– N. Ribar –
The question of democracy is an important one, for it is often a trick used by the capitalist class and their agents to provoke a reaction against countries which are proceeding upon an independent course. The issue for communists worldwide is to define precisely what democracy means stemming from the real conditions, not from some “pure” set of human values endowed to us metaphysically. The key being that we define in a way that is modern and consistent with the place we are working; in the view of the publishers the modern form of democracy, democracy for the working class, is democratic renewal, which is explained very briefly in this entry. In winning over the working people, who are heavily subject to this propaganda about “democracy”, it is our view that the question must be dealt with extensively…
NEPH
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In Anglo-American society and “the West” broadly, the term “democracy” is purposefully ambiguous, it has been bereft of its meaning and turned into a gross caricature of what democracy is said to mean. We are said to live in this democracy, we must fight for this democracy to continue, and we do not learn from nation-building projects around the world for even a second. This (liberal) democracy is said to be life’s prime want and the whole world is to revolve around the following axiom — democratic, freedom-loving Western nations and the savage dictatorial regimes in independent countries such as Cuba and the DPRK. Thus the old Cold War thesis of two worlds is turned into a dogma, where the world is separated in status according to each country’s relation to the so-called Western democracies. This is so true that these “superior” democracies even recognize Juan Guaido as head of state in Venezuela, who has never been elected to such a position, and military dictatorships around the world are regarded as democratic if they support U.S. imperialism. Simply put: the term democracy is void of any meaning, it has been weaponized against any country striving for independence and peace, for the prosperity of their homeland. To smash this oppression imbued by bourgeois culture is liberating.
It is thus necessary also to provide a modern definition of democracy, its requirements and the inevitable historical limits that the present system brushes us up against. At this stage, what precisely does the term “democracy” mean? What needs to be done to ensure a democratic system that will fulfil modern needs and guarantee the rights of all? There are all kinds of different dictionary definitions of democracy. The Oxford English Dictionary defines democracy as “a system of government in which all the people of a country can vote to elect their representatives.” What is interesting about this dictionary is that provides a second definition of democracy that plainly says “a country which has this system of government,” giving “Western democracies” as an example of its use in a sentence. Thus, even the dictionary definition of “democracy” can literally mean anything which is appealing to the Anglo-American imperialists, whatever U.S. imperialism and its lackeys label democratic. Wikipedia defines democracy as “a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (‘direct democracy’), or to choose governing officials to do so (‘representative democracy’).” This definition proceeds from the view that democracy can only fit two abstract categories, neither of which deal with the time and place but ideas humanity has created over history. The old Soviet Dictionary of Philosophy defines democracy as “a form of power that officially proclaims subjection of the minority to the will of the majority and recognises the freedom and equality of citizens.” It then goes on to describe why their “socialist democracy” was abstractly superior to Western democracy. The revisionists, too, defined democracy as proceeding from the ideal, not from the material; they could not define what democracy meant at each stage of humanity’s progress and why the new is not just a good idea, but an historical stage succeeding the present.
The problem is that all these dictionary definitions are static and dry. When we say we need to define democracy we are not talking about these definitions but about linking up a definition of democracy to the needs of human society at the present. All definitions of democracy have to do with various epochs which come into being and die away. It was Marx that first recognized this historic trend; overviewing his contributions to modern science, he summed up one of his three main discoveries in the following way: “What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production.” We are not dealing with Marx’s second and third points at this moment, while the first is not self-evident for our purposes. Marx here merely mentions the existence of classes in the society and not what constitutes the leading class in society or of what class democracy belongs to in society. Therefore, it must be emphasized that the existence of various classes which have usurped power by force during various epochs constitute themselves the nation, the leading class in society, and democracy merely serves to sort out internal contradictions within the factions of the ruling class. Marx extends this argument to what is self-evident, that the leading economic class in society necessarily needs to contain a grip over the political sphere or else it would cease to exist. In class society in general, this is what is known as democracy for the united exploiters, or the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in capitalist society.
