

interpretations of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In what David

Lovell calls the core meaning, Marx understands the defense of the

socialist revolution against a bourgeois opposition.18 Accordingly,

the dictatorship of the proletariat is merely one aspect of the transitionperiod. The second meaning, however, identifies the dictatorship

with the entire transition, that is, it would determine the political and

socio-economic realms from the time of the successful revolution

until the arrival of socialism. Here, then, not only does dictatorship

suggest that defense of the revolution against the bourgeoisie is the

primary task of the transition, to which all else must be subordinate,

but it makes no distinction between class rules.19

Not surprisingly, there is a great deal of discord among students

of Marxism on Marxs interpretation of the transition period itself.

Etienne Balibar, for instance, considers the dictatorship of the pro-

letariat as the period of transition from capitalism to communism.

He argues that the dictatorship of the proletariat is not the period

of transition to socialism for it is socialism itself, an historical

period of uninterrupted revolution and of the deepening of the classstruggle.20 Yet others consider this period to extend from the prole-

tarian revolution to the advent of socialism, admittedly, a momentous

difference.21

Likewise, no scholarly agreement has been reached on the ques-

tion of whether Marx regarded political or economic elements to

be the most important for defining the transition to socialism. For

Lovell, the central aspect of transition in Marxs thought was itsfostering of politics as an activity integral to human existence.22

This view is hardly congruent with other interpretations of Marx,

according to which the very purpose of the transition stage was to

transcend political freedom. For Daler Deol, however, the func-

tion of the period of transition for Marx was clearly twofold. On

the one hand, the mission of the proletarian dictatorship was to sup-

press the resistance of the bourgeoisie, i.e., a political-destructive set


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of activities and, on the other hand, to establish socialism through

socio-economic reconstruction, i.e., via constructive socio-economic

activities.23

It should be reiterated that Marx only considered thenotion of transition as a means to the end (socialism) and not as an

end in itself. It was in this context that Marx expressed enthusiasm

for the Paris Commune as an effective dissolution of the state.

Accepting the notion that the dictatorship of the proletariat is but

one aspect of the transition period, there still remain such questions as

how and by whom the dictatorship would be organized, how would it

enforce its authority, etc. Whatever Marx believed would be or mightbe characteristic of the transition period, it was not this term that dealt

with future problems of the workers state.24 The dictatorship of the

proletariat did not refer to specialized characteristics or instruments

of the envisioned workers rule, such as the utilization of coercive

terror; it meant proletarian rule itself. Nonetheless, Marxism has not

been a stranger to the

well-known tension between the acceptance of violence as an inevitable concomi-tant of the class struggle : : : on the one hand, and the utopia of a classless societyin which all instruments of coercion would wither away, on the other. 25

Marx himself, however, failed to define the use of violence during

the transition period. Although he did not explicitly disapprove of

coercion, he certainly did not advocate its unbridled use. Herbert

Marcuses interpretation supports this point:

Violence was at least not inherent in the action of the proletariat; class conscious-ness neither necessarily depended upon nor expressed itself in open civil warfare;violence belonged neither to the objective nor to the subjective conditions of therevolution (although it was Marxs and Engelss conviction that the ruling classescould and would not dispense with violence).26

Neither is there anything to indicate in Marxs writings that he

conceived the proletarian state as a party state, a dictatorship of a

single party ruling, or claiming to rule on behalfof the proletariat.27

It appears that, as Mihailo Markovic noted, the emerging regimes

that called themselves Marxist conveniently forgot the fact, that

Marx referred to the rule of the working majority of people which

had to give way to a stateless society : : : The word dictatorship

was, however, well remembered.28

In a sense, Marxs failure to specify practical aspects of imple-

menting the dictatorship provided an unusually large margin of


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8 ZOLTAN BARANY

interpretation for his disciples. It is important to realize that in

Marxs thinking dictatorship was not an inherent part of workers

rule and this, in fact, may be the reason that Marx and Engels used theterm so rarely.29 Milibands conclusion appears to be correct when he

asserts that for Marx the dictatorship of the proletariat constituted

: : :

both a statement of the class character of the political power anda descriptionof the political power itself : : : it is, in fact, the nature of the political power whichit describes which guarantees its class character.30

It seems clear, then, that Marx used the concept of the dicta-

torship of the proletariat rather sparsely and ambiguously in hiswritings. Moreover, when he did employ the term, he failed to elab-

orate on specific aspects of its denotation. As we will see, these

shortcomings were to have dire consequences in the usage of the

term by the first generation of Marxist writers.

