[Monti]

I’m sure “dictatorship of the proletariat” is a familiar term.

DICTATORSHIP OF PROLETARIAT

I have read many books of Marx. First surprise, the term "dictatorship of proletariat" is rare in his writings. Second observation: he never defines it in a sense that we can imagine how such a society works, particularly in a field such as human rights.

What seems obvious to me is that any form of dictatorship is antithetical with socialism. The reason of that is pure logic. If the means of production are ownership of the state and the state is a dictatorship, then the politicians who command the state have actually if not legally the command over the means of production. In such a situation, we cannot say that the people own the means of production; so there is no socialism.
You could reply: the case here is that of a dictatorship of the majority. I answer: if it is really the majority, why do they need a dictatorship? If human rights are not sanctified, everybody could become an enemy of the government, independently of his social status. Without the barrier of human rights, the political leaders become necessarily a new dominant class.

[Rich]

Well, technically all primitive people are living as communists and socialists, so both systems definitely existed and have been for 99% of all people ever born the conditions of their living, and for 190,000 years nothing else was known anywhere.

If you are a hunterer/gatherer, there are no poor people, and there is no rich class.

Which is why our mind always assumes that we live in communism and socialism, even if you're the worst capitalist on the planet. In fact capitalism often develops into socialism for the rich.

Never communism, though. In fact scientists found that amusingly the more rich the rich get, the more poor they feel. Thats because if the divide between regular people and the rich is relatively small, a rich person might know another rich person that owns maybe ten times as much. But the more extreme it gets, the more extreme differences are between the rich themselves, too. So a very rich 200 times millionaire meets Elon Musk - and this already super extremely rich person just met a person thats no less than a thousand times as rich.

Only the invention of agriculture and cities and the resulting reforms allowed the creation of classes, and the phenomen that some people suffer from poverty, and the idea of slavery. Which, in a mild form, exists to this day as capitalism.

No slavery exists in some hunter-gatherer societies. the hunter gatherers of modern times can give a distorted perspective, because they often live on marginal /poor land left unexploited by horticulturists/ agriculturalists and industrialists. The Comanche were notable for their slave trading. Its interesting how the Liberals have attempted to write the Comanche out of history. Slavery, sex slavery, rape, torture, imperialist expansionism, terrorism. They had the lot and all while remaining hunter gatherers, although they did have horse husbandry.

Look at the amount of land the average ancient hunter gatherer controlled and effectively owned. They were rich. They were super rich. They were what we called the 1% or the 0.1%. It is the massive expansion in human numbers that has created what we call the middle and lower classes.

[Senter]

DICTATORSHIP OF PROLETARIAT

I have read many books of Marx. First surprise, the term "dictatorship of proletariat" is rare in his writings. Second observation: he never defines it in a sense that we can imagine how such a society works, particularly in a field such as human rights.

What seems obvious to me is that any form of dictatorship is antithetical with socialism. The reason of that is pure logic. If the means of production are ownership of the state and the state is a dictatorship, then the politicians who command the state have actually if not legally the command over the means of production. In such a situation, we cannot say that the people own the means of production; so there is no socialism.
You could reply: the case here is that of a dictatorship of the majority. I answer: if it is really the majority, why do they need a dictatorship? If human rights are not sanctified, everybody could become an enemy of the government, independently of his social status. Without the barrier of human rights, the political leaders become necessarily a new dominant class.

If you have read many books by Marx, you then know that “the dictatorship of the proletariat” is not what we, today, think of as a “dictatorship”. It is the rule of the proletariat over the capitalist class, as detailed here……
https://criticallegalthinking.com/2019/ ... oletariat/

….and here….
https://www.marxists.org/subject/marxmy ... ticle2.htm

In “Critique of the Gotha Programme” Marx says that the new socialist society will begin "just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.”

And since it will develop from that point according to need which will be dictated by the condition and nature of the society at the time, we can only state generalities about what socialism will look like and how it will function. So we cannot be specific about human rights and many other features and hope it will apply in all cases.

You say you have read many of Marx’s writings but you also characterize socialism as “means of production is owned by the state”. In fact it is to be owned and controlled by the workers. This will take a worker/state interaction, and in fact the state must be a government of the working class in actual fact. A worker/government partnership must be formed much as a capitalist/government partnership exists today.

