Democracy in Marxism

In the 19th century, The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels called for the international political unification of the European working classes in order to achieve a communist revolution. It also proposed that since the socio-economic organization of communism was of a higher form than that of capitalism, a workers' revolution would first occur in the economically advanced industrialized countries. Marxist social democracy was strongest in Germany throughout the 19th century, and the Social Democratic Party of Germany inspired Vladimir Lenin and other Russian Marxists.{{Cite book|last= Lih |first= Lars |title= Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? in Context |year= 2005 |publisher= Brill Academic Publishers |isbn= 978-90-04-13120-0 }}

During the revolutionary ferment of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and 1917, there arose working-class grassroots attempts of direct democracy with soviets (Russian for council). According to Lenin and other theorists of the Soviet Union, the soviets represent the democratic will of the working class and are thus the embodiment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin and the Bolsheviks saw the soviet as the basic organizing unit of society in a communist system and supported this form of democracy. Thus, the results of the long-awaited 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election, which Lenin's Bolshevik Party lost to the Socialist Revolutionary Party, were nullified when the All-Russian Constituent Assembly was disbanded in January 1918.{{cite book|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1978/lenin3/|title=Lenin 3: Revolution Besieged|chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1978/lenin3/ch03.html|last=Cliff|first=Tony|chapter=The Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly|location=London|publisher=Pluto Press|year=1978|access-date=26 March 2025|via=Marxists Internet Archive}}

Russian historian Vadim Rogovin attributed the establishment of the one-party system to the conditions which were "imposed on Bolshevism by hostile political forces". Rogovin highlighted the fact that the Bolsheviks made strenuous efforts to preserve the Soviet parties such as the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, and other left-wing parties within the bounds of Soviet legality and their participation in the Soviets on the condition of abandoning armed struggle against the Bolsheviks.{{cite book |last=Rogovin |first=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |pages=13–14 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1MakzgEACAAJ }} Similarly, British historian E. H. Carr drew attention to the fact "the larger section of the party (the SR party – V.R) had made a coalition with the Bolsheviks, and formally broke from the other section which maintained its bitter feud against the Bolsheviks."{{cite book |last1=Carr |first1=Edward Hallett |title=The Bolshevik revolution 1917 - 1923. Vol. 1 |date=1977 |publisher=Penguin books |isbn=978-0-14-020749-1 |pages=111–112 |edition=reprinted}}

Functionally, the Leninist vanguard party was to provide the working class with the political consciousness (education and organisation) and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism in Imperial Russia.The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought Third Edition (1999) pp. 476–477. After the October Revolution of 1917, Leninism was the dominant version of Marxism in Russia; in establishing soviet democracy, the Bolshevik régime suppressed socialists who opposed the revolution, such as the Mensheviks and factions of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition. (1994), p. 1,558. Leon Trotsky argued that he and Lenin had intended to lift the ban on the opposition parties such as the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries as soon as the economic and social conditions of Soviet Russia had improved.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |pages=528 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}

In November 1917, Lenin issued the Decree on Workers' Control, which called on the workers of each enterprise to establish an elected committee to monitor their enterprise's management.{{sfnm|1a1=Pipes|1y=1990|1p=709|2a1=Service|2y=2000|2p=321}} In December 1917, Sovnarkom established a Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh), which had authority over industry, banking, agriculture, and trade.{{sfnm|1a1=Rigby|1y=1979|1p=50|2a1=Pipes|2y=1990|2p=689|3a1=Sandle|3y=1999|3p=64|4a1=Service|4y=2000|4p=321|5a1=Read|5y=2005|5p=231}} Adopting a left-libertarian perspective, both the left communists and some factions in the Bolshevik Party critiqued the decline of democratic institutions in Russia.{{sfn|Sandle|1999|p=120}} Internationally, some socialists decried Lenin's regime and denied that he was establishing socialism; in particular, they highlighted the lack of widespread political participation, popular consultation, and industrial democracy.{{sfn|Service|2000|pp=354–355}}

