Dual Power - History

History

Dual power is a term first used by Lenin, "The Dual Power," (dvoevlastie), although conceptually first outlined by Proudhon, which described a situation in the wake of the February Revolution in which two powers, the workers councils (or Soviets, particularly the Petrograd Soviet) and the official state apparatus of the Provisional Government coexisted with each other and competed for legitimacy. Lenin argued that this essentially unstable situation constituted a unique opportunity for the Soviets to seize power by smashing the Provisional Government and establishing themselves as the basis of a new form of state power. This notion has informed the strategies of subsequent communist-led revolutions, including the Chinese Revolution led by Mao.

Libertarian socialists have more recently appropriated the term to refer to the non-violent strategy of achieving a libertarian socialist economy and polity by means of incrementally establishing and then networking institutions of direct participatory democracy to contest the existing power structures of state-capitalism. In this context, the strategy itself is sometimes also referred to as "counterpower" to differentiate it from the term's Leninist origins.

The strategy of dual power is generally held to be in line with the non-aggression principle as it does not involve the use of force or advocate expropriation.