Theses written by Lenin and adopted at the First Congress of the Communist International in March, 1919.

‘Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and Proletarian Dictatorship’ (1919) by V. I. Lenin from The Communist. Vol. 10 No. 4. April, 1931.

1. The growth of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in every country has driven the bourgeoisie and their agents in the working class organizations to the most convulsive efforts to find ideological-political arguments for the defense of the rule of the exploiters. Among those arguments they raise particularly the condemnation of dictatorship and the defense of democracy. The falsity and hypocrisy of such an argument, which the capitalist press and the Conference of the Yellow International in Berne in February, 1919, repeat in a thousand different ways, is clear however, to everybody who is not bent upon betraying the basic principles of Socialism.

2. In the first place this line of argument operates with the concepts of “democracy in general” and “dictatorship in general,” without putting the question of their class character. Such a method of putting the question as outside or above the class standpoint, as if it were a standpoint of “the whole people,” shows a direct contempt for the basic teaching of Socialism, namely, the teaching of the class struggle which, while recognized in words by the Socialists who have gone over to the camp of the bourgeoisie, is forgotten in their deeds. For in none of the civilized capitalist countries does there exist such a thing as “democracy in general.” There exists only bourgeois democracy. And we are not talking of “dictatorship in general,” but of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, that is the proletariat, over the oppressors and exploiters, that is the bourgeoisie, for the purpose of overcoming the resistance which the exploiters put up in the fight to maintain their rule.

3. History teaches that no oppressed class has ever come to power or could have come to power, without going through a period of dictatorship, that is the conquest of the political power and the forceful suppression of the desperate, savage resistance which is always offered by the exploiters and which stops at nothing—not even the greatest crimes. The bourgeoisie, whose rule is now defended by the Socialists, who come out against “dictatorship in general” and fight body and soul for “democracy in general,” conquered its power in the civilized countries through a series of revolts and civil wars, through forceful suppression of the absolute monarchies, the feudal slave-holders, and their attempts at restoration. Thousands, nay millions of times have the Socialists of every country analyzed for the people in their books and pamphlets, in the resolutions of their congresses, in their agitational speeches, the class character of these bourgeois revolutions. Thus the present defense of “bourgeois democracy” by speeches about “democracy in general” and the present alarm against the dictatorship of the proletariat by. howls about “dictatorship in general,” are direct treachery to Socialism, actual crossing over into the camp of the bourgeoisie, denial of the right of the proletariat to its proletarian revolution, a defense of bourgeois reformism exactly at the historical moment when bourgeois reformism has broken down throughout the whole world and when the war has created a revolutionary situation.

4. All Socialists, in explaining the class character of bourgeois democracy, of bourgeois parliamentarism, have proclaimed the idea, which was expressed with the most scientific precision by Marx and Engels, that the bourgeois democratic republic is nothing but a machine for the oppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie— of the masses of workers by a handful of capitalists. There is not one single Marxist among those who now raise the alarm against dictatorship and stand up for democracy, who has not sworn by all that’s holy before the workers, that he acknowledges this basic truth of Socialism. But now that a whole ferment and movement has begun among the revolutionary proletariat, directed towards the annihilation of this machine of oppression and winning the dictatorship of the proletariat, these traitors to Socialism present the thing as though the bourgeoisie had presented the workers with “pure democracy,” as if the bourgeoisie had renounced any resistance and is inclined to submit to the majority of the toilers; as if there was not and is not in the democratic republic any state apparatus for the suppression of the workers by capital.

5. The Paris Commune, which, in words, is celebrated by all who wish to be considered Socialists (for they know that the working masses have great and sincere sympathy for it) showed with particular clearness the historical limitation and the restricted worth of bourgeois parliamentarism and of bourgeois democracy, which in comparison with the middle ages are highly progressive, but which in the period of the proletarian revolution inevitably undergo basic transformations. In particular Marx, who more than any other valued the historical significance of the Commune, proved in his analysis of the latter the exploiting character of bourgeois democracy and of bourgeois parliamentarism, which gives the oppressed class the right once in several years to decide which delegate of the possessing classes shall represent and misrepresent the people in parliament. It is just at this moment when the Soviet movement, which has swept over the whole world, carries forward before everybody’s eyes the cause of the Commune, that the traitors to Socialism forget the practical experience and the concrete teachings of the Paris Commune and repeat the old bourgeois swindle of “democracy in general.” The Commune was not a parliamentary affair.