THE MODIFICATION OF A MARXIAN CONCEPT: FROM ENGELS TO

STALIN

It is ironic, perhaps, that Engelss interpretation of the concept and,

more importantly, his understanding of Marxs interpretation, was

sharply criticized by his irreverent contemporaries as well as future

generations of Marxists and students of Marxism. Some of the mis-

understanding pertaining to Marxs views on the Commune were

originated by Engelss famous remark, directed against the social

democratic philistine in 1891: Look at the Paris Commune. That

was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.31 As noted above, Marx

never identified the Commune as the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Engelss error, however, should be evaluated in the specific historical

context. Faced with a growing social democratic movement that was

swiftly becoming increasingly reformist in the 1890s, he felt he had

to point to immediate political objectives that would be justifiable

with the broader concepts of Marxist ideology.

The reason for the divergent interpretation of the concept of the

dictatorship of the proletariat appears to lie in the fact that Engels

had been heavily influenced by the anarchist vision of a stateless

future. The only modification that he made to the anarchist schema

was the inclusion of the era of transition in which the state, if still in

existence, would function merely as a tool in the hands of the prole-

tariat used to defend the revolution from its enemies. Consequently,


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Engels stressed the coercive nature of the proletarian dictatorship

in the transition period considerably more than Marx did. At the

same time, Engels did not realize that a transition period centeredon coercion, to a society in which there shall be no coercion, seems

to entail overwhelming risks.32 Summarizing Engelss role as the

interpreter of Marx, Michael Harrington wrote:

: : : [He is] the second great figure in the Marxist misunderstanding of Marxism: : : [Marx] was unjust to his ideas in a few passages; Engels did much moreconsistent harm to his mentors theory although he sometimes was its shrewdestinterpreter.33

In sum, while Engels similarly to Marx recognized the main

function of the dictatorship of the proletariat to be the suppression

of bourgeois resistance to the new rule he, too, failed to be more

specific thereby opening up ways to divergent interpretations of his

theses.34

Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and most other revisionists

actively discouraged the use of the Marxian dictatorship of the

proletariat concept arguing that with its illiberal connotations it

would be a rule by a minority, an embattled regime built on the

unstable foundations of a yet unprepared working class.35 For them

proletarian dictatorship referred to the dominance of the working

class and did not denote a tyrannical, non-consensual form of govern-

ance.

Many German socialists who developed the workers movement

into a real political force in Germany had propagated views that were

quite different from those held by Marx and Engels. Among them,

Kautsky and Luxemburg were ardent critics of the dictatorship of

the proletariat that had come to power according to the claims of

the Bolshevik leaders in Soviet Russia. For Rosa Luxemburg, only

a spontaneous form of proletarian politics can be the dictatorship of

the proletariat. For Kautsky, in so far as the term is acceptable at all,

it stands only as a somewhat parliamentarized version of the Paris

Commune, resting upon the highest moral authority of the vote. Con-

sent is abstracted from coercion and is declared to be the conceptual

soul of the true proletarian state.36 As Kautsky states, dictatorship

as a form of government is something rather different from the

dictatorship of a class, since a class can only rule, not govern.37

Kautsky, then, denied the very possibility of the realization of

socialism where democracy was displaced by dictatorship.38 He went


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as far as suggesting that the dictatorship of the proletariat had been

an off-the-cuff phrase by Marx and had no serious importance for

Marxism.39

For him, the dictatorship of the proletariat was distin-guished from democracy chiefly by its lack of universal suffrage and

popular participation in politics. Voting rights had become increas-

ingly inclusive in the industrial nations of Europe between the 1880s

and the 1920s. Universal manhood suffrage was introduced by 1919

in Britain, France, the Weimar Republic, and Italy, but substantial

expansion in the granting of voting privileges was realized by as

early as 1915. Thus, for Kautsky in 1918 the concept of the dicta-torship of the proletariat had quite different connotations than for

