dictatorship of the proletariat
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: dictatorships of the proletariat
form: DOTP
form: DotP
Etymology: Calque of German Diktatur des Proletariats.
Initially worded as Diktatur der Arbeiterklasse “dictatorship of the working class” and Klassendiktatur des Proletariats “class dictatorship of the proletariat”, both attested earliest in Karl Marx's series The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850 [1850].
Two early appearances of the precise wording Diktatur des Proletariats “dictatorship of the proletariat” are in:
* Joseph Weydemeyer's article “Die Diktatur des Proletariats” [1 January 1852]; and
* Marx's letter to Weydemeyer [5 March 1852].
Senses: examples: text: If a revolution is to be victoriously carried through, it will require a concentrated power, a dictatorship at its head. Cromwell's dictatorship was necessary in order to establish the supremacy of the English bourgeoisie; the terrorism of the Paris Commune and of the Committee of Public Safety alone succeeded in breaking the resistance of the feudal lords on French soil. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat which is concentrated in the big cities, the bourgeois reaction will not be done away with.
ref: 1962 [1852], Joseph Weydemeyer, “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, in Hal Draper & Horst Duhnke, transl., Labor History, volume 3, number 2, translation of original in German, page 217 of 214 - 217:
text: What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.
ref: 1852, Karl Marx, “Abstract from Marx to J. Weydemeyer in New York”, in Marxists Internet Archive:
text: Bourgeois states are most varied in form, but their essence is the same: all these states, whatever their form, in the final analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to communism is certainly bound to yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.
ref: 1917, Lenin, V. I., “The State and Revolution”, in Lenin Collected Works, volume 25, Moscow: Progress Publishers, translation of original in Russian, published 1964, 1974, 2011, page 418 of 381 - 492:
text: Only after it was all over did I learn of their plan to seize me on board the Chungshan when I was to take it to go back to the Military Academy at Whampoa from Canton. They would then send me as a prisoner to Russia via Vladivostok, thereby removing the major obstacle to their scheme of using the National Revolution as a medium for setting up a "dictatorship of the proletariat."
ref: 1957, Chiang Chung-cheng (Kai-shek), “Beginnings”, in Soviet Russia in China: A Summing-up at Seventy, New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 39:
synonyms: proletarian dictatorship
antonyms: dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
glosses: A socio-political power, as opposed to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, characterized by a struggle to achieve a communist society.
wikipedia: Joseph Weydemeyer
The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850
Related terms: class struggle