@nifker It seems like *you* don't really know what Marx and Engels wanted because, as many marxists, you were reading them selectively.

""There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror" (Marx, "The Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna", 1848)

@DissidentKitty@sunbeam.city

@nifker

"Force [meaning violence], however, plays yet another role in history, a revolutionary role; that, in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument with the aid of which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilised political forms" (Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring, 1877)

@DissidentKitty@sunbeam.city

@nifker

In general, violence plays a very important role in Marx and Engels writings. The whole argument between Marxists and Social-Democrats ("Anti-Dühring", "Critique of the Gotha Program") was specifically about the use of violence.

Social-Democrats argued that the transition to communism should be gradual and peaceful. Marx and Engels argued violence is required as it will help "cleanse the society".

@DissidentKitty@sunbeam.city

@nifker

Therefore:

"A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists." (Engels, On Authority, 1872)

@DissidentKitty@sunbeam.city

@nifker

And even:

"[The workers] must work to ensure that the immediate revolutionary excitement is not suddenly suppressed after the victory. On the contrary, it must be sustained as long as possible. Far from opposing the so-called excesses – instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated – the workers’ party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction."

@DissidentKitty@sunbeam.city

@nifker

The last one comes from "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League", 1850.

As you can see, violence was not only integral part of Marxian communism, but dictatorship and terror were core elements of Marxism.

Lenin and Stalin merely built on top of Marx and Engels writings. Lenin's "The State and Revolution" (1917) quotes them a lot and is all excited about Engels writings being a "panegyric on violent revolution".

@DissidentKitty@sunbeam.city