In Marxist theory, a new democratic society will arise through the organised actions of an international working class, enfranchising the entire population and freeing up humans to act without being bound by the labour market.
[14][15] controversy over Marx's legacy today turns largely on its ambiguous relation to democracySome argue democratic decision-making consistent with Marxism should include voting on how surplus labor is to be organized.
[17] In the 19th century, The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels called for the international political unification of the European working classes in order to achieve a Communist revolution; and proposed that, because the socio-economic organization of communism was of a higher form than that of capitalism, a workers' revolution would first occur in the economically advanced, industrialized countries.
[19] Russian historian Vadim Rogovin attributed the establishment of the one-party system to the conditions which were “imposed on Bolshevism by hostile political forces”.
[21] Functionally, the Leninist vanguard party was to provide the working class with the political consciousness (education and organisation) and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism in Imperial Russia.
[23] Trotsky argued that he and Lenin had intended to lift the ban on the opposition parties such as the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries as soon as the economic and social conditions of Soviet Russia had improved.
[27] Internationally, some socialists decried Lenin's regime and denied that he was establishing socialism; in particular, they highlighted the lack of widespread political participation, popular consultation, and industrial democracy.
[33]: 61–62 In the concept of New Democracy, the working class and the communist party are the dominant part of a coalition which includes progressive intellectuals and bourgeois patriotic democrats.
[34] Led by a communist party, a New Democracy allows for limited development of national capitalism as part of the effort to replace foreign imperialism and domestic feudalism.