Re: Process (was Third Worldism)

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

The original point behind the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat"
was grounded in the ancient Roman meaning of "dictator": someone who for
a specified period of time was allowed to rule without needing to
conform to law. Immediately after a revolution there is a choice between
"old law" -- i.e., the law of the bourgeois state with its protection of
property -- or direct rule, not limited by law: hence dictatorship. It
had _none_ of the implications that the word dictatorship assumed after
the rise of the totalitarian states of the 20th century.

The Paris Commune was a dictatorship because it created its own rules as
it went along, as a roman dictaror would have. It was a dictatorship of
the proletariat because it was workers who were making those rules.

Carrol