Democracy

Mao voting in the 1954 election in China

Democracy, as of common consensus, as a concept, was formally conceived by the ancient Greeks. The word “democracy” comes from two Greek words being: people (demos), and rule (kratos). By popular definition, democracy is a method of rule wherein the populace have common power, as in the people have an active role within the steering and guidance of the state. Contrary to common conception, “democracy” is not a system within itself, but a basis upon which political organizations and structures are formed. Democracy became the method of rule within Athens, a part of the superstructure, so to speak, however within the bounds of the material base. In slave societies, the only people eligible to participate were so-called “free men”, which did not include women, children, and slaves, who made up the majority of the population.

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

— Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Interpretations

Democracy in modernity has been split into many categories and has been countlessly interpreted and, at times, vulgarized by bourgeois thinkers. It may be noted that “democracy”, in all of its forms, are indeed a progressive force comparatively to the political systems proceeding it. Even the simplest liberal democracy serving the interests of the ruling class, is still superior to a direct dictatorship by class interests.

Bourgeois democracy

A majority of Chinese and Indian people believe their countries are more democratic than the West in addition to a large minority from Turkey and Russia.

In practice, bourgeois democracies, or capitalist democracies, are a form of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Capitalists and landlords control 90% of newspapers and meeting halls and prevent workers from controlling the state through bourgeois property laws.

Deng Xiaoping argued that bourgeois democracy was,

'...no more than a system of multiparty elections, separation of judicial, executive and legislative powers, and a bicameral legislature.'

He argued that rather than having a bourgeois democracy in China, there was a people's democracy.

Lenin in Chapter 5 of State and Revolution declares,

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”--supposedly petty--details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.,--we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

This minority rule of the tiny unelected group, the capitalist class in politics mirrors the daily work life of workers throughout the world. Why is the workplace decisions of what to produce, where to produce and how to produce are left to the undemocratic and short-sighted profit-seeking of capitalists? The individual enterprise is the smallest cell of capitalist democracies. With capitalists organizing together along class lines to run the political system made up of all these workplaces. Democracy for the 1%.

In essential terms, what Lenin declares remains that democracy, especially in a republic may seem to be complete from the outside, but if the true nature and origins of the said republic (or if need be, a modern day constitutional monarchy) remains capitalist, the laws of democracy will always be set against the majority, which is the working class and only benefiting the minority and the absolutely rich. This in itself is already detrimental to the political participation of the working class as due to the conditions of the capitalist exploitations in wages, the working class would be far more concerned about their material existence (poverty and survival) that they “they cannot be bothered with democracy” and “they cannot be bothered with politics”, hindering them from democratic participation.

See also

• Democratic centralism
• Centralism