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“The political system in which the traditional model is embedded is a dictatorship, that is, a system in which the ruling group impose their will on society, and deal with opposition (real and imaginary) by repression (i.e. arrest, deportation, imprisonment, execution). This dictatorship was originally known as the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. This formula expressed the idea that it was a dictatorship of the proletariat, by the proletariat, for the proletariat. Although the formula ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ was abandoned in the USSR under Khrushchev, along with the Stalinist terror which it had been used to legitimate, it was retained elsewhere. For example, in China it is still orthodox. A ‘people’s democratic dictatorship’ is the officially favoured description of the political system in China, but in essence this is the same as the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.” — Michael Ellman