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What is the Dictatorship of the Proletariat?
The fundamental difference between reformists and centrists of all varieties on the one hand, and revolutionary Marxists, i.e., Bolshevik-Leninists, on the other regarding the conquest of state power, the need for a socialist revolution, the nature of the proletarian state, and the meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat does not lie in defense of a multiparty system by the former and a one-party system by the latter. Nor does it lie in defense of unrestricted democratic freedoms by the former and defense of severe restriction, or even suppression, of democratic freedoms by the latter. Any attempt to identify the difference between reformists and revolutionists primarily in this way distorts the basic lessons of three~quarters of a century of historical experiences with revolutions and counterrevolutions and objectively represents a grave concession to reformism itself.
The fundamental differences between reformists and revolutionary Marxists on the key issue of state power consist of:
a. The clear recognition by revolutionary Marxists of the class nature of all states and of the state apparatus as an instrument for maintaining class rule.
b. The illusion upheld by the reformists that "democracy" or "democratic state institutions" stand above classes and the class struggle.
c. The clear recognition by revolutionary Marxists that the state apparatus and state institutions of even the most democratic bourgeois state serve to uphold the power and rule of the capitalist class and cannot be instruments with which to overthrow that rule and transfer power from the capitalist class to the working class.
d. The clear recognition by revolutionary Marxists, flowing from these considerations, that the conquest of power by the working class requires the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus, in the first place of the repressive apparatus of the bourgeoisie.
e. The necessary conclusion drawn by revolutionary Marxists as a consequence: that the working class can exercise state power only within the framework of state institutions of a type different from those of the bourgeois state, state institutions arising out of' sovereign and democratically elected and centralized workers councils (soviets), with the fundamental characteristics outlined by Lenin in State and Revolution - the election of all functionaries, judges, leaders of the workers or workers and peasants militias, and all delegates representing the toilers in state institutions; regular rotation of elected officials; restriction of their income to that of skilled workers; the right to recall them at any time; parallel exercise of legislative and executive power by soviet-type institutions; radical reduction of the number of permanent functionaries and greater and greater transfer of administrative functions to bodies run by the toilers.
In other words, a qualitative growth of direct democracy as contrasted to indirect, representative democracy. As Lenin said, the workers state is the first state in human history that upholds the rule of the majority of the population against exploitative and oppressed minorities. "Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officialdom, the chiefs of the standing army), the majority itself can directly fulfill all these functions, and the more the functions of a state power are performed by the people as a whole, the less need there is for the existence of this power." ("State and Revolution," Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp. 419-420) Thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat is nothing other than a workers democracy. It is in this sense that the dictatorship of the proletariat begins to wither away almost from its inception.
The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which summarizes all these points, is a basic part of the Marxist theory of the state, of the proletarian revolution, and of the process toward building a classless society. The word "dictatorship" has a concrete meaning in that context.' it is a mechanism for the disarmament and expropriation of the bourgeois class and the exercise of state power by the working class, a mechanism to prevent any reestablishment of private property in the means of production and thus any reintroduction of the exploitation of wage-earners by capitalists. But it in no way means dictatorial rule over the vast majority of people. The founding congress of the Communist International stated explicitly that "proletarian dictatorship is the forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, i.e., an insignificant minority of the population, the landowners and capitalists. It follows that proletarian dictatorship must inevitably entail not only a change in democratic forms and institutions, generally speaking, but precisely such a change as provides an unparalleled extension of the actual enjoyment of democracy by those oppressed by capitalism-the toiling classes. . . . all this implies and presents to the toiling classes, i.e., the vast majority of the population, greater practical opportunities for enjoying democratic rights and liberties than ever existed before, even approximately, in the best and the most democratic bourgeois republics." ("Theses and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," Lenin, Collected Works, vol.28, pp.464.465)
Against the now avowedly programmatic revisionism of many Communist parties and centrist formations, the Fourth International defends these classical concepts of Marx and Lenin. A socialist society is not possible without the collective ownership of the means of production and the social surplus product, economic planning and administration by the working class as a whole through democratically centralized workers councils, i.e., planned self-rnanagement by the toilers. No such socialization is possible unless the capitalists are economically and politically expropriated and state power is wielded by the working class.
Especially after the tragic Chilean experience, which confirmed so many previous lessons of history, the Kautskian reformist concept now defended by the so-called Eurocommunist parties, the Japanese CP, and several other CPs as well as centrist formations, according to which the labor movement can fully attain its goals within the framework of bourgeois-parliamentary institutions through reliance on parliamentary elections and gradual conquest of "positions of power" within these institutions, must be energetically opposed and denounced for what it is: a cover-up for abandonment of the struggle for the conquest of state power by the proletariat; a cover-up for abandonment of the struggle for the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, for abandonment of a policy of consistent defense of the class interests of the working class; a substitution of ever more systematic class collaboration with the bourgeoisie for the policy of consistent class struggle, and, flowing therefrom, a growing tendency to capitulate to the class interests of the bourgeoisie at moments of decisive economic, political, and social crisis. Far from reducing the costs of "social transformation" or from ensuring a peaceful, albeit slower, transition to socialism, this policy, if it should decisively determine the political attitude of the toilers in a period of unavoidable overall class confrontation, can only lead to bloody defeats and mass slaughters of the German, Spanish, and Chilean type.
From the Fourth Interntional's 1985 resolution "Socialist Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat".
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