When humans could no longer hold back the development of their productive powers in hunter-gatherer society (primitive communism), one of those great birth pangs occurred in the emergence of classes. The reason for this is only logical — at that time not all humans were capable of managing this new emergence of productive powers because humanity did not have the resources at their disposal to spontaneously educate all members of society. Classes served the necessary role of managing production until the vast masses of people became capable of managing their production with industrialization, at which point classes have been transformed from a necessity into an old hanger-on only for the profit of the capitalist class. Pre-capitalist class society was economically dominated by slave-owning and feudal classes (among others), who openly proclaimed their political dictate over the whole society in the name of democracies which were open only for the privileged classes to participate in. The earliest example of what is called a direct democracy (i.e. a democracy without representatives), ancient Athens, was a slave society where only the slave-owners were allowed to participate in politics. In feudal society too, feudal lords held on to their power through the expression of the monarchy. Political privileges are an unyielding law of all class society.
Though it is necessary to give historical context to definitions, we are not living in the epoch of slave-owning or feudal democracy, we are living in capitalist democracy, specifically what is known as liberal democracy. Known as the founding theorist of liberalism, John Locke theorized in his famous Second Treatise that “government has no other end but the preservation of [private] property”; in this notion lies the entire essence of what the definition of democracy was in his historical period. The factional differences in government are not decisive matters of principle, i.e. ends, but of the means which to achieve the end of the protection of private property. Locke continues: “Master and servant are names as old as history, but given to those of far different condition; for a freeman makes himself a servant to another, by selling him, for a certain time, the service he undertakes to do, in exchange for wages he is to receive: and though this commonly puts him into the family of his master, and under the ordinary discipline thereof; yet it gives the master but a temporary power over him, and no greater than what is contained in the contract between them.” This is the liberal doctrine of Locke in its whole. While man does not sell their labour but rather their capacity for labour, labour power, this wage slavery is the “ideal” society for liberalism and the one we live under today. The government’s role is merely to protect private property and exploitation, while the vast majority of the population cannot decide any matter of concern.
From this point, even the somewhat limited rights which the working class receives in society were established because they were fought for against the reactionary exploiters. The universal franchise, by which the workers pick which representative are to oppress them in parliament, is one such right. In Canada it was the fight of the 1837-38 patriots for a responsible government that opened the path to the limited democratic freedoms which we have today. This problem has been solved, but the new issue which has come into being is that the people cannot choose who they want to represent them. The capitalist class and its cartel parties retain the supreme power and choose which candidates the workers can elect, all of whom serve the same end by different means, something openly theorized by the earliest liberal bourgeois theoreticians. The working class is seeing through the hoaxes presented to them more and more every day, as proven by the increasingly dreadful voter turnouts — the bourgeois state is losing its legitimacy in the eyes of the vast majority of people.
In Canada, there are presently 4 parties which have representatives in the federal legislative body. In reality, only one of these parties concentrates the real power in the executive branch, which increasingly continues with Rule by Decree and other police methods of dictate. They are all sworn to protect private property and the present system, while all those outside the cartel are considered to be “fringe” and “extremists”. They say this for CPC(M-L), for example, but their thoughts are not crazed, they are based on a scientific analysis of the stage of society and what is necessary for human development. The total members of the 4 main parties reach not even 2 per cent of the entire polity and yet they decide which candidates are put up for election (if that; not infrequently candidates are chosen exclusively by party leadership). The vast majority of people are reduced to voting cattle, their only role is to vote for one of the minority’s candidates every certain amount of years. People no longer want to be marginalized, they want to see themselves represented, in power, and to hold onto power between elections. Their discontent is a result of this abysmal and outdated situation where their concerns are not even being listened to, never mind constitute themselves a power. In the 2021 federal election, the Liberal government was elected with just over 20% of the electorate, while in the 2022 Ontario provincial election, the Conservative government was elected with just 18% of the electorate. It is clear that this democracy is not working for Canadians, just as it is not working for any other country where crises, anarchy and decay are evident in every corner. The absence of political power is immediate for the entire polity.