Marx, partly because the socio-political milieu of his time was radi-

cally different from Marxs. By 1918 in Soviet-Russia, rival parties

had been already outlawed, open opposition had been suppressed,

and suffrage had been restricted by the Bolsheviks, to be sure, but

the effective terror machinery affecting the bulk of the population

was not yet put in place.One of the principal reasons for the European social democratic

parties attacks on Bolshevism in the late 1910s and early 1920s

was the contrast between democracy and dictatorship. The first

two decades of the twentieth century was a period of often brilliant

intellectual debate among the various factions of the left, concern-

ing practical and theoretical aspects of the workers movement

in general, and the Marxian legacy in particular. Kautskys book,The Dictatorship of the Proletariat(1918) and Lenins reply in the

pamphlet The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky was

perhaps the culmination of a long-standing intellectual and ideo-

logical feud between the Bolsheviks and mainstream European

social democrats. On the question of the dictatorship Kautsky argued

that since the exploiters have always formed only a small minority

of the population the rule of the proletariat need not assume a formincompatible with democracy. Lenins less than radiant rejoinder

was that the pure democracy Kautsky talked about was sheer

nonsense. Kautsky, with the learned air of a most learned armchair

fool, or with the innocent air of a ten-year old schoolgirl, asks: Why

do we need dictatorship when we have a majority?40

While Lenin surely had clear ideas regarding the political future,

his thoughts were ill-formed as far as immediate tasks were con-


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cerned. According to many of his critics, Lenin simply ignored the

laws of development. This is evident not only on the theoretical

level but in the extraordinary terminological confusions before andjust after the Bolshevik Revolution.41 In fact, Jurgen Habermas, sup-

porting Daniel Bells argument, contends that the Soviets in October

1917 under the direction of Leninistically schooled professional

revolutionaries had no immediate socialist aims.42 It is character-

istic of Lenins initial naivete or political opportunism that he

believed that workers control itself a much debated notion

could run an entire society. A practical thinker, Lenin swiftly real-ized, however, that some measure of bureaucracy was necessary in

order to keep the country governed. In a remarkable statement at the

time, he said that Ours is a workers government with a bureaucratic

twist.43

Thus, when the Bolsheviks seized power, the dictatorship of the

majority, envisioned by Marx, had gradually turned into the dicta-

torship of an ever smaller minority.44

Lenins ideas, however, weremore concisely formulated than those of Marx. For him, the party

was completely identified with the dictatorship of the proletariat.45

The revolutionary partys function, under the Bolsheviks, was to

lead the masses and organize and unite them in the struggle for the

victory of a new system.46 The Leninist rationale for such a leading

role of the party was that No dictatorship by a class can be orga-

nized in such a way as to enable the whole class to exercise directleadership of society, thus the function of guiding society in the

name of the class : : : is performed by its political vanguard i.e., the

Bolshevik Party.47 In the Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government

Lenin declared that

: : : Soviet power is nothing but an organizational form of the dictatorship of theproletariat, the dictatorship of the advanced class, which raises to a new democracy

and to independent participation in the administration of the state tens upon tensof millions of working people, who by their own experience learn to regard thedisciplined and class conscious vanguard of the proletariat as their most reliableleader.48

This passage illustrates well Lenins interpretation of the dictator-

ship of the proletariat. First, he refers to the dictatorship of the

advanced class, but it soon becomes evident that there is an even

more advanced stratum of the advanced class, the vanguard


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of the proletariat, that is, the Bolshevik Party. As Lenin explicitly

noted:

Yes, the dictatorship of one party! We stand upon it and cannot depart from thisground, since this is the party which in the course of decades has won for itselfthe position of vanguard of the whole factory and industrial proletariat.49

Lenin was convinced about the necessity of coercion during the

transition period. As he explained in March 1917 in one of his letters

from afar, the purpose of coercion was to ensure that when the old

state machinery was crushed, the people substitute a new one for

it, merging the police force, the army, and the bureaucracy with the

entire armed population.50 In his thought, violent suppression is a

major if not the most important attribute of proletarian dictatorship.

