48. The class Character and the Transitoriness of the proletarian Dictatorship.
The bourgeoisie has everywhere concealed its class rule behind the mask of “the cause of the whole people.” How could the bourgeoisie, a comparatively small group of parasites, openly acknowledge that it imposes its class will upon all? How could the bourgeoisie venture to declare that the State is but a league of robbers? Of course it could do nothing of the kind. Even when the bourgeoisie hoists the bloodstained standard of a militarist dictatorship, it continues to talk of “the cause of the whole people.” But the capitalist class is peculiarly adroit in the way in which it cheats the people in the so-called democratic republics. In these, the bourgeoisie rules, and is able to maintain its dictatorship through keeping up certain appearances. The workers are given the right of exercising the parliamentary vote every three or four years, but they are carefully excluded from all power in the administration. Yet because universal suffrage exists, the capitalist class loudly declares that the “whole people” rules.
The Soviet Power openly proclaims its class character. It makes no attempt to conceal that it is a class power, that the Soviet State is the dictatorship of the poor. The point is emphasised in its very name; the Soviet Government is called the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government. The constitution, that is to say the fundamental laws of our Soviet Republic, the constitution adopted by the third All-Russian Soviet Congress, expressly declares: “The third All-Russian Soviet Congress of workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ delegates, declares that now, in the hour of the decisive struggle between the proletariat and the exploiters, there can be no place for the exploiters in any of the instruments of power.” The Soviet Power, therefore, not only proclaims its class character, but does not hesitate to deprive of electoral rights and to exclude from the instruments of power the representatives of those classes which are hostile to the proletariat and to the peasantry. For what reason can and