The political situation in Canada is now so dire for everyone that many public institutions and staples have become privatized. During the period of neo-liberal anti-social offensive, the ruling class reorganized itself quite boldly in an attempt to strengthen their control over the state and ensure the passivity of the broad masses. Old ways of open public participation like public forums, where people were provided with even a limited space to air their views, are gone in favour of secret “citizens assembles” with predetermined outcomes decided by the private consultants that convoke them. One such company which has served in this role for the federal government since 2007, MASS LBP, writes on their website that “the public” is a “resource” and that people should be merely consulted in government decision-making. This basic statement contradicts even many dictionary definitions of democracy — in Canada, the people are not to rule but only consulted in government affairs, which are, of course, decided by and subordinated to the interests of the ruling class. And this “consultation” is only confirmation bias — the “public opinion” in these citizens assemblies have the agendas already set by big business in collusion with government. This situation was capitalized upon by the Trudeau Liberals in 2015 with their election promise for electoral reform, but time was to prove they were only to deepen the reliance on private firms for “democratic participation.” Once in office, they contracted Vox Populus to give them the findings they wanted to scrap not only their promises, but the all-party parliamentary committee on electoral reform as well, again usurping duties away from the legislative body and towards the executive, with its Rule by Decree orders. Even “progressive” initiatives undertaken by the government like anti-racism are commodified and handed to private consultants— take Humanity Agency Ltd., which was given a $2.4 million contract for “anti-racism public education”, or AC Nielsen Company of Canada, which was given a $336k contract for “anti-racism engagement strategy.” All of this, no matter what veneer it is given, is proof that the political process is increasingly becoming privatized, that issues of concern are becoming commodified and that the present form of democracy cannot be called a modern one — people themselves play no role and do not even have a public outlet where they can speak for themselves.1
We are in a national and international situation where it is clear that the old is hanging on by a thread. It used to be, as Marx and Lenin correctly stated, that capitalism threw itself into periodic crises of overproduction and generally anarchy in the society, endangering the whole system of relations. But today, this would not be accurate to say — the crises are constant and increasing. There is no let-up to overproduction, as seen since the COVID-19 pandemic with Canadian farmers literally throwing out milk and other dairy products while the prices of foodstuffs skyrocket and life becomes unaffordable. This is one way in which nearly everyone can see how harmful this system is for all of humanity. The constant anarchy and violence also parrots the savage war waged abroad by the Canadian imperialist state and their U.S. puppet masters. Take the wholesale destruction of Libya, which occurred just last decade — Canada participated in the U.S.-NATO operation to literally wipe the most prosperous country in Africa off the map. Gaddafi Libya was rich in gold, silver and oil and was planning to use its vast natural resources in backing a new pan-African currency to reduce the hegemony of the U.S. dollar in Africa just prior to the intervention. The 40-year nation-building project by the Libyan people was destroyed and today the cities and towns are in ruins, Libya is the world’s slave trade capital. This violence is mirrored at home too in never-ending shootings and hate crimes, with events like January 6th and the Freedom Convoy protected by the bourgeois state while the people affected are terrorized. With the bourgeoisie in control of the state, and their bureaucratic apparatus of the police, military and justice system — the people of Ottawa had to resort to forming their own commission just to get the facts about the effects of the Convoy right. This chaotic environment is unsustainable and this democracy can no longer even fulfil the role of mediating between the antagonistic interests within the ruling class; it is tearing apart the society and shifting the burden on the backs of the working people. They must have their own power and end the ruling capitalist class which speaks in their name for everything it imposes on the society.
This democracy, taken in the historical time period of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, was actually modern for its time. This we do not deny, we do not try to paint any idea in the light of being abstractly bad, as utopian and idealist socialists and anarchists have done. Some modern socialists, as a result, claim that we must not utilize the scientific and technological advancements built up by capitalism for human progress but actually destroy them and turn back the wheel of history. They, too, are reactionaries in such a sense. We openly admit that bourgeois society, its relations and democracy had its necessary time and place, but that has passed and the necessity for a new society posits itself as the prime question up for solution today. We are now merely saying that what was modern 3 centuries ago can no longer be considered consistent with human development at this stage and that the great social productive powers given by capitalism must be matched with new social relations of production. This is what makes us for a revolutionary transformation of society from capitalism to communism.
