Democracy

Social Justice Usage

Source: Marxists.org Glossary, “Democracy” Entry

Democracy: A political system of rule by the majority. Democracy is a much-abused term however, with even the most stunted, abstract and limited forms of suffrage going by the name of democracy.

“… in capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority. Communism alone is capable of providing really complete democracy, and the more complete it is, the sooner it will become unnecessary and wither away of its own accord. …”

“Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich – that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty” – supposedly petty – details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc., – we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.” [Lenin, State and Revolution, Chapter 5]

Communism means, in the first place, a step far above the limited democracy found under capitalism, by the most thoroughgoing proletarian democracy; and after that, the withering away of democracy as the majority less and less finds it necessary to overrule the will of any minority, because the majority is neither threatened nor damaged by the minority; in other words, without classes, conflict will be on a personal level not on a social level.

New Discourses Commentary

In Critical Social Justice, as with all Marxism, democracy is an organizational principle for society that exists only when all citizens are equal, i.e., under Communism. Like in all other established uses of the word, democracy represents a system of government where the people contribute to the governance through voting, petitioning, and speech (see also, free speech), but unlike other established uses of the term, Marxist Theories, like Woke Marxism, understand the concept differently in different social contexts. Specifically, if there are any differences in the social, political, or material standing (positionality) of different citizens, then democracy is not “true” for Marxists.

The rationale for this view is simple. If one has more resources, money, or privilege than another citizen, then one also has greater capacity to influence the democratic process, through influence or otherwise. The lack of total equity therefore “unlevels” the playing field, advantaging some over others. Thus, while in a democratic republic like the United States, each individual citizen might be able to show up and cast one vote, just like any other, in elections or on ballot measures, this is a false “bourgeois” form of democracy because of the social system (capitalism, liberalism) it is embedded within. Marxists generally believe bourgeois forms of democracy, like the allegedly “white supremacist” democracy Critical Race Theory identifies in the United States (see also, colorblind, equality, meritocracy, and individualism), only serve to reproduce the existing system while blocking transformative, radical, and revolutionary change.

Instead, Marxists of all types advocate for a “true” democracy (or an “ideal” democracy) in which all citizens are completely equals before participating in the democratic process. This, they insist, is only possible under Communism, the stateless, classless society wherein producing equitable outcomes (Socialism) is spontaneously the will of the people, i.e., of “Socialist Man” (see also, New Soviet Man). In a Communist Utopian society, all decisions will be made by all by this kind of democratic process, although that is also not true because political decision-making will be superfluous. According to the Marxists, such votes will not even be necessary because no majority would ever overrule any minority (because everyone is “Socialist Man” and sees these political matters identically), and democracy, like all forms of government, will have withered away. It is not known how any of this will work, but it will be just and democratic.

Because Karl Marx outlined a historicist progression of History through six stages, the last two of which are Socialism (state-administered equity) that slowly becomes Communism, Marxists offer an intermediate form of quasi-“true” democracy under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat that controls and manages the state as a literal one-party dictatorship under Socialist organization. This “proletarian democracy,” as Vladimir Lenin called it is a proxy “ideal” democracy given the necessary dialectical constraints of Socialism. It is democracy by and for the class-conscious (or critical-conscious) proletariat, who are the only true citizens with voting rights in Socialism, since everyone else is unqualified due to their affliction with false consciousness and ideological willful ignorance. In other words, it is a “democracy” in which only fully committed members of the Party can participate. (The Marxist faith maintains that when society is guided by the conscious—those who have accepted and adhere to Marxist Theory—it will progress toward its intended and purposed end of Communism, but not otherwise.)

Woke Marxists, though they tend not to say so directly, would view democracy similarly. It will not exist until we have “justice,” which is the neo-Marxist analogue of Communism, but it can be approximated under “equity” by, say, only extending full citizenship and suffrage to antiracists (mutatis mutandis for other dimensions of Identity Marxist thought, like gender studies, feminism, and Queer Theory). “Deplorables” (see also, conservative) need not be politically enfranchised, because that would maintain the status quo. This, for example, is part of why Ibram X. Kendi suggests that there be a Constitutionally mandated “Department of Antiracism” that has authority to “preclear all local, state, and federal public policy,” and more, so that the will of the “deplorable” (“racist”) voter is effectively erased. One should think of these things every time they hear the contemporary American Democratic Party talk about “our democracy.”

Revision date: 4/13/22

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James Lindsay