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Democracy and Revolutionary Movement

I. Reevaluating Democracy For many years, in defending the dictatorship of the proletariat, organizations of the Marxist-Leninist Left scorned the other side of the coin, broader popular democracy. They were influenced by Lenin's emphasis on the former as a necessity in defeating a counterrevolution that did not accept the rules of the game and that attempted to regain its lost power by relying on the aid of the world counterrevolution. Until just a few years ago, leaders of these organizations proclaimed themselves revolutionaries and labeled the other progressive forces of the Left democratic. This was an ideological aberration, because the more revolutionary a political organization, the more democratic must its project be, and, conversely, the most radical democracy can only be won through the realization of profound social transformations -- that is to say, through the adoption of revolutionary measures. At the same time, the "New Left" in particular was unable to understand that democracy was the immediate goal of the majority of the people. Because Left forces were unable to raise the banner of democracy forcefully and consistently, they were not able to lead people toward their proposed socialist project. In its discourse and propaganda, this Left emphasized the dictatorship of the proletariat as the great objective. More than a few Communist parties, on the other hand, despite including in their programs and speeches the dictatorship of the proletariat as the final goal, concentrated in their political practice only on struggles for general democratic demands. They did not attempt to link these demands to the struggle for socialism and thus fell into the trap of reformism, following behind the bourgeoisie. Today, the Left is making an enormous effort to take back the banner of democracy. Before continuing, however, we must first define what is meant by democracy. The different definitions of democracy can be grouped around three fundamental aspects: 1. The problem of representation and citizen rights, or political democracy; 2. The problem of social equality; and 3. The problem of participation, of the people's role as protagonists. Political democracy is what some have called government of the people. It can, as happens with bourgeois democracy, favor minority sectors of the population; as a result, some call it formal, since in the name of a people, it favors only a minority. Within such a democracy, there exist first- and second-class citizens. Accordingly, the Marxist-Leninist Left has taken a very pejorative attitude toward this type of democracy, forgetting that the democratic gains made in this terrain were not gratuitous gifts from the bourgeoisie; rather, they were won through historic struggles of the popular movement for universal suffrage, the right of women to vote, the right to organize trade unions, etc. The firsthand experience of living without such democratic rights during the military dictatorships caused the Left to begin to reassess the value of this aspect of democracy. The second aspect is expressed in substantial or social democracy, or government for the people, the fundamental aim of which is to search for solutions to the real, most acutely felt problems of the population: bread, land, work, education, housing -- all of the things that allow progress toward a more egalitarian society. In practice, this form of democracy can be exercised by a political system that does not function with the same mechanisms of representation used in countries with traditional "Western" democracy. The third aspect is expressed in participatory democracy, or government exercised by the people. The Left project for society -- socialism -- must combine these three types of democracy. It must seek a government of the people, for the people, and by the people. A government of the people is the system in which the interests of the diverse sectors of the population are represented in the state. …