All this goes to prove that even a term so taken for granted as “democracy” is always in motion — the only thing that is absolute is motion and change. Nothing stays forever, nothing can prevent itself from going out of being and the new coming into being. This is considered self-evident for the natural sciences, but motion in social sciences is still denied because the End of History viewpoint espoused by bourgeois idealist philosophy is entrenched in education to protect what is moribund. The old cannot protect itself and its old form of democracy through reason, so it seeks to impose their anti-conscious view on the entire polity through methods of dictate, leading the people to believe their “democracy” is the final stage of history and abstractly superior to all else. But through the grey skies shines the light of the new dawn, society itself is demanding to move forward and giving a modern definition to democracy.
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Thus far it has been established that the leading economic class is inherently the leading political class as long as it is able to preserve itself. Along with that comes the truth that only the new leading political class can abolish the old leading economic class and usher itself in as the new economic class. Such a class in our epoch is the proletariat, the working class, that class which is bereft of means of production and toils for a wage. In his second and third points outlining his contribution to social sciences, Marx said: “(2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.”
The objective class struggle between exploited and exploiters, oppressed and oppressors, which rages on in every society divided into classes was recognized even by the bourgeois theorists. But it was Marx who was able to discover that the class struggle in capitalist society, between bourgeoisie and proletariat, was a peculiar struggle in so far as in that it had prepared the conditions to overthrow classes and exploitation in general. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, democracy for the capitalist class, sharply divided society into two main classes and prepared the time for the vast majority of people to constitute themselves the nation and vest sovereignty in themselves. All workers know how to manage their production, they know much better than the capitalist class what they need for their profession to successfully contribute to society. Take the nurses and school teachers, who have accelerated their urgency in fighting for their rights since COVID-19, when their well-being has been greatly endangered by long hours and dangerous conditions, in the form of clearly laid-out demands. They know what is best for the people they serve and what is best for society at large. These conditions are very clearly preparing the working class to take up its independent politics and create new social relations — the bourgeoisie is not only no longer necessary, but it is also a block to humanity’s progress and cannot manage production efficiently. Only the proletariat can remove this block, as it is destined to smash the old and build the new.
Ending the old and building the new entails a transitional period in which the proletariat is the leading political class but has not yet been able to abolish all class distinctions, where the old leading economic class is in the process of being put to an end. This is the period of democracy for the proletariat, the democracy for the nine-tenths of the population and the most democratic system ever known in the existence of man. This is in direct contrast to the present system which is democracy for the one-tenth. Here we are speaking of the new transitional period as what Marx termed the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Previously, the form of this new democracy was known as Soviet power and in the period from the Great October Socialist Revolution until the beginning of the anti-social offensive in 1984-85, this democracy was the form in which all Marxist-Leninists worked to build up the new socialist society. Since the new period, however, this form is no longer suitable. Forms necessarily change when revolution goes into retreat (or, reversely, into flow). We still take up the people’s empowerment as the question of the day, but it is not Soviet power that the new society comes in. CPC(M-L) builds up the new in the form of democratic renewal, which retains every principle of Soviet power but in a new, broader form consistent with the times. This directly deals with the question of democracy, what it meant in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, what it means today for moribund capitalism and, most importantly, what the new democratic process will look like where everyone is empowered. The term renewal implies implicitly to “start again” in this regard because each stage of human advancement has been a renewal where new classes are brought into power. Comrade Hardial Bains, in his book A Power to Share, which outlines the nature of the political process and a case for democratic renewal, states “By demanding that the political parties must not be permitted to select candidates and that the people exercise power over the elected, the resolution of the contradiction in the supreme power will begin.” By depriving the rulers of their means to secure power over the people, the working class is able to put forward its best from among their own ranks to govern the society. They will constitute the supreme power and immediately work towards resolving the antagonistic contradictions in political and economic life.
