How the Soviet Union Failed Karl Marx

The words "dictatorship of the proletariat" never appear in Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. But that doesn't stop the concept from being an important aspect to Marx's theory. While the actual words may not appear, the idea is there, a vague phantom haunting Marxism like Communism haunts Europe. The spectre of proletariat dictatorship is ambiguous, as unclear and obscure as the communist society that will follow it. Marx hardly devoted any words to it at all, except to explain its necessity for the emergence of an ideal classless society that was to come. This society, he thought, was inevitable, as history had been leading up to a revolution to end all revolutions. And his Manifesto was a call to action to be part of it.

According to Marx, the history of the world is defined and driven by class conflict. Throughout time one class has been oppressing another. In his time the ruling elite were the bourgeoisie, and those oppressed were the urban workers. Europe was in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, a turbulent time of machinery and invention, a time in which science was promising the business world greater wealth and progress. Marx, along with many other socialists, saw this time as both promising and dangerous; promising in the amount of wealth it gave to Europe, and dangerous in the distribution of that wealth. While factory owners and rich bourgeoisie lined their pockets with cash, factory workers were barely able to line their tables with food. The promising situations of the Industrial Revolution gave them but one option to keep alive: sell their labor for less than its worth, and do so in poor living and working conditions.

This alone was not enough for Marx to try to incite a revolution of his own. Conditions had to worsen and worsen, as capitalism matured, before anything could or should be done. As this would happen, more and more workers would realize the despair of their situations. Marx called this realization of the miseries of life class-consciousness. The dawn of class-consciousness would be gradual and slow, increasing only in small increments as the bourgeoisie gained greater and greater wealth. Capitalism, however propitious it was to factory owners, was flawed, believed Marx.

In creating a large working class the bourgeoisie unknowingly created their own nemesis. The less they paid them the more likely they were to revolt. The more oppressed they were the more likely they were to squash the system. Marx believed that workers were the key instruments to capitalistic society. Without them, the machines could not run and factories could not produce. So it was the workers, above all else, that made capitalism teeter vulnerably on the edge of ruin.

With these conditions in mind, Marx set out to incite the working class to revolt against their oppressors. Much inspired by the German philosopher Hegel, who believed history was the result of conflicting ideas, Marx saw not ideas driving history but class struggle. With a proletariat revolution, he saw an end to the cycle of revolutions that had defined history. The first step in the revolution, as he writes on page 104, is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class. Forming a majority of the population, they will seize control of the state. By abolishing private property and placing the means of production in the hands of the state, the workers will set up a dictatorship of the proletariat, which is needed to destroy capitalism, thus ending the rule of the bourgeoisie.1 When the workers initially take over, other classes will still exist in society.

Peasants, lumpens, aristocracy, and even some bourgeoisie will not cease to be the morning after revolution. But they will eventually die out, becoming workers themselves, and their classes will wither away. The state, too, will follow suit, having no purpose in a classless society. Because it dismantles stratified society in this way, the dictatorship of the proletariat is, therefore, a necessary stage in the journey to a classless society.

In Marx's ideas some see an inclination to totalitarian rule. And with a phrase like "dictatorship of the proletariat," it's hard not to think of Big Brother watching your every move. But by "dictatorship" Marx did not mean tyrannical rule. Instead, he meant the term as the Romans had meant it, a short period of rule of one group. According to Marx, capitalism had already established a bourgeoisie dictatorship because they ruled over the working class. In Rome, a dictatorship lasted six months. Although Marx never said in the Communist Manifesto how long a proletarian dictatorship might last after the revolution, it is assumed it would last only as long as needed. In other words, until classes ceased to exist. It's also important to note that in seizing power Marx writes that the workers will be winning "the battle of democracy." If anything, Marx favored majority rule of the workers, not totalitarianism but democracy. Hence, his idea of proletarian dictatorship means nothing more than rule of the working majority.

Had Marx stopped right there history probably would have turned out much different. But he didn't. This dictatorship, he said, may need to use terror and violence to keep power, especially if they seize power before the working class is in a majority. This very thing happened in Russia in 1917, when the Bolsheviks took control of the state and had to resort to terror to keep their power. These Russian Marxists, led by Lenin and Leon Trotsky, encouraged the idea of permanent revolution, that a bourgeoisie revolution could quickly be followed by a revolution of the proletariat even if the working class was not yet a majority. They could slip in behind the bourgeoisie and then rely on international revolutions across Europe to aid them in keeping power. But this didn't happen, and Russia became a country not ruled by even a working class minority, but a totalitarian dictator in Josef Stalin.

The dictatorship of the proletariat became a dictatorship, all right, but of the modern sort. As Lindemann points out on pages 203-4, the revolution in 1917 was more of a Bolshevik victory than it was a victory for the soviets, more similar to an anarchist revolution than it was to a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was as Taylor said in his Introduction. After a revolution, a few men will emerge as the leaders of a state, and the rest will let them. The Bolsheviks claimed to know what the proletariat wanted only because they said they did. Russia is an example of a revolution that led not to a dictatorship of the proletariat, but to a dictatorship of the Bolsheviks. While they claimed they were speaking for the proletariat and being true to Marxism, they really were not. They had their own interests in keeping power, just like how Marx had described the bourgeoisie earlier in history. As a result, an ideal communist society did not develop in Russia.

A better blueprint for a dictatorship of the proletariat is the Paris Commune of 1871, which turned out very different than Socialist Russia. It was brief and successful in saving many lives, as food and resources were shared with everyone during a German blockade. Marx described it as an historic example of working class rule. But many in Paris were not Marxists, nor were they socialists. They were, however, in dire need of social justice in order to survive their conditions. So much can be argued on whether or not they were models of Marxism. The answer is as ambiguous as Marx when he describes the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The world has not yet had a dictatorship of the proletariat true to Marxist theory. Perhaps it never will. Marx mentioned its necessity and suggested applicable measures for the state to take, but they are easier said than done. About whether or not a dictatorship should use terror to keep power, Marx was ambiguous, granting the Russian Marxists a small hole with which to terrorize the world. But however ambiguous the concept of proletarian dictatorship is, its significance to Marxism is definitely certain. The ideal state of communism, Marx's final goal for the world, cannot exist without it.