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Democracy is in principle the suppression of class government, though it is not yet the actual suppression of classes.

— Eduard Bernstein Evolutionary Socialism (1899)

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Democracy

More quotes by Eduard Bernstein

The parties which assumed the names of liberals were, or became in due course, simple guardians of capitalism.

Evolutionary Socialism (1899)

Democracy is the high school of compromise.

Evolutionary Socialism (1899)

We may think as we like theoretically, about man’s freedom of action, we must practically start from it as the foundation of the moral law, for only under this condition is social morality possible.

Evolutionary Socialism (1899)

[T]he increase of social wealth is not accompanied by a diminishing number of capitalist magnates, but by an increasing number of capitalists of all degrees.

Evolutionary Socialism (1899)

The aim of all socialist measures, even of those which appear outwardly as coercive measures, is the development and the securing of a free personality. Their more exact examination always shows that the coercion included will raise the sum total of liberty in society, and will give more freedom over a more extended area than it takes away.

Evolutionary Socialism (1899)

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Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

Vladimir Lenin The State and Revolution (1917)

The law itself is the instrument of the ruling class; hence it is a logical impossibility for another class to assume power legally.

Oliver Cox Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

Gustave Flaubert

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Eduard Bernstein (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.