enslaved. Even in a democratic republic, the factories and workshops belong to the capitalists, and the land belongs to the capitalists and the landlords. The worker has nothing but his labour power; the poor peasant has nothing beyond a tiny scrap of land. They are eternally compelled to labour under terrible conditions, for they are under the heel of the master. On paper, they can do a great deal; in actual fact, they can do nothing. They can do nothing because all the wealth, all the power of capital, is in the hands of their enemies. This is what is termed bourgeois democracy*.
Bourgeois republics exist in the United States, in Switzerland, and in France. But all these countries are ruled by unscrupulous imperialists, by the trust kings and the bank barons, malignant enemies of the working class. The most democratic republic which existed in the year 1919 was the German Republic with its National Assembly. Yet this was the republic to which the murderers of Karl Liebknecht belonged.
The Soviet Power realises a new, a much more perfect type of democracy — proletarian democracy. The essence of this proletarian democracy consists in this, that it is based upon the transference of the means of production into the hands of the workers thus depriving the bourgeoisie of all power. In proletarian democracy, those who formerly constituted the oppressed masses, and their organisations, have become the instruments of rule. In the capitalist system of society, and therefore in bourgeois democratic republics, there existed organisations of workers and peasants. They were, however, overwhelmed by the organisations of the rich. Under proletarian democracy, on the other hand, the rich have been deprived of their wealth. The mass organisations of the workers, the semi-proletarian peasants, etc. (soviets, trade unions, factory committees, etc.), have become the actual foundations of the proletarian State authority. In the constitution of the Soviet Republic we find at the outset the statement: “Russia declares itself to be a republic of workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ delegates. All power, both central and local, is vested in these soviets.”