The Concept of the State: Sun Yat-sen and Mao Tse-tung

Abstract

In communist theory, the state is a coercive apparatus that exercises the dictatorship of a single class. Proletarian revolution consists of seizing that apparatus from the oppressing capitalist class and establishing the dictatorship of the working class. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a transitional period in which the final remnants of capitalism are eliminated and the means of production socialized. During this peiod the Communist Party, as the vanguard of the proletariat, exercises leadership in the dictatorship in order to guide the state to full socialism and the eventual withering away of the state.