Dictatorship of the proletariat

[This is a guest post by Nate Holdren, from Whatinthehell.]

The current discussion here on democracy includes two posts I like very much on thinkers who I've recently encountered and who I find provocative and compelling, Jacques Ranciere and Alain Badiou. I had planned to engage with both in my post. Happily, much of what I'd wanted to say has been said in these fine posts, and more clearly than I'd been able to say it. This frees me up to focus solely on Louis Althusser, an important figure for both Ranciere and Badiou.

Althusser decried the abandonment by the French Communist Party (PCF) of the category "dictatorship of the proletariat," or, in a formulation he preferred, the domination by the proletarian class of the bourgeoisie.

There are two forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat, one good and the other bad. The bad: "In a word, the incorrect definition of the dictatorship of the proletariat consists in taking the word 'dictatorship' in the political sense, (...) in the sense of a political regime, that is, a political government over men."(Philosophy of the Encounter, 87-88.) Lenin held at least some of the time to this mistaken definition. The mistake here is one of over-emphasis. The bad form of the dictatorship of the proletariat makes the political moment, the political organization, all-determining and thus neglects the point that "[c]lass domination encompasses the whole set of economic, political, and ideological forms of domination – that is to say, of class exploitation and oppression." (89.) Over-emphasizing the political component reduces "all forms of domination to the political form alone." Althusser adds parenthetically, "what takes place in production is, let us recall, determinant in the last instance." (92.)

Overcoming capitalist class domination means overcoming the entire economic-political-ideological ensemble. Proletarian class domination, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, "can only designate the whole set of economic, political, and ideological forms by means of which the proletariat has to impose its politics on the old dominant, exploiting class. (90.)" Althusser holds that the dictatorship or domination of the proletariat will not consist of of expanded democracy. Rather, expanded democracy will be one moment of this dictatorship: "the political form of the dictatorship of the proletariat must be the broadest possible democracy." The political form is only one side of the triad of economic, political, and ideological which Althusser insists upon. The broadest possible political democracy will make only one moment of the proletariat's dominance.

Althusser's attack on the PCF's abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat was an attack on the party's parliamentarianism. It is no accident that he declared around this same time that Marxism lacked a theory of the state. The two themes are connected.

The state serves "to intervene in the struggle of the working class in order to maintain the system of exploitation and the general oppression of the exploited classes by the bourgeois class" and furthermore "to intervene, should the need arise, in the class struggle within the dominant class, with a view to overcoming its divisions." (71.) The state is an instrument for class struggle and it "must endure so that the conditions of exploitation will endure as well." (77.) The state is thus "terribly biased in favour of the ruling class."(78.) The communist project, then, is not to enter the state but to abolish it. Since democratic government under capitalism is class democracy - that is to say, the political form of the dictatorship of the capitalist class - parliamentarianism will not produce a rupture in the relations of exploitation.

The state and class domination are connected to "another 'absolute limit' of Marxist thought: namely its inability to think politics." (150.) It is unclear if Althusser intended to include or exempt his own work from this diagnosis. What is clear, however, is that for Althusser democracy is not to be eliminated, at least in its good form, which is bound up with the good form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. "[T]he broadest possible mass democracy, in which democracy is 'taken to the limit'," is the political component of the ensemble which forms, or rather will form, the proletariat's dominance.

Those interested in more on Althusser and particularly late Althusser are encouraged to see the recent issue of Borderlands on Althusser, edited by David McInerney. (Another avenue that would be productive would be to engage with Ranciere, Badiou, and the thematic of democracy in relation to Mao and French Maoism as a heterogeneous political sequence and body of thought. I'm not currently able to pursue this avenue because of limits of my time and my French.)