" He opposed Lassalle's idea
of an armed insurrection in 1862, because he was certain that the economic
development had not yet reached the stage which alone could make a social
change possible. He fought with all the fierce impetuousness of his nature
every attempt of Bakunin to lead the workers to attempt the seizure of
political power and forcibly establish their rule while still a
minority.[52] He fought all these men because he had become profoundly
convinced that "_no social order ever disappears before all the productive
forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new and
higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions
of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society_."[53] No
"dictatorship of the proletariat," no action by any minority, however well
armed or however desperate, can overcome that great law.
The "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the sense in which that term is
used by the Russian Bolshevik leaders, and by those who in other countries
are urging that their example be followed, is not a policy of Marxian
Socialism. It is not a product of modern conditions. Rather it harks back
to the earlier conspiratory Socialism of Blanqui, with its traditions
inherited from Robespierre and Babeuf.
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