Editorial Note, Nov-Dec, 2020

Lenin is commonly considered responsible for the notion that a single-Party dictatorship is the political form that the proletarian State should take in a socialist society. Prabhat Patnaik in the lead article in this issue contests this view. The Bolsheviks, he argues, had visualized a multi-Party democracy being established in the wake of the revolution. The fact that this did not happen, and they dissolved the Constituent Assembly instead, was a matter of historical contingency. But even after one-Party rule was established, Lenin was careful that it should not become a one-Party dictatorship, for which he made strenuous efforts to ensure that the Party did not suppress the independent initiative of the working class. His stand on the trade union question and on enlarging the Central Committee indicate the complexity of his position.