Function
| This section may contain original research. |
According to Marxist-Leninist theory, the communist party represented the working class — the revolutionary proletariat — whose interests it championed against those of the capitalist bourgeoisie. The period between the fall of a bourgeois state and the attainment of communism is a subject on which Marx was reticent, describing only in general terms the establishment of a democratic socialist state, which would eventually begin to "wither away" (slowly turn into a form of direct democracy) until a communist society was achieved. Several decades later, Vladimir Lenin, facing a real revolution and the possibility that the communist party might be able to seize power, put theoretical subtleties to the side. He suggested that the fall of the bourgeois state (a label of questionable accuracy when applied to tsarist Russia, if one forgets the February 1917 revolution) would be followed by a transitional state characterized by socialism, soviet democracy and communist party rule – the "dictatorship of the proletariat."
Read more about this topic: Communist Party Of Czechoslovakia
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)
“Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.”
—Audre Lorde (1934–1992)
“To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)