GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THEORY OF COMMUNISM 69 1
to Fascism renders communists by contrast friendly to
bourgeois democracy. Hence the value of political liberty
is now stressed; it was at the cost of blood and suffering
that! we are told, it was won in the past, and by blood
and suffering it must, if need arises, be defended in the
present Admittedly, it is very far from being all that the
workers need or have a right to demand, but it is, at least,
to the straits to which the
something and, having regard
destruction of liberty has reduced the workers in fascist
countries, something, it must be conceded, worth fighting
for.
THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. But political democracy
and political liberty are not economic equality, are
not, therefore, true liberty. With the deceptive liberty
which the workers "enjoy" in capitalist countries, communist
writers contrast the system of democracy which is
gradually taking shape in Soviet Russia. Of this system
some account will be given in the next chapter. 1 Here it is
sufficiept to point out that its basis is functional rather than
territorial, and that it is through the appointment of
delegates by those who are engaged upon the same work,
rather than through the election of representatives by
those who are living in the same area, that it seeks to secure
expression of the people's will. From this system the surviving
members of the bourgeoisie are, admittedly, excluded,
although even to them the new Soviet Constitution, which
came into force in the spring of 1937, makes important
concessions. In general, however, the Marxist would maintain
that during the revolutionary period, the period of
the dictatorship of the proletariat, only the proletariat is
entitled to political expression. During this period the
State may be accounted democratic in the sense that it
can only continue for so long as the mass of the workers
wills its continuance; but it is not a pure democracy, ifa pure
democracy is a form of government which commands the
assent of the people as a whole, A democracy of the
1 See Chapter XVIII, pp. 748-750.