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Walden or, Life in the Woods

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Henry David Thoreau

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“The form of coercion that the proletarian vanguard finds itself forced to exercise against counter-revolutionaries is of so fundamentally different a nature from the past forms of oppression, and it is compensated for by so advanced a degree of democracy for the formerly oppressed, that the word dictatorship clashes with that of proletariat.”

RevolutionSocialismDictatorship Of The Proletariat
Book:For a Libertarian Communism
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“For Lenin the premise was that a Marxist is someone “who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat”. This term dictatorship has been repeatedly seized on by the defenders of capitalism to insist “dictatorship” is what Marxists aim at all the time (and, of course there was Stalin wasn’t there?). But the term dictatorship when used by Marx stems from the material fact that this is really what the state is in any class society, whatever democratic institutions it clothes itself in. Thus the bourgeoisie today exercises a dictatorship over society by virtue of the parliamentary regime which gives an appearance of openness, but which in fact is easily dominated by those who control the means of production (and hence the means of production of ideas). In this sense the dictatorship of the proletariat would be no different. It would also be an instrument of class rule but against the bourgeoisie and their allies. The main difference would be that this new dictatorship means a vast extension of democracy “which, for the first time, becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags.”

SocialismCommunismMarxismLeninDictatorship Of The ProletariatLeft CommunismWorkers Democracy
Book:Russia: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 1905-1924. A View from the Communist Left
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“Bakunin perceived the authoritarianism inherent in a so-called dictatorship of the proletariat. The state, he insisted, however popular in form, would always serve as a weapon of exploitation and enslavement. He predicted the inevitable formation of a new "privileged minority" of savants and experts, whose superior knowledge would enable them to use the state as an instrument to rule over the uneducated manual laborers in the fields and factories. The citizens of the new people's state would be rudely awakened from their self-delusion to discover that they had become "the slaves, the playthings, and the victims of a new group of ambitious men." The only way the common people could escape this lamentable fate was to make the revolution themselves, total and universal, ruthless and chaotic, elemental and unrestrained. "It is necessary to abolish completely, in principle and in practice, everything that might be called political power," Bakunin concluded, "for so long as political power exists, there will always be rulers and ruled, masters and slaves, exploiter and exploited".”

RevolutionMarxismAnarchismStatism1967Dictatorship Of The ProletariatBakunin1905
Book:The Russian Anarchists
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“Finance capital, in its maturity, is the highest stage of the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the capitalist oligarchy. It is the climax of the dictatorship of the magnates of capital. At the same time it makes the dictatorship of the capitalist lords of one country increasingly incompatible with the capitalist interests of other countries, and the internal domination of capital increasingly irreconcilable with the interests of the mass of the people, exploited by finance capital but also summoned into battle against it. In the violent clash of these hostile interests the dictatorship of the magnates of capital will finally be transformed into the dictatorship of the proletariat. [p. 370]”

Dictatorship Of The ProletariatFinance Capital
Book:Finance Capital: A study in the latest phase of capitalist development
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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’.”

Dictatorship Of The Proletariat
Book:Socialist Planning
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“The dictatorship has important economic consequences. For one thing, it makes disasters more likely. Because feedback is suppressed by censorship and repression, it is much easier than would otherwise be the case to pursue policies which have disastrous consequences, such as the collectivisation of agriculture. Even when these policies lead to famine, the extent of the famine can be hidden by censorship and control over the movement of people. The leadership has an interest in hiding the extent of the famine so as not to undermine the image of the Glittering Future towards which the Party is supposedly leading society. It is not an accident that the worst famines of the twentieth century were in China and the USSR.”

Dictatorship Of The Proletariat
Book:Socialist Planning
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“There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another. This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical.”

AnarchismBolsheviksOctober Revolution
Book:My Disillusionment in Russia
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