The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-04-25
Marx and PrO|etarian Dictatorship

THERE is a United Front of the
yellow Socialists American
Socialist Labor Party, the Socialist
Party, and the German Social Demo
crats-to prove that the Communists
Of Russia and of the world are
wickedly non-Marxian in their advo-
cacy of the Dictatorship of the Pro-
letariat. The Socialist Labor Party
in their edition of Marks Gotha Pro-
pramn1e attempt to prove that Marx
didn't mean what he said when he
predicted the revolutionary dictator
ship of the proletariat" as the only
possible transition between capital
ism and Communism. Grandmother
Kautsky has for some years now been
proving the dictatorship to be unhis-
torical, from the point of view Of
Marxism. Our Socialist Party pub
fishes in their new weekly, the New
Leader" February Is, 1924, another
diatribe against Lenin for being so
violent and Tataric and militaristic as
to preach dictatorship-and Kautsky
| III lis dnlAlly says IL AOA bnClus III
the New Leader" of January 10,
1924, Hillquit undertakes to demon
strate the incorrectness of the die
tatorship-altho unwillingly admit
ting that to destroy capitalist die
tatorship such as Italy's or Hungary's
revolution and dictatorship may be
necessary.
A Lie Seotehed.
It is about time that we once for
all scotched this snake, or rather,
killed it. Marx and Engels did be-
lieve in and preach the dictatorship
Of the proletariat, consistently and
actively for forty years. Hillquit
says that Marx merely coined the
phrase; Kautsky calls it "single
word" a shibboleth (wortchen)
in his "Dict. of the Prolet." Germ.
ed, page 20); the Socialist Labor
Party tells us that Marks reference
in the Gotha Programme is ''his only
direct reference to and authority for
the phrase pulled in to illumine
a point offhand and incidental"
will not believe that this is igno.
rance; it is deliberate misinformation
and classification. l shall prove this
broad charge by direct quotations
from Marx and Engels, indicating the
sources. Even Kautsky himself shall
testify to his lies.
In the "Class Struggles in France
1S48 to $780," Marx says of the Paris
proletariat, only the defeat first
convinced it of the truth that the
slightest improvement in it's condition
within the bourgeois republic re
mains a utopia. In place of its
demands +. arose the keen revolu
tionary battle-cry: Overthrow of the
bourgeoisie! Dictatorship of the work
ing class!" (Neue Rheinische zeitung
jan, 1850
Again in 1862 in letter to Weyde
mayer published in Neue Zeit, Vol
%, part 2, D. 164) Marx considers him
self the real author of the theory O
the dictatorship, and shows it to b,
one of his chief contributions to his
torical thinking. GAS far as am con
cerned, can't claim to have discov
cred the existence of classes il
modern society or their strife agains
one another. l have added as {
new contribution the following propo
sitions: ~ that the existence o.
classes is bound up with certain
phases of material production; e.
that the class struggle leads neces
sarily to the Dictatorship of the Pro
letariat; 60 that this dictatorship il
but the transition to the abolition o
all classes and to the creation Of
society of free and equal" Does thi
sound like the Socialist Labor Part,
charge that "the uninitiated nigh
easily conceive the notion that hi
(Marx's) criticism constitutes a dc