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Lenin’s concept of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was intended to be a temporary system intended on rapid development and growth of the economy. It was more important to try and stop starvation and establish railroads than build worker co-ops. The mistake was when the leaders that came after decided to never cede power back to the working class.

Marx came up with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, not Lenin, and it didn’t mean Dictatorship over the Proletariat, but of the Proletariat, as a contrast to the Capitalist Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie.

The DotP is not to stop starvation or anything, it’s to protect against the resurgance of Capitalism. It additionally wasn’t meant to be “ceded back to the working class,” but become unnecessary as the mechanisms for Capitalism to come back were erased.

Neither Marx nor Lenin were advocating for literal modern conceptions of dictatorship, but consolidating all power away from the bourgeoisie and into the hands of the Proletariat.

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Marx coined the term, sure. But he didn’t come up with much more than that and a very rudimentary theory on how it would work. Lenin put it into practice and actually created it as an economic model. Everything else you’re arguing is theoretical semantics. How the thing works is how the thing works.

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