6. The significance of the Commune consists further in that it made the attempt to smash the bourgeois state apparatus, the apparatus of officials, courts, military, and police, to destroy it fundamentally and to replace it by the self-ruling mass organizations of the workers which know of no separation of legislative and executive powers. All bourgeois democratic republics of our time, including the German, which, with complete contempt for the truth, is classified as proletarian by the traitors to Socialism, maintain this bourgeois state apparatus. This shows again and again, clearly and distinctly, that the howls about defense of “democracy in general” represent nothing but the defense of the bourgeoisie and their privileges as exploiters.

7. We can take the “freedom of assembly” as an example of the demands of “pure democracy.” Every conscious worker who has not broken with his class understands immediately that it would be nonsense to promise the exploiters freedom of assemblage in the period and situation when they are resisting their overthrow and defending their privileges. The bourgeoisie, when it was a revolutionary class, neither in England in 1649 nor in France in 1793, gave the monarchists and nobles freedom of assemblage when they were calling foreign troops into the country and were “assembling” in order to organize an attempt at restoration. If the present bourgeoisie, which has long since become reactionary, demands of the proletariat that it shall guarantee in advance “freedom of assemblage” for the exploiters without regard to what resistance the capitalists will set up against their expropriation, the workers will merely laugh at such hypocrisy on the part of the bourgeoisie.

On the other hand, the workers know perfectly well that “freedom of assemblage” even in the democratic bourgeois republics is nothing but an empty phrase, for the rich have the best public and private buildings at their disposal, have also sufficient free time for meetings, and enjoy the protection of the bourgeois state apparatus. The city and country proletarians, as well as the poor peasantry—that is the overwhelming majority of the population— have neither the first, nor the second, nor the third. As long as this keeps on “equality,” that is “pure democracy,” is a swindle. To obtain real equality, to make democracy a reality for the workers, we must first take away from the exploiters all the fine public and private buildings; we must obtain leisure for the workers; and it is necessary that the freedom of their meetings should be protected by armed workers and not by the sons of nobles or officers from capitalist circles with intimidated soldiers.

Only after such a change can one speak of equality without showing contempt for the toiling people, for the poor. This change, however, can be brought about by none other than the advance guard of the toiling masses, the proletariat, which overthrows the exploiters, the bourgeoisie.

8. “Freedom of the press” is another one of the main slogans of “pure democracy.” Yet the workers know, and the Socialists of all countries have admitted millions of times, that this freedom is a swindle, as long as the best printing plants and the greatest supplies of paper remain in the hands of the capitalists, and as long as the power of capitalism over the press remains—a power which becomes the more distinct, the more sharp, and the more cynical, the more that democracy and the republican regime are developed, as, for example, in America. To obtain real equality and real democracy for the toiling masses, for the workers and peasants, one must first take away from the capitalists the power to hire journalists for their service, to buy publishing plants and to bribe newspapers. And for this it is necessary to shake off the yoke of capitalism, to overthrow the exploiters and to crush their resistance. The capitalists have always labeled as “freedom” the freedom of profits for the rich, and the freedom for the workers to die of hunger. The capitalists label as “freedom of the press” the freedom for the rich to bribe the press, the freedom for the rich to manufacture and falsify so-called public opinion. The defenders of “pure democracy” show themselves again in reality the defenders of this filthy and prostitute system of the rule of the rich over the means of enlightenment of the masses, as swindlers of the people, who, with fine-sounding but with through-and-through lying phrases, lead away from the concrete historical task of the emancipation of the press from capital. Such a real freedom and equality will be the social order which the Communists are building and in which there will be no possibility for any to enrich themselves at the expense of others, no objective possibility directly or indirectly to subject the press to the power of money; where nothing will prevent the workers (or a small or large group of workers) from having and realizing their equal right to the use of the printing plants and paper belonging to society.

