[lbo-talk] Stalin, democrat

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Mon May 8 09:22:58 PDT 2006


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.



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