> Charles Brown seemingly gave two different, but related, general
> examples of the acts carried out by a proletarian dictatorship.
>
> This one:
>
>> What I am trying to say is that a likely interpretation of Marx's use
>> of the term "dictatorship" is that he meant that masses and
>> majorities of
>> uncoerced, self-determining working people would support and endorse
>> and carry out (!) , yes, mass repression in class warfare with the
>> bourgeoisie and its allies.
>
> and this, more explicitly violent one:
>
>> There is a nuanced possibility ,probability even, that Marx
>> anticipated a mass and even majority of working people who would be
>> repressively and
>> murderously hostile toward resistent owning classes , including petit
>> owning classes, intellectual strata, AND THAT THIS DICTATORIAL
>> ATTITUDE WOULD BE SUBTANTIALLY RATIONAL and democractic in the full
>> historical context and in face of the murderous and repressive
>> resistance of the bourgeoisie to
>> peaceful socialist revolution.
>
> Which one are you arguing against, Ted? It seems like the latter.
> Your examples from Marx's Civil War in France all have to do with
> outright physical bloodshed, which is what Charles talks about in his
> second example. What about Charles' first example? Are you arguing
> against that one too?
Both. The "smashing" of the "state" by the Commune consisted, in part, of removing from "state power" any capacity to carry out "mass repression." This is made clear in the following from Engels's 1891 Postscript.
> The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of
> conspiracy, and held together by the strict discipline which went with
> it, they started out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number
> of resolute, well-organized men would be able, at a given favorable
> moment, not only seize the helm of state, but also by energetic and
> relentless action, to keep power until they succeeded in drawing the
> mass of the people into the revolution and ranging them round the
> small band of leaders. This conception involved, above all, the
> strictest dictatorship and centralization of all power in the hands of
> the new revolutionary government. And what did the Commune, with its
> majority of these same Blanquists, actually do? In all its
> proclamations to the French Communes with Paris, a national
> organization, which for the first time was really to be created by the
> nation itself. It was precisely the oppressing power of the former
> centralized government, army, political police and bureaucracy, which
> Napoleon had created in 1798 and since then had been taken over by
> every new government as a welcome instrument and used against its
> opponents, it was precisely this power which was to fall everywhere,
> just as it had already fallen in Paris.
>
> From the outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the
> working class, once come to power, could not manage with the old state
> machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered
> supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all
> the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself,and, on
> the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by
> declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any
> moment. What had been the characteristic attribute of the former
> state? Society had created its own organs to look after its common
> interests, originally through simple division of labor. But these
> organs, at whose head was the state power, had in the course of time,
> in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves
> from the servants of society into the masters of society, as can be
> seen, for example, not only in the hereditary monarchy, but equally
> also in the democratic republic. Nowhere do "politicians" form a more
> separate, powerful section of the nation than in North America. There,
> each of the two great parties which alternately succeed each other in
> power is itself in turn controlled by people who make a business of
> politics, who speculate on seats in the legislative assemblies of the
> Union as well as of the separate states, or who make a living by
> carrying on agitation for their party and on its victory are rewarded
> with positions.
>
> It is well known that the Americans have been striving for 30 years
> to shake off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and that in
> spite of all they can do they continue to stink ever deeper in this
> swamp of corruption. It is precisely in America that we see best how
> there takes place this process of the state power making itself
> independent in relation to society, whose mere instrument it was
> originally intended to be. Here there exists no dynasty, no nobility,
> no standing army, beyond the few men keeping watch on the Indians, no
> bureaucracy with permanent posts or the right to pensions. and
> nevertheless we find here two great gangs of political speculators,
> who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by
> the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends — and the nation
> is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are
> ostensibly its servants, but in reality exploit and plunder it.
>
> Against this transformation of the state and the organs of the state
> from servants of society into masters of society — an inevitable
> transformation in all previous states — the Commune made use of two
> infallible expedients. In this first place, it filled all posts —
> administrative, judicial, and educational — by election on the basis
> of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same
> electors to recall their delegate at any time. And in the second
> place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received
> by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was
> 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and
> careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to
> delegates to representative bodies which were also added in profusion.
>
> This shattering of the former state power and its replacement by a
> new and really democratic state is described in detail in the third
> section of The Civil War. But it was necessary to dwell briefly here
> once more on some of its features, because in Germany particularly the
> superstitious belief in the state has been carried over from
> philosophy into the general consciousness of the bourgeoisie and even
> to many workers. According to the philosophical notion, the state is
> the "realization of the idea" or the Kingdom of God on earth,
> translated into philosophical terms, the sphere in which eternal truth
> and justice is or should be realized. And from this follows a
> superstitious reverence for the state and everything connected with
> it, which takes roots the more readily as people from their childhood
> are accustomed to imagine that the affairs and interests common to the
> whole of society could not be looked after otherwise than as they have
> been looked after in the past, that is, through the state and its
> well-paid officials. And people think they have taken quite an
> extraordinary bold step forward when they have rid themselves of
> belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In
> reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the
> oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic
> republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited
> by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy,
> whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid
> having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as
> a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be
> able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap.
>
> Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled
> with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
> Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship
> looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of
> the Proletariat.
> <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/
> postscript.htm>
Marx's own account of the Commune's "smashing" of the state is at <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ ch05.htm>
Ted