: : I'll tell YOU what is NOT 'rule by the people'. A system in which an elite writes laws in their favor and uses sanctimonious phrases like 'free enterprise' to protect their tyrannical dominion. Rule by the people means that the peopel RULE, i.e. they pass laws that everyone is required to obey. If capitalists break these laws, they are criminals and should be deal with as criminals. : : A 'despotism of the people' is an oxymoron.
Piper: Look Nikhil you can bandy about your wishy washy pseudo marxist views all you like. The fact remains that Marx himself called the dictatorship of the proletariat despotic:
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e. of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course in the beginning, this cannot be affected except by means of despotic inroads..." (Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto, at 104).
BTW the proletariat is not 'the people', it is a class of people. Hence during the tenure of the dictatorship of the proletariat class distinctions, by definition, still exist.
There will be no oppression after the dictatorship of the proletariat, when all classes have merged. This however does not change the fundamental character of the dictatorship of the proletariat which is, despotism.
None.
