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The Communist Party and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Umsebenzi Online, Volume 14, No. 48, 26 November 2015
Introduction by Umsebenzi Online
On 6 January 2016 the South African Communist Party (SACP) will be
commemorating the 21st anniversary of the death of its renowned leader,
Comrade Joe Slovo. Slovo was a leader also of the African National Congress
(ANC) and the joint ANC-SACP armed-wing uMkhonto weSizwe. The commemoration
on 6 January 2016 will be held at Avalon Cemetery in Soweto, Johannesburg,
where Slovo was laid to rest.
Umsebenzi Online will be carrying excerpts from his intellectual work as
part of the commemoration process. The importance of COSATU's National
Congress, currently underway in Midrand, Johannesburg cannot be
overemphasised. Addressing the Congress, ANC President Comrade Jacob Zuma,
to who Umsebenzi Online expresses its sincere gratitude, presented his
useful insights about the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat and
the relationship between the national and class struggle.
In this issue, Umsebenzi Online presents Slovo on the notion of the
dictatorship of the proletariat summing up the collective wisdom of, and
decades of experience by the SACP. The SACP has taken international lessons
into account in formulating its present strategic position on the matter so
aptly summarised by Slovo. The present political programme of the SACP is
that of building democratic working class power and hegemony in all key
sites of struggle and centres of power.
Dictatorship of the proletariat
Joe Slovo, in "Has Socialism Failed?", 1989
The concept of the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' was dealt with rather
thinly by Marx as 'a transition to a classless society' without much further
definition. For his part Engels, drawing on Marx's analysis of the Paris
Commune, claimed that it indeed 'was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat'.
The Paris Commune of 1871 was an exceptional social experience which brought
into being a kind of workers' city-state (by no means socialist-led) in
which, for a brief moment, most functions of the state (both legislative and
executive) were directly exercised by a popular democratic assembly.
The concept of the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' was elaborated by Lenin
in 'The State and Revolution' in the very heat of the revolutionary
transformation in 1917. Lenin quoted Engels approvingly when he said that
'the proletariat needs the state, not in the interests of freedom but in
order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to
speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist' (Engels, Letter to
Bebel). In the meanwhile, in contrast to capitalist democracy which is
'curtailed, wretched, false ... for the rich, for the minority ... the
dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism,
will, for the first time, create democracy ... for the majority ... along
with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority.'
Lenin envisaged that working-class power would be based on the kind of
democracy of the Commune, but he did not address, in any detail, the nature
of established socialist civil society, including fundamental questions such
as the relationship between the party, state, people's elected
representatives, social organisations, etc. Understandably, the dominant
preoccupation at the time was with the seizure of power, its protection in
the face of the expected counter-revolutionary assault, the creation of
'democracy for the majority' and the 'suppression of the minority of
exploiters'.
The term 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' reflected the historical truth
that in class-divided social formations state power is ultimately exercised
by, and in the interests of, the class which owns and controls the means of
production. It is in this sense that capitalist formations were described as
a 'dictatorship of the bourgeoisie' whose rule would be replaced by a
'dictatorship of the proletariat' during the socialist transition period. In
the latter case power would, however, be exercised in the interests of the
overwhelming majority of the people and should lead to an ever-expanding
genuine democracy - both political and economic.
On reflection, the choice of the word 'dictatorship' to describe this type
of society certainly opens the way to ambiguities and distortions.
The abandonment of the term by most communist parties, including ours, does
not, in all cases, imply a rejection of the historical validity of its
essential content. But, the way the term came to be abused bore little
resemblance to Lenin's original concept. It was progressively denuded of its
intrinsic democratic content and came to signify, in practice, a
dictatorship of a party bureaucracy. For Lenin the repressive aspect of the
concept had impending relevance in relation to the need for the revolution
to defend itself against counter-revolutionary terror in the immediate
post-revolution period. He was defending, against the utopianism of the
anarchists, the limited retention of repressive apparatus.
. A Marxist-Leninist intellectual par excellence, Cde Joe Slovo was the
General Secretary of the SACP, National Chairperson and leader of the
uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), the people's liberation army, a joint ANC-SACP
armed-wing. Slovo became the first minister of housing after the first
democratic general election held in South Africa, in 1994 and died a year
later on 6 January 1995. This is an excerpt of his pamphlet 'Has Socialism
failed?'. Published in 1989, the piece is accessible from the SACP website
<http://www.sacp.org.za/docs/history/failed.html>
http://www.sacp.org.za/docs/history/failed.html or the Marxists Internet
Archive
<https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/slovo/1989/socialism-failed.htm>
https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/slovo/1989/socialism-failed.htm
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