4.2.

MODEL OF DEMOCRACY
WESTERN VS. COMMUNIST

COMMUNIST MODEL OF DEMOCRACY

 Concept of Communist Model
• Socialist thought has several different
views on democracy.
• Social democracy, democratic socialism,
and the dictatorship of the proletariat
(usually exercised through Soviet
democracy) are some examples.
• Many democratic socialists and social
democrats believe in a form of
participatory democracy and workplace
democracy.
 Communist Model of Democracy
• Communist model of Democracy is a type of
democracy, which implies necessarily the end of
the division between different classes of society.
• It is part of the workers' democratic movement,
and struggles :
• for the abolition of capitalism, wage labour, and
the division of human beings into social classes ;
• for the end of the dictatorship of the capitalist
class, and to replace it with direct democracy;
• for a socialist-communist society;
• for the end of sexism and male domination;
 Communist Advocates Direct Democracy

• Because of their desire to eliminate

the political elitism (which they see in
capitalism), Marxist and Leninists,
believe in direct democracy
implemented though a system of
communes.
• This system ultimately manifests itself
as council democracy and begins with
workplace democracy.
 Way of Communist Democracy
• Major aim of the communist democracy
is
• to participate in the actual movement of the
world's proletariat for the improvement of
its life conditions, and
• to change society – fighting for, among other
things, the common property over the
means of production, transportation,
communication and the suppression of all
states.
 Karl Marx’s View
• According to Karl Marx in his great
work on Communist Manifesto, this new
society, of a socialist-communist type,
would be
• an association in which the free development
of each is the condition for the free
development of all.
• As long as equality is not real, freedom of
all unfortunately only remains theoretical.
We have to change society in order to
obtain real equality and freedom.
 IDEA of V. I. Lenin
A year after the revolution, in
October 1918, Lenin claimed that
"proletarian democracy is a million
times more democratic than any
bourgeois democracy".
 Objective of Communist Model
• The objective of the communist model of
democracy is the end
• of all oppressions and
• of all alienations.
• In order for the human being to be really free, it is
necessary
• to get rid of all the institutions created for the
maintenance and
• the justification of the oppression: the States, the
representative "democracies", the armies, etc...
• On the contrary, socialism-communism is a society
without frontiers or oppression.
Democracy: system or process
• Marx considered democracy "not as a system
but as a process which come down essentially to
a struggle for democracy."
• Lenin wrote in state and revolution,
"Democracy is of great importance for the
working class and its struggle for freedom
against the capitalist.
• But democracy is by no means a limit one may
not overstep; it is only one of the stages in the
course of development from feudalism to
capitalism and from capitalism to communism.
Demerit of Liberal Democracy: Eyes of Communist
The important features of bourgeois democracy are:
• election, multi-party system, liberty and rights,
independent judiciary and the constitution.
• Money plays very important part in elections and the
working class which consists of poor people cannot
capture political power through election.
• Political parties win the election by taking currency
notes/money from the rich and collecting votes from the
poor.
• After winning elections, the policies of the government
serve the interests of the rich and the poor are appeased
merely with slogans and speeches.
• Thus, Lenin says: Parliament is given up to talk for
special purpose of fooling the common people.
 On the Human Rights Perspective

• The communist thinkers claim that, liberal or bourgeois

democracy provides only political democracy their
people and deny economic, social and cultural
democracy.
• In socialist democracy, the right to work, education,
leisure, health and old age security are guaranteed under
the economic, social and cultural rights of human being.
• Communist thinkers said people cannot get justice, even
there is independent judiciary. They claimed, in liberal
democracy, the workers who are poor cannot expect to
get justice as they have neither the time nor the money to
engage lawyers to fight their cases in the courts.