On the Question of Democracy
Ideas of Democracy have been around since Ancient Greece, most notably in Athens, and those ideas never died with them, Democracy then, isn’t as much different now, only difference is this idea became global since the emergence of Capitalist Mode of Production, where the Bourgeoisie themselves sought better representation and political control, Liberalism became the main factor of Capitalistic Idealism that sought Liberties from all strata of society, that was the idea for everyone, under Serfdom of Feudalism in comparison what the Liberals implanted sounded amazing, “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness”, though this was the Americanized version of the quote, it was same across Europe: “liberté, égalité, fraternité” (liberty, equality, fraternity) in France; “Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit” (unity, justice and liberty) in Germany and “peace, order, and good government” in the Commonwealth (including Canada and Australia). It is also similar to a line in the Canadian Charter of Rights: “life, liberty, security of the person” this line was also in the older Canadian Bill of Rights, which added “enjoyment of property” to the list.
But the main question we have to ask ourselves is this, ‘Did this idea honoured to represent everyone?’ that’ll be “NO!”, for those who are well acquainted with Human History, we can see that the moment the Bourgeoisie overthrew the Monarchism and the State of Affairs of Feudalism that represented it, a NEW State Ownership was made that gave special privileges to those that owned the Means of Production, that controlled the Institutions, and determined the Freedoms and Liberties of all (see Chris Harman). That being the Capitalists themselves, only they had all the privileges of “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness”, only they could vote to make decisions on the population. The rest of the Classes, i.e. Workers, and Peasants, weren’t given rights nor liberties, to them society carried on as same, but this time it was their Bosses that ran the State, and determined their socio-economic role in society to suit their interests. Workers across history fought for those Rights as equal as their masters were, overtime the bourgeoisie slowly fed bread crumbs that eventually made Workers achieve equal privileges on voting, owning land, and property. But, the one thing they’ll never allow the Workers have is control of the Means of Production! The very Production that feeds our bellies, that builds our infrastructure, that provides culture, and creates wealth! All this is controlled by the Capitalists, only they determine, what we can eat, what we listen, what we see, what we believe, and what we need! To this does this sound like “Liberty” or “Democracy”? Where we have control of our lives and can make decision without marketing advertisers psychologically determining our interests? That’ll be “NO”!
Even under Feudalism similar methods were used through religion to control the population and control their needs and superstitions, the Clergy were a very powerful Class, they rivalled the Kings and Queens of the period, determining who was King and Queen through use of “Divine Rights”! The Clergy were the most Intellectual, and hold all the power of Knowledge, they controlled the flow of information just as the Capitalist control information in our Media, our Libraries, and other Mediums! Though the Clergy had no issues in hiding this knowledge as most of the lower classes were illiterate at the time, but in the Modern Day Capitalists work extra hard in Psychological Operations to manipulate the masses through various rhetorical manipulations. Humans in all societies have been exposed to Psychological Propaganda by their Governments convincing them who are our enemies, what they’re conspiring, twisting their intentions, and other fallacies. We should know it more recently, from the 1900s to the present-day! In 1930s Central Europe, it was the Jews that were viewed as “Enemies”! In the 1960s West, it was Communism that were viewed as “enemies”! In 1980s America it was Japan that were viewed as “Enemies”! In 1990s West, it was Yugoslavia that was viewed as “enemies! In 2000s West, it was Iraq that was viewed as “enemies”! In 2010s West, it was Libya, Syria, Palestine, Iran, China, and Russia that was viewed as “enemies”! And this Psychological Warfare never stops, it’s still very prevalent in our societies, we’re constantly reminded who our supposed “enemies” are, whether domestically, or abroad! No matter of Identity they’ll be used as a pedestal of conspiracy to achieve constant division among the lower classes, keep throwing the bread, organise the circuses, and the population won’t bat an eye to their masters. The Romans did it, the Greeks did it, the Empires of Colonialism did it, and they still do extensively present-day!
