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“So-called democracy, i.e., bourgeois democracy, is nothing but the veiled dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The much-vaunted ’general will of the people’ is no more a reality than ’the people’ or ’the nation’. Classes exist and they have conflicting and incompatible aspirations. But as the bourgeoisie represents an insignificant minority it makes use of this illusion, this imaginary concept, in order to consolidate its rule over the working class. Behind this mask of eloquence it can impose its class will. The proletariat, which forms the vast majority of the population is, on the contrary, completely open about using the class power of its mass organizations and Soviets to eliminate the privileges of the bourgeoisie and guarantee the transition to the classless, communist society.

Bourgeois democracy consists essentially of a purely rhetorical and formal recognition of rights and freedoms, which are in fact inaccessible to the working people – the proletariat and semi-proletarian elements – on account of their lack of material means. The bourgeoisie at the same time has every opportunity to use its material means, its press and organization to cheat and deceive the people. However, the new type of state power, known as the Soviet system, ensures the proletariat the opportunity of guaranteeing its rights and freedom in practice. Soviet power provides the people with the best palaces, houses, printing works, stocks of paper, etc. for their press, and clubs for their meetings. Only such measures make proletarian democracy really possible. It is only on paper that bourgeois democracy and its parliamentary system give the masses the opportunity to participate in the running of the state. In actual fact, the masses and their organizations have absolutely no access to real power and are denied any genuine participation in the state administration. Under the Soviet system it is the mass organizations, and through them the masses themselves, that are running things, inasmuch as the Soviets attract an ever-increasing number of workers into government. This is the only way the entire working population can gradually be drawn into the work of state administration. The Soviet system is thus based on the mass organizations of the proletariat, on the Soviets themselves, the revolutionary trade unions, the cooperatives, etc.“

– The Platform of the Communist International, First Congress of the Third Communist International, 1919

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Image: The Last Supper by Bruce Onobrakpeya. Linoleum print.