Democracy has been an elusive term, one that has been used to
mean different things. The much effective propaganda of the
Western imperialist world that presents ‘liberal democracy’ as
the only legitimate form of democracy has always tried to
position Marxism, socialism and communism as the opposite of
democracy. But Marxists have been and should be the most
relentless advocates, defenders and practitioners of democracy.
Marx and Engels stated in the Communist Manifesto of 1848 that,
“The first step in the revolution by the working class, is to
raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win
the battle of democracy.” The Marxist project, for the first
time gave a class perspective to democracy by providing an
incisive and holistic critique of ‘neutral’ liberal state and
‘free-market’ economy under bourgeois democracy. But perhaps
even more significant than this critique was the development of
the Marxian idea of democracy as a class state; dictatorship of
the proletariat would replace the dictat