Comrade Bains continues: “The period in which society is being transformed from capitalism to socialism is a period of the dictatorship of the proletariat in which its supreme power eventually dissolves or ‘withers away’. This process, once established, would open the path for the progress of society. People will have to bring about the democratic renewal of the political process.” This addresses the third main discovery of Marx — that the dictatorship of the proletariat leads to a classless society. The present-day political process is the problem which we are grappling with, it is the block to progress, what stays in the way of the revolutionary transformation of society. Taking up the work to construct a modernly defined democratic society is to take up the work for a proletarian dictatorship, with an aim towards socialist and communist society.
The historical experience of working-class power and socialist construction has many merits and lessons for our bright future. Particularly valuable is the first experience in the USSR, with Lenin and Stalin at the helm. The form and specificity of the revolution then warranted the aforementioned Soviet power, building up dual power while the old obsolescent forces still had state power. Winning over the many millions of workers and peasants oppressed under the Tsarist yoke, they overthrew that old political class and replaced it with the new proletarian democracy, for the first time the dictatorship of the exploited over the exploiters. Ravaged by imperialist war, brutal civil war and Anglo-American intervention, they found themselves in a peculiar position of economic ruin and temporarily proceeded on the course of the New Economic Policy (NEP), where small- and medium-sized businessmen were allowed to develop capital (albeit heavily restricted) and build up the country. The merits thus far belong to Lenin’s time, when the question of political power was solved in the form of democracy for the majority and it was proved for the final time that any scientific view of society sees revolution as an historical law.
Shortly after Lenin’s death, the USSR began to be dragged down by the NEPmen and the speculators, who still held a significant amount of economic power, especially in foodstuffs production, despite the socialization of heavy industry and transportation. It was then the duty of his successors, first of all Stalin but all of the Soviet people, to carry the revolution forward and build socialist society. They faced enemies in the form of the Trotskyites, who claimed socialism was impossible, and the Bukharinites whose “socialism” was purely concessions to the capitalist-imperialist world. The program was worked out by Stalin and the Bolshevik Party to end capitalist control in industry and agriculture and make the workers and peasants the masters of their own destiny – the socialization of industry and the collectivization into artels in the countryside were worked out and carried out over the span of a decade. It was at this time that industrialization was also of the utmost priority to end the remnants of Tsarist backwardness. At this time, Stalin said in his speech The Tasks of Business Executives: “We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go under.” Such a transformation was realized thanks to the shock brigades of workers and the Stakhanovite movement, a great asset in defeating the menace of Hitlerite fascism, of which the USSR carried the main burden.
This history is so vitally important for today because the USSR really did abolish exploitation, they were the first to defy the tides of the whole world and independently establish their own social system, and by doing so they deepened the democratic system to such an extent unknown to Canadians or Anglo-American society. The 1936 Soviet Constitution enshrined the right to equally elect and be elected, determined by direct vote. The entire people were enthused and involved in a nation-building project like no other. They answered the key question of “Who decides?” with the power of the working people. They constructed and realized a modern definition of democracy, though incomplete. We should not and cannot seek to emulate them or any others, but we can learn from them, most importantly why the socialist system eventually fell.
In the period of rebuilding the country after the Great Patriotic War, insufficient attention was paid to the system of political power and the strengthening of the democratic centralist system, work which was considered finished by many Soviet officials. The flaws which existed, such as the bureaucratic insistence that the Bolshevik Party choose candidates for elections, were brushed off. In the socialist world, the Titoites popped up and became the first revisionists in power, while internally Nikolai Voznesensky and the Leningraders attempted to overthrow socialist economic relations. This was clearly a symptom of the mistakes the Soviet Union made. Stalin and the Bolsheviks then waged the struggle against them on the economic plane, as in Stalin’s book Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, but still did not give sufficient play to political power, setting up the usurpation of power by the revisionists as the imperialists’ order of the day. The Khrushchevites turned against this state of people’s empowerment and declared the proletarian dictatorship null and void, replaced by the “state of the whole people”, robbing democracy of its class character established in the 1936 Constitution, discarding every norm of democratic centralism and finalizing the rule of dictate by the party and army, as in any other capitalist country.