[Monti]

Marx has much less written about "dictatorship of proletariat" than his followers, particularly Lenin. He generally remains vague. In the pages where he uses the term, it is always to repeat that it is the first phase of socialism, where the proletariat takes the power. He never explains how this power functions. As democracy matters to me, this interrogation is important. You write "So we cannot be specific about human rights and many other features and hope it will apply in all cases". In a discussion with other people that you try to convince about socialism, this phrase will deplete you.
From a practical point of view, the means of production can only be owned and controlled by the working class by the medium of the state. "Owned by the workers" is a beautyful slogan but as a mode of organisation, it is too vague. It is obvious that the "partnership" between the state and the working class can take various forms. The forms that do not respect human rights must be ruled out.
Is the "Commune de Paris" an example of dictatorship of proletariat? Maybe. But it happened in so dramatic circumstances. An event happening in these abnormal circumstances cannot serve as a model for us today. By the way, in "La guerre civile en France" in which he analyses these events, Marx never writes the words "dictatorship of proletariat".

[Rich]

Marx's predictions failed utterly. By the eighteen nineties, it was clear that the immiseration of the immense majority as predicted by Marx was simply not happening. Bernstein revisionism was one response to the crisis of Marxism. Others were not happy with this solution. They wanted to hang on to the promise of revolution of complete turning of society upside down. in the early twentieth century we saw the adoption of the theory of imperialism. This was the beginnings of Cultural Marxism the replacement, initially partial and tentative of the international proletariat. We were still a very long way from when the racially European working classes would become the deplorables. But idea that the proletariat could be replaced if only partially by oppressed nationalism had been seeded.

Bu then when Lenin had given up hope of a revolution in his life time. The revolution happened. But it didn't happen where it was supposed to happen in the most developed industrialised urbanised countries but in relatively backward Russia. But even more crucially the immiseration of the immense majority that Marx had promised happened, but not by social economic processes, but through total war. The theory of Imperialism would be updated to blame the war on finance capital. But the war was not caused by finance capital, it wasn't caused any sort of private ownership of capital. It was caused by nationalism and we've seen that wars of nationalism can occur even where all the means of production are nationalised.

And it only got worse after the Russian Revolution from the point of view of Marxism with the later revolutions having even less to do with the urban industrial labour movement. The Workers and Soldiers Soviets were no where to be seen. The later revolutions were imposed by the red army or by guerilla militaries basing themselves amongst the rural agricultural peasantry.

[Senter]

Marx has much less written about "dictatorship of proletariat" than his followers, particularly Lenin. He generally remains vague. In the pages where he uses the term, it is always to repeat that it is the first phase of socialism, where the proletariat takes the power. He never explains how this power functions.

Yes. This is for two reasons. First of all, socialism will develop under the direction of a socialist government according to need. And needs change due to many factors, so that any “blueprint” for the development of socialism would greatly risk incorrect action and changes that could harm the efforts. Changes must be made based on current needs.

And secondly, an explanation of how power functions under the DOTP would require an explanation of how the socialist state would function, and Marx never got around to developing a much needed analysis of the role of the state under socialism. That explanation would be a foundation for the development of the guidance you are calling for, but Marx didn’t live long enough to develop such an analysis.

From a practical point of view, the means of production can only be owned and controlled by the working class by the medium of the state. "Owned by the workers" is a beautyful slogan but as a mode of organisation, it is too vague. It is obvious that the "partnership" between the state and the working class can take various forms. The forms that do not respect human rights must be ruled out.

I think what’s needed is a Constitution that specifies the requirement of worker control. It can then be developed such that the role of the state would be for facilitating worker control of business and industry. That facilitation can take the form of satisfaction of any real and legitimate needs of workers to succeed, like resources and agencies for business access to low-interest loans, or even government (tax) funding and payment for facilities and equipment for startups, but with a strict requirement that government is not allowed to direct or influence business….. government’s role being only one of support for worker control.

I don’t claim to be a source of all answers to all questions on this, but intelligent people can work out details in practice. That is how capitalism and feudalism developed too.

[FiveofSwords]

There is no reason to have a state at all unless war is possible. Ergo a socialist state must have a strong friend/enemy distinction where it is altruistic for its friends (a well defined citizen identity) while not being altruistic...even pot4ntislly hostile for the enemy/outgroup. But this of course is fascism (national socialism). Most socialists are a bit horrified about being associated with Hitler, therefore they cannot tell these obvious truths about socialism and where it inevitably leads.