“Democracy is a form of bourgeois state championed by all traitors to genuine socialism, who now find themselves at the head of official socialism and who assert that democracy is contrary to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Until the revolution transcended the limits of the bourgeois system, we were for democracy; but as soon as we saw the first signs of socialism in the progress of the revolution, we took a firm and resolute stand for the dictatorship of the proletariat.” [Emphasis added.]
Source: Vladimir Lenin, January 25, 1918, “Concluding Speech on the Report of the Council of People’s Commissars at the Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets.”
In other words, democratic socialism is a wolf in sheep’s clothing until the disguise is no longer necessary.
Related: “The Crisis of Socialism,” Chapter 5 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.