The proponents of “Western democracy”, who weaponize that word, say that its failure in the USSR means the failure of socialism. Surely then, if a student fails a science exam, then it is science itself which has failed. Indeed, we want to go further and eliminate the errors the Soviets made in practising socialism. Democratic renewal of the political process puts the question of working-class empowerment as its centre stage and involves them in an all-round way in building up the new socialist society. It is a truly modern definition of democracy that has been worked out theoretically and tested in practice to come to the conclusions of democratic renewal — a means to proceed on the high road of civilization. The slogan — No Election Without Selection — is also modern in that we are demanding the people to be able to select candidates from among their peers, to win power and guarantee that they will stay in power, in stark contrast to the Soviet errors. This is how, as has been established, today the working class constitutes itself the nation, establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat and advances towards classless society.
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There are not a few over the centuries who have utterly distorted the teachings of Marx on the question of democracy. Here, we are forced to focus on just a few historical examples that are relevant to us today in our time and place.
By the dawn of the 20th century, Marxism had defeated all the anti-Marxist socialist trends thoroughly, and it thus became their duty to spread capitalist ideas within Marxism. Eduard Bernstein, known to many as the first revisionist, cloaked his capitalist view of democracy in Marxist clothing. He gave up everything modern science had contributed on the pretext that the times had changed. It is important to state that things do indeed change, and the tactics and form communists work in must necessary change, but principles and content remain as long as the same mode of production dominates. Bernstein revised Marxism precisely on the question of elections and their significance to communists when he said in his work Evolutionary Socialism “Universal franchise is, from two sides, the alternative to a violent revolution.” No longer was a revolutionary leap from capitalism to socialism necessary, all that was needed was to elect the “correct” people to the already existing bourgeois state. Bernstein did not even think to consider the fact that all the candidates are chosen by the capitalist class and elections are designed specifically to keep them in power, it was this wilful ignorance that served his social-democratic party well in deceiving the masses of workers. He, therefore, denied the class character of democracy and the scientific discovery of the law of motion of society.
Karl Kautsky, at the head of the Second International, deserted the revolution and proceeded upon the revisionist road of attempting to put the workers atop the capitalist state and its democracy. In his work The Class Struggle, Kautsky says: “By electing representatives to parliament, therefore, the working-class can exercise an influence over the governmental powers… Whenever the proletariat engages in parliamentary activity as a self-conscious class, parliamentarism begins to change its character… The proletariat has, therefore, no reason to distrust parliamentary action; on the other hand, it has every reason to exert all its energy to increase the power of parliaments in their relation to other departments of government and to swell to the utmost its own parliamentary representation.” Parliament was the solution for Kautsky and the whole Second International, as the participation of the working class in it allegedly changed its class character, as if the capitalist class would readily hand over the keys to the force which preserved the privileges they held. The beggar extends a hand of friendship to the capitalist, hoping for Christian values of humanism, and gets nothing but crumbs — this was the experience social-democratic workers quickly found when they followed these traitors who served the bourgeois state just like the other politicians.
Earl Browder, former leader of the Communist Party of the USA, is known now as the first modern revisionist, separating the old revisionist Second Internationalists, known as social-democrats, and the modern revisionists who operated under the mask of Marxism-Leninism and the Third International. Browder held that, with the Tehran peace conference, a new period emerged where capitalism and socialism would co-operate peacefully, including internally in capitalist countries. He declared that the two-party system in the U.S. was positive and that democracy was now stripped of its class character, spontaneously moving the entire population, including the bourgeoisie, towards socialism as part of “national unity.” The essence of all this is that Browder worked within the bourgeoisie’s End of History viewpoint that the American “founding fathers” had created an ever-improving democracy that could sort out any problem, including the question of socialist transformation. The CPUSA was dissolved (in favour of the “Communist Political Association”, a non-party organization of communists who worked within the two major parties) and the task of building the new society was completely abandoned. The question of democracy was the key thing in this revisionist deviation from Marxism, and it had not an insignificant impact on other communist parties throughout the world.
