Since its inception, a key pillar of the worker’s movement has been it’s struggle to “make the blessings of democracy really accessible to the workers”. But why should communists fight for democracy, and what’s our party’s place in this?
Form And Function
A key discernment to be made between existing democracy, bourgeois democracy, and the radical democracy of the proletariat, is between the form of democracy and its function. Bourgeois democracy is defined by the former; elections are held, government changes hands, but the state remains, ultimately, in the control of the ruling minority - the bourgeoisie. The reason for this is clear whenever a state’s capitalists feel the need to impose their will, at home or abroad. The coercive power, both physical and bureaucratic, of the state, is essential for the imposition of one class’ will upon the other. When the mask of the democratic form is removed, the bourgeois state is revealed in its purest nature; neither neutral, nor egalitarian.
Proletarian democracy, contrastingly, is defined by its democratic function; the rule of the demos, or body politic. This democratic function can only be fulfilled by the working class, because the rule of the majority is their interest alone, as the majority class in all modern societies. Every other class’ interest is in imposing their will, as a minority, on the classes they subordinate to themselves.
Radical Democracy
But what does this democratic function look like, if not just elections and accountability? While it, of course, includes all the traits of democratic form, it must, too, surpass them. In Lenin’s April Theses, echoing Marx’s “Civil War in France”, the demand is given for the “abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy”, alongside a government system of elected delegates, “displaceable at any time”, and paid an “average wage”.
These demands, informed by Marx’s real experience of the Dictatorship of The Proletariat (which is a dictatorship only in the sense that the majority proletariat dictates its will on the minority classes who oppose them) are the functions of democracy. Through the abolition of army and police, and the arming of the proletariat, the coercive powers of the state shall be torn from the hands of bureaucrats and capitalists and placed into the hands of the working class. Similarly, through the recallability and regulation of delegate wages, power will be placed firmly in the hands of the body politic over their representatives. Through these measures, the revolutionary workers will “carry the democratic revolution to its completion”, and constitute the state as a dictatorship of the revolutionary masses - the proletariat - over and against their class enemies.
Democratic Dictatorship
With this understanding, what once seemed oxymoronic begins to make sense. The democratic dictatorship, rather than a contradiction of terms, is the only form by which the proletariat can assert its own interests. Democracy is essential to proletarian power because it is only through radical, new democracy that our goal - the rule of the entire proletariat, can be realised. Capitalists, both large and small, peasants, and bureaucrats have successively shown they can only lead their own interests to victory, not the workers. The proletariat, having nothing of its own, is the only class capable of becoming the vanguard of progress, and a democratic state is the only state capable of representing the interests of the majority working class. However, this democratic state takes the form of a dictatorship; not of an individual, but of a collective. In the same way the bourgeoisie maintain their dictatorship through undemocratic means, the proletariat shall maintain theirs through maximally democratic ones. Through this democracy, the proletariat, forming the majority, will dictate their will upon their would-be oppressors.
Function Against Form
The reality of the capitalist state as one that dictates for capital against the workers makes the decision of an electoral project such as The Socialists clear. We can either choose to enter executive positions and rule for capital, or maintain a position of principled opposition, until the party is prepared to rule against it. Taking a position of leadership in the capitalist state necessarily means taking a position of leadership over the military, the police, and the prison system, and, unless the revolutionary party holds both a majority within the class and within the parliament, it cannot possibly hope to rule against these forces. So, what is the alternative? What is ‘principled opposition’? It simply refers to the fact that committed revolutionaries must enter parliament with the goal of representing the working class - and this means holding constant, principled opposition to bourgeois machinations. This also means lending support, from a position of opposition, on single issues that benefit the revolutionary goals of the class. Until such a time as the party holds a majority within the working class, this position of ‘principled opposition’ must be its commitment, lest we ally ourselves with class enemies.
Our Party
How can our party, as small as it is, complete this historic task? We must begin our revolution in our own backyard - by revolutionizing ourselves. If we expect the Socialist Party to carry out a radically democratic revolution, we can’t preach loyalty to an infallible Executive. The party must itself be a democratic republic in miniature.
What is holding back our struggle, then? First and foremost, it is the bureaucratic system that has despoiled our party. The powers vested in the Executive Council, including the right to appoint, expel, dissolve, and publish as they see fit, and their top-down development of the party nationwide, through appointed Local Coordinators and state Executives, must be overturned. These powers, in the hands of bureaucrats, proliferate bureaucracy. In the hands of the membership, they proliferate egality, democracy, and socialism.
The struggle for democracy must begin with the membership. On a local level, a fight for education, member sovereignty, and open, honest debate must be waged, both with, and, if need be, against the defenders of bureaucracy. Let one hundred schools of thought contend! Once these struggles have been fought through, the march towards radical democracy must be completed in the conference - the “supreme decision-making body of the party”. It must re-assert this power against all opposition, and supersede old party structures with new ones; a realization of the democratic republic.
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