Proletarian dictatorship began as a petit-bourgeois conspiracy without mass support

Evidence

Such were the beginnings of the notion of proletarian dictatorship in European socialism. It is a heritage that tends to confirm Marx’s later characterizations of the petit bourgeoisie while suggesting some of the political forms and consequence of such presumptions. It is also useful to note that at no point had the conspiracy become a popular or mass movement. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 309

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: the vanguard concept — so central to 20th-century revolutionary politics — was born not from proletarian mass action but from a tiny Parisian plot of 1796; the priesthood precedes the congregation.