Antonio Gramsci and Anti-bureaucratic revolution - страница 8

Lenin sees the concrete content of the phenomenon of “class dictatorship” as follows. Firstly, the dictatorship of a class is its power, i.e. his domination over all other social groups, uncontested submission to his will and interests of behavior, actions of all members of society. Secondly, such a dictatorship includes the support of the power of the ruling class directly on the violence used in a variety of forms. Lenin especially singles out the moment of violence as one of the necessary components of a dictatorship. Thirdly, an indispensable sign of the dictatorship of the class is its complete “emancipation”, perfect incoherence by any laws. Here are his words: “Dictatorship is power based directly on violence, not bound by any laws”. “The scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing but unlimited, no laws, absolutely no rules constrained, based on violence based on power” [Сорокин, 67]. Lenin thereby on behalf of Marxism gives past, modern and future states indulgence to be anti-legal and even illegal social institutions.

The flip side of the Marxist-Leninist interpretation of the essence of the state as a class dictatorship is the perception and appreciation of democracy, freedom, law, the principles of humanism, in particular those established in the pre-socialist era, as insignificant components of socio-political life. From Lenin’s point of view, almost all that they are capable of is being agents of the dictatorship of the class, covering it with externally attractive attributes and thereby misleading the working people, the masses, hiding the oppressive nature of the state from them.

In the days of Lenin, they were, first and foremost, the institutions and norms of democracy prevailing in the developed capitalist countries. “Bourgeois democracy,” he wrote, “being a great historical progress compared to the Middle Ages, it always remains – and under capitalism it cannot but remain: narrow, trimmed, false, hypocritical, a haven for the rich, a trap and a deceit for the exploited, for the poor”.