Why is this important for the “Question of Democracy”? Because “Democracy” is all about COLLECTIVE RULE and COLLECTIVE DECISIONS! Something that’s not in Capitalist Dichotomy! In Capitalism only ONE CLASS rules the system, and that is the Bourgeoisie (Capitalists) themselves, the owners of the Mode of Production, that rule / dictate the Factories, and all Businesses that exploit Labour for profit. The Working Class (aka Proletariat) themselves have no bargaining power, nor choice to sell their labour, Capitalists love to say that the system is “VOLUNTARY” in attempt to gaslight the objective flaw that between WORKING and NOT WORKING, the Former will live, while the Latter will DIE! This is not a “VOLUNTARY” situation, this is a coercive situation that’ll kickstart the Human natural ability of Self-Preservation! Calling a Survivability situation a “voluntary” one is an act of callousness! For all talk of “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness”, we’re still not at all in that stage in our lives, the “Democracy” we have is nothing more than a “Circus” itself, an illusion that’s organised to facade the human psyche that their choices matter, but never realising they won’t have the representation they think they’ll have, whether Republican vs Democrat, or Conservatives vs Labour, the bipartisan relationship between these parties are very evident, both are Capitalist Parties and both advance their interests, as Lenin says himself:
“Since the emancipation of the Negroes, the distinction between the two parties has been diminishing. The fight between these two parties has been mainly over the height of customs duties. Their fight has not had any serious importance for the mass of the people. The people have been deceived and diverted from their vital interests by means of spectacular and meaningless duels between the two bourgeois parties. This so-called bipartisan system prevailing in America and Britain has been one of the most powerful means of preventing the rise of an independent working-class, i.e., genuinely socialist, party. And now the bipartisan system has suffered a fiasco in America, the country boasting the most advanced capitalism! What caused this fiasco? The strength of the working-class movement, the growth of socialism.”
[The Results and Significance of the U.S. Presidential Elections]
Capitalists love to boast the “Multiparty” system they have pedestalling it as the epitome of “Democracy”! Democracy isn’t about how many parties you can have, it’s about electing the individual (whether Constituent, an MP, MoC, or PM and President) as representatives whom is supposedly qualified in leading society to the future! People have forgotten and vulgarised the meaning of Democracy, treating it as a Football Club than an educated political decision that determines the very future of their nation and society! We have to give thanks for the Bourgeoisie for treating it in this fashion as even the Capitalists themselves profit from the ventures of Elections, to pass Bills that gives Tax Cuts, that reduce spending to Austerity levels, that gives Tax Relief to Corporations, to increase Policing to protect Private Property, to reduce Worker Unions and Criminalise Workers for demanding concessions and much more! If people truly value their “Liberty” and “Democracy” then they must be the locomotive that can make radical changes to benefit their lives, their interests for their wider communities and class interests.
Marxist View of Democracy
The Marxian view of Democracy is very supplicated, Marx and thinkers after him all supported Democracy in advancements of Worker interests, no matter what the naysayers think of Marxism, Marx and thinkers after him have constantly exposed the facades of Capitalist dichotomy and discourses, Marx cited the Paris Commune as the Pinnacle of Proletarian rule, the concepts of the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ came from Marx’s critiques on the Paris Commune, establishing that for the first time in history the Workers themselves seized the means to rule themselves and vote the necessary leaders to protect the commune from the United Reactionary forces of France and Prussian armies. As Marx explained himself:
“The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time. Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workman’s wage. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the state was laid into the hands of the Commune. Having once got rid of the standing army and the police — the physical force elements of the old government — the Commune was anxious to break the spiritual force of repression, the ‘parson-power’, by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon the alms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the apostles. The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of church and state. Thus, not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it. The judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham independence which had but served to mask their abject subserviency to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken, and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revocable. The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centres of France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old centralized government would in the provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of the producers. In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few but important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal and thereafter responsible agents. The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, to be organized by Communal Constitution, and to become a reality by the destruction of the state power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excresence.”
