From: Bill Bartlett
The working class cannot be the ruling class, the idea is preposterous. Who would they rule over? Only themselves?
^^^^ CB: Perhaps you are familiar with the notions of self-goverance and self-determination. Do you think them preposterous too ? Popular sovereignty has the same sense.
Ultimately, this idea forsees no "rule", with the whithering away of the state. But the idea is that in the first phase of socialism, there is still a state, which means there is still ruling.
Also, in this case, Marx and Engels are thinking about the working class ruling over the bourgeoisie, who remain at the time of the socialist insurrection.
Especially from the actual experience from building socialism, the rule is in resistence to the foreign interventions by remaining capitalist countries. Note the experience of the Soviet Union, Korea, Viet Nam, Laos, Nicargua, which were invaded.
^^^^^^^
In which case they wouldn't constitute a "class" in the sense of a separate section. Over the capitalist class? That too is illogical, why would a working class choose to retain a class of capitalists as domestic pets when they have the power to simply appropriate the means of production from them.
^^^^^ CB: There's the NEP, current China. The bourgeoisie haven't just disappeared in the actual revolutions.
^^^^^^^
Not to mention the danger that, as is their nature, the supposedly tamed capitalists would go feral at the slightest opportunity and rip out the throats of their masters.
^^^^^ CB: Yea, there is such a thing as counterrevolution, and there is not much that can be done to prevent it. For example, there is a bunch of Cuban capitalists in Miami waiting to return. Thus, the Cuban working class maintains a state to rule over them, or rule them OUT of Cuba to be more exact. Do you see the need for rule in that case ? In most of the revolutions of the 20th Century the danger was the return of imperialist capitalists, thus the need to "rule them out".
Perhaps you haven't taken account of the fact that just because the working class takes power in one country doesn't prevent the capitalists from other countries from sending armies in to try to overthrow the socialist government. "Rule" includes the defense against those armies representing the feral capitalist nature.
^^^^^^^^
This notion of the working class as a ruling class is entirely absurd. Always has been, always will be. We all know that dictatorship of the proletariat can only mean the creation of a new ruling class.
^^^^^^ CB: Naw, it's not absurd. See above. The experience of the 20th Century , with its triumphant counterrevolutions by the capitalists demonstrates even more how the working class must have a state and _rule_ in the period of contest between socialist and capitalist states.