Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, A Retreat In Full Disorder - Part 5 of 10

Here, then, are also the features that distinguish The Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry from The Dictatorship of The Proletariat. In the former, the workers need the support of a large peasantry, and, as the latter, along with many workers, retain illusions in bourgeois-democracy, one of the demands around which the revolution is conducted is that for a National Assembly. As Trotsky says,

“The democratic dictatorship was always thought of by the Bolsheviks as a bourgeois-democratic dictatorship, and not as a supra-class one, and was contrasted to the socialist dictatorship only in this – the only possible – sense.” (p 234)

The Marxists advocate that demand only in this sense of allying themselves with the peasants and workers that retain those illusions, and, thereby, to prise them away from those illusions, in the course of the struggle. The formula of The Democratic Dictatorship was algebraic, because only history could determine what the relative strength of these two classes would be. If the peasants were strong, their natural advantage in numbers would give them a stronger presence, and they would seek to use those numbers, also, in favour of bourgeois-democracy. That would result in the existence of bourgeois-parliamentarism for a long time, and a growing antagonism between peasants and workers.

The freer, more rapid development of capital, however, would diminish the size of the petty-bourgeoisie, increasing the ranks of the proletariat. In agriculture, the same process would result in the expansion of capitalist farmers, and conversion of peasants into agricultural workers, whilst others would be expelled from the land to become industrial workers. The process strengthens the social position of the proletariat.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, however, means that the workers have the social weight to carry through the revolution on their own, though they will, inevitably, draw other classes behind them. In April 1917, Lenin, in his April Theses, abandoned the formula of The Democratic Dictatorship, because history had already answered the question it posed of these relative social weights. The revolution was being led by the workers, whilst the peasants, although large in numbers, were being drawn behind them. What existed was a Dictatorship of the Proletariat Leading The Peasantry.

It was this proletarian dictatorship which, in 1917 and 1918, was carrying through the tasks of the bourgeois-revolution, and agrarian revolution, with the support of a Peasant War. But, by its nature, it could not stop there. Those same workers would demand higher wages, better conditions and so on, and via control of the soviets, would impose them on the capitalists. Should the capitalists refuse, the workers would simply seize the factories, arms in hand, and demand their government rubber stamp it.

The revolution, because it is carried through by a proletarian dictatorship, i.e. by the working-class organised in soviets, does not, and cannot stop at that stage, but becomes permanent, growing over into a socialist revolution. The difference between this and The Democratic Dictatorship is precisely the class nature of the state.

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