British Marxist economist Maurice Dobb throws his pen into the ring in the discussion and definition of the proletarian dictatorship.

‘The Way Out of the Capitalist Mire’ by Maurice Dobb from Truth (Duluth). Vol. 6 No. 10. March 10, 1922.

What, then, is the Communist’s method, what is his aim? He asserts that the person who conceives of the growth of Capitalism into Socialism as an “organic” growth, the one “broadening out” into the other, as the “collective will” of the community expressed in the State slowly and gradually changes, is blind to the true nature of the present system. He is supposing an organic solidarity in society which does not exist. He is neglecting the obvious fact–i.e., obvious to the class-conscious proletarian of the class struggle. Since there are distinct and antithetical “wills” in society, the one directed to the preservation at all costs of the “coercive association” of labour and the dominance of the bourgeoisie, the other directed at all costs, to the ending of the bourgeoisie, and with it the dissolution of the “coercive association.”

Now, if, as has been already asserted, the capitalist class obtain their power to control society from their possession of wealth, i.e., their ownership of industry and land, then, that power can only be ended and transferred to the hands of the working class by the transference of land and industry from the hands of the comparatively few capitalists to the proletariat organised as a class has been stated above, this cannot be done through Parliament, it must be done by direct proletarian action. And the instrument by which the proletariat can do this, and carry on the control of society, must be by special institutions which represent the masses as producers and distributors of wealth. These in Russia were called Soviets. It is the fact that capitalist control of society is based on force that necessitates the use of force by the proletariat to dispossess them. The force used by the Capitalist Dictatorship to buttress its power will be the measure of the force necessary to defeat it. The Communist method does not involve any more force. than the I.L.P. method would, supposing it to be anything than futile. Force is the attribute of any attaining to power by whatever method, if there is opposition to its attainment. Circumstances impose the necessity of force, not any particular method.

PREVENT COUNTER-REVOLUTIONS

What, then, of the morrow of the Revolution? What further necessity is there for restriction of freedom? Why should not the millenium be ushered in at once? These are questions often put by anti-Communists. The Communist replies thus. The control of industry, and hence of society, having passed from the directing will of the bourgeoisie to the directing will of the proletariat, a move has been made towards the removal of class antagonisms by the removal of the economic cause producing them–private ownership of industry with its necessary corollary–the subjection of the non-owning class. But this tendency can only be maintained if the will of the proletariat continues to direct and dominate. Just as previously the bourgeoisie found it necessary to use the State to suppress the “egoism” of the proletariat, whose interference in the direction of affairs would have challenged the whole basis of capitalist society: so after the revolution the proletariat must use the State to suppress the “egoism” or “will” of the bourgeoisie, whose natural aim is to reverse the move towards Communism and to restore their own privileges. Since the two egoisms are antithetical there must be a struggle between them. One must be dominant to the subjection of the other. This is the meaning of the Proletarian Dictatorship of the Proletarian State. It is a Dictatorship in the sense that the State has always been in history the organ of class-power.

DICTATORSHIP TEMPORARY

Where, then, the middle-class Socialist will ask, is there any Improvement on the present system? What guarantee is there that this Dictatorship will not be perpetual and not merely temporal? The Communist will reply that this question arises from loose! thinking; the questioner is blinded by the appearance of things on the surface to the nature of underlying causes. The egoism of the bourgeoisie arises from a particular type of mind, and this type of mind will not disappear in a night. So long as this type of mind persists, therefore, the Proletarian State must exercise its dictatorship to prevent this type of mind from interfering in the control of affairs. Otherwise all might well be confusion and vacillation from one extreme to the other. But how did this bourgeois type of mind originate in the first place? It originated as the result of a certain social environment, which in its turn depended upon a certain relation the relation of ownership–to the economic environment. With the ending of private ownership this particular economic relationship ceases; and with it gradually ceases the creation of a bourgeois type of mind. Instead the new environment, which is gradually being reconstructed in the direction of Communism; creates a type of mind that is neither proletarian nor bourgeois, but progressively more communist, having a common collective will the efficiency of the new form of production. It is this new type of mind, which makes the free association of labour and complete Communism possible. As class differences disappear with the rising generation reared in the new environment, and the bourgeois type of mind ceases to oppose a contrary egoism to the establishment of Communism, so will the need for Dictatorship disappear, and there being nothing over which this dictatorship is to be exercised there will automatically cease to be any dictatorship. This is what Engel’s meant when he spoke about the State “withering away.”

Moreover, the complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie will not take place all at once. The Initial stages will have been accomplished by the seizure of industry by the workers. But there will still remain much to be done in the way of vesting the means of production in

the community. Moreover, the time immediately following the Revolution is likely to be full of bourgeois plots and “sabotage,” and attempted counter-revolutionary risings. The State must be armed with powers to suppress these, or the result will be chaos. Nor should we overlook the influence of the world revolutionary situation. A proletarian Dictatorship must mould its policy in accordance with the power, not of the home capitalist class, but of the imperialist propertied interests of the world.

