Ok, I realized that two weeks ago I actually read both Chapter 2 and 3 together. For some reason I thought that's what we were doing LOL. So I'll just compile my thoughts on both here.

The second chapter, I think, was pretty self-explanatory; not many deep revelations within the chapter, but some more rhyming moments, like this:

Nothing could be more absurd than the two contradictory views of Communists promulgated today by their opponents. They are usually pictured as planless inciters to violence and riot, people who have a crazy desire for chaos, in the hope that something vaguely called communism may somehow ensue. A more sophisticated view, to which no less a person than Sinclair Lewis falls victim in It Can't Happen Here, portrays them as brainless sheep required to act in blind obedience to the orders of their superiors for the sake of discipline. Neither of these types could possibly lead a successful strike, much less a revolution. A communist who increased risks by recklessness would be early eliminated; a man who only took orders would be useless as a leader. Communists must learn the difficult combination of intelligence with daring; they must learn to act together but they must all know why.

It's just incredible to see how little the anti-communist myths have changed in nearly 100 years. I'm going to leave the rest to speak for itself; the 3rd chapter is far more interesting.

Most Americans shrink from the word “dictatorship.” “I don’t want to be dictated to,” they say. Neither, in fact, does anyone. But why do they instinctively take the word in its passive meaning, and see themselves as the recipients of orders? Why do they never think that they might be the dictators? Is that such an impossible idea? Is it because they have been so long hammered by the subtly misleading propaganda about personal dictatorships, or is it because they have been so long accustomed to seek the right to life through a boss who hires them, that the word dictatorship arouses for them the utterly incredible picture of one man giving everybody orders?

No country is ruled by one man. This assumption is a favorite red herring to disguise the real rule. Power resides in ownership of the means of production—by private capitalists in Italy, Germany and also in America, by all workers jointly in the USSR. This is the real difference which today divides the world into two systems, in respect to the ultimate location of power. When a Marxist uses the word “dictatorship,” he is not alluding to personal rulers or to methods of voting; he is contrasting rule by property with rule by workers.

Again, not much has changed in 100 years. What I love about how this chapter opens is that it really pulls no punches. I feel as though in our current time we often shy away from this idea, dance around the concept, and try to dilute it in some way by reframing it as a form of reconstitution of democracy. Yet, this really misses the point. The point that Lenin, Marx, and Engels were making this whole time. We live in a dictatorship of capital, and there are no two ways about it. "Democracy" under this system is an illusion, and those who really have power are the capitalists. I found this entire chapter incredibly refreshing because Strong leans in to this idea and tells you, in so many words, "It'll be our turn to dictate". Why do they never think that they might be the dictators? What a great question! We know that ideas like taxing the rich or even taking sectors and making them public (healthcare) are wildly popular, and imagine a system with the pure authority to make those things happen! There is no debate, because the debate is over; most of us agree healthcare is a human right, and as such, the debate should only be about implementation. Yet our capitalist democracy has endless debates on if "healthcare is a human right" because we allow for the opinions of capitalists to have any importance at all.

What characteristics of the new régime most obviously showed its dictatorial character? They were the following:

This was the section where I realized that Strong wasn't interested in dancing around the topic. Especially the 3rd point:

Third, they took control of schools, press and all means of expression, and while encouraging the widest latitude of criticism by workers interested in augmenting or improving the public properties, suppressed any expressions which seemed to the government likely to strengthen the rights of private property or injure the efficiency of socially owned production. At certain periods when they felt their social ownership of production threatened, whether by sabotage, graft, or the strengthening of private owners, they suppressed these dangers as drastically as they thought necessary by means which varied from economic discrimination to deportation or shooting.

If you were not already disillusioned with the state of things, this paragraph would probably send you screaming for the hills. Yet, this is precisely what is happening now. The capitalist state allows for:

the widest latitude of criticism by [capitalists] interested in augmenting or improving the [private] properties, suppressed any expressions which seemed to the government likely to [weaken] the rights of private property or injure the efficiency of [privately] owned production. At certain periods when they felt their [private] ownership of production threatened, whether by sabotage, graft, or the [weakening] of private owners, they suppressed these dangers as drastically as they thought necessary by means which varied from economic discrimination [ie international sanctions] to deportation [of subversives] or shooting [of subversives].

Except, what a communist is seeking to build is a system that flips this on its head. Strong acknowledges this by simply stating:

the above characteristics are definite indications of dictatorship, a rule to which not all men have equal access. They are the tactics of all owners in all countries and all periods of history when they feel themselves threatened. They are the tactics to which owners of private property resorted in Italy and Germany when the rising votes of communist and socialist workers threatened their ownership. They are resorted to today in sections of America where property feels threatened, whether by farmhands in Imperial Valley or sharecroppers in Arkansas and Alabama. They will be resorted to on a wider scale if American capitalism really feels itself slipping. Nothing in Soviet history indicates that the Bolsheviks were any more “dictatorial” or ruthless than owners of property anywhere under similar stresses. Certainly they were far less bloody and oppressive than any of the “dictatorships of the right”—whether in Hungary, Finland, China, Italy or Germany—established in retaliation or prevention by private ownership which really felt itself in danger.

She goes on to make some clear points about the extent and power capitalists have, and will go to, to kill even the smallest gains for the working class. Yet, when thinking about the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," we also should consider, as Strong points out, that "The tactics used by the dictatorship in the Soviet Union were conditioned by the economic development of the land and its international relations. In the first years they were affected by foreign intervention and civil war; in later, years they conformed to and created the rapid economic advance and increasing international prestige of the country." I only point this out because any current and modern attempt at this same thing will be conditioned by our own "economic development of the land and its international relations".

The chapter ends with the reality that the work doesn't end once you succeed; I think the example she gives of the railroads is very fascinating. We know all too well that under our current system there is waste, that many of us perform bullshit jobs, and bullshit tasks to inflate the productivity of ourselves, our departments, and entire industries. We do not do it willingly either! This kind of busy work is dictated to us to justify all kinds of things, from performance reviews of our managers to national GDP. Except, we would never look at these productivity reports from other parts of our sector and want to investigate them, not willingly anyway, because any productivity gains wouldn't go to us. Yet, when a railroad under the newly formed Soviet system reported high efficiency, not only did workers want to understand how, they then reported on the falseness of these reports. The reason for that is obvious! Any gains would directly benefit the workers in a workers state, and any falsehoods would directly harm the workers in a workers state.

This is today’s routine in the Soviet Union. Scores of letters like this appear daily in the press throughout the land. Some of them are ironic, some statistical, some outraged. But all of them express men who know themselves owners, and through ownership dictators of the land in which they live.

The next chapter should be very intriguing. I've been trying to learn more and understand more about Democratic Centralism both in theory and in practice, and it can be very difficult to understand without directly experiencing it. The way it scales from a small party to the national level is all interesting stuff.