Dictatorship of the proletariat?

(A short note on a complicated theoretical theme.)

A veteran Pakistani Communist and political activist Jam Saqi died on March 5, 2018, aged 73. At a later stage in his life, he rejected the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as irrelevant to our present times. That was something with which I concur with him.

There have been enormous political developments and changes in the system of government and the extension of people's representation in many western countries since the nineteenth century, when Marx and Engels formulated the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat to replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The way democracies function at this time in the Nordic countries is the best example of that sociopolitical change.

However, in many Afro-Asian countries the ruling power is still mostly in the hands of feudal lords, old aristocratic families, religious politicians and comprador and raw capitalists. In these countries the form of government may be seemingly democratic, but the power stays in the hands of a minority of the powerful people and exploiting groups that I have briefly referred to.