GUARANTEE OF ULTIMATE FREEDOM

But what guarantee is there that the leaders of the proletariat, in whom this supreme power is temporarily vested, will not continue to act as dictators permanently, as Bertrand Russell prophecies? Brailsford gives a partial answer in the case of Russia, when he says because they are educating the people. The complete answer is that the leaders have no power except that which they derive from the proletariat, and this is meant in a real and not merely a legal sense. Even supposing them not to be elected by the workers through the Soviets, they only have power In so far as they express the collective will of the proletariat. What other power, the Communist will ask in reply, have they? They are not owners of private accumulations of wealth, which can enable them to enslave non-owners, as under the property system. Their psychology is proletarian, and therefore is not likely to produce anti-proletarian desires in the mass of them; for as we have already seen, the “herd-complex” is strong. (The case of the Trade Union leader is no analogy, in that it is bourgeois environment and contact with bourgeois minds which infects him,) The leaders would have to form a separate caste apart for a generation before in any sense there would be the likelihood of them developing into a separate class with fundamental desires different to those of the masses. But even supposing the impossible, that all persons in State positions concocted a plot to amass wealth to themselves and exploit the rest of the community; the proletariat, their class-consciousness now having been fully organised by the Revolution, would have less difficulty in removing them than they had in removing the capitalists. As a matter of fact, long before the leaders amassed sufficient economic power in their hands so as to make them personal dictators, the proletariat would have displaced them as easily as to-day society removes a burglary-gang. They would do this the first time the leaders acted seriously contrary to their collective egoism. As a matter of fact in Russia there is abundant proof that with the lightening of the stress of civil war and Imperialist invasion the restrictions are being everywhere relaxed, and non-party representatives are more and more being admitted into the administration.

There seems little fear, therefore, that the Dictatorship, which is temporarily exercised over the bourgeoisie, will fall to be purely transitional. The very seeds sown by this Dictatorship, in the shape of economic changes, will finally reach that system where the “government of men” will be “replaced by the administration of things.” Then mankind will be ready for a further stage of evolution on a higher plane. Such is the Communist’s assertion of the inevitability of his ultimate ideal.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

To dissipate a misapprehension on one or two Important questions, it is necessary to correct a somewhat common misunderstanding. The first can be corrected by quoting a definition.

Dictatorship: an extraordinary power for a particular purpose. Proletariat: the workers regarded as in conflict with the capitalist therefore containing potentially all workers including the managerial, but actually according to their alignment in the class struggle.”

This definition shows that “Proletariat” does not only include manual workers as is so often supposed. It merely happens that by virtue of their economic position the manual workers are the first to become class-conscious as a rule. In Russia doctors and teachers are equally represented in the Soviets with factory workers. The Manifesto of the Third (Moscow) Communist International leaves no doubt on this point. It says:

“All qualified technicians and specialists are to be made use of, provided that…they are capable of adapting themselves, not to the service of capital, but to the new system of production. Far from oppressing them the proletariat will make it possible for the first time for them to develop intensive creative work. The Proletarian Dictatorship with their co-operation will reverse the separation of physical and mental work, which capitalism has developed, and thus will Science and Labour be unified.”

MASS ACTION NOT MOB RULE

Secondly, the mass action of the proletariat does not mean mob rule; it does not mean the blind violence of the slum proletariat. “The slum proletariat,” says Postgate, “may make a riot but not a revolution…The ideals on which Socialism rests have no meaning for a degraded mind.” Lenin has said that the Revolutionary Dictatorship must as sternly repress the looting and disorder of the hooligan element as it represses the intrigues of the bourgeoisie. The mass action of the proletariat means the disciplined action of the organised workers, led by Communist mass fighters and assisted by all who have become imbued with proletarian ideology. The more disciplined the proletariat are through their revolutionary organisations, the more conscious and powerful they are, and the less destructive and the more peaceful will a revolution be. Hence the insistence of the Communist on organising now for such revolutionary crisis as may arise in the future, so that the proletariat shall not be “caught napping.”

In conclusion, the idealism of Communists is well expressed in the following fine passage in the Manifesto of the Third International:

“There would be no evil war, if the exploiters, who have carried mankind to the brink of ruin, had not prevented every step of the Iabouring masses, if they had not instigated plots and murders and called to their aid armed help to maintain or restore their predatory privileges. Civil War is forced upon the labouring classes by their arch-enemies.

“The Communist parties, far from conjuring up civil war artificially. strive to shorten its duration as much as possible–in case it has become an iron necessity–to minimise the number of its victims and to secure victory for the proletariat.

“The ultimate result of the capitalist mode of production is chaos–a chaos to be overcome only by the great production class, the proletariat, which must establish real order, the order of Communism. It must end the domination of capital, make war impossible, and transform the world into one co-operative commonwealth, and bring about real human brotherhood and freedom.”

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the IWW leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-IWW raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor JO Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the CP.

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