Actually, it is precisely the bourgeoisie that has always played the hypocrite by characterising formal equality as “democracy”, and in practice using force against the poor, the working people, the small peasants and the workers, by employing countless means of deception, oppression, etc. The imperialist war (that the Scbeidemanns and the Kautskys painted in shamelessly bright colours) has made this plain to millions of people. Proletarian dictatorship is the sole means of defending the working people against the oppression of capital, the violence of bourgeois military dictatorship, and imperialist war. Proletarian dictatorship is the sole step to equality and democracy in practice, not on paper, but in life, not in political phrase-mongering, but in economic reality.

V. I. Lenin
Greetings To Italian, French and German Communists

October signifies the ideological victory of communism over Social-Democratism, of Marxism over reformism.

Formerly, before the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the U.S.S. R., the Social-Democrats and reformists could flaunt the banner of Marxism, could coquet with Marx and Engels, etc., for that was not dangerous for the bourgeoisie, and people did not yet know what the victory of Marxism could lead to.

Now, after the victory of the proletarian dictatorship in the U.S.S.R., when everybody realises what Marxism leads to and what its victory may signify, the Social-Democrats and reformists, sensing the danger to the bourgeoisie of such flaunting and coquetting with Marxism, have preferred to dissociate themselves from Marxism.

Henceforth, communism is the only shelter and bulwark of Marxism.

J. V. Stalin
Synopsis of the Article "The International Character of the October Revolution"
October 1927

Wars and all their calamities are produced by capitalism, which keeps millions of working people in bondage, sharpens the struggle between nations, and turns the slaves of capital into cannon fodder. A world-wide socialist army of the revolutionary proletariat is alone capable of putting an end to this oppression and enslavement of the masses and to these massacres of slaves in the interests of the slave-owners.

V. I. Lenin
To All the Citizens of Russia

If socialism is not victorious, peace between the capitalist States will be only a truce, an interlude, a time of preparation for a fresh slaughter of the peoples. Peace and bread are the basic demands of the workers and the exploited. The war has made these demands extremely urgent. The war has brought hunger to the most civilised countries, to those most culturally developed. On the other hand, the war, as a tremendous historical process, has accelerated social development to an unheard-of degree. Capitalism had developed into imperialism, i.e., into monopoly capitalism, and under the influence of the war it has become state monopoly capitalism. We have now reached the stage of world economy that is the immediate stepping stone to socialism.

V. I. Lenin
For Bread And Peace

There is and there can be no other way of testing the real might of a capitalist state than by war. War does not contradict the fundamentals of private property—on the contrary, it is a direct and inevitable outcome of those fundamentals. Under capitalism the smooth economic growth of individual enterprises or individual states is impossible. Under capitalism, there are no other means of restoring the periodically disturbed equilibrium than crises in industry and wars in politics.

V. I. Lenin
On the Slogan for a United States of Europe

Today the bourgeoisie and the social-traitors are jubilating in Berlin-they have succeeded in murdering Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Ebert and Scheidemann, who for four years led the workers to the slaughter for the sake of depredation, have now assumed the role of butchers of the proletarian leaders. The example of the German revolution proves that "democracy" is only a camouflage for bourgeois robbery and the most savage violence.

Death to the butchers!

V. I. Lenin
Speech at a Protest Rally Following the
Murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat.

Frederick Engels 1847
The Principles of Communism

all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social evolution; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the capitalists), without at the same time forever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression, class struggles — this basic thought belongs solely and exclusively to Marx.

Frederick Engels June 28, 1883, London

The only possible solution in the framework of the bourgeoisie is the postponement of the solution.

The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850

It is sheer mockery of the working and exploited people to speak of pure democracy, of democracy in general, of equality, freedom and universal rights when the workers and all working people are ill-fed, ill-clad, ruined and worn out, not only as a result of capitalist wage slavery, but as a consequence of four years of predatory war, while the capitalists and profiteers remain in possession of the "property" usurped by them and the "ready-made" apparatus of state power.

Lenin
“Democracy” and Dictatorship