One important dispute revolved around Marx and the leading anarchist Bakunin. Marx had argued that after the revolution there must be a period of ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in order to expunge from society those still existing elements of the capitalist economy. But sooner or later this revolutionary state would ‘wither away’. Bakunin countered that once it had its dictatorship the proletariat would never let go. The dictatorship of the proletariat may not be all that much of an improvement over the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.