Socialism and Democracy
The decisions taken by the first four Congresses of the Third International remain a key resource for socialists to study and apply in today's struggles. In this post, I summarise what the Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos agreed by the First Congress of 1919 can teach workers and youth today about how 'democracy' under capitalism differs from the system of genuine workers' democracy that would operate in a socialist society.
Capitalist politicians, journalists and historians have always sought to confuse and dissuade workers and youth from socialist ideas by insisting that socialism is 'undemocratic'.
Trotsky, one of the key leaders of the 1917 Russian Revolution, answered these accusations in the ‘Manifesto of the Communist International to the Workers of the World’, written for its First Congress in March 1919.
It’s definitely worth restating the words of that Manifesto today: “The entire bourgeois world accuses the Communists of destroying freedom and political democracy. These are lies. Upon assuming power, the proletariat merely lays bear the complete impossibility of employing the methods of bourgeois democracy and creates the condition and forms of a new and much higher workers' democracy”.
The First Congress of the Communist International
This First Congress, bringing together delegates from 19 countries to build a new ‘Third International’ of revolutionary socialists, met at a time when the rulers of the capitalist powers were showing just how quickly they can ditch ‘democracy’ when they feel that they are under serious threat.
Not only were the imperialist powers aiming their usual journalistic and political weaponry against the threat of socialist revolution, they were mobilising their military weaponry too. That's because they were desperate to crush the fledgling workers' state created by the October Russian Revolution of 1917.
As the Congress' theses on ‘The International Situation and the Policy of the Entente’ explained,“From the first day of the October revolution … the Entente powers took the side of the counter-revolutionary parties … They have seized Siberia, the Urals, the coastal areas of European Russia, the Caucasus and a part of Turkestan. The Allies have taken … raw materials … stolen the gold reserves of the Russian state … contrived to blow up bridges, railways and trains, thereby obstructing the distribution of food supplies. The allies have supplied money, arms and military aid to the reactionary generals Denikin, Kolchak and Krasnov, who have hanged and shot thousands of workers and peasants … The Entente has openly proclaimed the principles of 'economic encirclement', that is, of starving to death the revolutionary republic of workers and peasants”.
Lenin, the other key leader of the Russian Revolution, explained in the Congress' ‘Theses and Report on Bourgeois Democracy’, how, in the capitalist powers’ own countries, Communists were being “exiled, persecuted and thrown into prison”. In Germany, “the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg … assassinated by officers and capitalists with impunity” had exposed how so-called capitalist democracy was in fact operating a “bourgeois dictatorship”.
In short, when it came to defending their class privileges against any kind of serious threat, capitalism was quick to dispense with ‘democratic’ norms and instead rely on repression and military force.
Yet, hypocritically, as Lenin pointed out, “faced with the growth of the revolutionary workers' movement in every country, the bourgeoisie and their agents in the workers' organisations are making desperate attempts to find ideological and political arguments in defence of the rule of the exploiters. Condemnation of dictatorship and defence of democracy are particularly prominent among these arguments. The falsity and hypocrisy of this argument … are obvious to all who refuse to betray the fundamental principles of socialism”.
The limitations of capitalist democracy
Lenin's theses set out how the repression employed by the capitalist class during times of civil war and revolutionary threats to their rule was only an extension of the lack of genuine democracy to be found at all times under capitalism.
Lenin emphasised that in any class society, such as capitalist society, it was wrong to speak about “‘democracy in general’, without posing the question of the class concerned”. He explained that, under capitalist democracy, the ‘liberty and equality’ extended to the capitalist class is very different to that available to the working class.
Lenin gives some specific examples.
Para.7 of the Theses states that: “The workers know perfectly well that, even in the most democratic bourgeois republic, 'freedom of assembly' is a hollow phrase, for the rich have the best public and private buildings at their disposal, and enough leisure to assemble at meetings, which are protected by the bourgeois machine of power. The rural and urban workers and the small peasants - the overwhelming majority of the population - are denied all these things. As long as that state of affairs prevails, 'equality', i.e., 'pure democracy', is a fraud”.
