On Two Forms of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Another Translation
Savez Rada (Revolutionary Alliance of Labour of Serbia)
June 15, 2021
It becomes painfully obvious to the peoples of the world and to all progressive people that the revisionist, Trotskyist, fascist and imperialist conspirators, the entire bourgeois world, are using the strategy of Goebbels, the “big lie” against the great Stalin; with one decisive tactical focus: to accuse him of the most heinous, base crimes. Out of helplessness, jealousy and revenge, Stalin was splattered with the very mud from which he helped pull the working class and the peoples of the world. This great conspiracy is perhaps best outlined in the person of the shameless Khrushchev (though no less striking than other anti-Stalinist obscurantists!) — who accused Stalin of exactly what Stalin had charged him with and against which he persistently and consistently fought, and often in that fight he was left alone, without the help of his faithful comrades who did not always manage to recognize with such insight neither the revisionist current nor those problems which were rolling behind the scenes. This is, among others, very impressively testified by Dimitrov’s Diary — an authentic destroyer of revisionist forgeries.
In such historical conditions, many of Stalin’s writings and ideas, in addition to being presented in a completely distorted way, were also completely ignored or did not get a chance to come to the surface in the new course of time. This also lies in the fact that the revisionists did not publish the last three volumes of Stalin’s collected works. Thus, the peoples of the world are not familiar with Stalin’s most mature creative age. For example, the ingenious work Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, a roadmap for the future of mankind, written just before Stalin’s death, is fully known only to the most consistent Marxist-Leninist circles and has no deserved historical attention.
Thus, the theoretical treatment of people’s democracy remained unclear, although Stalin paid full attention to it. The works of A. Sobolev (1, 2 , 3 ) remained as a pledge of these theoretical researches. In that light, we present a significant passage from Dimitrov’s Diary…
Stalin on two forms of dictatorship of the proletariat
“Stalin made important remarks concerning my letter on peop[le’s] democracy and the dict[atorship] of the proletariat, as well as on some other fundamental issues. (Traicho took short[hand] notes of the whole discussion.)
Two possibilities or two forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat have been outlined in the history of Marxist thought. We consider it an axiom that the transition from capitalism to socialism without dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible. Two forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat are known.
The first is the democratic republic, which Marx and Engels saw as in the Paris Commune, in claiming that the democratic republic and the majority of the proletariat is the best form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Lenin formulated the Soviet form of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a better match for our conditions. Here in Russia, where the proletariat took power by means of an uprising (when an uprising begins, everything collapses), the Soviet form proved to be the most appropriate one.
In your country, where the working class seized power not by means of an uprising but with help from outside — with the help of the Soviet army, in other words — the seizure of power was easier; you can do without the Soviet form, going back to the model of Marx and Engels — i.e., the people’s democratic parliamentary form. We are of the opinion that you can do without the Soviet regime. In your case, you will be able to carry out the transition from capitalism to socialism by means of a people’s democracy. The people’s democracy will play the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
We deprived the kulaks and the bourgeoisie of the right to vote. In our country, only the working people had this right. We had to relocate two million kulaks to the north, and when we abolished the kulaks as a class, we granted suffrage to all people. The capitalists and the landowners fought against us for four years during the Intervention, whereas in your country they just fled and surrendered without fight.
Where there are antagonistic classes and the working class has the power, dictatorship is indispensable. But you have the legal arguments to defeat your enemies. There are still some signs of a civil war going on in your country. Only after you destroy the exploiting classes completely will you be able to claim that you no longer have a dictatorship of the proletariat.
A democratic republic in which the working class has a substantial role to play — this is what Marx and Engels considered the most appropriate form of dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead, we had a Soviet system rather than a parliamentarian one, and there were workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ deputies in the Soviets, whereas all non-working-class elements were excluded. The advantage of the Soviet form is that it solves the problems quickly — by shedding blood; but you can do without it because the capitalists in your country surrendered immediately. In other words, you were lucky, and we are responsible for your luck, as we readily admit.
As long as there are antagonistic classes, there will be dictatorship of the proletariat. But in your country it will be a dictatorship of a different type. You can do without a Soviet regime. However, the regime of the people’s republic can fulfill the major task of the dictatorship of the proletariat, both in terms of abolishing classes and in terms of building socialism. The people’s democracy and the Soviet regime are two forms of dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Dimitrov’s Diary in PDF Format
6 December, 1948
Source
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