Bakunin's Fear: Dictatorship Over the Proletariat

Karl Marx theorized a transitional phase known as the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. This was intended as a state controlled by the working class to suppress counter-revolutionaries after a socialist revolution.

However, the anarchist thinker Mikhail Bakunin expressed significant concern about this concept. Bakunin feared that instead of the proletariat exercising power, a new ruling elite would emerge.

Bakunin worried that Marx's proposed 'dictatorship of the proletariat' could easily morph into a 'dictatorship on the proletariat'. This meant the state apparatus, even if initially claiming to represent the workers, would ultimately dominate and oppress them, creating a new form of authoritarianism rather than liberation.

This critique highlights a fundamental disagreement between Marxists and anarchists regarding the role and nature of the state, even during a revolutionary transition.

Therefore, Mikhail Bakunin is the figure associated with the fear that Marx's concept would become a dictatorship on the proletariat.