Para.8 adds that “ 'Freedom of the press' is another of the principal slogans of pure democracy'. And here, too, the workers know … that this freedom is a deception while the printing-presses and the biggest stocks of paper are appropriated by the capitalists, and while capitalist rule over the press remains, a rule that is manifested throughout the world all the more strikingly, sharply and cynically the more democracy and the republican system are developed, as in America for example.”
Para.4 sums up the Marxist theory of the State stating that, “in explaining the class nature of bourgeois civilisation, bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois parliamentary system, all socialists have expressed the idea formulated with the greatest scientific precision by Marx and Engels, namely, that the most democratic bourgeois republic is no more than a machine for the suppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the working people by a handful of capitalists.”
Workers' Democracy
In contrast, Lenin stresses that, under a socialist democracy, workers would have both the time and the resources needed for genuine freedom to organise. The working day would be reduced and equal access provided to meeting spaces, public printing presses and stocks of paper [rights that now, of course, would extend to digital spaces and media platforms too].
In Para.13, Lenin stresses that workers' democracy, based on the organisation of Soviet-type bodies such as workers' councils or shop steward committees, would provide “an unparalleled extension of the actual enjoyment of democracy by those oppressed by capitalism - the toiling classes … i.e., the vast majority of the population” and present to them “greater practical opportunities for enjoying democratic rights and liberties than ever existed before, even approximately, in the best and the most democratic bourgeois republics”.
Lenin goes on in the next paragraph to explain that “the substance of Soviet government is that the permanent and only foundation of state power, the entire machinery of state, is the mass-scale organisation of the classes oppressed by capitalism, i.e., the workers and the semi-proletarians (peasants who do not exploit the labour of others and regularly resort to the sale of at least a part of their own labour-power). It is the people who even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, while possessing equal rights by law, have in fact been debarred by thousands of devices and subterfuges from participation in political life and enjoyment of democratic rights and liberties, that are now drawn into constant and unfailing, moreover, decisive, participation in the democratic administration of the state”.
In Para.15 Lenin adds that “the equality of citizens, irrespective of sex, religion, race, or nationality, which bourgeois democracy everywhere has always promised but never effected, and never could effect because of the domination of capital, is given immediate and full effect by the Soviet system … The fact is that this can only be done by a government of the workers, who are not interested in the means of production being privately owned and in the fight for their division and redivision”.
‘Dictatorial’ socialism? Answering the capitalist lies
But what about the accusations from the capitalist world that, far from being democratic, the Bolsheviks were (in the civil war conditions that they faced), resorting to ‘Red Terror’ and ‘dictatorship’ ?
Trotsky answers as follows in his Manifesto: “The wails of the bourgeois world against civil war and against Red Terror represent the most monstrous hypocrisy yet known in the history of political struggles. There would be no civil war if the clique of exploiters who have brought mankind to the very brink of ruin did not resist every forward step of the toiling masses, if they did not organise conspiracies and assassinations, and did not summon armed assistance from without in order to maintain or restore their thievish privileges”.
Trotsky continues, “Civil war is imposed upon the working class by its mortal enemies. Without renouncing itself and its own future, which is the future of all mankind, the working class cannot fail to answer blow for blow. While never provoking civil war artificially, the Communist parties seek to shorten as much as possible the duration of civil war whenever the latter does arrive with iron necessity; they seek to reduce to a minimum the number of victims and, above all, to assure victory to the proletariat. Hence flows the necessity of disarming the bourgeoisie in time, of arming the workers in time, of creating in time the Communist army to defend the workers' power”.
And so, when Lenin talks of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, he certainly isn't proposing a regime without workers' democracy, simply one where the working class defends its hard won gains from the resistance of its previous exploiters, resistance taking the form in Russia at that time of the civil war instigated by the capitalist powers.
Lenin stresses that considering just ‘democracy in general' without considering its class basis is also false when considering ‘dictatorship in general’ too. When having to defend the gains of the revolution from capitalist attacks, “it is not a question of ‘dictatorship in general’, but of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, i.e., the proletariat, over its oppressors and exploiters, i.e., the bourgeoisie, in order to overcome the resistance offered by the exploiters in their fight to maintain their domination”.
Lenin continues (in Para.3) to explain that “history teaches us that no oppressed class ever did, or could, achieve power without going through a period of dictatorship, i.e., the conquest of political power and forcible suppression of the resistance always offered by the exploiters - a resistance that is most desperate, most furious, and that stops at nothing. The bourgeoisie … won power in the advanced countries through a series of insurrections, civil wars, and the forcible suppression of kings, feudal lords, slaveowners and their attempts at restoration.”
Lenin castigates those supposed ‘socialists’ that were joining with the capitalist class in condemning the Bolsheviks and the Russian working-class for putting into practice such a ‘proletarian dictatorship’. Lenin describes their actions as a “denial of the proletariat's right to its own, proletarian, revolution” amounting to a “defence of bourgeois reformism at the very historical juncture when bourgeois reformism throughout the world has collapsed and the war has created a revolutionary situation”.
Lenin's adds (Para.7) that “When the bourgeoisie were revolutionary, they did not, either in England in 1649 or in France in 1793, grant 'freedom of assembly’ to the monarchists and nobles, who summoned foreign troops and 'assembled' to organise attempts at restoration. If the present-day bourgeoisie, who have long since become reactionary, demand from the proletariat advance guarantees of 'freedom of assembly' for the exploiters, whatever the resistance offered by the capitalists to being expropriated, the workers will only laugh at their hypocrisy”.
He concludes (Para.12) that, given the circumstances, “proletarian dictatorship is not only an absolutely legitimate means of overthrowing the exploiters and suppressing their resistance, but also absolutely necessary to the entire mass of the working people, being their only defence against the bourgeois dictatorship which led to the war and is preparing new wars. … In capitalist society, whenever there is any serious aggravation of the class struggle intrinsic to that society, there can be no alternative but the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Dreams of some third way are reactionary, petty-bourgeois lamentations.”
Lenin also points out (Para.13) how the forms of democracy have “inevitably changed over the centuries as one ruling class replaced another. Democracy assumed different forms and was applied in different degrees in the ancient republics of Greece, the medieval cities and the advanced capitalist countries. It would be sheer nonsense to think that the most profound revolution in human history, the first case in the world of power being transferred from the exploiting minority to the exploited majority, could tak place within the time-worn framework of the old, bourgeois, parliamentary democracy, without drastic changes, without the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions that embody the new conditions for applying democracy”.
Lenin goes on to emphasise (Para.14) that “proletarian dictatorship is similar to the dictatorship of other classes in that it arises out of the need, as every other dictatorship does, to forcibly suppress the resistance of the class that is losing its political sway. The fundamental distinction between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of other classes - landlord dictatorship in the Middle Ages and bourgeois dictatorship in all the civilized capitalist countries - consists in the fact that the dictatorship of the landowners and bourgeoisie was the forcible suppression of the resistance offered by the vast majority of the population, namely, the working people. In contrast, proletarian dictatorship is the forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, i.e., an insignificant minority of the population, the landowners and capitalists”.
Only a temporary ‘dictatorship'
Lenin’s theses also include a reminder of the theory of the State developed by Marx and Engels i.e., that, having successfully suppressed the attempts by the old exploiters to crush the new workers' state, and having started to develop a workers' democracy and socialist economy to address poverty and inequality, the need for any ‘proletarian dictatorship’ - and, eventually, any state power at all - ends - so that the state “withers away’.
