Consolidating the Dictatorship

Abstract

The term “dictatorship of the proletariat”1 applied by the Bolsheviks to the regime established by them in Russia after the October revolution, carried no specific constitutional implications. It defined the ruling class, but was neutral about the form of government through which that class exercised power. There was no opposition in this sense between dictatorship and representative government: the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”, which was the antithesis of the dictatorship of the proletariat, was generally exercised through the medium of representative government. The emotional overtones of the word “dictatorship” as associated with the rule of the few or of one man were absent from the minds of Marxists who used the phrase. On the contrary, the dictatorship of the proletariat would be the first regime in history in which power would be exercised by the class constituting a majority of the population — a condition to be satisfied in Russia by drawing the mass of the peasantry into alliance with the industrial proletariat. Moreover, since the dictatorship of the proletariat was the rule of the vast majority, it would require, once the bourgeoisie was struck down, less compulsion to maintain it than any previous order of society.