Democracy — Democracy of Lies

National revolution is counter-revolution. Spiritual revolution is world revolution. The political spirit is experiencing — for the first time in history — the executive of the world revolution. What is the political means to fulfill it beyond the collapsing states? For the time being, the states attacked by the revolution are still fighting bloodily for this political means. The one first tried everywhere, the one loudest recommended and most visibly embodied in Germany at the moment, is called democracy.

Very captivating: popular rule. The right to self-determination. Everyone has free influence on the community in which they live through secret, equal and direct voting.

A closer look: After a revolution has taken place, the most fantastic, utopian, deceptive political means for its fulfillment. Almost a counter-revolutionary political means, a means of salvation for the pre-revolutionary powers.

Before the two world-historical events of world war and world revolution, the struggle for the democratic idea was a more meaningful one, as a struggle for the provisional political party goal of easing servitude within the still existing state under the state-supporting powers of imperialism, militarism and capitalism, at least to the extent that minorities should not be lawless and muzzled.

But now the revolution is here. In the face of the catastrophic collapse of the world powers, the executive will of the political spirit to overthrow them, to achieve happiness for mankind and humanity through every compromise of state and fatherland. Supported by the revolutionary class of the proletariat. This sweeps along a large part of the state-preserving class of the bourgeoisie, which, in the despair of the bankruptcy of its spiritual powers, finds no other way out.

Unanimity that is short-lived. For the bourgeoisie is the class of national revolutionaries: they want Germany. They are making revolution for Germany. They want peace to save Germany. They even threaten world revolt in order to maintain Germany. The true revolutionary wants peace for peace's sake. Not peace for Germany, but for France and Russia alike. For the people. As a spiritual principle of love against that of hatred and violence. And furthermore, as the executive of the political spirit, wants the overthrow of the guilty powers that have brought about the world situation of the world war.

The bourgeois national revolutionary soon realizes that the revolutionary is by no means concerned with Germany, that he is not interested in a rescue operation for a Germany brought close to disaster by the victory of other nations. That the revolution is basically directed against himself and the means of his power. That the revolutionary is the bearer of a spiritual movement that grew long before the war, spread victoriously during the war, and now, at the end of the war, in the collapse of the spiritual powers that have prevailed up to this point, has become executive. A spirit that moves, not against France and not for Germany, but against the spirit of the powers that have formed nations, national feeling, national hatred and all its inhuman consequences. For the victory of socialism, human love and human dignity over all nations.

Here I and Germany — here man and the world. They soon had to separate and become opponents within the revolution, for they were deeper antagonisms than those within the war. In the efforts of the national revolutionaries to find a political means of realizing their national revolutionary aims and of countering the march of the political spirit of the times, the means of democracy conveniently presented itself to them. A means that the political parties of progress had demanded even before the world-historical executives of the world war and the world revolution. Not a revolutionary one: to achieve the happiness of mankind and humanity beyond the fatherland and the state; but a national revolutionary one as ever: the will to reform within the boundary pile, to expand the state and to make its shackles more bearable for its subjects.

The national revolutionaries, blind to the world-historical step of the political spirit and — of course, for they were only carried along by the momentum of the executive power of the proletariat and without any spiritual brotherhood of their own — uncreative for the redeeming political means in the face of the world-historical event, were busy grasping at democracy and loudly praising its healing power. Against the creative political means of the councils, which was born with the revolution, and for the preservation of their own supports of power, which the revolution, which they had joined out of self-defense against the victory of the other nations, attacked.

Democracy is a utopian political means as long as the foundations of the community in which it is to be applied and the conditions under which it is to become effective in this community are undemocratic. The prerequisite for a democratic right to vote is a state based on democratic principles. It is nonsense to put a grand piano in the cell of a chained musician.

What use is an equal right to vote if a minority of people endowed with this ''right'' are still in possession of the powers of violence that are to be eradicated because they are recognized as being against the spirit? The paper right of equal self-determination is annulled by the injustice of the state order under which the right is to be exercised. Equal voices are a mockery as long as one voice still carries a sabre in its hand and the other a sack of money on its back. As long as there are still exploiters and wage slaves, commanding powers and obedient servants, those who bear arms and those who are defenseless. As long as a minority remains equipped with terrorist means of violence with which it forces the majority behind it.

Majority is nonsense. Politics is always a battle between minorities. Voting figures cannot hide this, because they show nothing but the quantitative measure of the influence that minorities have been able to exert. Equal rights are free. The conditions under which the right benefits the people must be equalized.

But the undemocratic conditions have remained. And democracy is nothing but a means to reinforce them. Can a man who has thought and lived soldierly all his life cast his vote overnight for the opposite of his previous thinking and living, because the executive of a new spirit disturbs him in the new morning? For the laying down of all arms? For the abolition of all power of command and all obedience to subjects? For the love of the enemy? Or does a man whose thoughts and deeds were capitalist raise his voice overnight for the complete eradication of capitalism? For the abolition of all exploitation? For the work of all people? For the law of human dignity: love your neighbor as yourself? Above all, does he give up the means of power with which he has made his thoughts and actions effective? Weapons protection and a majority of votes? Will the rulers of yesterday, if they are granted the same rights today as those they oppressed yesterday and, moreover, are left in possession of their old means of power, vote for their own death sentence, propagate their own death sentence with their terrorist means of power? No, this is a grotesque error, welcome only to those who want to prevent the fulfillment of the revolution and save and prop up anew the powers against which the executive will of the political spirit rose up with the proletariat. No, the thief does not learn to steal overnight; the lion does not leave the lamb through good-natured persuasion. Capital will continue to buy the press, buy votes, buy dependencies. And the swords, just as venal, will stand in front of capital to support its undemocratic abuse.

That is how it is. Property enjoys its old power. Its old tyranny the sword and the machine gun. The terrorist powers of capital and the sword are in the hands of the same minority that drove us people into the lies and death of the world war and which the revolution had to replace. The tribunes of the spirit are distributed undemocratically — that is, right under the old, guilt-ridden, blood-stained hands. From the cathedrals chatter the same vain Jesus-men and artificial cymbals, from the pulpits the miserable sinners and officials of the state religion. The press is still in the possession of the exploiters. From all these cathedrals, pulpits, stages, tribunes of the spirit, the same poisonous, inciting spirit is preached as before the uprising. With the help of the national revolutionary means of democracy, the ruling class of yesterday is in full possession of its terrorist means of power. And forces a majority under its will.

Democracy is not the political means to ensure the fulfillment of the revolution. Rather, in the face of revolution, it is a counter-revolutionary political means of preventing revolution. Rescue and protection of the old, antagonistic powers. Democracy is capital democracy. Military democracy. National democracy. Democracy of lies.

Revolution is on the way.