Bruce Buchan and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

[iwp.ilo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (CEP )]

    Dear Bruce:

    I do agreed with your positions on the Dictatorship of the
    proletariat on several areas:

    1. The dictatorship of the proletariat *need to be conveived*
    only as a transitional regime.  The self-perpetuating aspect
    of power is, in itself, *against* the very foundation of the
    dictoarship of the proletariat as defended by Marx and, to
    a certain degree, by Lenin and Trotsky.

    2. Revolution should be international or won't be.  The Stalinist
    cinicysm of confusing the stge of the dictatorship of the
    proletariat with socialism and communism is no more than the
    attempt to a) perpetuate the priviledges of the bureucracy and b)
    do this through changing gthe transitory character of the
    dictatorship of the proletariat into a perpetual dictatorship.
    Logically then, the dictatorship was shifted from a class to an
    apparatus: first the party, then the Central Committee, further
    along the way to the Politbureau and finally to the dictator
    himself. The dictatorship of the proletariat is not only devised
    to defend the class against counter-revolution, but to prepare the
    stage of its own dissolution as a regime.

    3. The objective of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to
    prepare, organize and carry out the defeat of
    capitalism-imperialism at the world scale and prepare the basis
    of the "withering away" of the state.  An stateless society is
    what both anarchists and Marxists (real Marxists and real
    Anarchists) have in common.  Only in the process of "withering
    away of the state" at an international level, can Socialism and
    communism be realizable (which in essence have much in common
    with ultimate goals of the anarchists).

    4. The dictatorship of the proletariat, if you wish, cannot but
    be a necessary evil rather than the whole objective of revolution.

    I think we agree on this ... Maybe ... Who knows ...

    As to the assertion of the term "Dicatorship of the Proletariat"
    as something tactically not adecquated, I kind of agree.  The
    question is that science needs a concrete language to be expressed.
    Revolutionary politics, too. "Rule of the Working Class" was
    mentioned but have not the same meaning since "Rule" is only the
    exercise of government, not the oppression of other classes to
    impose the future of the new society without classes.

    In relationship with the utopian, idealist assertions of "after
    the revolution".. cannot thrust it.  Power is in itself a
    powerhouse for abuse that it is inherent to it. Once the exercise
    of power is transferred from the class to the apparatus and the
    "policemen are put to guard the lines for bread" what you have
    is a dictatorship of the bureaucracy, a cancer to be extirpated,
    not to be 'understood' because the "difficult objective
    circunstances".

    If something we learned from the fall of the FSU is that we need to
    work on the definition of "transitional regime" as applied to the
    Dictatorship of the proletariat as we worked (or rather Lenin did)
    in 1917-1920 to the definitive no role of the state under communism
    and socialism.  What was incredible is that there were Stalinists
    who really believed that the FSU and other Eastern countries were
    socialist/communists while maintaining a bureaucratic dictatorship
    and a solid nationalist conception of Socialism/Communism.

    Comradely,
    Carlos


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