POL 315 MODULE 2
classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have
nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
All communist regimes claimed to be democratic, but more or less
implicit in this claim was the belief that the people were not yet ready or
able to govern themselves. For this reason, real-world communist states
became fossilised in what was supposed to be a transitional phase:
political power remained concentrated in the vanguard, and the
dictatorship was not of the proletariat but of the increasingly centralised
communist party and so it proved, to a tragic degree, in the world's
experience of socialist/communist states in the 20th century. Here, if
anywhere, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.
Capitalist class structures were replaced by rigid hierarchies, in which a
new political class governed in its own interests.
Command economies lumbered along inefficiently under the corrupt
direction of huge and unaccountable central bureaucracies, producing
not surpluses but bread queues and price riots. In almost every case, the
classless paradise promised by Marx quickly degenerated into dystopian
nightmare.
(b)
Proletarian Revolution
Dupre (2010) defines proletariats as the lowest or the poorest class of
citizens whose main duty is to produce children for the Roman state.
According to Marxism, Proletariats are working classes and are all wage
earners collectively and they are those who sell their labor or work for
wages. They have no means of production or property and must sell
their labor to survive. Marx raised the term from its derogatory
connotation to its sociological use referring to working class.
Proletarian revolution is the political revolution in which the working
class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie.
Marxist Theory of Revolution
Marx vacillated over whether violence was necessary to achieve
socialist goals. During the early part of his professional life, he clearly
suggested that one could not hope for a change from a capitalist system
to a socialist one without violence. Gradually, however, he began to
weaken this position until finally he admitted that certain systems (such
as those in England, Holland, and perhaps the United States) might be
responsive enough to adopt socialism by nonviolent means. Violence
was still necessary elsewhere however; Lenin would again insist that no
meaningful change could occur without violence.
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