Ludwig von Mises on Dictatorship of the proletariat

“People argued over the problem whether the realization of Socialism…was to be attempted through the instrumentality of democracy or whether in the struggle one should deviate from the principles of democracy.  This was the celebrated controversy about the dictatorship of the proletariat; it was the subject of academic discussion in Marxist literature up to the time of the Bolshevist revolution and has since become a great political problem.”

“The bigger an enterprise is, the more is it forced to adjust its production to the changing whims and fancies of the masses, its masters.  …  It is the patronage of the masses that make enterprises grow big.  The common man is supreme in the market economy.  He is the customer who "is always right."In the political sphere, representative government is the corollary of the supremacy of the consumers in the market.  Office-holders depend on the voters as entrepreneurs and investors depend on the consumers.  The same historical process that substituted the capitalistic mode of production for precapitalistic methods substituted popular government—democracy—for royal absolutism and other forms of government by the few.  And wherever the market economy is superseded by socialism, autocracy makes a comeback.  It does not matter whether the socialist or communist despotism is camouflaged by the use of aliases like "dictatorship of the proletariat" or "people's democracy" or "Führer principle."  It always amounts to a subjection of the many to the few.”