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 fundamental concepts of Marxism have been used and abused to t their advocates purposes. More specically, the interpretation of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat has been subject to a dual development. First, the dictatorship 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 smaller segment of society. This paper seeks to analyze and elucidate this much disputed and frequently misunderstood Marxist concept. In the rst 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 rst generation Marxist thinkers and practitioners like Engels, Lenin, Kautsky, Bukharin, and Stalin. Following the summary of my ndings I attempt to formulate some meaningful generalizations about the usage of 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 ow, and all things change, opined Lenin in 1905. If anything, Marxist thought has amply conrmed 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 innitely 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 t their advocates purposes. More specically, the interpretation of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat (die Diktatur des Proletariats) 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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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 elucidate this 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 rst generation Marxist thinkers like Engels, Lenin, Kautsky, Bukharin, and Stalin. The concluding section summarizes my ndings and attempts to formulate some meaningful generalizations about the usage of the concept by Marxist thinkers. The dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist thought was predicated 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 their livelihood. 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 concord among Marxists on these and other similarly crucial practical and 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, rst 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 dened. The intrinsic signicance of a precise denition of the proletariat has been recognized by many sociologists. Nevertheless, no widely accepted meaning has been agreed upon for an adequate denition must incorporate the notions of class-consciousness, productive physical labor,

VOLATILE MARXIAN CONCEPT OF THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT

and industrial employment. In the context of the materialist concept of politics it is clear why the boundary problem is considered to be a crucial one. It involves political questions of the greatest importance 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 stratication. Therefore, he would include white-collar workers in the working class while the French and other communist parties have traditionally denied the proletarian character of such employees.4 For two reasons, at the center of the debate on the membership in or composition of the proletariat lies the notion of productive labor as an important clue to the denition of the proletariat. First, it is instrumental in establishing a rigorous connection between Marxs writings on value and exploitation and the concept of social class. Second, free labor is, for Marx, the hallmark of an authentic existence. Since Marx and Engels never provided an unambiguous denition 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 ancient Rome, 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 parliamentary republic, representative rule, constitutional forms, etc. for he
thought that in Russia more than anywhere else a strong dictatorial government that would be exclusively concerned with elevating and educating the popular masses 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 content but without the freedom of printing : : : 6
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These views demonstrate clearly that the denition regarding the concepts of the proletariat (or working class) and dictatorship have been interpreted as variedly as the individuals who set out to dene 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 up with particular historical phases of the development of production; 2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.7

The broad outlines of Marxs ideas are discernible from this wellknown 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 persistent 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 concept 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 rst used the term the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1850. 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 period or 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 signicance 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, in none 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 taken place 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 denite ideas about the future.15 Thirdly, Marxs accounts of the Commune leave no doubt that he thought it should have developed a more clearsighted and less ambiguously dened 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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Although Marx had never dened 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 during the 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 transition period. The second meaning, however, identies 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 proletariat 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 class struggle.20 Yet others consider this period to extend from the proletarian revolution to the advent of socialism, admittedly, a momentous difference.21 Likewise, no scholarly agreement has been reached on the question of whether Marx regarded political or economic elements to be the most important for dening the transition to socialism. For Lovell, the central aspect of transition in Marxs thought was its fostering 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 function of the period of transition for Marx was clearly twofold. On the one hand, the mission of the proletarian dictatorship was to suppress 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 the notion 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 might be 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 concomitant of the class struggle : : : on the one hand, and the utopia of a classless society in which all instruments of coercion would wither away, on the other.25

Marx himself, however, failed to dene 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 consciousness neither necessarily depended upon nor expressed itself in open civil warfare; violence belonged neither to the objective nor to the subjective conditions of the revolution (although it was Marxs and Engelss conviction that the ruling classes could 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 behalf of 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 implementing the dictatorship provided an unusually large margin of

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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 the term 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 and a description of the political power itself : : : it is, in fact, the nature of the political power which it describes which guarantees its class character.30
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It seems clear, then, that Marx used the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat rather sparsely and ambiguously in his writings. Moreover, when he did employ the term, he failed to elaborate on specic aspects of its denotation. As we will see, these shortcomings were to have dire consequences in the usage of the term by the rst 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 misunderstanding 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 identied the Commune as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Engelss error, however, should be evaluated in the specic 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 justiable 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 inuenced by the anarchist vision of a stateless future. The only modication 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 proletariat 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 centered on 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 gure in the Marxist misunderstanding of Marxism [Marx] was unjust to his ideas in a few passages; Engels did much more consistent harm to his mentors theory although he sometimes was its shrewdest interpreter.33
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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 specic 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 governance. 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. Consent 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 distinguished from democracy chiey by its lack of universal suffrage and popular participation in politics. Voting rights had become increasingly 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 dictatorship of the proletariat had quite different connotations than for Marx, partly because the socio-political milieu of his time was radically 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 rst two decades of the twentieth century was a period of often brilliant intellectual debate among the various factions of the left, concerning 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 ideological 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 form incompatible 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 and just after the Bolshevik Revolution.41 In fact, J rgen Habermas, supu 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 characteristic 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 realized, 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 dictatorship of an ever smaller minority.44 Lenins ideas, however, were more concisely formulated than those of Marx. For him, the party was completely identied 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 organized in such a way as to enable the whole class to exercise direct leadership 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 the proletariat, the dictatorship of the advanced class, which raises to a new democracy and to independent participation in the administration of the state tens upon tens of millions of working people, who by their own experience learn to regard the disciplined and class conscious vanguard of the proletariat as their most reliable leader.48
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This passage illustrates well Lenins interpretation of the dictatorship 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 this ground, since this is the party which in the course of decades has won for itself the 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 dictatorship with violence: when we speak of dictatorship we mean the employment of coercion specically 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 ock that serves as a support for those, who having severed all ties with the masses, carry out their own policy and build up industry without regard to our opinions and creative abilities under the reliable cover of the Party label?54