[The Third Address, May, 1871, The Paris Commune, Karl Marx]
Rising up in armed rebellion and holding the city for 72 days until France’s rulers finally were able to wreak their bloody vengeance on the slaves who’d dared to raise the flag of revolution. It was certainly not the first revolt of the oppressed, nor even the first rebellion by the young working class. But it was the first time that the working class seized power, and the lessons learned in that first successful (if only short-lived) revolution have established basic principles for working class revolution ever since. After this, it wouldn’t been long for other Revolutions to take place after the disasters of World War I, that devastated most of Central and Eastern Europe, many Worker Revolutions emerged from the Spartacus Uprising, to the successful Bolshevik Revolution, there were other successful revolutions such as Hungry, and Bavaria but they suffered as the Paris Commune did, the Russian Bolsheviks were the first too successfully establish and maintain a Proletarian State throughout the 1900s till its dissolution in 1991. Throughout that period the Soviet People’s enjoyed what the Capitalists NEVER provided, that being “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness”, you may laugh at that statement in bad faith then mention the famines, or the purge without any proper historical contexts, which I’m not going to delve in this article as that’s not the point of it, but to indulge in this childish mentality, any academic that studied the Soviet Period in Good Faith, would know fully well how the Famines occurred, it wasn’t because of Communism or through Policy, their’s context for each one that happened, for example the Famines of 1921–1922, were famines that occurred during the Civil War, much destruction upon the landscape destroyed acres of land and lost thousands of peasants that toiled the fields, during War — attrition is one of the secondary causes of death, if you don’t have supplies to nurture armies or people than naturally they’ll die, that’s the objective conditions, other causes of death during the time were also from cholera, typhoid and return typhoid, and some other diseases! The 1930–33 Famine were result of Economical Crisis’s with Grain Procurement in 1928, due to Kulaks (i.e. Rich Peasants) wanting to sell their produce at higher prices in comparison to Poorer and Middle Class Peasants, as Stalin himself explains:
“You say that the kulaks are unwilling to deliver grain, that they are waiting for prices to rise, and prefer to engage in unbridled speculation. That is true. But the kulaks are not simply waiting for prices to rise; they are demanding an increase in prices to three times those fixed by the government. Do you think it permissible to satisfy the kulaks? The poor peasants and a considerable section of the middle peasants have already delivered their grain to the state at government prices. Is it permissible for the government to pay the kulaks three times as much for grain as it pays the poor and middle peasants? One has only to ask this question to realise how impermissible it would be to satisfy the kulaks’ demands.”
[Grain Procurements and the Prospects for the Development of Agriculture, Stalin]
By 1928, Stalin came to the Central Committee and criticised them for the incompetence of the Grain Procurement losses stating:
“About a month and a half ago, in January 1928, we experienced a very grave crisis in regard to grain procurements. Whereas by January 1927 we had managed to procure 428,000,000 poods of cereals, by January 1928 procurements of cereals scarcely totalled 300,000,000 poods. Hence, by January 1928, as compared with January 1927, we had a deficit, a shortage, of 128,000,000 poods. That shortage is an approximate statistical expression of the grain procurement crisis. […] It goes without saying that the responsibility for these blunders rests primarily on the Central Committee, and not only on the local Party organisations.”
[First Results of the Procurement Campaign and the Further Tasks of the Party, Stalin]
The abolishment of the NEP and move to Collectivisation was made to Centralise the Production of Agriculture into State’s hands so they could distribute the produce to the Workers of the Urban regions more efficiently, the Kulaks revolted against Collectivisation and simply destroyed all storages of food, essentially committing Economic Sabotage to the point it costed people’s lives! Kulaks that participated in such activities were either apprehended or executed. Western reports blame the Collectivisation for the Famine and not the Counter-revolutionaries that committed Economic Sabotage that exacerbated the conditions! If “Collectivisation was the cause of the famine”, then how come materially speaking it stopped the famine? Considering by mid-1930s about 65% of Agriculture was under Collectivisation. In Summary:
Western Powers forced the USSR to export Grain and not Gold in exchange for materials and blueprints to begin Industrialisation.
USSR at the time was still very underdeveloped and remained as a Semi-Feudal backwatered economy, the need to industrialise was very important to modernise their production of Grain and Raw Materials.
