Establishing dictatorship of the proletariat

Description

Establishing the proletariat as the ruling class after a socialist revolution in order to create a transition to communism. This strategy includes developing democracy insofar as appropriate and suppressing – by force when necessary – resistance by exploiting classes or any other elements hostile to the new regime.

Context

In traditional Marxist-Leninist thinking, this transition period is the time for a new regime to restructure society along socialist lines.

Counter-claim

Any revolutionary scheme which envisions an idealized end-point is difficult to apply to social reality.

The assumption that any class, such as the proletariat, are better administrators than any other class is not viable. Thus, some other selection criteria is always applied.