9. The history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries showed us long before the war what this famous “pure democracy” really signifies. The Marxists have always asserted that the more developed, the more “pure” democracy is, the more open, the more sharp, the more merciless becomes the class struggle, the more plainly the pressure of capital and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is shown. The Dreyfus affair in republican France, the bloody clashes of the capitalists’ armed hirelings with the striking workers in the free and democratic republic of America—these and thousands of similar facts disclose the truth which the bourgeoisie seeks in vain to cover up, namely, that in the most democratic republics the terror and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie rule in reality and come out openly whenever the power of capital seems to the exploiters to be shaken.

10. The imperialist war of 1914-18 disclosed once and for all even to the backward workers the true character of bourgeois democracy, even in the freest republic, as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In order to enrich the German and English groups of millionaires and billionaires, dozens of millions of men were murdered and the military dictatorship of the bourgeoisie was installed in the freest republics. This military dictatorship continues to exist in the lands of the Entente even after the overthrow of Germany. The war has opened the eyes of the workers more than anything else, has torn off the false veil of bourgeois democracy, and shown the people the whole of abyss of speculation and greed during the war and incidental to it. The bourgeoisie waged this war in the name of freedom and equality. In the name of freedom and equality the war contractors enriched themselves unbelievably. No efforts of the Yellow Berne International will be able to hide from the masses the now finally exposed exploiters’ character of bourgeois freedom, bourgeois equality, and bourgeois democracy.

11. In the most developed capitalist land of the continent of Europe, namely, in Germany, the first months of full republican freedom which were brought by the overthrow of imperialist Germany have shown the German workers and the whole world the real class content of the bourgeois democratic republic. The murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg are events of world-wide historical significance not only because the best persons and leaders of the really proletarian Communist International have been tragically put to death, but also because the class character of the most highly developed capitalist European state (and one can also say without exaggeration, the first in the whole world) has been disclosed with finality. If arrested people, that is, people taken under the protection of the state power, could be murdered unavenged by officers and capitalists under a government of social-patriots, it is clear that the democratic republic in which such a thing could happen is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. People who express their indignation over the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, but who do not understand this truth, show thereby only their own stupidity or hypocrisy. In one of the freest and most progressive republics in the world, in the German republic, there exists the “freedom” to kill the arrested leaders of the proletariat without punishment. And that cannot be otherwise as long as capitalism maintains itself, since the development of democracy does not weaken the class struggle which at the present time, as a result of and under the influence of the war and its consequences, has reached the boiling point, but instead sharpens it.

In the whole civilized world, deportations, persecutions, and imprisonment of the Bolsheviks are taking place, as, for example, in one of the freest bourgeois republics, in Switzerland; further, in America where pogroms against the Bolsheviks, and so on, are taking place. From the viewpoint of “democracy in general” or “pure democracy” it is simply laughable that progressive, civilized, democratic countries, armed to the teeth, are afraid of the presence of a few dozen people from backward, hungry, ruined Russia that is characterized as savage and criminal in millions of copies of bourgeois newspapers. It is clear that the social situation which can create such a shrieking contradiction is in reality a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

12. Under such a condition of affairs the dictatorship of the proletariat is not only fully justified, as a means to the overthrow of the exploiters and to the suppression of their resistance, but is also absolutely essential for the entire masses of toilers as the sole protection against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie which brought about the war and which is preparing new wars.

What the Socialists completely fail to understand and what shows their theoretical shortsightedness, their dependence on bourgeois prejudices, their political treachery to the proletariat, is, that in a capitalist society, with the sharpening of the class struggle which lies at its foundations, there can be no middle ground between dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and dictatorship of the proletariat. Any dream of a third possibility is a reactionary lamentation of a petty bourgeois. The experience of more than a century of development of bourgeois democracy and of the labor movement in all advanced countries and in particular the experience of the last five years bears witness to this. The whole teaching of national economy bears witness to this—the whole content of Marxism, which lays down the economic necessity of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie under any form of commodity economy, the dictatorship which can be overthrown only by the class which, through the very development of capitalism itself, continually develops itself, increases in numbers, tightens its ranks, and becomes ever stronger.