In Lenins words, the dictatorship rests directly on violence.51 As

early as 1904 he declared that the dictatorship of the proletariat is

an absolutely meaningless expression without Jacobin coercion.52

Furthermore, in his later writings Lenin equated proletarian dicta-

torship with violence: when we speak of dictatorship we meanthe employment of coercion specifically organized as institutional

violence.53

Nevertheless, the more pragmatic the policies of the Bolshevik

leadership became, the more criticism they had to face from external

and even internal sources. Already in 1921, Alexandra Kollontay,

a prominent Bolshevik and sometime critic of her party, openly

lamented social developments:

The workers ask who are we? Are we really the prop of the class dictatorship,or are we just an obedient flock that serves as a support for those, who havingsevered all ties with the masses, carry out their own policy and build up industrywithout regard to our opinions and creative abilities under the reliable cover ofthe Party label?54

What Kollontay perceived was that the dictatorship of the prole-

tariat had turned into not only the dictatorship of the Bolshevik

Party but into the dictatorship of the upper echelon of the Bolshevik

Party that had gradually become totally estranged from the working

class.

Since then, Communist leaders have cleverly utilized many of

Lenins statements that point to the necessity of violence for the

sake of establishing proletarian dictatorship. Various interpretations

of Lenin by Soviet writers also assisted Communist leaders abroad


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in their efforts to create totalitarian dictatorships. As one such work

contends, while the proletarian dictatorship implies not only or

chiefly coercion, violence is an indispensable attribute of thisconcept.55 Le Duan, the Vietnamese Marxist leader interpreted Lenin

not quite a half-a-century later as follows:

Lenin developed the idea of carrying out proletarian revolution by violencewhere imperialism existed. In discussing democracy under bourgeois rule, Leninpointed out that the bourgeoisie would only allow a democracy : : : within a cer-tain limit, without detriment to its rule. Should the working class go beyond thislimit, the bourgeoisie would suppress it with open violence. Therefore, counter-

revolutionary violence can only be smashed with revolutionary violence.56

Lenin seems to have been acutely conscious of the fact that, given

Russian backwardness and isolation, Soviet rule utilized the dictator-

ship of the proletariat in its harshest form.57 While Lenin advocated

a particularly merciless form of dictatorship for Soviet-Russia, he

appears to have also expressed the hope that, as he put it in 1919,

other countries will travel by a different, more humane road.58

Soviet writers reiterated the notion that the Soviet model was not

necessarily the example to be emulated. Their explanation for the

crude dictatorship imposed by the Bolsheviks was that the class

opponents offered stronger resistance to socialist developments in

Soviet-Russia than in other socialist countries.59 Given the history

of Communist states, such an explanation should be accepted only

with wary contemplation.

Bolshevik leaders other than Lenin were also ready to publicize

their interpretations of Marxs concept of the proletarian dictatorship.

For Bukharin, one of the better equipped Bolshevik theoreticians, the

proletariat was not a homogenous social category. The proletariats

victory and the subsequent establishment of its dictatorship was

typically the development of its nature, which was characterized by

a signal instability of the productive forces. Consequently, Bukharin

argued, it had to be recognized that there would inevitably result a

tendency to degeneration, that is, the excretion of a leading stratum

in the form of a class-germ.60 He saw the source of degeneration

during the transition period in the heterogeneity of the working

class and in the fact that the productive forces were, at this time,

materially insecure. Recognizing the attendant implication that

the class enemy would also be characterized by heterogeneity,

Bukharin advised lenience toward certain strata of the bourgeoisie


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14 ZOLTAN BARANY

notably toward the technical intelligentsia during the transition

period.

In his essay, The Theory of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.(1919) Bukharin insists that the proletarian state is a dictatorship of

the majority over the minority. He contends that the

aim of the proletarian dictatorship is to break the old relations of productionand to organize new relations in the sphere of social economics, the dictatorialinfringement of the rights of private property.61

For Bukharin, then, the foremost attribute of the Soviet power is thatit is the power of the mass organizations of the proletariat and the

rural poor.62

For Leon Trotsky, who shared Bukharins early prominence and

tragic fate, proletarian dictatorship had a meaning associated with

more violence. As he wrote,

Just as a lamp before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the state, before

disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the mostruthless form of state, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively inevery direction.63

Trotsky understood proletarian dictatorship not only as an essentially

violent regime but also as the last historical stage in which the

conventional state had legitimate functions. In sum, he was an even

more spirited advocate of violent dictatorship than Lenin.64 Trotsky,

similarly to other Bolsheviks sharing his views, had remarkably little

to say with regards to the practical arrangements of the inevitable

stateless future.