Grain Procurement Crisis developed when Kulaks demanded the State to buy their Grain at much higher price in comparison to the Middle and Poorer Peasants.
To resolve the crisis, the Central Committee voted in abolishing the NEP and develop Centralised Collectivisation where Grain production can be State Produced and Distributed more efficiently.
Wealthy Peasants protested against Collectivisation via destroyed all the Crops and Livestock exacerbating the conditions.
For more information here’s Hakim video to explain:
Naysayers that don’t bother to do any studies in good faith upon the Soviet History is not worth the breath to be wasted, as Mao evidently stated:
“When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows …”
Okay, so how did Soviet Democracy work? Here’s an Infographic below to assist:
Okay, so what you see is a concise infographic that expresses how Soviet Democracy works, though it doesn’t detail the advance framework which I’ll detail, Soviet Democracy is based on ‘Democratic Centralism’, what is it? Under Democratic Centralism, all resolutions of parliament are binding on all local councils, while the local councils themselves are elected by the population; also, cabinet resolutions are binding on local administrations, with local administrations elected by local councils and accountable to both local councils and the cabinet of ministers or a higher local administration. The term was introduced by Lenin in State and Revolution (1917) stating:
“Marx disagreed both with Proudhon and Bakunin precisely on the question of federalism (not to mention the dictatorship of the proletariat). Federalism as a principle follows logically from the petty-bourgeois views of anarchism. Marx was a centralist. There is no departure whatever from centralism in his observations just quoted. Only those who are imbued with the philistine ‘superstitious belief’ in the state can mistake the destruction of the bourgeois state machine for the destruction of centralism! Now if the proletariat and the poor peasants take state power into their own hands, organize themselves quite freely in communes, and unite the action of all the communes in striking at capital, in crushing the resistance of the capitalists, and in transferring the privately-owned railways, factories, land and so on to the entire nation, to the whole of society, won’t that be centralism? Won’t that be the most consistent DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM and, moreover, proletarian centralism?
[…]
Approaching the matter from the standpoint of the proletariat and the proletarian revolution, Engels, like Marx, upheld DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM, the republic — one and indivisible. He regarded the federal republic either as an exception and a hindrance to development, or as a transition from a monarchy to a centralized republic, as a ‘step forward’ under certain special conditions. And among these special conditions, he puts the national question to the fore.
[…]
It is extremely important to note that Engels, armed with facts, disproved by a most precise example the prejudice which is very widespread, particularly among petty-bourgeois democrats, that a federal republic necessarily means a greater amount of freedom than a centralized republic. This is wrong. It is disproved by the facts cited by Engels regarding the centralized French Republic of 792–98 and the federal Swiss Republic. The really DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISED republic gave more freedom that the federal republic. In other words, the greatest amount of local, regional, and other freedom known in history was accorded by a centralized and not a federal republic”
As a principle of governing society, democratic centralism is manifested in a combination of democracy, that is, the absolute power of the working people, the election of the governing bodies and their accountability to the people, with centralization — the leadership of a single centre, discipline. It also manifests itself in a combination of heterogeneous power functions within one specific body, denies the separation of powers. The concept of the separation of powers, which had been articulated by intellectuals from the ancient and mediaeval eras like Aristotle and Marsiglio of Padua, was codified as a theory by Montesquieu in the middle of the 18th century. The bourgeoisie’s fight against absolutism and the arbitrary rule of kings was historically advanced by the notion of the separation of powers, which is connected to the theory of natural law. A compromise between the bourgeoisie, which had gained control over the legislative and judiciary, and the feudal-monarchical circles, which had preserved executive authority, was justified in a number of nations using the idea. The doctrine of the separation of powers, is nothing but the profane industrial division of labour applied for purposes of simplification and control to the mechanism of the state. With the establishment of the capitalist system the principle of the separation of powers was proclaimed one of the fundamental principles of bourgeois constitutionalism. This was first reflected in the constitutional documents of the French Revolution. The principle of the separation of powers was followed in drawing up the US Constitution of 1787 (still in effect), which established a strong presidency largely independent of Congress. In actuality, the principle was not consistently followed in the constitutional practices of the capitalist countries. For example, the system of checks and balances, widely used in the “presidential republics,” is a significant divergence from the theory. Under this system the legislature is dependent on the executive branch because of the right of the head of state to veto legislative enactments and because of the judicial review of the constitutionality of laws. Marxist-Leninist doctrine rejects the theory of the separation of powers because it ignores the class nature of society. The existence in a socialist state of state bodies with different jurisdiction means that a certain division of functions in exercising state power is essential while maintaining the unity of state power.
