Polemic on General Line of International ... - From Marx to Mao

letarian democracy is becoming socialist democracy of thewhole people”. 1These utterances can only show that their authors eitherare completely ignorant of the Marxist-Leninist teachings onthe state or are maliciously distorting them.Anyone with a little knowledge of Marxism-Leninism knowsthat the concept of democracy as a form of the state, like thatof dictatorship, is a class one. There can only be class democracy,there cannot be “democracy for the whole people”.Lenin said:Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppressionby force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of theexploiters and oppressors of the people -- this is the changedemocracy undergoes during the transition from capitalismto Communism. 2Dictatorship over the exploiting classes and democracy amongthe working people — these are the two aspects of the dictatorshipof the proletariat. It is only under the dictatorshipof the proletariat that democracy for the masses of the workingpeople can be developed and expanded to an unprecedentedextent. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat there canbe no genuine democracy for the working people.Where there is bourgeois democracy there is no proletariandemocracy, and where there is proletarian democracy thereis no bourgeois democracy. The one excludes the other. Thisis inevitable and admits of no compromise. The more thoroughlybourgeois democracy is eliminated, the more willproletarian democracy flourish. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie,any country where this occurs is lacking in democracy.But actually this is the promotion of proletarian democracy1N. S. Khrushchov, Report to the 22nd Congress of the CPSU,October 1961, and Report on the Programme of the CPSU, deliveredat the Congress.2V. I. Lenin, “The State and Revolution”, Selected Works, Eng. ed.,FLPH, Moscow, 1952, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 291.450