Polemic on General Line of International ... - From Marx to Mao

It is perfectly clear that according to Marx and Lenin, thehistorical period throughout which the state of the dictatorshipof the proletariat exists, is not merely the period oftransition from capitalism to the first stage of communism,as alleged by the revisionist Khrushchov clique, but the entireperiod of transition from capitalism to “complete communism”,to the time when all class differences will have beeneliminated and “classless society” realized, that is to say, tothe higher stage of communism.It is equally clear that the state in the transition periodreferred to by Marx and Lenin is the dictatorship of the proletariatand not anything else. The dictatorship of the proletariatis the form of the state in the entire period of transitionfrom capitalism to the higher stage of communism, andalso the last form of the state in human history. The witheringaway of the dictatorship of the proletariat will mean thewithering away of the state. Lenin said:Marx deduced from the whole history of Socialism and ofthe political struggle that the state was bound to disappear,and that the transitional form of its disappearance (thetransition from state to nonstate) would be the “proletariatorganized as the ruling class”. 1Historically the dictatorship of the proletariat may takedifferent forms from one country to another and from oneperiod to another, but in essence it will remain the same.Lenin said:The transition from capitalism to Communism certainlycannot but yield a tremendous abundance and variety ofpolitical forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same:the dictatorship of the proletariat. 2It can thus be seen that it is absolutely not the view of Marxand Lenin but an invention of the revisionist Khrushchov1Ibid., pp. 256-57.2Ibid., p. 234.447