13. The second theoretical and political error of the Socialists consists in the fact that they do not understand that the forms of democracy inevitably, in the course of thousands of years, beginning with its germs in the ancient past, are changed with the replacing of one ruling class by another. In the republics of ancient Greece, in the cities of the Middle Ages, in the advanced capitalist states, democracy has different forms and a different extent. It would be the greatest absurdity to imagine that the most profound revolution in the history of humanity, the first transition of the power from the hands of the minority, the exploiters, into the hands of the majority, the exploited, could take place within the frame of the old bourgeois parliamentary democracy, without the greatest overturn, without the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions, new conditions for their use.

14. The dictatorship of the proletariat resembles the dictatorship of other classes in that, like all other dictatorships, it is brought about by the necessity to suppress by force the resistance of the class which has lost its political power. The basic difference between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the other classes—the dictatorship of the big land-owners in the Middle Ages, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in all civilized capitalist countries—consists in the fact that the dictatorship of the big landowners and of the bourgeoisie was a violent suppression of the resistance of the overwhelming majority of the population, namely, the working masses. In contradistinction to this, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a violent suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, that is, the pronounced minority of the population, the big  land-owners and the capitalists.

From this we see again that the dictatorship of the proletariat, generally speaking, must not only inevitably bring with it a transformation of the forms and institutions of democracy, but also that such a transformation results in an extension of the actual use of democracy by the toiling classes that were enslaved under capitalism, on a scale never before seen in the world.

And truly the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which has already been actually worked out, that is, by the Soviet government in Russia, the soviet system in Germany, the shop stewards’ committees and other analogous soviet institutions in other countries—all these realize and make available for the toiling classes, that is, for the overwhelming majority of the population, the actual possibility of using democratic rights and freedom as never before, even approximately, in the best democratic bourgeois republics.

The essence of the Soviet government consists in the fact that the mass organizations of just those classes which were oppressed by the capitalists, that is, the workers and semi-proletarians (the peasants who exploit no other labor and who are constantly forced to sell at least a part of their own labor) are the permanent and sole foundation of the whole state power, of the whole state apparatus. Just those masses—which, even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, where they are equal according to law, are in reality through thousands of different methods and tricks kept out of participation in political life and prevented from using their democratic rights and freedoms—are now drawn into permanent, unhindered, and in addition decisive participation in the democratic rulership of the state.

15. The equality of citizens without regard to sex, religion, race, or nationality, which bourgeois democracy has always and everywhere promised, but never carried out, and which as the result of the rule of capitalism it cannot carry out, has been realized once and for all by the Soviet government or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. For only the government of the workers who are not interested in private property in the means of production and in a struggle for its division and re-division, is in a position to do this.

16. The old, that is bourgeois democracy and parliamentarism, was so organized that it was exactly the working classes who were kept furthest away from the ruling apparatus. The Soviet government, that is the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, on the other hand, is so organized that it brings the working classes closer to the ruling apparatus. The same aim is served by the unification of the legislative and executive powers in the soviet organization of the state, and the substitution of territorial electoral districts by production units, such as workshops and factories.

17. The army was an apparatus of suppression, not only under the monarchy; it remained such in all the bourgeois, even the most democratic, republics also. Only the Soviet government, as the one permanent state organization of the classes which were oppressed under capitalism, is in a position to free the army from the bourgeois officers’ rule and really to merge the proletariat with the army, really to carry through the arming of the proletariat and the disarming of the bourgeoisie without which the victory of Socialism is impossible.

18. The Soviet organization of the state is directed towards giving the proletariat, as the class which became most concentrated and enlightened as a result of capitalism, the leading role. The experience of all revolutions and all movements of enslaved classes, the experience of the Socialist world movement, teaches us that only the proletariat is in a position to unite the scattered and backward strata of the toiling and exploited population and to lead them.