This unity was evermore important when we take into consideration the fact that the Soviet Union was besieged by a Sea of Imperial Capitalist States that wanted to destroy the Proletarian Rule of the Nation from the very beginning of its implementation. The development of Socialism turned into a development of ‘Siege Socialism’ whereby the Workers State defends itself from external Class Enemies that seek to destroy them through authoritative means. As Parenti explains in ‘Blackshirts and Reds’:
“But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this ‘pure socialism’ view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality [of siege socialism], and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.
[…]
Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self-directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counter-revolutionary subversion and attack.”
He’s not wrong look to every other Socialist Movement and Revolution in history, what do you see? Yes! Every single one of them was crushed through Authoritarian means, from the Spanish Anarchists, to Socialists, to Austrian Socialists and Communists, to Hungarian Communists and Socialists, to Bavarians, to Germans, and most notably the Paris Commune! Parenti continues:
“The years of foreign invasion and civil war did much to intensify the Bolsheviks’ siege psychology with its commitment to lockstep party unity and a repressive security apparatus. Thus, in May 1921, the same Lenin who had encouraged the practice of inter- nal party democracy and struggled against Trotsky in order to give the trade unions a greater measure of autonomy, now called for an end to the Workers’ Opposition and other factional groups within the party. ‘The time has come,’ he told an enthusiastically concur- ring Tenth Party Congress, ‘to put an end to opposition, to put a lid on it: we have had enough opposition.’ Open disputes and conflicting tendencies within and without the party, the communists concluded, created an appearance of division and weakness that invited attack by formidable foes.”
Parenti’s political motive for describing, say, the Lenin and Stalin periods as aberrations of “pure socialism” comes later.
“By the late 1920s, the Soviets faced the choice of (a) moving in a still more centralized direction with a command economy and forced agrarian collectivization and full-speed industrialization under a commandist, autocratic party leadership, the road taken by Stalin, or (b) moving in a liberalized direction, allowing more political diversity, more autonomy for labour unions and other organizations, more open debate and criticism, greater autonomy among the various Soviet republics, a sector of privately owned small businesses, independent agricultural development by the peasantry, greater emphasis on consumer goods, and less effort given to the kind of capital accumulation needed to build a strong military- industrial base. The latter course, I believe, would have produced a more comfortable, more humane and serviceable society. Siege socialism would have given way to worker-consumer socialism. The only problem is that the country would have risked being incapable of withstanding the Nazi onslaught. Instead, the Soviet Union embarked upon a rigorous, forced industrialization.”
