Intensification of class struggle under socialism

The intensification of class struggle under socialism is a Marxist–Leninist theory which holds that after the socialist revolution overthrows the bourgeois state, the resistance against the socialist state on the part of the remaining exploiters whose privilege and property are under threat will only grow significantly more militant. As class struggle continues and intensifies under socialism, this necessitates the empowerment and expansion of the dictatorship of the proletariat to defend revolutionary gains against reactionary elements.

Application

Soviet Union

During the break from the New Economic Policy and initiation of collectivization in the late 1920s and early 1930s, wealthy peasants and kulaks resisted the efforts by the Soviet government to requisition grain and other produce and collectivize farmland. The kulaks only started to resist the state's policies after the NEP was being reversed in 1927 and later, having benefited from the limited concessions to capital and their class status was then endangered.