"Both Lenin and Stalin failed to recognize the inherently powerful but latent
revolutionary potential of the peasants of the pre-industrial colonies and
semi-colonies of the Western Empires, which had to wait until the emergence of
Mao Zedong in China to force the world to acknowledge this truth in history.
Mao, in placing his faith in the revolutionary potential of the Chinese
peasantry, redefined the term "proletariat" to mean those deprived of property,
a property-less class, away from the European idea of the proletariat as the
class of urban industrial workers.
The October Revolution of 1917 was launched on the slogan "All Power to the Soviets", through which the minority Bolsheviks won political leadership in the Soviets, which were workers councils that constituted the power behind the new socialist state. Bourgeois liberal democracy was not an objective of the October Revolution, but rather a target for elimination in order to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat in the context of socialist revolution through class struggle.
This was because in feudal Russia in 1917 the proletariat as a dominant class was an abstraction yet to be created as a reality by industrialization. The proletariat in its infancy, small in number, could not possibly command a majority under universal suffrage in a feudal agricultural society. Therefore, under similar circumstances, dictatorship of a minority proletariat is the only revolutionary path towards socialism, according to Leninism.
In pre-industrial societies, liberal representative democracy is by definition reactionary in the absence of a dominant working class. Lenin considered the revolution in Russia as a fortuitous beginning of an emerging socialist world order that required and justified a dictatorship of the proletariat to sustain revolutionary progress. " (thanks Talal)
The October Revolution of 1917 was launched on the slogan "All Power to the Soviets", through which the minority Bolsheviks won political leadership in the Soviets, which were workers councils that constituted the power behind the new socialist state. Bourgeois liberal democracy was not an objective of the October Revolution, but rather a target for elimination in order to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat in the context of socialist revolution through class struggle.
This was because in feudal Russia in 1917 the proletariat as a dominant class was an abstraction yet to be created as a reality by industrialization. The proletariat in its infancy, small in number, could not possibly command a majority under universal suffrage in a feudal agricultural society. Therefore, under similar circumstances, dictatorship of a minority proletariat is the only revolutionary path towards socialism, according to Leninism.
In pre-industrial societies, liberal representative democracy is by definition reactionary in the absence of a dominant working class. Lenin considered the revolution in Russia as a fortuitous beginning of an emerging socialist world order that required and justified a dictatorship of the proletariat to sustain revolutionary progress. " (thanks Talal)
