Dictatorship is antithetic to people The postulate ordains: A minority needs uncouth armoury to subdue the formidable majority.

The practice goes: The rule of armed minority over the disarmed majority is the norm presently in all countries of the world. The institution of state has shed all pretensions of neutrality; it has been made subservient to capital. The fearful minuscule minority that has mastered the art of grabbing commons and expropriate labour uses the armed institutions and organs of deceit by the state to keep its victims tethered secure. Barring few autocratic rulers, who give a bad name, democracy in almost all other countries is the creed that has been crafted to legitimise this norm of armed minority rule. Lenin bluntly called it dictatorship of the bourgeoisie to emphasise its basic characteristic while presenting his own version of dictatorship of the proletariat by comparison to underline the claim of majority in conception, though admitting that proletariat in itself is still a minority. The norm of minority rule and dictatorship nevertheless stands! To counter the virtual dictatorship of capital, after its over-throw, the concept of ruthless suppression of the vanquished class through armed state captured by the victorious proletariat with the help of allies was presented as a natural course for survival of revolution during the transitory phase of socialism. It became a touchstone of revolutionary resoluteness of a ruling communist party in later debates. The premise says that the vanquished bourgeoisie is more ferocious in defeat and to check it the ruling proletariat has to be more ruthless. The postulate further justifies a saying that violence can be defeated only by more violence. And violence in both cases is practiced through the institution of the state having its last stay in armed forces. The justification for the concept of dictatorship of proletariat however suffers from some glaring infirmities. Theoretically the concept is unsound. It ignores the minority characteristic of a self-perpetuating state that basically nurtures capital, even the so-called socialist state. The postulate then admits that ruling proletariat, as a minority in society at the time of capturing state power needs to rule ruthlessly to reach the stage of majority. First, this goes against its allies in the revolution that shared their shoulders to bring it in power. It is sheer political dishonesty that from the moment proletariat assumes power it seeks to eliminate its allies with the help of arms and manipulation of economic levers. It paves the way for breaking the unity among ranks of revolution and ultimately its dissolution! Secondly, if the socialist revolution represents a rule of majority over the minority the postulate of more violence to meet the violence of the vanquished is spurious if one remembers that state is basically an instrument of rule by the minority over majority. Thereafter its relevance disappears. The majority is capable to subdue any recalcitrant but over thrown minority. There is no need for any armed institution like state for this purpose.

To be precise: in the scheme under dictatorship of proletariat peasantry, as an ally class of revolution stands to be eliminated at the hands of proletariat whom it helped to be in power under socialism; ostensibly through a hectic campaign for industrialisation-cum-capitalisation and uncouth armoury if need be. The lesson: erstwhile soviet experiment under dictatorship of proletariat failed to eliminate the bourgeoisie as a class that was overthrown by 1917 revolution while it was successful to eliminate its ally in peasantry, turning them into wage workers. Here, one basic tenet was over looked that state is an instrument of capital rather than the majority surviving in labour. Further more, it is worth analysing how the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat came to mean as it turned out to be in its application. It ruthlessly suppressed each and every form of dissent within the ruling party as well as in society. Uncouth uniformity was sought after from every quarter. As a result regimentation reigned. The concept degenerated into virtually a dictatorship of the party that ruled by reason of arms. The party turned into an instrument of rule in the hands of its General Secretary, which again meant nothing but arbitrary rule, with a coterie around of his own choice to clap the wishes of the leader or at best to fine-tune the rule. The general mass of the population was affected in its creativity. It is difficult to digest that all the brilliant minds charged with the interests of the workingmen initially in this experiment could reduce to such a pathetic situation and why they could not assess what this interpretation of the concept meant actually in social terms. The culprit sneaked perhaps when the communist party assumed itself as the sole representative of the class, with neither check from, nor any worthwhile accountability to the class in place. Society as such was belaboured and fooled. The role of the masses was nowhere in account. Obviously, the dictatorship of the proletariat turned out to be more obnoxious than the discarded dictatorship of bourgeoisie where many factions contend for sectional interests, at least providing a leeway for the people to escape rigours and ruthlessness to an extent in their contest against both the state and capital. Here under socialist state, no such leeway was left available to the ruled. It may be noted that self-check is no check in such matters, especially when such a volatile institution is dealt as the state.