#Democracy 3 manual full#

I read this section from Lenin as Brazil’s former president Lula turned himself in to the federal authorities to begin a prison sentence. Not this incomplete and distorted democracy, which has allowed money to corrupt politics and which has allowed force to determine the victor. Basing ourselves on the democracy already achieved, and exposing its incompleteness under capitalism, we demand the overthrow of capitalism, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, as a necessary basis both for the abolition of the poverty of the masses and for the complete and all-round institution of all democratic reforms.įull democracy is our standard, not the mutilated form of democracy on offer in our times.

#Democracy 3 manual full#

The proletariat cannot be victorious except through democracy, i.e., by giving full effect to democracy and by linking with each step of its struggle democratic demands formulated in the most resolute terms…While capitalism exists, these demands – all of them – can only be accomplished as an exception, and even then in an incomplete and distorted form. While reading Lenin on self-determination (1915), I came upon a paragraph that made me stop: You can almost see him scribbling his words down on scraps of paper as his comrades stand around – in the midst of two or three arguments – the text itself pushing Marxist theory forward at the same time as Lenin develops the slogans for political action. Lenin writes in the middle of an argument. I have enjoyed going back and reading the texts not just for what Lenin is saying but for his style. For LeftWord Books, I have been editing a volume that selects Lenin’s main writings.