Looking at Stalins thoughts on proletarian dictatorship it

becomes clear that the long process of misinterpreting the concept

had reached its climax. In Stalins interpretation the dictatorship of

the proletariat was synonymous with violence and, in practice at

least, the entire proletariat was represented by a single dictator. For

Stalin, as he explained in The Foundations of Leninism (1924), the

dictatorship of the proletariat was the instrumentof the proletarian

revolution.

There have been no cases in history where dying classes have

voluntarily departed from the scene therefore, class struggle during

the dictatorship of the proletariat must necessarily become more

intensified.65 Even though the bourgeoisie might have been defeated


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it could still draw strength from international capital and from its

enduring connections with the international capitalist community.

The dictatorship of the proletariat arises not on the basis of the bourgeois order,but in the process of the breaking up of this order, after the overthrow of thebourgeoisie : : : The dictatorship of the proletariat is a revolutionary power basedon the use of force against the bourgeoisie : : : for the proletarian state is a machinefor the suppression of the bourgeoisie.66

In contrast with Bukharin, the dictatorship of the proletariat

according to Stalin is not a brief interlude in the evolution of the

communist state but an entire historical era.67 Another major differ-

ence between the two Bolsheviks is that, as we have seen, Bukharin

would have spared some groups of the bourgeoisie (particularly

some segments of the intelligentsia) from the wrath of proletarian

dictatorship while the major objective of this stage for Stalin was

to physically crush any potential opposition to proletarian rule.68 In

the late 1920s and early 1930s, under the emerging Stalinist form of

proletarian dictatorship the perspicacious intellectual polemic of the

first fifty years after Marxs death had degenerated into Stalins and

his henchmens heavy-handed and often irrational verbal attacks on

and, increasingly, physical elimination of, their real and presumed

enemies.

CONCLUSION

The preceding discussion attempted to demonstrate how the interpre-

tation of the Marxian notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat

had changed in the first half century after Karl Marxs demise.

Since Marx we have witnessed a dual development in the use of the

concept.

First, proletarian dictatorship had come to be associated with

the dictatorship of an increasingly narrow stratum of society over

an ever-larger proportion of the citizenry. As we have seen, for

Marx the dictatorship of the proletariat meant the domination of the

vast majority of the population by a small minority. For Lenin, the

domination of the small minority had gradually become the rule of

the Bolshevik Party. During Stalins rule, the proletarian dictatorship

had come to denote the terroristic rule of a small group of individuals

(members of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet

Union) and, in time, reduced to a single person: Stalin.


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16 ZOLTAN BARANY

Second, in a parallel development with the gradual erosion of the

popular basis of the dictatorship, the concept had come to denote an

ever more violent form of governance as well. While Marx did notdissociate himself from the possibility of violence in order to sup-

press the opposition of the former exploiters, he merely condoned

it. Lenin, as we have seen, enthusiastically advocated the necessity

of coercion against the Partys adversaries. Under Stalin, however,

proletarian dictatorship had become a tool to justify the indiscrim-

inate slaughter of his and the Soviet leaderships real or imagined

enemies.This study also attempted to contrast the views of Marx and Lenin

on the dictatorship of the proletariat. According to Donald Hodges,

Lenins thoughts differed on three points from Marx concerning this

concept. First, for Marx proletarian revolution begins under the con-

ditions of imperialism while Lenin disregarded the Marxian laws of

development. Second, for Lenin a political rather than economic

crisis becomes a catalyst of the proletarian revolution. Finally, forLenin revolution breaks out where the link is weaker while Marx

expected the arrival of proletarian revolution in an advanced indus-

trial society.69

Nevertheless, Hodgess argument is at fault on two accounts. On

the one hand, he is dealing with the notion of proletarian revolution

and not proletarian dictatorship, clearly two substantially different

concepts. The former merely suggests the beginning of the transitionperiod during which the latter is presumed to function. On the other

hand, Hodges himself states that Marx spoke only in passing of the

transition to Communism, thus he finds it convenient to turn to

Lenin for an elucidation of this concept. It may be a minor point

but one should note that, as Marcuse pointed out, the notion of the

weakest link originated from Trotsky and not Lenin.70

As we have seen above, there are two crucial differences betweenthe interpretations of Marx and Lenin of proletarian dictatorship.