Following Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power in the Soviet Union and static centralization of political power, Trotsky condemned the Soviet government's policies for lacking widespread democratic participation on the part of the population and for suppressing workers' self-management and democratic participation in the management of the economy. Because these authoritarian political measures were inconsistent with the organizational precepts of socialism, Trotsky characterized the Soviet Union as a deformed workers' state that would not be able to effectively transition to Marxist socialism. Ostensibly socialist states where democracy is lacking, yet the economy is largely in the hands of the state, are termed by orthodox Trotskyist theories as degenerated or deformed workers' states and not socialist states.Trotsky, Leon (1935). [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/02/ws-therm-bon.htm "The Workers' State, Thermidor and Bonapartism"]. New International. 2 (4): 116–122. "Trotsky argues that the Soviet Union was, at that time, a "deformed workers' state" or degenerated workers' state, and not a socialist republic or state, because the "bureaucracy wrested the power from the hands of mass organizations," thereby necessitating only political revolution rather than a completely new social revolution, for workers' political control (i.e. state democracy) to be reclaimed. He argued that it remained, at base, a workers' state because the capitalists and landlords had been expropriated". Retrieved 27 December 2019. Trotsky and Trotskyists have associated democracy in this context with multi-party socialist representation, autonomous union organizations (economic democracy), internal party democracy, and the mass participation of the working masses.{{cite book |last1=Mandel |first1=Ernest |title=Trotsky as Alternative |date=5 May 2020 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78960-701-7 |pages=84–86 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xVmcEAAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+as+alternative+mandel&pg=PT80 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution: Including The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International |date=1977 |publisher=Pathfinder Press |isbn=978-0-87348-524-1 |pages=145–146|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rL8gAQAAIAAJ&q=the+transitional+program+trotsky |language=en}}

{{See also|Democracy in China}}

Mao Zedong put forward the concept of New Democracy in his early 1940 text On New Democracy,{{Cite book |last=Liu |first=Zongyuan Zoe |title=Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions |publisher=The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |year=2023 |isbn=9780674271913 |pages=}}{{Rp|page=36}} written while the Yan'an Soviet was developing and expanding during the Second Sino-Japanese War.{{Cite book |last=Karl |first=Rebecca E. |title=Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World: a Concise History |date=2010 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-4780-4 |series=Asia-Pacific series |location=Durham, North Carolina}}{{Rp|page=|pages=60–61}} During this period, Mao was concerned about bureaucratization and sought to develop a culture of mass politics.{{Rp|page=61}} In his view, mass democracy was crucial but could be guaranteed only to the revolutionary classes.{{Rp|pages=61–62}} In the concept of New Democracy, the working class and the communist party are the dominant part of a coalition including progressive intellectuals and bourgeois patriotic democrats.{{Cite book |last=Lin |first=Chun |url= |title=The Transformation of Chinese Socialism |date=2006 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-3785-0 |location=Durham, NC |pages=42 |oclc=63178961}} Led by a communist party, a New Democracy allows for limited development of national capitalism as part of the effort to replace foreign imperialism and domestic feudalism.

The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) was the primary government body through which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sought to incorporate non-CCP elements into the political system pursuant to principles of New Democracy.{{Cite book |last=Hammond |first=Ken |title=China's Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future |publisher=1804 Books |year=2023 |isbn=9781736850084 |location=New York, NY |pages=}}{{Rp|page=43}} On 29 September 1949, the CPPCC unanimously adopted the Common Program as the basic political program for the country following the success of the Chinese Communist Revolution.{{Cite book |last=Zheng |first=Qian |title=An Ideological History of the Communist Party of China |date=2020 |publisher=Royal Collins Publishing Group |isbn=978-1-4878-0391-9 |editor-last=Zheng |editor-first=Qian |volume=2 |location=Montreal, Quebec |translator-last=Sun |translator-first=Li |translator-last2=Bryant |translator-first2=Shelly}}{{Rp|page=25}} The Common Program defined China as a new democratic country, which would practice a people's democratic dictatorship led by the proletariat and based on an alliance of workers and peasants that would unite all of China's democratic classes (defined as those opposing imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism and favoring an independent China).{{Rp|page=25}}

From 2007 to 2009, Hu Jintao promoted intra-party party democracy (dangnei minzhu, 党内民主) in an effort to decrease the party's focus on top-down decision-making.{{Cite book |last=Cabestan |first=Jean-Pierre |title=The Chinese Communist Party: a 100-Year Trajectory |date=2024 |publisher=ANU Press |isbn=9781760466244 |editor-last=Doyon |editor-first=Jérôme |location=Canberra |chapter=Organisation and (Lack of) Democracy in the Chinese Communist Party: A Critical Reading of the Successive Iterations of the Party Constitution |editor-last2=Froissart |editor-first2=Chloé}}{{Rp|page=18}} The Core Socialist Values campaign, which was introduced during the 18th National Congress in 2012,{{Cite web |title=How Much Should We Read Into China's New 'Core Socialist Values'? |url=https://www.cfr.org/blog/how-much-should-we-read-chinas-new-core-socialist-values |access-date=2023-12-13 |website=Council on Foreign Relations |language=en}} promotes democracy as one of its four national values.{{Cite book |last=Santos |first=Gonçalo |title=Chinese Village Life Today: Building Families in an Age of Transition |date=2021 |publisher=University of Washington Press |isbn=978-0-295-74738-5 |location=Seattle}}{{Rp|page=204}} The Xi Jinping administration promotes a view of consultative democracy (xieshang minzhu 协商民主) rather than intra-party democracy.{{Rp|page=18}} This view of socialist democracy emphasizes consulting more often with society at large while strengthening the leading role of the party.{{Rp|page=18}}

