I propose in this chapter to examine Marx's notion of the transition to socialism, particularly his concept of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, to answer what is perhaps the most fundamental question that must be asked of it in the context of this study: does the transition allow for the existence of opposition and the protection of opposition rights? The major obstacle to this task is that Marx was never clear about the constitution of his ‘transition’, and was sometimes even evasive about it. Characteristically, Marx was long on criticism and short on precise remedies, for what he thought were good reasons. Marx's project was formed at a time when detailed, and sometimes fantastic, plans for harmonious communities were being proposed by socialists such as Fourier and Cabet. Marx determined to avoid such a method. As he wrote many years later in the only volume of Capital he completed, he had always refused to write ‘receipts…for the cook-shops of the future’. In itself, Marx's commitment reveals a good deal about his project and its implementation, and it will be examined later. But it also relieved him from being specific and detailed on those very points on which his followers most needed direction. Marx's contemporary critics, particularly the anarchists, were never mollified, for he refused to answer them directly. In the face of his general reticence we must attend to the context of his writings on the ‘transition’, and to the context of the ‘transition’ itself.