First, while Marx preferred a peaceful dictatorship of the proletariat,

Lenin considered it necessarily violent. Second, while the term for

Marx denoted the rule of a large majority over a small minority, for

Lenin it entailed the domination of the ruling Bolshevik Party over

the rest of society. Therefore, to explain Marxs meaning according


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to Lenins interpretation is clearly tantamount to not only a gross

misinterpretation but also to doing injustice to Marxs thought.

It appears likely, then, that the dictatorship of the proletariat thatwas realized by the Bolsheviks did not approximate Marxs ideas.

Nevertheless, as McCarthy notes, if the proletariat has failed to

carry out the mission Marx assigned to it, the fault lies not with the

proletariat but with the mission itself.71 More precisely, Marx had

not only been ambiguous about many aspects of his theories but

: : : in reading Marx (not just Engels) one can find him, at one time or another,

espousing (at different times) both sides of nearly all the polar opposites listedabove, and one cannot explain that by using the word dialectical since that wordexplains everything.72

Consequently, it is important to realize that one should not put all the

blame for bending Marxs concepts only on those who purpose-

fully or inadvertently misinterpreted them. The individuals whose

thought this study has attempted to examine were pragmatic thinkers

who simply took advantage of the vaguenesses and ambiguities inMarxs writings on this and other subjects. They did so in order to

accomplish practical goals, to serve political ambitions.

It is the inconsistency in Marxs work that has made it possible for

so many people to construct their own version of Marxism. There

are so many alternative Marxisms that one is hard pressed to decide

which one (if any!) is the right for me? Marxist thinkers have been

confronted by structuralist Marxism, humanistic Marxism, histor-ical Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Castroism, African

Marxism, and so forth. It seems that the search for the authentic

Marxism will never end. Eugene Kamenka had the following to say

on the volatility of Marxism:

The past history, present character and likely future development of Marxismshow Marxism to be as complex and as much subject to historical change and

tension as Christianity: : :

The only serious way to analyze Marxist or socialistthinking may well be to give up the notion that there is a coherent doctrine calledMarxism and socialism, that there is such thing as the Marxist or socialist idea oreven the Marxist or socialist view of the world.73

Thus, it is difficult to avoid the question of whether or not we may

consider Marxism as a set of clear and concise ideas in any sense.

There is a coherent and clear kernel of Marxism that should be

respected and not subjected to misinterpretation and abuse for any

justification. If there is any accurate definition of what Marxism is,


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18 ZOLTAN BARANY

the parameters of such explanation should probably include Marxs

dialectical approach to knowledge itself and materialist perspective

of dealing with history on the one hand, and his general view of cap-italism based on his social analysis and his permanent commitment

to socialism, on the other.

This essay sought to demonstrate through the examination of the

various interpretations of a single concept by the first generation

of selected Marxist thinkers some of the practical and theoretical

problems that resulted from the lack of consistency in the Marxian

usage of theoretical constructs. The notion of the dictatorship of theproletariat is only one of the many concepts that has been subjected

to misuse and misinterpretation. In fact, it would be rather difficult to

find any aspect of Marxs thought that has not been disputed. In order

to avoid or at least lower the risk of misinterpreting Marx, what

his interpreters ought to strive for is, perhaps, to explore the reasons

behind Marxs frequently unclear statements and examine the sur-

rounding historical, political, and socio-economic environment thatinfluenced his work.

