Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie

In Marxist class analysis, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie refers to the notion that liberal democracies like the United States are dictated according to the class interests of capitalists, just as medieval society was dictated by the nobility, and early socialist society will be dictated by the proletariat.

Of liberal "democracy", Vladimir Lenin wrote:

The bourgeoisie are compelled to be hypocritical and to describe as "popular government", democracy in general, or pure democracy, the (bourgeois) democratic republic which is, in practice, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the exploiters over the working people. The Scheidemanns and Kautskys, the Austerlitzes and Renners (and now, to our regret, with the help of Friedrich Adler) fall in line with this falsehood and hypocrisy. But Marxists, Communists, expose this hypocrisy, and tell the workers and the working people in general this frank and straightforward truth: the democratic republic, the Constituent Assembly, general elections, etc., are, in practice, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and for the emancipation of labor from the yoke of capital there is no other way but to replace this dictatorship with the dictatorship of the proletariat

— Lenin, "Democracy" and Dictatorship

See also

• Bourgeois democracy