Western Powers collaborated with the White Armies during in the Civil War, providing supplies and volunteers to defeat the Red Army, after the Victory of the Revolution, the Western Powers committed Economic Warfare in isolating the Soviet Union, when the Polish Invaded the Soviets after the Civil War the West aided them in their victory which lost the Western Regions of Belarus and Ukraine. From these events the Workers themselves, distraughted and plundered by both wars needed to rapidly develop themselves, economically and militarily, to protect themselves and their interests. But with the consideration that they were isolated, they had no means of developing an industry independently, they needed blueprints, and materials, the Soviet State plead with the West to establish import Trade of building materials to kickstart their industrialisation, the West agreed, BUT there was a catch… The West agreed to send materials in exchange for Grain…
Figure 1: Nove, An Economic History of the USSR
Note that exports, which were used to fund imports of industrial equipment, continued despite the famine of 1932–33 (thus the sharp jump in exports associated with the onset of industrialization in 1930). It was evident from the start that this deal Machiavellian, but they needed the materials, without an industry the Soviets wouldn’t be able to produce their own materials and goods, they needed too catch up to produce in abundance in what they were lacking, the decision in accepting the deal would be a better trade off if they didn’t accepted it, if we take in to the consideration of the decisions the Soviets made in their Five-Year Plans to rapidly-industrialise themselves, would they been able to defend themselves during World War Two without those decisions? Unlikely, VERY Unlikely. Considering the fact that the Soviets were mostly Economically Isolated, they managed to achieve superabundance of production, pioneer in space travel, and provided Healthcare, Education, Housing, etc for FREE, and as a RIGHT! Not only that but Women were given Rights to Civil Positions, to Vote, and to Abortions. There were a wide variety of ethnic women voted to be Chairwomen of their Autonomous Regions such as; Valentyna Shevchenko, Kalima Amankulova, Khertek Anchimaa-Toka, Tagan Babaeva, Ariadna Chasovnikova, Zinaida Dolotenko, Kamshat Donenbaeva, Roza Eldarova, Nadezhda Grekova, Vera Korsakova, Nonna Muravyova, Alexandra Ovchinnikova, and many more. For more information, I suggest British Patrick Alan Sloan Book ‘Soviet Democracy’ that details Soviet Socio-Political life in the country!
So we establish what ‘Democratic Centralism’ is and it’s functions, this can be summed up as Party gatherings, a resolution is moved (proposed), which could be a new policy or amendment, a goal, a plan, or any other form of political concern. Voting occurs once discussion has concluded. All party members are supposed to agree to the result and stop discussing it if one vote obviously prevails (getting a share of 60% or more amongst two possibilities, for example). Achieving this prevents participants with minority opinions from undermining decisions. As socialism evolved in the Soviet Union and China, it was put into place in response to the more rapid procedures for decision-making that were needed due to the political developments that were occurring at a rapid pace. Before and after an issue has been voted on and actioned, discussion and criticism is permitted in all forms. Once a resolution is being actioned, discussion & criticism which may disrupt unity in performing the action is forbidden, to ensure that the action isn’t derailed. In several socialist states, related practices were also adopted to ensure freedom of discussion, such as Mao’s “Don’t Blame the Speaker”, and Lenin’s “Freedom of discussion, unity of action”. This was the best possible compromise to the development of Socialism which birthed ‘Siege Socialism’ from the material conditions that the Soviets suffered, their needed to be Rapid Action to resolve issues than be bottlenecked in constant discussion, as it was evident in history that the Soviets couldn’t afford to waste time in stagnant discussions the economy needed to grow out of the backwaters of semi-feudalism.
They’ll always be Bad Faith naysayers that’ll always mention the “Gulags”, the “Kidnapping”, and the supposed “Absolutism” of Stalin’s Rule. These points are always brought up but never understood other than treated as a superstitious “Evil” word that’s uttered as a Thought-Terminating Fallacy. People liken Gulags to be “Forced Labour Camps” but in reality they were re-educational centres, Labour is one of the rehabilitations, they were bathed, clothed, medically checked for work fitness, had mattress bed with cover and pillow, and they’re also taught to be literate and given new skills before they leave and rejoin society, people that end up in Gulags were mostly criminals and counter-revolutionaries. The West has committed much of its resources to denouncing and vilifying Socialism while at the same time hypocritically projecting the same accusations they’re committing themselves. Soviet Democracy (i.e. Democratic Centralism) remained as the pinnacle of Collective Rule and Decision making, it was representative of their interests, and committed decisive acts that protected the state of affairs of the Working Class, as well developing them materially out of their misery. Majority of Eastern Bloc still favour Socialism in comparison to Capitalism, as reported in my other article; 61% of Romanians currently consider Communism as a good idea, with 47.5% of Romanians viewing Nicolae Ceauşescu a positive character. 