Proletarian dictatorship

“ It is thus clear that the question itself of the necessity, the inevitability of a proletarian dictatorship for every capitalist country is connected with the question as to whether the resistance of the exploiters to their expropriation by Socialist society—or, more precisely, by society marching towards Socialism—is inevitable. ”

“ During the period of proletarian dictatorship it will become necessary to re-educate millions of peasants and small-owners of property; hundreds of thousands of employees, of officials, and of bourgeois intellectuals; it will become necessary to subject them all to the proletarian State and to proletarian leadership, to suppress and conquer in them their bourgeois habits and traditions. ”

“ Not only the "state aid" but the very revolutionary struggle for the seizure of power in the capitalist countries renders the consolidation of the proletarian dictatorship possible and the development of socialism in the existing Soviet Republics. ”

“ That is why, in the making of revolution and the forming of a communist order, the iron rule, of a proletarian dictatorship is indispensable.
It should be clear to everyone that, during the transition period, the working class will have to (and must do so now) strain all its energy in order to emerge victorious in the battle with its numerous enemies, and that no other organisation can defeat the enemies of the working class except one that embraces the working class and the poorer peasantry of the whole country. ”

“ Proletarian dictatorship is a recognition of the necessity for a revolutionary state to coerce and suppress the bourgeoisie; it is equally a recognition of the fact that, in the Communist reconstruction of society, the proletariat as a class alone counts. . . . The old machinery of the state cannot be used by the revolutionary proletariat. It must be destroyed. The proletariat creates a new state, based directly upon the industrially organized producers, upon the industrial unions or Soviets, or a combination of both. ”

“ Its basic position is that an objective basis is lacking at the present moment for proletarian dictatorship, in view of the fact that the majority of the town workers are in favor of the Independents. ”

“ In order further to gain the sympathy of the proletarian masses in favor of Communism, a state of things under which political freedom can be fully utilized and under which bourgeois democracy could in no case manifest itself as a dictatorship of capital—such a state of things is of great importance from the point of view of the development of proletarian dictatorship. ”

“ They are just as anxious to suppress the fact that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie of one class, the proletariat, and that, after the "transition stages" of the revolution will follow the "transition stages" of the general withering away of the proletarian State. ”

“ The struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie has its own logic; it must become more and more acute and bring things to a climax long before the time when concentration of production has become predominant in economic life. It is evident, further, that the growth of the political consciousness of the proletariat is closely related with its numerical strength; proletarian dictatorship presupposes great numbers of workingmen, strong enough to overcome the resistance of the bourgeois counter-revolution. ”

“ The peasants can not get the land except through immediate seizure, the abolition of private ownership, and the nationalization of the banks and lands. This procedure, however, emphasized the Bolsheviki, means a relentless struggle against capital and the bourgeoisie, the creation of a revolutionary proletarian dictatorship representing exclusively the interests of the workers and pauperized peasants. ”

“ If a member of the proletariat is so mad that he refuses or hesitates to act his part in this scheme, then those who have been called by the force of events to assume a dictatorship on his behalf are entitled to destroy him as an unconscious enemy to himself and his class. ”

“ dictatorship does not necessarily mean the abolition of democracy for the class that exercises the dictatorship over other classes; but it does mean the abolition (or very material restriction, which is also a form of abolition) of democracy for the class over which, or against which, the dictatorship is exercised. ”

“ From this it follows that, in general, the dictatorship of the proletariat must bring with it not only an inevitable alteration of democratic forms, and institutions, but such an alteration as will yield a hitherto unknown extension of the actual application of democracy among those who are enslaved by capitalism, among the working classes. ”

“ Now, remember, as I pointed out in the first place this hatred is against a good many of these people in the cities, [107] and people like the peasants who had land, who belonged to the proletariat. But because they did not agree, they call them bourgeoisie. You can see that they are fighting parts of the very class for whom they say they are trying to establish a dictatorship. They are not trying to put the proletariat in power, but the most demoralized elements of that class, which represents, gentlemen, a very small per cent. ”

“ But the party of the communist-bolsheviks, on the contrary, holds that dictatorship of the workers is essential at the present moment, and that there can be no talk whatever of any transfer of government. The bourgeoisie must be deprived of every possibility of deceiving the people. ”