English citations of DOTP and DotP

Noun: "(Marxism) initialism of dictatorship of the proletariat" edit

1985 1995 2000 2003 2014 2016 2020
ME « 15th c. 16th c. 17th c. 18th c. 19th c. 20th c. 21st c.
  • 1985 February 26, Richard Carnes, “What is socialism? (Dictatorship of the Proletariat)”, in net.politics.theory[1] (Usenet), retrieved 2022-11-08:
    Thus I see no reason to believe that by "dictatorship of the proletariat" Marx meant anything less democratic and civil libertarian than the US and the England of his day. The Paris Commune, which Marx and Engels considered an example of the DotP, was characterized by universal suffrage, immediate recallability of all public officials by the same voters, and the same wages for both working class and public officials. This hardly sounds like a model for the Soviet Union. It is a great misunderstanding of Marx, in my opinion, to think that he advocated a political dictatorship, oligarchy, or tyranny in any shape or form.
  • 1995 January 11, Chris Faatz, “Suggestion for Discussion”, in alt.politics.socialism.trotsky[2] (Usenet), retrieved 2022-11-08:
    Q: What is the difference between the scientific definition of dotp and the ordinary use of the word dictatorship?
    A: Well, the popular impression of dictatorship is a one-man rule, an absolutism. I think that is the popular understanding of the word dictatorship. This is not contemplated at all in the Marxian term dotp. This means the dictatorship of a class.
    Q: And how will the dotp operate insofar as democratic rights are concerned?
    A: We think it will be the most democratic government from the point of view of the great masses of the people that has ever existed, far more democratic, in the real essence of the matter, than the present bourgeois democracy in the United States.
  • 2000 July 27, Sean Carroll, “Museum of Communism FAQ Version 1.2”, in alt.politics.socialism.trotsky[3] (Usenet), retrieved 2022-11-08:
    Here the author also shows his complete ineptitude in basic Marxist theory by performing the cardinal error of conflating the Dictatorship of the Proletariat with totalitarianism. I would have said the same thing 3 years ago when all I had were second-hand notions of the DotP fed into me by bourgeois society. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, in its most likely historical form, will include such basic democratic notions as universal suffrage, accountability of the national government to the local workers' councils, and instant recall of public officials. Hardly a model of totalitarianism.
  • 2003 May 5, brian turner, “The Hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky”, in alt.politics.usa[4] (Usenet), retrieved 2022-11-08:
    What is meant by 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is also vague, only a little less so. Marx praised the 1871 Paris Commune as an example of it, and supposedly Engels said DOTP meant a democratic republic like the American one (see Hal Draper _TDOTP: From Marx to Lenin_).
  • 2014 November 13, stevedarcy, “Dictating the Terms of Social Cooperation: Quick Sketch of a Normative Interpretation of DOTP”, in The Public Autonomy Project[5], archived from the original on 2022-11-08:
    According to Marx, “supreme authority” should be vested in a “Council,” operating as “a democratic assembly, [in which] every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it” (Ethnological Notebooks, p. 150). And yet, he assigned a central role in revolutionary politics to what he called the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (DOTP), which he suggested would undertake “despotic inroads on the rights of property.”

    Should we understand the DOTP as instantiating the democratic ideal as he understood it, or as suspending the democratic ideal on a “transitional” or “emergency” basis?

    The concept of DOTP has been subject to multiple interpretations.
  • 2016 November 14, GreySpark1950, “What should be a Marxist-Leninist's personal stance towards culture in today's society? And what about in the DotP?”, in Reddit[6], communism101, archived from the original on 2022-11-08:
    I understand that art has a class character, but what should our stance as marxists be? Should we avoid art, films, music and other cultural products in capitalism because they hold the ideology of the rulling class, as well as racism, sexism and classism? Should we strive to enjoy and create proletarian art during capitalism?

    What about during the DotP? Should we ban the music and art of the old society? I understand that artists like Mozart or Beethoven had bourgeois ideals and we should shun that. But what would people do if we banned them in order to defend socialism?
  • 2020 July 20, ToasterEconomy, “The definition for Dictatorship of the Proletariat is often vague to the point of being meaningless”, in Reddit[7], DebateCommunism, archived from the original on 2022-11-08:
    My final contention is that if a DOTP is only something we know existed/didn't exist because x country isn't Marxist anymore, then what is the point of having a term that can't be used to describe a possibly existing and current society? As example Ethiopia could be said to not have been a DOTP since the EPRDF reformed into the Prosperity Party. Unless was Ethopia still a DOTP under the EPRDF, despite post 1991 reforms?
  • 2020 July 20, vanstertrafik, “The definition for Dictatorship of the Proletariat is often vague to the point of being meaningless”, in Reddit[8], DebateCommunism, archived from the original on 2022-11-08:
    The DOTP is not a form of government, but a set of class relations. The most authoritarian ML one-party state and the most libertarian direct democracy could both concievably be examples of a DOTP, given that the class relations are such that political power is held by the working class. Actually existing socialism only having taken the form of the "ML state", coupled with the presence of the scary D-word and a large dose of general dogmatism have contributed to shifting the common usage of the term to just referring to countries in which socialist parties hold political power.