The dictatorship of the proletariat from Plekhanov to Lenin

Abstract

Among Hal Draper's many contributions to our understanding of Karl Marx's theory of revolution, one of the most important was his detailed study of the meaning of the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the Marxist tradition. Draper persuasively demonstrated that for Marx this phrase did not have the antidemocratic connotations it acquired in the twentieth century. "For Marx and Engels, from beginning to end of their careers and without any exception, 'dictatorship of the proletariat' meant nothing more and nothing less than 'rule of the proletariat,' the 'conquest of political power' by the working class, the establishment of a workers' state in the first postrevolutionary period." The slogan "did not refer to particular characteristics, methods, or institutions of pro letarian rule" ? to a type of government ? but merely indicated the class content of the future socialist state.1 For Marx and Engels, Draper argued, the dictatorship of the proletariat did not imply an authoritarian restriction of democracy. After Marx's death that phrase acquired a different connotation, and in a 1987 work ? The "Dictatorship of the Prol?tariat" from Marx to Lenin ? Draper traced the transformation of Marx's terminology into a codeword for despotic one-party rule. He argued that the Russian Social-Democrat G. V. Plekhanov "was the begetter, fons et origo, of the career of 'dictatorship of the proletariat' in the socialist movement," and that he strongly influenced the interpretation adopted by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.2 Plekhanov used the phrase more frequently than any other Social-Democrat at the end of the nineteenth century and was the first to include it in an official party program, the one adopted by the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (RSDRP) at the Second Congress in 1903. What is more, Draper argued, Plekhanov "explicitly conferred] an antidemocratic content on the 'dictatorship of the pro