Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

DEMOCRACY
Young communists did not speak of themselves as "enemies of democracy," but as
class enemies of the bourgeois state and champions of "Soviet democracy." In their early
propaganda, the YCI emphasized that the YCL's central task was to "undermine the
apparatus of the bourgeois state" and "the destruction of the bourgeois order." 12 YCI
rhetoric embraced a language of urgency and action. Communists strove to make young
workers "conscious of the fact that if they are to be able to live, the capitalist society must
die" and that this "consciousness is the backbone of the will to fight for and set up the
proletarian dictatorship." 13 Bourgeois democracy was intimately linked with capitalist
economies. Faith in such a political system distorted the class nature of the state and in
turn distracted youth from achieving "working-class liberation."
Communist propaganda dismissed Western notions of citizenship and legality as
"bourgeois illusions." Under the bourgeois state young workers were considered "oppressed
and enslaved;" the dictatorship of the proletariat, representing a higher form of
"Soviet democracy," enabled young workers to "become free citizens of the proletarian
state." 14 As "slaves," young workers were encouraged to participate in both legal and
illegal work to advance the revolution and undercut identification of young workers to
the state. 15 The "proletarian state" would provide young workers "true" democracy and
citizenship. 16
The class nature of the state defined the phenomenon of both democracy and dictatorship.
In one of his few theoretical publications, Stalin attempted to clarify the "Leninist"
position concerning class, democracy and dictatorship:
The dictatorship of the proletariat must be a state that is democratic in a new way (for
the proletarians and the non-propertied in general) and dictatorial in a new way (against
the bourgeoisie).... Democracy under capitalism is capitalist democracy, the democracy
of the exploiting minority, based on the restriction of the rights of the exploited majority
and directed against this majority.... Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, democracy
is proletarian democracy, the democracy of the exploited majority, based on the restriction
of the rights of the exploiting minority and directed against this minority. 17
The Second International betrayed socialism by not addressing these class realities,
putting their primary faith instead in parliamentary reforms. YCI rhetoric contrasted the
strategic outlook of socialist and communist workers. An article on the Russian Revolution
praised the clarity of Soviet workers who "did not expect any manna to fall from the
parliamentary heaven." The article went on to scorn "all pseudo-Marxists" who pursued
democratic reforms instead of preparing workers for "an armed insurrection" that would
bring "an age of socialist brotherhood and equality." 18 In its initial programme, the
Comintern insisted that the struggle against reformism could not be framed as a simple
"theoretical difference of opinion." Such a movement necessitated an unyielding "struggle
against the centrists and democrats" that supported "defense of democracy which
preserves the private ownership of the means of production." 19
The communist position against "bourgeois democracy" was formulated as a critique
of its limited nature, not as a rejection of egalitarian concepts. By positing themselves
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