Beginning in 2019, the party developed the concept of "whole-process democracy", which by 2021 was named whole-process people's democracy (the addition of "people's" emphasized a connection to the Maoist concept of the mass line).{{Cite book |title=CPC Futures The New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics |date=2022 |publisher=National University of Singapore Press |isbn=978-981-18-5206-0 |editor-last1=Pieke |editor-first1=Frank N |location=Singapore |pages=60–64 |doi=10.56159/eai.52060 |oclc=1354535847 |editor-last2=Hofman |editor-first2=Bert |doi-access=free}} Under this view, a "real and effective socialist democracy" can be presented as a series of four paired relationships: 1) "process democracy" (过程民主) and "achievement democracy" (成果民主), 2) "procedural democracy" (程序民主) and "substantive democracy" (实质民主), 3) "direct democracy" (直接民主) and "indirect democracy" (间接民主), and 4) "people’s democracy" (人民民主) and the "will of the state" (国家意志).{{Cite web |title=Whole-Process Democracy |url=https://chinamediaproject.org/the_ccp_dictionary/whole-process-democracy/ |access-date=2023-01-10 |website=China Media Project |date=23 November 2021 |language=en-US}} Whole-process people's democracy is a primarily consequentialist view, in which the most important criterion for evaluating the success of democracy is whether democracy can "solve the people's real problems", while a system in which "the people are awakened only for voting" is not truly democratic. As a result, whole-process people's democracy critiques liberal democracy for its excessive focus on procedure.

• Council democracy
• Council communism
• Criticism of communist party rule
• Criticism of Marxism
• List of political parties in the Soviet Union

{{Reflist}}

{{refbegin|2}}

• {{Cite book |title=Classical Sociological Theory |last=Calhoun |first=Craig J. |author-link=Craig Calhoun |year=2002 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |location=Oxford |isbn=978-0-631-21348-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6mq-H3EcUx8C}}
• {{cite book |title=The Life of Lenin |last=Fischer |first=Louis |author-link=Louis Fischer |year=1964 |publisher=Weidenfeld and Nicolson |location=London |url=https://archive.org/details/lifeofleninfischer }}
• {{cite book |title=The Russian Revolution: 1899–1919 |last=Pipes |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Pipes |year=1990 |publisher=Collins Harvill |location=London |isbn=978-0-679-73660-8 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/russianrevolutio00pipe_0 }}
• {{cite book |title=Lenin: A Revolutionary Life |last=Read |first=Christopher |year=2005 |series=Routledge Historical Biographies |publisher=Routledge |location=London |isbn=978-0-415-20649-5}}
• {{cite book |title=Lenin's Government: Sovnarkom 1917–1922 |url=https://archive.org/details/leninsgovernment0000rigb |url-access=registration |last=Rigby |first=T. H. |year=1979 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge, England |isbn=978-0-521-22281-5 }}
• {{Cite book |last=Ryan |first=James |title=Lenin's Terror: The Ideological Origins of Early Soviet State Violence |publisher=Routledge |location=London |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-138-81568-1}}
• {{cite book |title=A Short History of Soviet Socialism |last=Sandle |first=Mark |year=1999 |publisher=UCL Press |location=London |isbn=978-1-85728-355-6 |doi=10.4324/9780203500279}}
• {{cite book |title=Lenin: A Biography |last=Service |first=Robert |author-link = Robert Service (historian) |year=2000 |publisher=Macmillan |location=London |isbn=978-0-333-72625-9 |title-link = Lenin: A Biography}}
• {{cite book |title=Lenin: Life and Legacy |last=Volkogonov |first=Dmitri |author-link=Dmitri Volkogonov |year=1994 |translator-last=Shukman |translator-first=Harold |translator-link=Harold Shukman |publisher=HarperCollins |location=London |isbn=978-0-00-255123-6}}
• {{cite book |title=Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution |last=White |first=James D. |year=2001 |series=European History in Perspective |publisher=Palgrave |location=Basingstoke, England |isbn=978-0-333-72157-5}}

{{refend}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Democracy In Marxism}}

Category:Democracy

Category:Marxism

Category:Marxist theory

Category:Political ideologies

Category:Political theories

Category:Trotskyism

Category:Dictatorship of the proletariat