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Western Political Thought

Notes association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of
all”. For the purpose of socializing the means of production, a list of 10 measures was outlined,
which would vary from country to country, but which were essential prerequisites for a Communist
society. These ten measures were as follows.
1. Abolition of landed property and application of all rents of land for public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax, and abolition of all rights of inheritance.
3. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
4. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state.
5. Centralization of the means of transport in the hands of the state.
6. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state.
7. Equal liability of all to labour.
8. Combination of agriculture and industry.
9. Gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools.
Beyond this, Marx did not delve into the transitional phase. Interestingly, many of these ideas
were outlined by Engels in his Principles of Communism (1847), which formed the core of the
Manifesto.
The Class Struggles in France
Marx modified his views on the state between 1848-1852 as a result of events in France, and more
significantly after 1871. His ideas were the result of an elaborate misunderstanding of the French
Revolution, of the role of classes and of the very nature of the proletarian revolution. The Bolsheviks
in Russia imitated France as seen through the prism of the writings of Marx, which seemed to
them more real than the actualities of French history.
Until March 1850, Marx and Engels did not apply the word “dictatorship” to the rule of the
proletariat. The phrase was used as a tactical compromise slogan with the Blanquists, and then as
a polemical device against the Anarchists and assorted reformists. Before that, they neither
mentioned nor discussed the Babouvist-Blanquist conception of educational dictatorship for it
contravened their vision of a proletarian revolution based on the faith they had in the masses to
emancipate themselves. Hence, they did not feel the need for a period of educational rule by an
enlightened minority, or the need to postpone democratic elections.
It was not Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881), but Louis Eugene Cavaignac, a general and an
arch-antagonist of Blanqui, from whom Marx and Engels borrowed the word “dictatorship” and
incorporated it into their vocabulary. Engels clarified that the “strictest centralization of state
power” was necessary to fill the vacuum as a result of the destruction of the old order till the
creation of the new one. Unlike the previous phases, the dictatorship of the proletariat would
represent the rule of the majority over the minority. Marx accepted this formulation. Both were
confident that it did not mean the permanent rule of one person or group.
In March 1850, the phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat” replaced the habitually used phrase
“rule of the proletariat”. Marx and Engels stressed the notion of extraordinary power during an
emergency for a limited period of time. It was a constitutional dictatorship, like the one suggested
by Babeuf and Blanqui, but differed from their conception insofar as it would not be educational.
It did not mean the rule of a self-appointed committee on behalf of the masses, nor did it envisage
the need for mass terror and liquidation.
Marx did not define, in any specific way, what the dictatorship of the proletariat entailed, and
what its relationship with the state was. It was “a social description, a statement of the class
character of the political power. It did not indicate a statement about the forms of government
authority”. But for some scholars, the concept was both a statement of the class character of

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