Elections Run by the People: The End of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
"It is clear that both formations [the Homeland for All party (PPT) and the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV)], though often armed with valid arguments, do not understand the significance of this electoral confrontation, which is not over candidates but rather something qualitatively different: the possibility -- or not -- of taking a decisive step towards a rupture with the capitalist system through democratic elections."
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3943
The socialist revolution has reached a new level of maturity (indicated by: 1) the rise of world public opinion/consciousness; 2) the increased power of the proletariat (organization, knowledge, resources); 3) the establishment of successful and prosperous socialist states for all to see; 4) the universal discrediting of the capitalist system). Governments now have the ability to transform themselves by means of the ballot box--they now have the ability to vote communists into power and to change their constitutions from capitalist governance to socialist. What this means in terms of revolutionary theory is that the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat (that period of socialist development from the 1917 October Revolution in the USSR (the former Soviet Union) to the end of the 1900's which saw the freeing of all the countries under proletarian dictatorship (the so-called "collapse" of the Soviet Union.) The dictatorship of the proletariat was a time when the socialist state(s) were under siege, under constant threat of being overturned unless they kept their economy on a war footing (which severely limited their ability to prosper). Socialist maturity allows the people to change--by means of the ballot box--their constitutions from capitalist to socialist if they so desire. In other words, we are now in the period of socialist construction.
