The Soviet Power and our party have already done much in this direction. The mansions of the nobles, the theatres, the printing presses, paper, etc. — all these now belong to the working-class organisations and to the workers’ State. Our further task is to help by all possible means towards the full realisation of these rights by the backward strata of the proletariat and the peasantry. This will be achieved in two ways. First of all, we must continually advance along the road we have marked out, and must do everything in our power to broaden the material foundations of the workers’ freedom. We must, therefore, do our utmost to design and build new houses, set up new printing presses, instal workers’ palaces, etc. Secondly, the backward strata of the population must be made intimately acquainted with those possibilities of freedom which already exist, but which they have not hitherto been able to profit by, owing to ignorance, mental darkness, and lack of culture.
50. The Equality of the Workers, irrespective of Sex, Creed, and Race.
Bourgeois democracy proclaims in words a whole series of freedoms, but from the oppressed these freedoms are safeguarded by five locks and seven seals. Among other things, bourgeois democracy has often declared that people are equal irrespective of sex, creed, race, and nationality. Proudly has the pledge been given that under the bourgeois democratic system all are equals: women and men; whites, yellows, and blacks; Europeans and Asiatics; Buddhists, Christians, and Jews. In reality, the bourgeoisie has failed to carry out these pledges. During the imperialist epoch, there has been all over the world a terrible increase in racial and national oppression. (For details see the next chapter.) But even as concerns women, bourgeois democracy is far from having realised equality. Woman has remained a being without rights, a domestic animal, part of the furniture of the marital couch.