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

and the elimination of bourgeois democracy. As proletariandemocracy develops, bourgeois democracy is eliminated.This fundamental Marxist-Leninist thesis is opposed by therevisionist Khrushchov clique. In fact, they hold that so longas enemies are subjected to dictatorship there is no democracyand that the only way to develop democracy is to abolish thedictatorship over enemies, stop suppressing them and institute“democracy for the whole people”.Their view is cast from the same mould as the renegadeKautsky’s concept of “pure democracy”.In criticizing Kautsky Lenin said:. . . “pure democracy” is not only an ignorant phrase,revealing a lack of understanding both of the class struggleand of the nature of the state, but also a thrice-emptyphrase, since in communist society democracy will witheraway in the process of changing and becoming a habit, butwill never be “pure” democracy. 1He also pointed out:The dialectics (course) of the development is as follows:from absolutism to bourgeois democracy; from bourgeois toproletarian democracy; from proletarian democracy tonone. 2That is to say, in the higher stage of communism proletariandemocracy will wither away along with the elimination ofclasses and the withering away of the dictatorship of the proletariat.To speak plainly, as with the “state of the whole people”,the “democracy for the whole people” proclaimed by Khrushchovis a hoax. In thus retrieving the tattered garments ofthe bourgeoisie and the old-line revisionists, patching them1V. I. Lenin, “The Proletarian Revolution and the RenegadeKautsky”, Selected Works, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1952, Vol. II, Part2, p. 48.2V. I. Lenin, Marxism on the State, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, p. 42.451