Marx and Engels describe the suffering of workers under bourgeois “democracy” in the Communist Manifesto: “In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed – a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

“Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.”

Marx and Engels proposed: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

In plain language, they consider bourgeois society the old society, to be replaced entirely by a new society, based on real democratic beliefs about equal power and inherent worth for all people, without antagonism between classes.

As for “authoritarian regimes”, you may have been confused by a Stalinist writer. It is very important that you understand that Trotskyism represents the continuation of Marxism while Stalinism was its perversion, or an attempt by imperialism to produce its internal destruction. To remedy this confusion, I recommend you read the following, which quotes Marx and Lenin, from James P. Cannon, a founder of the Fourth International and its first leader in the United States and after Trotsky’s death, internationally.

https://www.marxists.org/ar…

Read the following quote, excerpted from the above speech, especially the last sentence. Cannon, in his prime, would accuse the WSWS of “burning incense to democracy as an immutable principle.”

“And always, in time of crisis, these labour leaders—who talk about democracy all the time, as against dictatorship in the “socialist countries”, as they call them—easily excuse and defend all kinds of violations of even this limited bourgeois democracy. They are far more tolerant of lapses from the formal rules of democracy by the capitalists than by the workers. They demand that the class struggle of the workers against the exploiters be conducted by the formal rules of bourgeois democracy, at all stages of its development—up to and including the stage of social transformation and the defence of the new society against attempts at capitalist restoration. They say it has to be strictly “democratic” all the way. No emergency measures are tolerated; everything must be strictly and formally democratic according to the rules laid down by the capitalist minority. They burn incense to democracy as an immutable principle, an abstraction standing above the social antagonism.”