The Stalin-era origins of the Eurocommunists’ ‘proletarian dictatorship’

This article discusses the Italian, French, and Spanish communists’ views on the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in the years between 1945 and 1980. In their scenario, parliamentary structures would remain intact yet be made subservient to the communist party. The capitalist elite and ‘reactionary’ parties would be excluded from the political community. The article argues that it was Stalin who formulated this hybrid scenario in 1948. The western communists remained loyal to it, neither adding to nor detracting anything substantial from it, until they finally said goodbye to proletarian dictatorship in the mid-1970s. But even then, they failed to make a clean break. The article concludes with a discussion of proletarian dictatorship as a state order in the context of today’s worldwide autocratic surge.