Lenin explains (Para 20) that “destruction of state power is the aim set by all socialists, including Marx above all. Genuine democracy, i.e., liberty and equality, is unrealisable unless this aim is achieved. But its practical achievement is possible only through Soviet, or proletarian, democracy, for by enlisting the mass organisations of the working people in constant and unfailing participation in the administration of the state, it immediately begins to prepare the complete withering away of any state”.
This important idea is also set out in another document agreed by the First Congress, the “Platform of the Communist International”, which states the following in the section on ‘Democracy and Dictatorship’: “The proletarian state is, like every other state, an apparatus of repression, but its repression is directed against the enemies of the working class. Its purpose is to break, once and for all, the resistance of the exploiters, who will stop at nothing in their desperate struggle to drown the revolution in rivers of blood. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which gives this class the leading position in society, is, however, a temporary form of government. As the resistance of the bourgeoisie is overcome, its property expropriated, and its members gradually drawn into working for society, so the proletarian dictatorship disappears, the state withers away and the division of society into classes is ended”.
The ‘Platform’ also adds this useful explanation of how the capitalist class seeks to conceal its own ‘bourgeois dictatorship’, whereas the working-class can be open about how it intends to use its organisation and power to end their exploitation: “So-called democracy, i.e. bourgeois democracy, is nothing but the veiled dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The much-vaunted 'general will of the people' is no more a reality than 'the people' or 'the nation'. Classes exist and they have conflicting and incompatible aspirations. But as the bourgeoisie represents an insignificant minority it makes use of this illusion, this imaginary concept, in order to consolidate its rule over the working class. Behind this mask of eloquence it can impose its class will. The proletariat, which forms the vast majority of the population is, on the contrary, completely open about using the class power of its mass organisations and Soviets to eliminate the privileges of the bourgeoisie and guarantee the transition to the classless, communist society”.
The Nature of Soviet Power
Both Lenin’s Theses and Trotsky’s Manifesto set out how a new form of state organisation has to replace the old bourgeois state machine.
Lenin (Para.16) explains that “the old, i.e., bourgeois, democracy and the parliamentary system were so organised that it was the mass of working people who were kept farthest away from the machinery of government. Soviet power, i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat, on the other hand, is so organised as to bring the working people close to the machinery of government. That, too, is the purpose of combining the legislative and executive authority under the Soviet organisation of the state and of replacing territorial constituencies by production units - the factory”.
He goes on (Para.19) to point out that “The Paris Commune [the first ever example of a workers’ government in March-May 1871] took the first epoch-making step along this path. The Soviet system has taken the second”.
Trotsky's Manifesto explains that “the proletariat is compelled to create its own apparatus designed first and foremost to cement the inner ties of the working class and to assure the possibility of its revolutionary intervention into the future development of mankind. This apparatus is represented by the Workers' Soviets … a broad organisation which embraces the working masses independently of trade or level of political development already attained; a flexible apparatus which permits of continual renovation and extension; and is capable of attracting into its orbit ever newer layers, opening wide its doors to the toiling layers in the city and the country who are close to the proletariat. This irreplaceable organisation of working-class self-rule, this organisation of its struggle for and later of its conquest of state power, has been tested in the experience of various countries and constitutes the mightiest conquest and weapon of the proletariat in our epoch”.
The tasks facing the International
What lessons did Lenin and Trotsky draw from their analysis for the coming struggle?
Trotsky makes clear that, while fundamentally aiming to replace limited capitalist democracy with genuine workers' democracy, “in those countries where historical development provided the opportunity, the working class has utilised the regime of political democracy in order to organise against capitalism”.
However, Trotsky also warns that, unlike the advanced layers of the working-class, “broad intermediate masses not only in the villages but also in the cities are being held back by capitalism, lagging entire epochs behind historical development”. These layers - peasants, small farmers and the like - are more easily duped by bourgeois lies and demagogy into continuing to give their support to capitalist parties, so maintaining the current situation whereby “on all the basic questions which determine the destinies of the peoples, the financial oligarchy makes the decision behind the back of parliamentary democracy”
But, while not underestimating those dangers, Trotsky expresses his confidence that “in those countries where the toiling masses live a conscious life, Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies are now being built and will continue to be built. To strengthen the Soviets, to raise their authority, to counterpose them to the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie - this is today the most important task of the class-conscious and honest workers of all countries”.
