The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the Crux of Marxism

(Part one of an upcoming series on the dictatorship of the proletariat) There’s alot of misinformation about the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state power and the "political rule of the proletariat." And this is to be expected, for as V.I. Lenin, outstanding director of Russia’s proletarian revolution, beautifully said: "there can be no “impartial” social science in a society based on class struggle. In one way or another, all official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery." Instead of condemning the capitalist system which breeds economic crisis, unemployment and war, bourgeois propaganda misrepresents the proletarian dictatorship as "the negation of democracy, as the dictatorship of individual groups or persons, as ’totalitarianism, ’ as political tyranny." The enemies of the working class slander the leading vanguard role of the Marxist-Leninist Party with the capitalist lie that "proletarian dictatorship (means) the dictatorship of the Party." What garbage! "The state is (and always has been), " Lenin pointed out, "a special organization of force, it is the organization of violence for the suppression of some class." In a class society, Lenin taught, "we can only speak of class democracy." The proletarian dictatorship suppresses the bourgeoisie and creates proletarian democracy. "Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery."(Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917; Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism; Otto Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow; Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917; Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918)


(Lenin eloquently wrote that a "dictatorship of the proletariat will not work except through the Communist Party." Working People's State Power can take diverse forms but it's political leader is a CP.)
Karl Marx spoke boldly: "between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." But revisionism, swimming with the tide of bourgeois ideology and falsifying Marxism-Leninism, opposes proletarian dictatorship. "By revisionism, Lenin understood an opportunist trend alien to Marxism and socialism that existed within the revolutionary party of the working class and which, under the guise of Marxism, actually carried out a revision of the fundamental tenets of Marxist theory, replacing the basic principles of that theory by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas." In other words, under the cover of Marxist terminology and a claim to be "creatively" developing Marxism, revisionism rips out the revolutionary essence and guts of Marxism-Leninism! Gus Hall, epic Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States and one of the founders of the United Steelworkers union (USWA) once said that "a classical feature of revisionism is its rejection of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat." Gus Hall hit the nail on the head. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the central issue that distinguishes Marxist-Leninists from reformists and revisionists. V.I. Lenin put it bluntly: "only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested." The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state power and the "political rule of the proletariat, " is the crux of Marxism because, as Lenin proclaimed, socialism can’t be built and "the proletariat cannot achieve victory without breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, without forcibly suppressing its enemies." (Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875; Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow; Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers, New York; Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917; Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918)

Peruse Part Five, Chapter 21 in Otto Kuusinen's Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism : "Dictatorship of the Proletariat & Proletarian Democracy."