NOTES

* For their insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper I am indebted to

Professors Dante Germino and W. Randy Newell.1 Lenin, The State and Revolution in Selected Works, Vol. II, Part 1 (Moscow:Foreign Language Publishing House, 1952), p. 233.2 Les Johnston,Marxism, Class Analysis, and Pluralism: A Theoretical and Polit-ical Critique of Marxist Conceptions of Politics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986),p. 2.3 Nikos Poulantzas, The New Petty Bourgeoisie, in A. Hunt, ed., Class andClass Structure (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1977), p. 113.4 Nikos Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (London: New Left

Books, 1975), p. 201.5 Hal Draper, Karl Marxs Theory of Revolution, Vol. III, The Dictatorship of theProletariat (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986), pp. 4647.6 Mikhail Bakunin, The Confession of Mikhail Bakunin (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1977), p. 41, my emphasis. For an excellent recent examinationof Bakunins thought, see Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1988), chapters 13.7 Marxs italics. See Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader(New York:W. W. Norton, 1978), p. 220.8

Robert L. Heilbroner, Marxism: For and Against (New York: W. W. Norton,1980), p. 73.


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9 Richard N. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels: Classical Marxism18501895 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), pp. 195199.10 Draper, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, p. 93.11 For arguments supporting this view, see for instance, Hal Draper, Marx andthe Dictatorship of the Proletariat, New Politics (1962), pp. 91104.12 For an excellent examination of the evolution of Marxs thought on the state, seeHans Kelsen, Sozialismus und Staat: eine Untersuchung der politischen Theoriedes Marxismus (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1965).13 See Ralph Miliband, Marx and the State, Socialist Register(1965), pp. 278296.14 David McLellan, Marx, Engels and Lenin on Party and State, in LeslieHolmes, ed., The Withering Away of the State? Party and State Under Commu-

nism (London: SAGE, 1981), pp. 733.15 Otto Bihari, The Constitutional Models of Socialist State Organization(Budapest: Akademiai Konyvkiado, 1979), p. 15.16 See McLellan, Marx, Engels and Lenin on Party and State, p. 23; and RobinBlackburn, Marxism: Theory of the Proletarian Revolution, New Left Review,No. 97 (1976), p. 27.17 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Works (Moscow: Foreign LanguagePublishing House, 1952), Vol. II, p. 33.18 See, David W. Lovell, From Marx to Lenin: An Evaluation of Marxs Respon-

sibility for Soviet Authoritarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1984), p. 69.19 Lovell, From Marx to Lenin, p. 69.20 Etienne Balibar, On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (London: New LeftBooks, 1977), p. 124.21 On this point, see for instance, Shlomo Avineri, The Social and PoliticalThought of Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 185188; Bruce Mazlish, The Meaning of Karl Marx (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1984), pp. 6870.22 Lovell, From Marx to Lenin, p. 69.23 Daler Deol, Liberalism and Marxism (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1976),p. 93.24 On this point, see for instance, Draper, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat,p. 213.25 Alexander Dallin and George Breslauer, Political Terror in Communist Systems(Standford: Standford University Press, 1970), p. 9.26 See Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (New York: RandomHouse, 1961), p. 11.27 Deol, Liberalism and Marxism, p. 93.28 Mihailo Markovic, Democratic Socialism: Theory and Practice (New York:St. Martins Press, 1982), p. x.29 Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, p. 246.30 Miliband, Marx and the State, pp. 289290.31 Quoted in N. Harding, Lenins Political Thought(London: Macmillan, 1981),p. 91.32 Lovell, From Marx to Lenin, p. 87.33 Michael Harrington, The Twilight of Capitalism (New York: Simon andSchuster, 1976), p. 42. For other arguments along these lines, see The Marx


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20 ZOLTAN BARANY

Legend, or Engels, Founder of Marxism, in Joseph OMalley and Keith Algozin,eds., Rubel on Karl Marx: Five Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1981); and Norman Levine, The Tragic Deception: Marx Contra Engels (Santa

Barbara: Clio Books, 1975).34 It appears that Lenin derived this views on the state and on the dictatorshipof the proletariat primarily from Engelss writings and the latters interpretationof Marx, rather than from the original source. One very likely reason for thiswas the fact that the body of work left behind by Engels fitted into the Bolshevikideology much more tightly than Marxs original dictums. For an illuminatingstudy attempting to dissociate Marxism from its bastardized Soviet version, seeIring Fetscher, Marx and Marxism (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971).35 Lovell, From Marx to Lenin, p. 194. See also, Peter Gay, The Dilemma of

Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernsteins Challenge to Marx (New York: CollierBooks, 1962).36 See John Hoffman, The Gramscian Challenge: Coercion and Consent in

Marxist Political Theory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), p. 179.37 Karl Kautsky, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 1964), p. 180.38 The same conclusion is reached by Christopher Pierson, Marxist Theory and

Democratic Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 60.39 See Roy Medvedev, Leninism and Western Socialism (London: Verso, 1981),

p. 31.40 Vladimir I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow: Foreign Language PublishingHouse, 1960), Vol. 28, p. 252.41 For an illuminating treatment, see Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (New York:Free Press, 1962), p. 375.42 Habermas, Theory and Practice (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), p. 197.43 Cited in Bell, The End of Ideology, p. 383.44 One caveat should be entered here. Even Marx could not envision literal ruleby the masses themselves: dictatorship implied for him some sort of centralauthority. Nevertheless, he failed to elaborate on what shape this central authoritymight adopt or take.45 Deol, Liberalism and Marxism, p. 76.46 V. Chikvadze, The State Democracy and Legality in the USSR: Lenins IdeasToday (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), p. 88.47 Georgi Shakhnazarov, The Role of the Communist Party in Socialist Society(Moscow: Novosti Press, 1974), pp. 1112.48 Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Governmentin Selected Works (NewYork: International Publishers, 19351938), Vol. 1, p. 422.49 Cited in E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution (London: Harmondsworth, 1975),Vol. 1, p. 236.50 See Lenins third letter in Letters from Afar. On the Proletarian Militia, inCollected Works, Vol. 23, p. 229.51 Mihaly Samu,Hatalom es allam (Budapest: Kozgazdasagi es Jogi Konyvkiado,1982), p. 203.52 Nikolai Valentinov, Encounters with Lenin (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1968), p. 128.53 Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 417.54 Cited in Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Polit-


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ical Opposition in the Soviet Phase (19171922) (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1955), pp. 254255.55 See, for instance, B. Topornin and E. Machulsky, Socialism and Democracy:

A Reply to Opportunists (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), p. 31.56 Le Duan, Hold High the Revolutionary Banner of Creative Marxism! (Peking:Foreign Language Press, 1964), p. 35.57 Hoffman, The Gramscian Challenge, p. 178.58 See M. Johnstone, Socialism, Democracy and the One-Party System,

Marxism Today, August, September, and November 1970, pp. 242250; 281287; 349356. The quote was taken from p. 352.59 Topornin and Machulsky, Socialism and Democracy, p. 30.60 Nikolai I. Bukharin,Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology (Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press, 1969), p. 310.61 Bukharin, The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period(London: Rout-ledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 48, Bukharins emphasis.62 Bukharin, The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period, p. 49.63 Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,1961), p. 170.64 This view is shared by Miliband. See his Marxism and Politics, p. 143.65 Cited in Thornton Anderson, Masters of Russian Marxism (New York:Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963), p. 232.66 See Bruce Franklin, ed., The Essential Stalin: Major Theoretical Writings,195052 (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1972), p. 127.67 See Ibid., and Stalin, The Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U.(B) in Works, vol.12 (Moscow, 1955), pp. 3538.68 See, for instance, Henri Chambre, From Karl Marx to Mao Tsetung: A System-atic Survey of Marxism-Leninism (New York: P. J. Kennedy & Sons, 1963),pp. 141142.69 Donald C. Hodges, The Bureaucratization of Socialism (Amherst: Universityof Massachusetts Press, 1981), pp. 89.70 Marcuse, Soviet Marxism, p. 15.71 Timothy McCarthy,Marx and the Proletariat: A Study in Social Theory (West-port: Greenwood Press, 1978), p. 70.72 Daniel Bell, The Once and Future Marx, American Journal of Sociology,Vol. 83, No. 1 (July 1977), p. 189.73 Eugene Kamenka, The Many Faces of Marx, Times Literary Supplement,November 19, 1976, p. 1442.

Department of GovernmentUniversity of Texas

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