What Kollontay perceived was that the dictatorship of the proletariat 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 chiey coercion, violence is an indispensable attribute of this concept.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 violence where imperialism existed. In discussing democracy under bourgeois rule, Lenin pointed out that the bourgeoisie would only allow a democracy : : : within a certain limit, without detriment to its rule. Should the working class go beyond this limit, the bourgeoisie would suppress it with open violence. Therefore, counterrevolutionary 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 dictatorship 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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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 production and to organize new relations in the sphere of social economics, the dictatorial infringement of the rights of private property.61

For Bukharin, then, the foremost attribute of the Soviet power is that it 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 ame, so the state, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of state, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every 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 instrument of 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 intensied.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 the bourgeoisie : : : The dictatorship of the proletariat is a revolutionary power based on the use of force against the bourgeoisie : : : for the proletarian state is a machine for 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 difference 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 rst fty 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 interpretation of the Marxian notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat had changed in the rst 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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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 not dissociate himself from the possibility of violence in order to suppress 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 indiscriminate 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 conditions 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, for Lenin revolution breaks out where the link is weaker while Marx expected the arrival of proletarian revolution in an advanced industrial 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 transition period 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 nds 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 between the 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 that was 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 nd him, at one time or another, espousing (at different times) both sides of nearly all the polar opposites listed above, and one cannot explain that by using the word dialectical since that word explains everything.72
:::

Consequently, it is important to realize that one should not put all the blame for bending Marxs concepts only on those who purposefully 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 in Marxs 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, historical 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 Marxism show Marxism to be as complex and as much subject to historical change and tension as Christianity : : : The only serious way to analyze Marxist or socialist thinking may well be to give up the notion that there is a coherent doctrine called Marxism and socialism, that there is such thing as the Marxist or socialist idea or even the Marxist or socialist view of the world.73

Thus, it is difcult 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 justication. If there is any accurate denition of what Marxism is,

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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 capitalism 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 rst 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 the proletariat is only one of the many concepts that has been subjected to misuse and misinterpretation. In fact, it would be rather difcult to nd 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 surrounding historical, political, and socio-economic environment that inuenced 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 Political Critique of Marxist Conceptions of Politics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986), p. 2. 3 Nikos Poulantzas, The New Petty Bourgeoisie, in A. Hunt, ed., Class and Class 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 the Proletariat (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986), pp. 4647. 6 Mikhail Bakunin, The Confession of Mikhail Bakunin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 41, my emphasis. For an excellent recent examination of Bakunins thought, see Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits (Princeton: Princeton University 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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Richard N. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels: Classical Marxism 18501895 (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 and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, New Politics (1962), pp. 91104. 12 For an excellent examination of the evolution of Marxs thought on the state, see Hans Kelsen, Sozialismus und Staat: eine Untersuchung der politischen Theorie des Marxismus (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1965). 13 See Ralph Miliband, Marx and the State, Socialist Register (1965), pp. 278 296. 14 David McLellan, Marx, Engels and Lenin on Party and State, in Leslie Holmes, ed., The Withering Away of the State? Party and State Under Communism (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 Robin Blackburn, Marxism: Theory of the Proletarian Revolution, New Left Review, No. 97 (1976), p. 27. 17 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Works (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1952), Vol. II, p. 33. 18 See, David W. Lovell, From Marx to Lenin: An Evaluation of Marxs Responsibility 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 Left Books, 1977), p. 124. 21 On this point, see for instance, Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 185 188; Bruce Mazlish, The Meaning of Karl Marx (New York: Oxford University Press, 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: Random House, 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 and Schuster, 1976), p. 42. For other arguments along these lines, see The Marx

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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 dictatorship of the proletariat primarily from Engelss writings and the latters interpretation of Marx, rather than from the original source. One very likely reason for this was the fact that the body of work left behind by Engels tted into the Bolshevik ideology much more tightly than Marxs original dictums. For an illuminating study attempting to dissociate Marxism from its bastardized Soviet version, see Iring 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: Collier Books, 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 of Michigan 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 Publishing House, 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 rule by the masses themselves: dictatorship implied for him some sort of central authority. Nevertheless, he failed to elaborate on what shape this central authority might adopt or take. 45 Deol, Liberalism and Marxism, p. 76. 46 V. Chikvadze, The State Democracy and Legality in the USSR: Lenins Ideas Today (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 Government in Selected Works (New York: 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, in Collected 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 University Press, 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; 281 287; 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: Routledge & 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 Systematic Survey of Marxism-Leninism (New York: P. J. Kennedy & Sons, 1963), pp. 141142. 69 Donald C. Hodges, The Bureaucratization of Socialism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), pp. 89. 70 Marcuse, Soviet Marxism, p. 15. 71 Timothy McCarthy, Marx and the Proletariat: A Study in Social Theory (Westport: 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 Government University of Texas Austin, Texas 78712-1087 USA