Why did Bordiga say socialism is un democratic?

[Jacob Cliff]

How would he expect for communists to win and create the dictatorship of the proles if it didn't have a firm statistical majority? How would they maintain power, by force? If so, wouldn't that alienate a lot of people from communism if they see a minority party (which claims to be the brain of the working class) take over the country and openly restrict democracy?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The basic point is not original to Bordiga, I would say. Lenin said something extremely similar in "The State and the Revolution":

Thirdly, in speaking of the state “withering away", and the even more graphic and colorful “dying down of itself", Engels refers quite clearly and definitely to the period after “the state has taken possession of the means of production in the name of the whole of society", that is, after the socialist revolution. We all know that the political form of the “state” at that time is the most complete democracy. But it never enters the head of any of the opportunists, who shamelessly distort Marxism, that Engels is consequently speaking here of democracy “dying down of itself", or “withering away". This seems very strange at first sight. But is is “incomprehensible” only to those who have not thought about democracy also being a state and, consequently, also disappearing when the state disappears. Revolution alone can “abolish” the bourgeois state. The state in general, i.e., the most complete democracy, can only “wither away". Fourthly, after formulating his famous proposition that “the state withers away", Engels at once explains specifically that this proposition is directed against both the opportunists and the anarchists. In doing this, Engels puts in the forefront that conclusion, drawn from the proposition that “the state withers away", which is directed against the opportunists.


One can wager that out of every 10,000 persons who have read or heard about the “withering away” of the state, 9,990 are completely unaware, or do not remember, that Engels directed his conclusions from that proposition not against anarchists alone. And of the remaining 10, probably nine do not know the meaning of a “free people's state” or why an attack on this slogan means an attack on opportunists. This is how history is written! This is how a great revolutionary teaching is imperceptibly falsified and adapted to prevailing philistinism. The conclusion directed against the anarchists has been repeated thousands of times; it has been vulgarized, and rammed into people's heads in the shallowest form, and has acquired the strength of a prejudice, whereas the conclusion directed against the opportunists has been obscured and “forgotten”!


The “free people's state” was a programme demand and a catchword current among the German Social-Democrats in the seventies. this catchword is devoid of all political content except that it describes the concept of democracy in a pompous philistine fashion. Insofar as it hinted in a legally permissible manner at a democratic republic, Engels was prepared to “justify” its use “for a time” from an agitational point of view. But it was an opportunist catchword, for it amounted to nothing more than prettifying bourgeois democracy, and was also a failure to understand the socialist criticism of the state in general. We are in favor of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism. But we have no right to forget that wage slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic. Furthermore, every state is a “special force” for the suppression of the oppressed class. Consequently, every state is not “free” and not a “people's state". Marx and Engels explained this repeatedly to their party comrades in the seventies.


This was in 1917. Now, when the world situation enters a reactionary phase, all sorts of opportunist slogans are resurrected. So it was with "prettifying bourgeois democracy" in the Stalinised PCd'I, which first called on the Fascists to carry out their "democratic programme" (!), then in the name of democracy squashed all challenges to bourgeois rule after the Second World War. Bordiga was reacting to this situation. He did attack methods used in democracies, in general - i.e. voting. But I think one can appreciate his criticism of democracy without putting any stock in "organic centralism", which no one can describe except to say that the Party will make the right decision because the right decision is the right decision for the Party to make.

I also don't think Bordiga imagined the Party to be "the social brain", although actual Bordigists might correct me on this. In "Trajectory and Catastrophe..." he uses the term "cervello sociale" as a metaphor for the entire technical-scientific knowledge of the human species. His concern was with how that knowledge might be put to use in socialism.

As for minority rule, would it require violence? Of course it would. But so would majority rule. That's the Marxist insight - all forms of state, including democracy, are connected to class rule, to large-scale violence. If minority rule "alienates" some people from socialism, OK, that's to be expected. But the question is not if we have a numeric majority but if we have strong support from the most forward-looking layers of the proletariat.