In the Communist Party of Canada (then the Labour-Progressive Party), Tim Buck and the other national executive leaders followed Browder’s line of capitulation to imperialism and reaction on the question of democracy. They submerged themselves deep into the bourgeois mire, Buck going as far as to state in his speech Canada Needs a Party of Communists: “We Communists strive to win support for the policies we advocate by exactly the same means as, and by no other means than, the other political parties of Canada. Everything we do and everything we advocate is strictly in accord with the laws of Canada.” To get elected and form government just as the “other political parties” do — this is the doctrine openly proclaimed by the Canadian party at the time. They threw overboard any modern definition of what democracy is and took on the claim that the state is above classes. In Buck’s speech Depression or Prosperity, he further stated: “This class alliance and the continued co-operation of socialist and democratic capitalist states will be the instrument for an orderly unfolding of a great democratic political transition in the old world.” In plain words, the transformation from capitalism to socialism will be spontaneous without any new power being built, it would occur if only the capitalists would be so kind as to allow our “correct” ideas to be put in charge of the present state. Hence, it is no surprise that the U.S. and Canadian parties were left totally inept in the face of the anti-communist McCarthyist offensive by Browderism.
In Cuba, the Popular Socialist Party also took the path outlined by Browder. They collaborated with the dictator Batista on the basis that he was for “democratic progress” and a “national united front”, leaving them totally without resources when Batista outlawed them in 1953. Despite such persecution, they were so loyal to Batista’s “democracy” that they opposed the Cuban revolution, condemning the famous assault on the Moncada barracks as “a putschist attempt, a desperate form of adventurism, typical petty-bourgeois circles lacking in principle and implicated in gangsterism.” As a result, the PSP played no role in the revolution and only supported it after the work had already been undertaken and state power was achieved.
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Mentioned above are just some examples of the deviations on the question of democracy that is typical of revisionists who come in all colours and hues. Comrade Bains, in his work The Ideas of Karl Marx are Immortal, emphasizes that: “The ‘democratic’ state of the bourgeoisie is an organization of violence to suppress the class struggle of the proletariat, to make it submit to the will of the bourgeoisie, to shift the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the workers, to fascize the state and all aspects of life, to militarize the economy and prepare for imperialist war and to defend the capitalist-revisionist status quo.” This is the class character of the bourgeois state both then and today, and our elaboration of a modern definition must take it into account as its central piece, our tactics always keeping it in mind and defending the independent politics of the working class.
The elaboration of a modern definition of democracy today and how to build up the new with fresh, revolutionary organs that demand an end to the present state of affairs where the people are completely marginalized from the decision-making process, is the Marxist-Leninist’s task. If the working class and its party came to power through elections, bound by the restrictions of this capitalist democracy and system, the people would remain antagonistic to it and the changes which it would sincerely like to pursue would not be realized.
The working class needs new mechanisms where they can decide precisely who gets elected and represent them from among their peers, the role of careerist politicians would end and everything would become political. Not political in a controversial or divisive sense, as it is largely seen today, but political in terms of soberly figuring out in every workplace, community and school which way society would proceed. On the world of scale, the question of democratic renewal poses itself, it is the axiom on which the struggle between the increasingly divided bourgeois society occurs. It is a question of class which the working class must necessarily lead if it is to see renewal to its completion, the end of exploitation and classes generally. The capitalist class is the force that is blocking this new political process from coming into being, never before has the class character of the parliament been clearer than it is today. Our analysis of democracy leads us to put the question of the new up for solution. The whole ensemble of human relations itself, not only the proletariat or bourgeoisie, is literally demanding to be liberated.
Imperialism is in crisis, in its grave sickness it has become just as savage as anytime before. But the Marxist-Leninists demonstrate through our work that the new, higher world of democracy for the majority has begun.
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Note
1 For more on the extensive privatization of the political process in Canada, see Anna Di Carlo’s article “Privatization of the Political Domain” in TML Monthly, July 2022.
(Originally published September 16, 2022)