Against Illusions in Bourgeois Democracy

(Quote of the Week)

V.I. Lenin, leader of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that brought the proletariat of Russia to power, explained that bourgeois democracy serves as a mask for the bloody dictatorship of the capitalist class. Writing in 1918 in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (a continuation of his 1917 work, The State and Revolution), Lenin polemicized against apologists for “democratic” bourgeois rule such as Karl Kautsky, a German Social Democrat and an opponent of the October Revolution and soviet rule (i.e., workers democracy).

Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor. It is this truth, which forms a most essential part of Marx’s teaching, that Kautsky the “Marxist” has failed to understand. On this—the fundamental issue—Kautsky offers “delights” for the bourgeoisie instead of a scientific criticism of those conditions which make every bourgeois democracy a democracy for the rich….

The learned Mr. Kautsky has “forgotten”—accidentally forgotten, probably—a “trifle,” namely, that the ruling party in a bourgeois democracy extends the protection of the minority only to another bourgeois party, while the proletariat, on all serious, profound and fundamental issues, gets martial law or pogroms, instead of the “protection of the minority.” The more highly developed a democracy is, the more imminent are pogroms or civil war in connection with any profound political divergence which is dangerous to the bourgeoisie.

—V.I. Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918)