88% of Bulgarians think that Communism was a better time. 44% of Polish think of Communism Positively. 43% of Slovaks think of Communism Positively, with 38% of Czechs over 40 said they lived better under socialism. 72% of Hungarians say are actually worse off now economically than they were under Communism. 57%, or an absolute majority, of eastern Germans defend the former East Germany. 48% of Lithuanians think that the economic times were better under the communist regime than they are now etc. People online beating their chests in regurgitating anti-Communist propaganda can’t fathom the idea of Class Characteristics that led to their dissolution, Class Struggle doesn’t exist in a vacuum, the Bourgeoisie fought hard to reclaim their mantle of control in the region, the Cold War period was a period of immense Ideological Subterfuge, CIA admitted that it sent Agents to commit Counter-Revolutions in Capitalist Interests (mostly Nationalists), in destabilising the regions, and firmly dismantled it completely, the Liberalisation of the East only benefited the Capitalists that exploited every resource and labour in the countries, and left the people to squalor, the results of this dissolution is the reason why Far Right Nationalism has emerged, and Conflicts in the region! Socialism kept the peace, it brought prosperity, it gave everyone Jobs, Healthcare, Housing, the basics necessities of living! You don’t have to take my word for it, the WORLD BANK, YES! Thee WORLD BANK made a report stating that Socialism in the Eastern Bloc brought more Quality of Life than Capitalism did! From the swath of academic evidence, people have to critical ask themselves if they’re being lied to, and commit to studying the material reality of history!
Just note that Western States also did similar acts when their States were transitioning from one Class rule to the Other, the Bourgeoisie also eliminated, apprehended and exiled their oppositions to secure their interests, they may not tell you this in their own history books because it’ll give credence to the hypocritical nature of their state power. As I mentioned before in one of my other articles, every State that’s ruled by certain Class needs to restrict rights to establish itself and maintain its status-quo in periods of stress and threat. Take the Sedition Act and Repression of Loyalists in the United States or restrictions on press freedoms during the American Slavery war. Liberal Capitalism dominance is certainly paved with blood. Without the Spring of Nations or the French revolution it certainly would not have taken hold as the Monarchies of old would never let their power be challenged (see English Civil War / Revolution), yet this socio-political aspect isn’t taught in Western Schools, and for good reason by the Status-Quo. Capitalists won’t let Socialists develop a peaceful and gentle Socialism. When Allende tried to in Chile the democratic government was overthrown in a U.S. backed military Coup. They are forced to adapt ‘authoritarian’ measures to stay alive. This all being said, the extent of ‘authoritarianism’ is often greatly exaggerated by western propaganda, even the CIA admit this!
In Marxist Theory, we acknowledge the Authoritative characteristics of the STATE, Engels gave credence to this while criticising utopians stating:
“Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough? Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don’t know what they’re talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.”
Indeed, to this very day the Bourgeoisie use the State in an Authoritative manner to maintain the State of Affairs for Capital Interests, look at France today, the people are rioting against the Governments policy to increase retirement age, the French proletariat knows this increase would only benefit the Capitalists as they seek to exploit as much value from labour as possible, no matter how old you are, the increase is against human welfare, it’s unjustifiable! But no matter how unjust it is, it doesn’t stop the Bourgeois State from sending armed police in beating the protesters, this use of force is seen countless times, but apparently people have developed Stockholm Syndrome to blatantly ignore its existence but project their issues upon foreign states, touting them as worse compared to their own state of affairs. I’m not going to turn the article into a ‘Myth — Debunking’ article as that requires its own discourse, but in this one, I want to profoundly embark thoughts to my readers on the true concept of ‘Democracy’. One that blatantly exposes the Capitalist Dichotomy as a factitious bubble of facade, a system founded upon the exploitation of living beings and the Earth itself is not a system to ever be REFORMED! Nor is it a system that’s inherently “Democratic”, the class character of a form of government is precisely why we differentiate bourgeois democracy from genuine rule by the majority that constitutes the working class. By:
“… deceiving the people and concealing from them the bourgeois character of present-day democracy,”
Those con artists eventually serve the interests of the ruling class, who are the adversary of our class. A bourgeois state is created when the institutions of bourgeois rule that the Biden administration seeks to “restore” are taken together. This state is the governmental arm of a larger system that is based on the exploitation of the vast majority of people by capital, who must sell their labour power to survive. According to Friedrich Engels’ 1891 writing:
“In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap.”
