Bourgeois democracy

Bourgeois democracy - in the “ left ”, especially Marxist social science, designation of the form of a political system based on the recognition of the principles of democracy, freedom and equality of citizens with the real rule of the bourgeoisie .

According to V. I. Lenin - a form of class domination of the bourgeoisie - a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie , proclaiming individual rights and democratic freedoms only in words, but in reality is characterized by the contradiction between formal political equality and actual socioeconomic inequality of citizens, the exploitation and oppression of the people. In a more journalistic style, Lenin gave the bourgeois democracy the following characteristics: “narrow, trimmed, false, hypocritical, a paradise for the rich, a trap and a deception for the exploited, for the poor . ”

Bourgeois democracy is opposed to "true" democracy - " socialist democracy ", "proletarian democracy", " popular democracy ", based on the dictatorship of the proletariat or a nation-state. Nevertheless, bourgeois democracy is recognized by Marxists as the most developed historical type of democracy in an exploiting society.

In the language now dominant in social studies, a close or the same concept is denoted by the term " liberal democracy ."