Communism

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.

-K. Marx & F. Engels

The dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists.

-V.I. Lenin

From its origin the Soviet State consciously embodied features of democracy and features of dictatorship. But the democracy was enjoyed by the vast majority of the population, and the dictatorship was over a small minority. At present I do not wish to go into the whys and wherefores of this, or into its rights and wrongs, but I just want to make one point absolutely clear: it is that democracy and dictatorship have never necessarily been mutually exclusive terms. To speak of “democracy” without saying for whom may be misleading.

To refer to dictatorship without specifying who dictates to whom is also liable to cause misunderstanding. The Soviet State, set up in October 1917, professed to give full democratic rights to the vast majority of the people. Did it do this? In Part I of this book I shall give my answer to this question by describing the organization of Soviet life as I have lived it, from 1931 to 1936. Soviet life, to one who has been brought up in a country where the factories and the land, the mines and the shops, are private property, is a new life, a life which differs in a vast number of ways from that of other countries. And, having lived this life, I find I can only agree with the Webbs and with Sir Bernard Pares, and refer to it as essentially democratic.

-P. Sloan

We can go on. Democracy is essential to the lifeblood of Communism, and Communists everywhere have strengthened the democracy for the working class while removing it from the Capitalists. This is the truth of democracy and Communism.