On 10/30/06, Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> citing Marx's letter to Weydemeyer dated March 5, 1852:
this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society."[5]
In other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat, in theory, means the dictatorship of the proletariat's interests, which are more universal than the other classes', over the other classes' in a class society. In all revolutions in practice, though, it's been the case that each class and strata within it were politically divided (the degree of division differing from class to class, the ruling class being the most united class), and revolutions assumed the character of struggles between political factions each of which consisted of multiple classes. The dictatorship therefore in practice meant the dictatorship of one faction over the other factions, and its traditional political vehicle was a one-party state in which other parties and factions were either outlawed or at best tolerated. In social struggles that do not amount to the dictatorship of the proletariat, each class and strata within it are even more politically divided. So, we have to carefully examine all multi-class political factions in a class society and see which one best represents the interests of a majority of working people of the country in question. This task is complicated by the fact that wage workers in the formal sector, the traditional image of the proletariat in the minds of many leftists, are a privileged minority in many developing countries, even well urbanized ones. IMHO, outsiders often mistake the sectoral interests of this or that segment of wage workers in the formal sector for the interests of the proletariat. In this day and age, however, our emphasis should be on working people, a number of whom are not even wage workers, in the vast, growing informal sector in many developing nations. Moreover, we live in the age of movements toward regional integration with a great potential for the decline of US hegemony. So, each nation's struggle had better be understood in this context, too, rather than in isolation from the rest of the world. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
