Virginia Cotts

What Ibrahim Traoré has said about not believing in “democracy” will shock the liberals, but only because they treat the word as sacred rather than material. From a historic class perspective he’s not rejecting people having power, he’s rejecting the lie that the West already provides it. What passes for “democracy” in countries like United Kingdom or United States is nothing more than managed consent. Political parties share policies and rotate in and out, but the ownership of industry, media, land and finance stays in the hands of the ruling class. Workers are invited to tick a box, but never any real say in governance. That is not democracy in any meaningful sense; it’s class dictatorship. Traoré cuts through that illusion. In a country like Burkina Faso, long suffocated by imperialism, plundered resources, and foreign interference, “democracy” has historically meant compliant governments serving imperialism. Rejecting that model is not authoritarianism that the western media portrays it as; it’s a recognition that a revolution must serve the liberation of the people, not mimic dangerous Western institutions. "In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners." - Lenin, State and Revolution. Lenin is clear on this: the state is not neutral. There is no abstract “democracy” floating above class interests. There is only rule by one class or another. The question is simple — who holds power, and in whose interests is it exercised? The West lectures the world about democracy while crushing any system that threatens capitalist dominance. Traoré is exposing that contradiction. Real democracy isn’t a ballot paper under capitalism, it’s the working class holding power, controlling production, and shaping society in its own interests. The Class Consciousness Project