Session 7: Democracy in Marxism

Viewing Marxism as a method of societal analysis that focuses on class relations and societal conflict, it can be stated that this conflicts the view of democratic Marxism.

Based on Marx’s theory of class systems; while Marxism does not dismiss democracy, it views it along class lines. The democracy that Marxists aim to achieve is a workers' democracy also known as the dictatorship of the proletariat. This would consist of political power being held by the working class (the majority demographic of society) and state power wielded in their interests.

However, this conflicts with Marx’s statement of democracy being ‘a road to socialism’. His view states that under a truly communist society, the class of proletariat would disappear, along with the state, to form a classless and stateless society.

This eventual eradication of the class system and the state is what conflicts the Marxist view of societal conflict. In addition to this, Marx’s views on democracy calls into serious question the (revisionist) Marxist assumptions that democracy represents the political epiphenomenon of a specific economic system.  

As evidenced by the fact that no regime around the world has been able to implement a truly marxist system, even Soviet Russia under lenin did not follow a marxist regime and scholars tend to call that form of government leninism. Thus proving that democracy in marxism is extremely idealistic and fails to take into account the practicalities of the modern world.