Lenin, the proletariat, and the legitimation of dictatorship

Abstract

This article examines the arguments Lenin employed after the October Revolution in order to justify party dictatorship over the working class. It challenges the conventional view that Lenin defended constraints on proletarian choice by appealing to the paternalistic vanguard theory set forth in What Is To Be Done? A systematic review of Lenin's revolutionary writings indicates that his legitimation strategy was based instead on an essentialist interpretation of class identity that made it possible to deny proletarian status, and thus democratic rights, to wage‐laborers who opposed Bolshevik rule. It is Lenin's theory of class, therefore, not his theory of the party per se, that is vital for an understanding of his authoritarian politics.