People's Democracy, A New Form of Political Organization of Society

by A.I. Sobolev

This book summarizes the Marxist-Leninist view of the People's Democracies.

116 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

Reviews

[Voyager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although quite short, the Soviet Marxist-Leninist theorist Sobolev makes excellent use of the limited pages to elucidate the state form of people's democracy as a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, explaining in genius terms, making use of extensive quotations from the Marxist classics, the conditions under which people's democracy was born, the stages people's democracy goes through as it transitions from a dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry to a dictatorship of the proletariat, why it didn't take root in Western Europe, and how it differs from the Soviet form of dictatorship of the proletariat as the highest form.

Even though all of the people's democracies have ceased to exist today as Vietnam, China, and the DPRK proceeded from the road of socialist construction to the road of preserving capitalism under the leadership of their respective opportunists and people's democracy in Europe was liquidated in the period of 1953-56, this book still has a lot to offer first in both understanding people's democracy as a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat (especially after the Khrushchevites, Titoites, and Maoists so distorted it) and the correct Leninist-Stalinist policies pursued after WWII, and also in understanding just how the revisionists distorted the concept of people's democracy, transforming it into bourgeois democracy everywhere, a feature that is especially evident by comparing this work and Stalin's writings with the opportunist theories of Mao Tse-Tung who rejected the course of socialist construction in China.

All in all, an excellent work, its only shortcomings being in some parts where it deals with other forms of proletarian dictatorship apart from the soviets and people's democracy.