First Published: The Call, Vol. 6, No. 32, August 22, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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For two decades, the revisionist Communist Party U.S.A. and its leaders have been attacking the Marxist- Leninist principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Striking this concept from their program, the modern revisionists claimed that it was “outmoded,” that the dictatorship of the proletariat “didn’t apply to the United States,” and that socialism should be brought to this country “through the constitution.”
Now they have suddenly rediscovered this concept. In the August 6 issue of the revisionist World magazine, Gus Hall, general secretary of the CPUSA, pretends to defend the dictatorship of the proletariat while at the same time attacking its real meaning. He says, for example, that the term “dictatorship” is a bourgeois term coined by “those who lose ... (their) privileges and power” under socialism.
But the dictatorship of the proletariat is no ruling class concept. On the contrary, Lenin pointed out that: “Only he is a Marxist who extends recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat ... This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.” (State and Revolution)
The dictatorship of the proletariat means very simply the rule of the working class over the capitalists. It is the form of state power that must be established when the working class overthrows the capitalist state in its fight for socialism. As Lenin put it, it is “the political rule of the working c1ass.” (State and Revolution)
When the CPUSA was taken over by the revisionists and followed the Soviet Union down the capitalist road, one of its first tasks was to launch an all-out attack on Lenin’s teachings on the dictatorship of the proletariat. To make themselves more legitimate in the eyes of the ruling class, the revisionists called for an “anti-monopoly” government to be “elected to power.” In this way they at once preached a “peaceful” transition to socialism, while at the same time channeling the struggles of the people entirely into the capitalist electoral system.
In imperialist countries around the world, the revisionist parties promoted the strategy of “sharing power” with a section of the ruling class and preached the electoral path to socialism. All talk about the working class making revolution and smashing the capitalist state apparatus was forbidden.
In the Soviet Union, the revisionists claimed to have gone beyond the period in which the dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary to defend working-class rule. They came up with the theory of the “state of the whole people” in order to conceal their emergence as a new capitalist class within the Soviet state.
By denying the existence of class struggle within socialist society, Khrushchev and his successors weakened the vigilance of the working class and provided the new exploiters with a crucial ideological weapon.
But in the recent period, all the revisionist doubletalk about a “state of the whole people” in the USSR has fallen flat. Daily exposures of increasing repression as well as the people’s resistance have shown clearly that class struggle there has not died out, but is intensifying. Even the revisionists in a number of European countries have been forced to put some distance between themselves and the fascist tyranny in the USSR in order to maintain their legitimacy in the electoral arena.
Because of worldwide condemnation of Soviet fascist rule – including “criticism” from the Eurocommunists – the Soviet bosses have launched a propaganda blitz to cover up their crimes. Their resurrection of the phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat,” using their loyal spokesmen like Gus Hall, is a key part of this campaign. Hall’s job is to use the rhetoric of Leninism to throw the honest critics of social-imperialism off the track.
Still promoting the “state of the whole people,” the revisionists are trying to explain away the huge police state apparatus in the USSR by calling it the “people’s state” suppressing the “bourgeoisie.” In fact, it is just the opposite. Hall’s article, for example, claims that all the talk about lack of “human rights” in the USSR is simply a restatement of the “big lie” of anti-communism that was used against the socialist USSR in years past. He tries to make us believe that the mental hospitals are filled only with “overthrown capitalists,” that the USSR is the “freest of democracies” and that the new Soviet constitution “breaks new ground in the development of a new and higher democracy, in both content and structure. ”
Look who is ’spreading the “big lie” now! Unlike Lenin’s time in the USSR, when the Soviet government firmly relied on the workers and peasants themselves to rule the country, today the Soviet workers and peasants are enslaved hired laborers, just as they are in the U.S. Instead of democracy for the workers and dictatorship over the bosses, there is dictatorship over the workers and “freedom” for the ruling elite.
Throughout the country, KGB agents infest the land and repressive laws are passed one after another. Common people are put in jail on false charges. Copying the old czars’ great-Russian chauvinism, the Soviet rulers have declared in the press that Russia is the “guiding nation” and that it is necessary to “wipe out national boundaries” and to create “one nation” and “one language.”
This is simply an attempt’ to carry out national oppression against the minorities and forcibly assimilate them. The tens of thousands of Jews fleeing the USSR some 60 years after the socialist revolution is an indication that the Soviet Union has once again become the “prison house of nations” as the old empire was.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), forged under Lenin’s leadership to liberate the oppressed peoples, has been turned into the Use of Spies and Systematic Repression (USSR) against the people. The dictatorship of the proletariat has been smashed and turned back to the dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie. It is only because this realization is becoming clearer to millions of people around the world and at home that the revisionists are clamoring about the dictatorship of the proletariat once again.
But even for this reactionary end, the term still sticks in Hall’s throat. In his article, Hall states: “The concept contained in the phrase dictatorship of the proletariat remains a necessary feature ... ” (our emphasis). ln other words, Hall still opposes using the phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat” itself.
Of course Hall won’t go so far, as to restore the term dictatorship of the proletariat to the CPUSA’s revisionist program. He is afraid the workers might read it and get the wrong idea that they are supposed to make revolution and seize political power.
What Hall’s article does include from the CPUSA’s 1970 Program is equally revealing. “Of course, we advocate social change by peaceful means, through political institutions and people’s organizations ... ” he quotes the program reassuringly. But to save himself some embarrassment, he inserts the “ ... ” in his article to substitute for the words “within the American constitutional frame work,” which can be found in the program. It would not serve the present needs of his rediscovery of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” to nakedly expose his timeless faith in the constitution of the bourgeoisie.
In place of the term “dictatorship of the proletariat,” says Hall, “most revolutionary parties use other terms which are more in tune with the experiences of the masses in the worldwide struggle for democracy and social progress.”
Well, we have news for Mr. Hall. The real Marxist-Leninist parties have never and will never abandon the phrase or the content of the dictatorship of the proletariat, because it is exactly in tune with the needs and experiences of the masses throughout the world.
These experiences are real and living ones and can be witnessed today in the People’s Republic of China and other socialist countries where the dictatorship of the proletariat is proudly displayed. It is also the cornerstone of the Program of the real Marxist-Leninist Party in the U.S., the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist).
Long Live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!
Long Live Marxism-Leninism!