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Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

There were similar observations in the German Ideology and the Paris Manuscripts (1844). Marx Notes
projected an image of future society from the internal tensions of existing capitalist society, implying
that, at the outset, Communist society would be perfect, universalizing those elements of bourgeois
society that could be universalized.

12.5 Dictatorship of the Proletariat

The controversial and ambiguous concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat emerged in the
writings of Marx and Engels as a result of a debate with the German Social Democrats, the
Anarchists, and more significantly, from the practical experience of the Paris Commune of 1871.
These observations had to be put together from the remarks solely made en passant and from
different sources. The two major texts, however, were the Civil War in France and the Critique of the
Gotha Programme.
The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat held the key to the understanding of Marx’s
theory on the nature of Communist society and the role of the proletarian state. It was a concept
that divided the Marxists and Leninists from the Anarchists on the one hand, and the Social
Democrats on the other.
The Communist Manifesto

The phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat” was not used in the Manifesto. Nor was there any
mention of the complete elimination of state power and the state machinery. Marx and Engels
spoke about the “political rule of the proletariat”, advising the workers to capture the state,
destroy all privileges of the old class, and prepare for the eventual disappearance of the state.
We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the
proletariat to the position of the ruling class, to win the battle of democracy ... . The proletariat will
use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all
instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling
class; and to increase the total of productive forees as rapidly as possible.
Marx and Engels were convinced that existing states, whether as instruments of class
domination and oppression, or rule by bureaucratic parasites on the whole of society, would
grow inherently strong and remain minority states representing the interests of the small,
dominant and powerful possessing class. It was only when the proletarian majority seized
the state structure that the state became truly democratic and majoritarian. Whatever might
be the form the state assumed, it was powerful and the proletariat would have to contend
with while making its revolution. In the later part of his life, Marx was convinced of the
imperative need to destroy the state and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the
initial stages, bearing in mind the example of the French Revolution of 1789, he anticipated
a seizure of the existing state machine by the revolutionary proletariat for he believed that
political centralization would assist the revolutionary process.
The initial “capture” thesis of the state, however, yielded to the “smash” thesis subsequently.
The former viewpoint was articulated in the Manifesto, where the existing state structure
would be used for revolutionizing the mode of production. The “smash” thesis was
articulated in response to the experience of the Parisian Communards, as evident in the
Civil War in France and the Critique of the Gotha Programme. In a book review written around
1848— 1849, Marx observed that the destruction of the state had only one implication for
the Communists, namely the cessation of an organized power of one class for the suppression
of another class.
In the Manifesto, Marx described the nature of Communist society as one in which the classes and
its antagonisms would have disappeared. The bourgeois society would be replaced by “an

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