this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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There is a stage in the transition to communism called 'the oppression of the proletariat' aka 'dictatorship'. Supposedly it should be a temporary stage before transitioning into a more decentralized type of government. As far as I am aware, not any communist revolution got beyond the dictatorship stage as absolute power corrupts.
Specifically "dictatorship of the proletariat", which was basically an 1800s gothic way to say "direct democracy for workers". Marx is somewhat infamous for the way he makes his ideas sound scarier than they are
And to clarify, most revolutions fail or adopt bureaucracy primarily to defend themselves from outside, capitalist influence, power corruption probably plays a part too but state power used by socialists is actually part of the plot
Very informative. I read the summarised work here that someone send me. And I have missed that nuance.
I also made a mistake and said "direct democracy for poor people" instead of "workers" so I went and edited that. whoops
The vast majority of (Let's use Vietnam as an example) is proletariat. So the vast majority of people are dictating terms to a small subset with different class interests. It's nothing like the dictatorship in, let's say the Netherlands, where a small group of capitalists dictate terms to the large body of proletariat, and the bourgeois political apparatus mediates in favour of bourgeoisie class interests. There's no corruption taking place, just the necessities of market economics.
This dictatorship will naturally "dissolve" when there are no more other classes (bourgeoisie et all) to oppress, since it will no longer serve the proletariat's interests.