lenin on “freedom” and “democracy” under capitalism:

“freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners.”

“the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that ‘they cannot be bothered with democracy,’ ‘cannot be bothered with politics’; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.”

“democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich - that is democracy of capitalist society. if we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the ‘petty’ details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of...”

“...women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly, in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc., - we see restriction after restriction upon democracy.”

“these restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been inclose contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life...”

“(and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.”

“marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!”

“no, forward development, i.e., development towards communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in any other way.”

“and the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy.”

“w/ an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the ppl, not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, exploiters&capitalists.”

“engels expressed this splendidly when he said: the proletariat needs the state, not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist.”

“democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people - this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.”

“only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists disappears, there are no classes (i.e., when there is no distinction b/w members of society as regards to the means of production), only then ‘the state ceases to exist’ & it becomes possible to speak of freedom.”

“the expression ‘the state withers away’ is very well-chosen, for it indicates both the gradual and the spontaneous nature of the process.”

“the dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority.”

“furthermore, during the transition from capitalism to communism suppression is still necessary, but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority.”

“lastly, only communism makes the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is nobody to be suppressed - ‘nobody’ in the sense of a class, of a systematic struggle against a definite section of the population.”