[lbo-talk] Stalin, democrat

[Charles Brown]

That democracy is a contradiction of democracy and dictatorship jumps out at
one in the classical Marxist writings on same. Marx and Engels anticipate
real democracy as the working classes as the ruling class,and that ruling is
not anticipated to be all nice. For Marx, the _dictatorship_ of the
proletariat is the highest form of democracy. Engels and Lenin, in analyzing
the state, emphasize that democracy is still a state, that is, has still a
repressive apparatus, standing bodies of armed personnel, prisons. People
may have heard of the notion of the state whithering away in Marxist theory.
However, when the state whithers away that is no longer democracy in this
theory. For Marx, the advanced phase of communism does not have democracy,
because in it the state has whithered away.

Some of what is described in Chris' translation sounds like the paradox or
whatever we might expect in that the masses when they take some measure
state power are going to make tragic mistakes out of ignorance and just
"class revenge" or residual resentment.  Is it really surprising that the
representatives of the classes who have been underfoot for centuries might
extract some revenge that is irrational from an objective standpoint, with
some individuals wrongfully "punished" for their "middle" class status ?

 I know that Ted Winslow quotes Marx as discouraging this "historical hate"
in the working classes, in discussion of the Paris Commune ( probably _Class
Struggles in France_). Still, it is difficult to avoid all "reigns of
terror" in the real world revolutions.