violence, dictatorship and markets

Dear WSNers: Kohler's point about Nazis and Stalinists being similar in some
ideological respects, violence and dictatorship seems correct to me. But 
let's
leave that aside to get to the heart of matter. The question for Marxists on
this list is how to use the good parts of Marx and avoid those aspects that 
led
to the errors of Stalinism. (I take it we have agreement that Stalin was a 
nasty
fellow and that Stalinism is a bad system. If not, we are beyond the realm 
of
reasoned argument.)The question then is, can one get rid of markets without
using dictatorial and violent methods, or if one thinks violence is 
necessary,
how can one keep the violence restricted to acceptable levels? At the very
least, they must produce less unhappiness in the long run than the amount of
violence that would occur otherwise.

Marx was very clear that he thought a dictatorship of the proletariat was
necessary to keep markets from being reinstated. It is also clear that
dictatorship requires violence. So this is the big question: How does one
eliminate markets without resorting to an unacceptable level of violence and
dictatorship?

Let me eliminate one standard response to such questions: It isn't ok to 
just
say capitalism causes its own share of violence. Maybe so, but that is 
merely
the fallacy of ad hominem tu quoque. How is a revolution that eliminates 
markets
going to avoid going down the Stalinist road?

To put this post in context, all along I have argued for the necessity of
markets, and many on this list have disagreed. Fair enough. But can one
eliminate them without resort to unacceptable amounts of violence and
dictatorship? This seems to me to be the nut to crack for those opposed to
markets. Without cracking it, why would anyone want to go down that road?

Randy Groves