p The dictatorship of the proletariat arises as a result of the successful socialist revolution and thorough demolition of the bourgeois state machine. It is a qualitatively new type 289 of state and differs radically from the previous states in regard to its class nature, the forms of state organisation and the role it is destined to play.

p All the preceding types of state were tools of the exploiting classes used for the subjection of the working people and designed to reinforce the system of exploitation and to perpetuate the division of society into oppressors and oppressed. The dictatorship of the proletariat, however, is the rule of the working class which, together with all other working people, destroys capitalism and builds a new society, a society without antagonistic classes and exploitation.

p “If we translate the Latin, scientific, historico-philosophical term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ into simpler language,” Lenin wrote, “it means just the following:

p “Only a definite class, namely, the urban workers and the factory, industrial workers in general, is able to lead the whole mass of the working and exploited people in the struggle to throw off the yoke of capital, in actually carrying it out, in the struggle to maintain and consolidate the victory, in the work of creating the new, socialist social system, in the entire struggle for the complete abolition of classes.”  [289•* 

p The theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the crux of Marxism. Only dictatorship, the undivided power of the proletariat, enables the proletariat to put an end to capitalism and build socialism. It is only natural, therefore, that the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat has always been, and remains, the pivot of the ideological struggle of Marxism-Leninism against reformism and revisionism. Lenin called the dictatorship of the proletariat the touchstone for testing the real understanding and recognition of Marxism. To be a Marxist it is not enough merely to recognise the struggle of classes, he said. You can only be a Marxist if you extend recognition of the class struggle to recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

p Lenin implacably fought against the reformist leaders of the Second International and revisionists who denied the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat. He tirelessly 290 proved that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the only means for building socialism. And history has fully corroborated him. It is due to the dictatorship of the proletariat that socialism scored complete and final victory in the Soviet Union, and that other countries are successfully advancing along the socialist road.

p Present-day revisionists, however, continue to deny the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat, although they do so in more refined ways than their predecessors. Unable to ignore the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the countries of the socialist system, they do not regard it as a universal, natural form of transition from capitalism to socialism, but as a national form applicable only to economically backward countries like the pre-revolutionary Russia. They assert that dictatorship of the proletariat is applicable only in economically backward countries, with a low level of development of the productive forces and almost no forms of political democracy. As regards the industrialised countries, there, in the opinion of the revisionists, the transition to socialism is effected through “pure democracy”, meaning bourgeois democracy.

The views of the reformists and revisionists run counter to history, which convincingly shows that it is impossible to build socialism without the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the course of socialist construction, the dictatorship of the proletariat solves a number of major problems by performing specific functions—the main aspects of its activity. We shall now examine these functions.