which it was at first necessary to enforce. Let us suppose, for example, that the professional classes have drawn nearer to the working class, that they are no longer hostile to the workers, that in all they do they are wholly on the side of the Soviet Power, that they are on the best of terms with the proletariat. When this happens (and it is only a question of time), it will be incumbent upon us to give the professional classes full civil rights, and to accept them into our family. To-day, when the whole world is in arms against the Workers’ Republic, it would be premature to speak of such an extension of rights. But we must never cease to make it perfectly clear that the extension of rights will ultimately be given, and will be given all the sooner, in proportion as there comes a speedier end to the attempts made by the exploiters to overthrow communism. In this manner the proletarian State will gradually die out, and will undergo transformation into a Stateless communist society, wherein the division into classes will have completely disappeared.
49. Rights of the Workers under bourgeois Democracy and under the Soviet Power.
One of the chief frauds of bourgeois democracy consists in this, that it gives only the appearance of rights. On paper we read that the workers can elect to parliament in perfect freedom; that they have the same rights as the masters (they are said to be “equal before the law”); that they have the right of combination and of public meeting; that they can publish any newspapers and books they please; and so on. These things are called the “essence of democracy”; we are assured that democracy is for everyone, for the whole people, for all the citizens, so that conditions are quite different from those in the Soviet Republic.
First of all we must point out that no such bourgeois democracy really exists. It existed a hundred years ago, but Mr. Bourgeois has done away with it long since.