Marxist Politics and The Role of the Marxist Party

QUESTION: Marxist Politics – The Role of the Marxist Party

ANSWER:

The Marxist political party will assist the workers in their efforts to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. According to the authors of Socialism as a Social System, “Marxist/Leninist theory and the experience of history show conclusively that the working class can carry out its historic mission only if led by a strong, well-organized party.”¹ Stalin writes, “Our Party guides the government. The Party supervises the work of the administration...and tries to secure for them the support of the masses, since there is not any important decision taken by them without the direction of the Party.”²

Marxist Politics – The Dictatorship of the Marxist Party

Thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat is in essence the dictatorship of the Marxist party. The state will rule by the majority of the proletariat guided by the principles of Marxism. Those opposed to the Party will be considered bourgeois or reactionary. Eventually, all in opposition to Marxism will be eliminated, rendering the dictatorship of the proletariat unnecessary. Once classes cease to exist, everyone will be of like mind, and no state will be needed to enforce one class’ oppression of another.

¹ V.V. Zagladin, ed., The World Communist Movement (Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers 1973), 159.
² Joseph Stalin, “Beseda s pervoi amerikanskoi rabochei delegatsiei,” Sept. 9, 1927. Cited in Goodman, The Soviet Design for a World State, 191.