#hal draper

The clearest explanation of the meaning of ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ came soon (1874) in an article by Engels devoted precisely to the Blanquists’ adoption of the term, in their brochure Aux Communeux. This article, ‘Program of the Blanquist Refugees of the Commune,’ is, far and away, the best analysis of the Blanquist tendency ever published, but this is not our present subject. Its statement on our subject goes as follows: ‘From the fact that Blanqui conceives of every revolution as the coup de main of a small revolutionary minority, what follows of itself is the necessity of dictatorship after its success – the dictatorship, please note, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small number of those who made the coup de main and who themselves are organized beforehand under the dictatorship of one person or a few. One can see that Blanqui is a revolutionary of the previous generation.’ There could be no more instructive differentiation between – on the one hand – Marx’s conception of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ as the rule (‘dictatorship’) of a majority class or class movement, and – on the other – the traditional conception of dictatorship, the idea of the 'previous generation,’ as the dictatorship of the party or revolutionary band, hence entailing the dictatorship of the latter over the proletariat.

Since the beginning of society, there has been no end of theories 'proving' that tyranny is inevitable and that freedom-in-democracy is impossible; there is no more convenient ideology for a ruling class and its intellectual flunkies. These are self-fulfilling predictions, since they remain true only as long as they are taken to be true. In the last analysis, the only way of proving them false is in the struggle itself. That struggle from below has never been stopped by the theories from above, and it has changed the world time and again. To choose any of the forms of Socialism-from-Above is to look back to the old world, to the 'old crap.' To choose the road of Socialism-from-Below is to affirm the beginning of a new world.

Outside the socialist movement, naturally, the standard line is that such ideas [of Socialism from Below] are visionary, impractical, unrealistic, 'utopian'; idealistic perhaps but quixotic. The mass of people are congenitally stupid, corrupt, apathetic and generally hopeless; and progressive change must come from Superior People rather like (as it happens) the intellectual expressing these sentiments. This is translated theoretically into an Iron Law of Oligarchy or a tinny law of elitism, in one way or another involving a crude theory of inevitability – the inevitability of change-from-above-only.

For Marx and Luxemburg, the function of the revolutionary vanguard is to impel the mass-majority to fit themselves to take power in their own name, through their own struggles.

Morris’ writings on socialism breathe from every pore the spirit of Socialism-from-Below, just as every line of Webb’s is the opposite. This is perhaps clearest in his sweeping attacks on Fabianism (for the right reasons); his dislike of the ‘Marxism’ of the British edition of Lassalle, the dictatorial H.M. Hyndman; his denunciations of state-socialism; and his repugnance at the bureaucratic-collectivist utopia of Bellamy’s Looking Backward. (The last moved him to remark: 'If they brigaded me into a regiment of workers, I’d just lie on my back and kick.’) Morris’ socialist writings are pervaded with his emphasis from every side on class struggle from below, in the present; and as for the socialist future, his News from Nowhere was written as the direct antithesis of Bellamy’s book. He warned 'that individual men cannot shuffle off the business of life on to the shoulders of an abstraction called the State, but must deal with it in conscious association with each other ... Variety of life is as much an aim of true Communism as equality of condition, and ... nothing but an union of these two will bring about real freedom.’

How does a people or a class become fit to rule in their own name? Only by fighting to do so. Only by waging their struggle against oppression – oppression by those who tell them they are unfit to govern. Only by fighting for democratic power do they educate themselves and raise themselves up to the level of being able to wield that power. There has never been any other way for any class.

The fact is that the choice between Socialism-from-Above and Socialism-from-Below is, for the intellectual, basically a moral choice, whereas for the working masses who have no social alternative it is a matter of necessity.