Re: two concepts of dictatorship of the proletariat

[boddhisatva <kbevans@xxxxxxxxx>]

                        Justin,




        Doesn't "dictatorship", in our meek, post-cold-war, industrial world,
simply mean any mass community action outside of civil authority?
Strikes, for
example are "dictatorships" of workers who operate outside the accepted
boundaries of wage determination.  Boycotts are also "dictatorships" of
concerned citizens over free trade.  If one accepts for an uncomfortable, but
necessary, moment, liberal bourgeois values, (as expressed in their highest
form) to be the norm (as some libertarians do), then community action such as
this is dictatorship.


        It seems a small point, but is worth exploring, especially for
market socialists.  While other socialists see the revolution as a spreading
out of the blanket of state protection for citizens, market socialists
realize that the initial revolution will be the large-scale refusal by the
government to supply legal protection.  Landlords, shareholders, bankers,
etc., will have to be denied protection on the basis of (otherwise) lawful
contracts.  Yet, the system will have both to retain and bolster the spirit
and letter of liberal bourgeois law.


        If this is done through a retraction of the long arms of the law,
citizens can later seek to codify the protections afforded them by the power
of non-governmental organizations (labor unions, etc.) so as to save them
from possible "mob dictatorship"  (which would already exist, in the
bourgeois liberal model, when hegemony of NGO's is such that it needed to be
codified).  If the thing is done by the extension of laws, the dictatorship
of the
proletariat becomes largely indistinguishable from the dictatorship of the
bourgeois state.

        

        Thus I think that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" signifies a
lessening of government protection and an attendant increase in the de facto
civil authority of NGO's, not an immediate blanket hegemony for a
formal revolutionary government.  It would then be the job of the designers
of the end-state to "save" the proletariat from the "dictatorship" and
establish a complete federal socialism.




        peace,



                boddhisatva





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