The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Dictatorship of the Proletariat This mental conservatism is most strikingly observed in their approach to the question of dictatorship. Six years of war and revolution (1914-1920) it would seem should have elucidated this finally, from all points of view, by practice, by facts out of the everyday life of the masses; and yet, even among the comrades adhering to the Third International, we are often confronted with the question: What is the dictatorship of the proletariat? Cannot the Labor movement attain its object without a dictatorship? Why is dictatorship inevitable? I heard these questions not only from the members of the British Trade Union delegation, but even from some of the members of the delegation of Italian Socialists. When one hears such questions one thinks involuntarily that the persons uttering them must have slept through a whole historical period, and, first of all, through the world war of 1914-18. For these years constituted a model epoch of dictatorship, and the method of carrying on the war were models of the application of dictatorial methods of ruling a country. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.