True democracy can’t be achieved if the means of production and political power doesn’t lie in the hand of the exploited. The demands for real freedom and equality from the proletariat is impossible under the bourgeois democracy.
Lenin criticised the main figures of the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), Scheidemanns and Kaustky for being defending the bourgeois democracy and refusing to destroy the On State# apparatus.
Lenin repeated the sentiment in his book @VladimirLenin1918 that the state is simply a machine for the oppressor to suppress the oppressed class, even if such machine is the most democratic republic, which is considered an advancement from monarchy.
Bourgeois democracy is, in fact, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It is a democracy for the rich, a democracy for the capitalists, not for the poor, not for the proletariat and peasants. This is because the capitalist class control most of the state apparatus, that is, the ability to designate bourgeois judge, bourgeois officials etc., and debarred the participation of the poor into the democratic politics by the protection of private property, as they control most of the best quality buildings and stocks of presses.
The present “freedom of assembly and the press” in the “democratic” (bourgeois democratic) German republic is false and hypocritical, because in fact it is freedom for the rich to buy and bribe the press, freedom for the rich to befuddle the people with venomous lies of the bourgeois press, freedom for the rich to keep as their “property” the landowners’ mansions, the best buildings, etc.
Lenin advocated the dethroning of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and replace it by the dictatorship of the proletariat. This means replacing the democracy for the rich by the democracy for the poor. This means replacing the freedom of assembly and the press for the minority (the exploiters) by the freedom of assembly and the press for the majority (the exploited). This means replacing the bourgeois state with the proletarian state.