19. Only the Soviet organization of the state is in position once and for all completely to destroy the old, that is the bourgeois, apparatus of officials and courts, which remained in existence under capitalism even in the most democratic republics, and which had to remain since it was in reality the greatest hindrance for the workers and toiling masses to carry out democracy. The Paris Commune took the first world historical step along this path. The Soviet government has taken the second.

20. The annihilation of the state power is the goal which all Socialists have set themselves, among them and at their head, Marx. Without the realization of this aim real democracy, that is, equality and freedom, cannot be attained. To this goal, however, only the Soviet government or proletarian democracy can lead, for it begins immediately to prepare the death of all such state organizations by bringing the mass organizations of the toiling people into permanent and unconditional participation in the government.

21. The complete bankruptcy of the Socialists who assembled in Berne, their complete lack of understanding of the new, that is, the proletarian democracy, can be seen especially from the following: on February 10, 1919, Branting declared the International Conference of the Yellow International closed. On February 11, 1919, its participants in Berlin published in the newspaper Freiheit an appeal of the Independents to the proletariat. In this appeal the bourgeois character of the Scheidemann government is admitted and it is reproached with trying to do away with the Soviets which are called “the bearers and defenders of the revolution,” and the proposal is made to legalize the Soviets, to give them state rights, to give them the right to veto the decisions of the National Assembly and to turn over all matters handled in them to a referendum.

Such a proposition discloses the complete mental bankruptcy of the theoreticians who defend democracy and who have not understood its bourgeois character. The laughable attempt to unite the Soviet system, that is the dictatorship of the proletariat, with the National Assembly, that is the dictatorship of the bourgeois, discloses with finality the mental poverty of the yellow Socialists and Social-Democrats and the reactionary policy of the petty bourgeoisie as well as their timid concessions to the irresistibly growing forces of the new, proletarian democracy.

22. The majority of the Yellow International in Berlin, which condemns Bolshevism but which, for fear of the working masses, did not dare formally to vote on a corresponding resolution, dealt correctly from the class viewpoint. It is exactly this majority that is in complete solidarity with the Russian Mensheviki, the Social Revolutionaries, and the Scheidemanns in Germany. The Russian Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries, who complain of their persecution by the Bolsheviks, make great efforts to conceal the fact that these persecutions were brought about as a result of the participation of the Mensheviki and the Social-Revolutionaries in the civil war on the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. In the same way the Scheidemanns and their party in Germany have already taken part in the civil war on the side of the bourgeoisie against the workers.

It is therefore quite natural that the majority of the participants at the Berne Congress of the Yellow International spoke for condemnation of the Bolsheviki. This, however, was not an expression of defense of “pure democracy,” but the self-defense of people who feel that they are on the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat in the civil war. On these grounds we must consider the decision of the majority of the Yellow International as completely correct from the class viewpoint. The proletariat, however, must not fear the truth but look it straight in the face and draw from it all the necessary political conclusions.

There are a number of journals with this name in the history of the movement. This ‘Communist’ was the main theoretical journal of the Communist Party from 1927 until 1944. Its origins lie with the folding of The Liberator, Soviet Russia Pictorial, and Labor Herald together into Workers Monthly as the new unified Communist Party’s official cultural and discussion magazine in November, 1924. Workers Monthly became The Communist in March ,1927 and was also published monthly. The Communist contains the most thorough archive of the Communist Party’s positions and thinking during its run. The New Masses became the main cultural vehicle for the CP and the Communist, though it began with with more vibrancy and discussion, became increasingly an organ of Comintern and CP program. Over its run the tagline went from “A Theoretical Magazine for the Discussion of Revolutionary Problems” to “A Magazine of the Theory and Practice of Marxism-Leninism” to “A Marxist Magazine Devoted to Advancement of Democratic Thought and Action.” The aesthetic of the journal also changed dramatically over its years. Editors included Earl Browder, Alex Bittelman, Max Bedacht, and Bertram D. Wolfe.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/communist/v10n04-apr-1931-communist.pdf