Trotsky continues, “through the medium of Soviets, the working class will be able to come to power most surely and easily in all countries where the Soviets are able to rally the majority of the toilers. Through the medium of Soviets the working class, having conquered power, will exercise its sway over all spheres of the country's economic and cultural life, as is the case at present in Russia”
Lenin ends his theses on a similar vein, making three practical proposals, all concerned with the key task of developing Soviet-type organisations in those countries where the International could influence developments within the workers’ movement.
Firstly, Lenin warns that “one of the most important tasks confronting the West-European comrades is to explain to the people the meaning, importance and necessity of the Soviet system. There is a sort of misunderstanding of this question … [reflecting] the mood of the backward sections of the German proletariat. The same thing took place in our country: during the first eight months of the Russian revolution the question of the Soviet organisation was very much discussed, and the workers did not understand what the new system was and whether the Soviets could be transformed into a state machine”.
He adds, “now we see that in Hungary and Switzerland the question is much more acute. On the one hand, this is very good: it gives us the firm conviction that in the West-European states the revolution is advancing more quickly and will yield great victories. On the other hand, a certain danger is concealed in it, namely, that the struggle will be so precipitous that the minds of the mass of workers will not keep pace with this development. Even now the significance of the Soviet system is not clear to a large mass of the politically educated German workers, because they have been trained in the spirit of the parliamentary system and amid bourgeois prejudices.” [Note: shortly after the First Congress, a Hungarian Soviet Republic was indeed declared but it was defeated within a few months].
Lenin's second proposal was about the importance of developing Soviets in rural areas amongst farm labourers and poor peasants, not just workers' soviets in the cities. He writes that “victory can only be considered assured when not only the urban workers, but also the rural proletarians are organised, and organised not as before - in trade unions and co-operative societies - but in Soviets”.
His third point is to stress that “winning a Communist majority in the Soviets is the principal task in all countries in which Soviet government is not yet victorious. … We, as the organised section of the working class, as a party, strive and must strive to gain a majority in the Soviets. Then our victory will be assured and no power on earth will be able to do anything against the communist revolution. If we do not, victory will not be secured so easily, and it will not be durable”.
Applying these ideas today
The resolutions of this First Congress of 1919 were written at a time when, as Trotsky put it in ‘The First Five Years of the Communist International’, “there was a certain justification for reckoning and hoping that the semi-spontaneous onset of the working class might overthrow the bourgeoisie before the latter succeeded in finding a new orientation and new post-war points of support. Such moods and expectations were by and large justified by the objective situation at the time”.
However, events, not least the defeats of the German and Hungarian Revolutions of 1919, confirmed that successful revolutionary change required the requisite revolutionary leadership, leadership that had not been developed in other countries in the way that the Bolsheviks had succeeded in building in Russia.
These lessons are reflected in the decisions taken by the Second Congress of the Third International which met in 1920, which I will look at in further posts. However, the way events developed in practice after the First Congress in no way detract from the general arguments set out above about the difference between bourgeois and workers' democracy.
Today, it is even more vital that we answer the lies of capitalism and use the ideas laid out in the resolutions of the First Congress to expose the lack of genuine democracy under bourgeois rule, and to explain how a genuine workers' democracy would operate.
Practice, rather than theory, will prove the precise form in which ‘Soviet’ organisation will develop - whether through workers' councils, shop steward or strike committees for example.
But Lenin’s insistence at the First Congress on the need, as revolutionary movements emerge, for such organisations to be built, and for the genuinely revolutionary forces to win majority support within them, is still as important as ever if we are to succeed in the struggle to build a socialist society today.
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