This was demonstrated when police in New York City beat up striking employees at the Hunts Point Produce Market. In a different 1918 essay, Lenin had stated that in order to comprehend the true function of a bourgeois democratic state, we should pay attention to:
“… how the most democratic and republican bourgeoisie in America or Switzerland deal with workers on strike.”
[The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Bourgeois And Proletarian Democracy, Lenin]
Even the laws — indeed, the very concept of the “rule of law” in a bourgeois democracy — puts the lie to what the reformists would have us believe. Biden wants us to trust in those laws, but Lenin’s description of laws in a bourgeois democracy — which fits the United States to a tee — reveals again the trap of not seeing their class character:
“Take the fundamental laws of modern states, take their administration, take freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, or ‘equality of all citizens before the law,’ and you will see at every turn evidence of the hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy with which every honest and class-conscious worker is familiar. There is not a single state, however democratic, which has no loopholes or reservations in its constitution guaranteeing the bourgeoisie the possibility of dispatching troops against the workers, of proclaiming martial law, and so forth, in case of a ‘violation of public order,’ and actually in case the exploited class ‘violates’ its position of slavery and tries to behave in a non-slavish manner.”
[The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Bourgeois And Proletarian Democracy, Lenin]
As the great German revolutionary communist Rosa Luxemburg made clear in 1902:
“What is actually the whole function of bourgeois legality? If one ‘free citizen’ is taken by another against his will and confined in close and uncomfortable quarters for a while, everyone realises immediately that an act of violence has been committed. However, as soon as the process takes place in accordance with the book known as the penal code, and the quarters in question are in prison, then the whole affair immediately becomes peaceable and legal. If one man is compelled by another to kill his fellow men, then that is obviously an act of violence. However, as soon as the process is called “military service”, the good citizen is consoled with the idea that everything is perfectly legal and in order. If one citizen is deprived against his will by another of some part of his property or earnings it is obvious that an act of violence has been committed, but immediately the process is called ‘indirect taxation’, then everything is quite all right.
In other words, what presents itself to us in the cloak of bourgeois legality is nothing but the expression of class violence raised to an obligatory norm by the ruling class. Once the individual act of violence has been raised in this way to an obligatory norm the process is reflected in the mind of the bourgeois lawyer (and no less in the mind of the socialist opportunist) not as it really is, but upside down: the legal process appears as an independent creation of abstract ‘Justice’, and State compulsion appears as a consequence, as a mere ‘sanctioning’ of the law. In reality the truth is exactly the opposite: bourgeois legality (and parliamentarism as the legislature in process of development) is nothing but the particular social form in which the political violence of the bourgeoisie, developing its given economic basis, expresses itself.”
The state and bourgeois order must be protected as the guiding premise of bourgeois democracy. That goal takes precedence above everything. Following the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, we had the chance to observe how this concept played out. A few Republican members of Congress, who represent one branch of the American ruling class, encouraged what the other branch has dubbed as “insurrection.” Nevertheless, on Inauguration Day, which was just two weeks later, we observed several of them — who were obviously “seditionists” against the bourgeois rule — become normal as the customs of the day were observed. They spoke with Democrats, gave speeches, gave gifts, brushed elbows, and overall had a good time. After all, they are all participants in a “bourgeois party,” deserving of “protection,” as Lenin stated:
“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.”
[The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Bourgeois And Proletarian Democracy, Lenin]
Every sign points to these two wings of bourgeois democracy uniting to enact a new “anti-terrorist law” that will be used to go after the “profound political divergence” they most fear: the political organization of the working class against capitalist rule. As we can see the basis of Capitalist Democracy is one massive SCAM, it insults the intelligence of the general population through psychological manipulation duping them as simpletons, and finally to go further in how unrepresentative the system is as a whole this infographic video would detail the systematic nature of the system: