Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/103

 of "essential democracy" represents nothing but the defense of the bourgeoisie and its exploitation-privileges.

"Freedom of assembly" may be taken as an example of the requirements of "pure democracy." Every conscious worker who has not deserted his class sees without further ado that it would be nonsense to promise his exploiters freedom of assembly during the period and under the circumstances when the latter are resisting their downfall and defending their privileges. At a period when the bourgeoisie itself was still revolutionary, it did not allow freedom of assembly, either in England in 1649, or in France in 1793, to the royalists and nobility (when the latter brought foreign troops into the country and "assembled" in order to organize an attempt at restoration). Should the contemporary bourgeoisie, long since become reactionary, demand that the proletariat guarantee in advance "freedom of assembly" to their exploiters regardless of what opposition the capitalists may set up against their dispossession, then the proletariat will merely be moved to laughter at such a display of bourgeois hypocrisy.

On the other hand, workers know very well that "freedom of assembly," even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, is an empty phrase, for the wealthy classes have the disposal of the best public and private buildings, and also have enough leisure for assemblage. They enjoy the protection of the bourgeois machinery of force. The city and the village proletariat, as well as the peasants, i. e., the overwhelming majority of the population, have neither the first, nor the second, nor the third. So long as this state of affairs continues, "equality," i. e., "pure democracy," will remain a fraud. In order to establish a real equality, in order actually to realize democracy for the workers, it would be necessary first to take all the magnificent private and public structures away from the exploiters, to provide leisure for the workers, and to see to it that the freedom of their assemblies is safeguarded by armed workers, not by scions of the nobility or by officers drawn from capitalistic circles and placed in command of intimidated troops.

Not until such a change has taken place will it be possible to speak of freedom of assembly, of equality, without making mock of the working people, of the poor. But this change can be brought about only by the vanguard of the working people, the proletariat, which dethrones the exploiters, the bourgeoisie.