historian said:
In a letter to Joseph Weydemeyer in 1852 Marx says:
My own contribution was
to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production;
that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat,
that this dictatorship itself constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.
So here we have Marx saying that the class struggle will lead to a dictatorship and that this dictatorship is phase that must be gone through to reach his nonsensical classless utopia. He called it a dictatorship of the proletariat as did Lenin.
Yes, but they meant utterly different things. Marx didn't mean a 'dictatorship' in the sense you're thinking of it. He called liberal democracy a "dictatorship of the bourgeouisie", that is, that it was set up so that bourgeouis interests would be dominant. The dictatorship of the proletariat is simply that, reversed: it now serves the class interests of the proletariat, rather than the bourgeoius. So it's not a totalitarian phase at all: it's the same system of government as an advanced capitalist democracy at the peak of its development, only now it is advancing proletariat rather than bourgeouis interests. What "dictatorship" means, in this context, is the supremacy of class interests, not a police state. Marx definately recognized that some countries - chiefly Britain and America - were advanced democracies where important gains in the state and the economy had been made by the working classes and yet he names these as dictatorships of the bourgeouis.
Not a "bourgeouis dictatorship" - the difference is important. It doesn't mean the state is a dictatorship, it has a meaning beyond the political sphere. It's the historical dictatorship of a class - in a sphere that transcends the state and every other social institution - where bourgeois interests are paramount.
Marx and Engels pointed to the Paris Commune as the model for the 'dictatorship'. Engels: "Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat ... election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate at any time. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers ... [the state is] at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap."
In no way did the Soviet revolution in Russia, nor the many Stalinist (and later Maoist) revolutions which followed, resemble these notions in the least.
Karl Kautsky's criticisms of Lenin come from a solid background in Marxist theory, and are about as close as you will get to seeing what Marx himself would have said about Lenin. A reading of Kautsky's last work -
Social Democracy versus Communism - would be immensely enlightening to you, and I think you'd very much enjoy the criticism of the USSR you will find therein. Here it is:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/index.htm
Lenin /Stalin et al could honestly point to that acceptance by Marx and claim to still be Marxists. You cannot use some of Marx words to justify your argument and ignore others that do not.
Exactly, that is precisely what Lenin and Stalin did. They ignored a vast number of 'inconveniences' in Marx's writings, including some rather elementary parts of his theories: a feudal, agrarian society could not (according to Marx) proceed straight to communism any more than a Stone Age society could overnight inaugurate a modern capitalist democracy. Russia was meant to go through a revolution, yes, but it was to be one which installed liberal democracy, not communism - that would come later. They ignored what had been written about the dictatorship of the proletariat, about voting rights, about elected officials, and many, many other things. The revolution in the first place defied Marx's historical conception of dialectic materialism; and the state which followed defied the labour theory of value (as you shall see by the end of the post). These are the two core elements of Marx's theories, and they were both rejected by Leninism. Clearly, the Bolsheviks utilized Marx's name and some of the slogans and catchphrases associated with his theories, but the meat of Marx's theories were completely and utterly rejected.
So at long last after hours of typing we get to the fact that peaceful old Marx did advocate bloodshed. As for being temporary how would you define that when the revolution is complete, which it never was it never went worldwide try as it might. So the bloody revolution in the eyes of socialists was still justified until the utopian state was reached, which of course it never would be.
Perhaps, but this is no different than the bloody imposition of liberal democracy on the entire world, which we witness right now. By outright invasions, but also of course by violent revolutions - the majority of capitalit democracies established in the last half-century have been founded in blood of one sort or another. Of course, according to Marx, this too is a historical necessity as capitalism must first be imposed and run its course before communism can take root.
Also, take note: Marx does not call upon bloody revolution in every case:
We know that we must take into consideration the institutions, the habits and the customs of different regions, and we do not deny that there are countries like America, England and – if I knew your institutions better I would perhaps add Holland – where the workers can attain their objective by peaceful means.
Since the socialism that Marx wanted was actually against human nature (the reason it would never work) it really cannot have been waiting to be “unveiled” it would need to be created.
I'm not sure why people think this. It seems to be based on a false understanding of Marx as advocating some sort of welfare state, a popular misunderstanding you seem to be having difficulty with. I did earlier make a few quotes of Marx on social reform and on redistribution of wealth, which he categorically rejects. I'll add some more here:
Criticizing state aid to socialist co-operatives in Germany:
Instead of arising from the revolutionary process of transformation of society, the "socialist organization of the total labor" "arises" from the "state aid" that the state gives to the producers' co-operative societies and which the state, not the workers, "calls into being". It is worthy of Lassalle's imagination that with state loans one can build a new society just as well as a new railway!
From the remnants of a sense of shame, "state aid" has been put -- under the democratic control of the "toiling people" . . . through these demands that it puts to the state, [the proletariat] expresses its full consciousness that it neither rules nor is ripe for ruling!
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On inequality in general:
"The elimination of all social and political inequality", rather than "the abolition of all class distinctions", is similarly a most dubious expression. As between one country, one province and even one place and another, living conditions will always evince a certain inequality . . . The concept of a socialist society as a realm of equality is a one-sided French concept . . . which, like all the one-sided ideas of earlier socialist schools, ought now to be superseded, since they produce nothing but mental confusion
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On economic inequality:
the individual producer receives back from society . . . exactly what he gives to it.
. . . Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values . . . the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.
. . . The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.
But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right."
So you see, the notion that Marx advocated some sort of "let's have the government redistribute all the wealth and make everybody equal!" is complete and utter nonsense: Marx advocated a society which featured a
right of economic inequality, according to the individual's capabilities.
