This is one of the concepts taken from Marx’s writings by the early leaders of the Bolshevik wing of the All-Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (later the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), especially by Lenin, and used to justify the dominant role of the Communist Party in the state. According to the developed Marxist-Leninist doctrine, immediately after the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism there will be an intermediate period during which the party, as the vanguard of the proletariat, will have to exercise political and economic control in a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. This undemocratic and inegalitarian state of affairs is unavoidable because the transition from capitalism to true socialism is impossible until the necessary conditions have been created. These conditions are partly economic, depending on the level of capitalist development that has been reached, but more important is the creation of ‘Socialist Man’. This entails the development of a true socialist consciousness among the masses. Until they come to grasp the true ideology, it is pointless to entrust political and social decisions to them, since they will still be suffering the alienation and ideological distortion that life in a capitalist society produces (see false consciousness). Ultimately, when a true socialist understanding has been developed, not only will the party’s supreme power be unnecessary, but indeed the whole state will ‘wither away’, leaving a peaceful co-operative society.
Until then democracy could only hold back this development; in fact selfishness and conflict would be rife unless kept down by forceful central control on the part of those who, having been admitted to the party, are known to have a proper understanding of scientific socialism. While there are theoretical difficulties in accepting this idea, it should not be taken as mere cynical pretence. In many areas of Soviet life it was possible to see serious attempts to build such a socialist man, for example in the ordinary criminal law and, above all, the educational system. Nevertheless, it is true that the doctrine was especially useful to the Bolsheviks in 1917 when they worked to turn the mass revolution of February into their own creation. It is generally accepted that Lenin’s October Revolution lacked any real popular support and was more of a coup d’état or putsch. Hence it was necessary to find a way of explaining how a true popular Marxist revolution could, nevertheless, be deemed to have occurred. With the fall of communist governments in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and the acceptance of pluralism, any remaining supporters of the concept have been marginalized. Communist parties in most other countries have long had to drop the idea in order to compete in democratic elections.
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