What do you think?
Rate this book
The ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ from Marx to Lenin
Hardcover Edition.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
2 people are currently reading
218 people want to read
About the author
Hal Draper
67 books31 followersHal Draper (born Harold Dubinsky) was an American socialist activist and author who played a significant role in the Berkeley, California Free Speech Movement. He is known for his extensive scholarship on the history and meaning of the thought of Karl Marx.
Draper was a lifelong advocate of what he called "socialism from below", self-emancipation by the working class, in opposition to capitalism and Stalinist bureaucracy, both of which, he held, practiced domination from above. He was one of the creators of the Third Camp tradition, a form ("the form", according to its adherents) of Marxist socialism.
Draper was a lifelong advocate of what he called "socialism from below", self-emancipation by the working class, in opposition to capitalism and Stalinist bureaucracy, both of which, he held, practiced domination from above. He was one of the creators of the Third Camp tradition, a form ("the form", according to its adherents) of Marxist socialism.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 27, 2017
What are socialists trying to achieve? Is it just to get some nice programs like free health care or free college? The concept of the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat" gets to the heart of these questions, as well as foregrounds the socialist view of democracy.
Hal Draper, an eminent independent socialist scholar, traces the textual history of the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" (DotP) as a window into the problems of revolution and reform, democracy and repression. Draper argues convincingly that the term "dictatorship" didn't always have its modern day connotations of undemocratic oligarchy, but was previously used essentially as a synonym for "regime" or "government." In that sense, a better contemporary framing might be "sovereignty of the working class" or a "workers' government."
Draper's book is his second on the concept of the DotP. The previous book on the subject traced the phrase leading up to Marx (with emphasis on the French revolutionary Blanqui and his followers); that volume can be found in Draper's third volume of his magnum opus, "Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution." You don't need to have read the latter volume to get caught up to speed; Draper provides a prehistory of the term then follows its usage (and misusage) after the deaths of Marx and Engels.
Draper has no patience for shoddy arguments and tangled logic, whether the culprit is a revisionist or the arch-revolutionary Lenin himself. He makes a compelling case that Marx's understanding of the DotP was warped and twisted both by Russian revolutionaries up to and including Lenin and his followers, as well as social democratic revisionists such as Bernstein and Kautsky. Rosa Luxemburg is one of the few Marxists who come across in Draper's account as faithful to the idea as initially articulated.
Summoning a smorgasbord of primary and secondary sources, Draper gives us a good sense of what the arguments within the socialist movement were at the time. However, Draper's fidelity to textual sources and "fundamentalism" toward Marx are also his weakness. Ultimately, who cares if so-and-so properly understood what Marx wrote or not? Isn't it about what they accomplished (or the mistakes they made)?
By focusing exclusively on the history of the phrase, Draper is able to dodge a number of vital questions brought up in the course of the debate. What are the specific features of a workers government (i.e. the "class content" of the regime) which delineate the DotP from a bourgeois government? What is the relation between parliamentary activity, revolution, and a revolutionary regime? And what would be a plausible model of transition from parliamentary activity in a bourgeois regime to a post-revolutionary regime? On questions such as these, Draper conveniently notes that they're outside the scope of his book.
But the lack of answers to these questions points more to a deficiency in the socialist theory of the state rather than being an indictment toward Draper or his book. The socialist movement would do well to go back to Draper (and, through him, Lenin, Kautsky, Luxemburg, and Marx and Engels) to try to answer these questions in our own time. Knowledge of the past is indispensable for those who would make the future.
Hal Draper, an eminent independent socialist scholar, traces the textual history of the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" (DotP) as a window into the problems of revolution and reform, democracy and repression. Draper argues convincingly that the term "dictatorship" didn't always have its modern day connotations of undemocratic oligarchy, but was previously used essentially as a synonym for "regime" or "government." In that sense, a better contemporary framing might be "sovereignty of the working class" or a "workers' government."
Draper's book is his second on the concept of the DotP. The previous book on the subject traced the phrase leading up to Marx (with emphasis on the French revolutionary Blanqui and his followers); that volume can be found in Draper's third volume of his magnum opus, "Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution." You don't need to have read the latter volume to get caught up to speed; Draper provides a prehistory of the term then follows its usage (and misusage) after the deaths of Marx and Engels.
Draper has no patience for shoddy arguments and tangled logic, whether the culprit is a revisionist or the arch-revolutionary Lenin himself. He makes a compelling case that Marx's understanding of the DotP was warped and twisted both by Russian revolutionaries up to and including Lenin and his followers, as well as social democratic revisionists such as Bernstein and Kautsky. Rosa Luxemburg is one of the few Marxists who come across in Draper's account as faithful to the idea as initially articulated.
Summoning a smorgasbord of primary and secondary sources, Draper gives us a good sense of what the arguments within the socialist movement were at the time. However, Draper's fidelity to textual sources and "fundamentalism" toward Marx are also his weakness. Ultimately, who cares if so-and-so properly understood what Marx wrote or not? Isn't it about what they accomplished (or the mistakes they made)?
By focusing exclusively on the history of the phrase, Draper is able to dodge a number of vital questions brought up in the course of the debate. What are the specific features of a workers government (i.e. the "class content" of the regime) which delineate the DotP from a bourgeois government? What is the relation between parliamentary activity, revolution, and a revolutionary regime? And what would be a plausible model of transition from parliamentary activity in a bourgeois regime to a post-revolutionary regime? On questions such as these, Draper conveniently notes that they're outside the scope of his book.
But the lack of answers to these questions points more to a deficiency in the socialist theory of the state rather than being an indictment toward Draper or his book. The socialist movement would do well to go back to Draper (and, through him, Lenin, Kautsky, Luxemburg, and Marx and Engels) to try to answer these questions in our own time. Knowledge of the past is indispensable for those who would make the future.
March 20, 2017
Historical research which uncovers the evolution of the dictatorship of the proletariat from its abstract formulation in Marx to its realization in the USSR. A well-researched book, but one which could have been written better. The structure isn't great, and the author switches from historical narrative to socialist rhetoric at times. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand and research the dictatorship of the proletariat, but not the greatest read in the world.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews