Amilcar Cabral on revolutionary democracy

Practise revolutionary democracy in all aspects of party life. Every responsible worker must bravely assume his responsibilities, must demand from others respect for his activity and must respect the activity of others. Do not hide anything from the mass of the people, do not lie, fight against lies, do not disguise the difficulties, errors and failures, do not believe in easy victories, nor in appearances.

Revolutionary democracy demands that we should combat opportunism, tolerance towards errors, unfounded excuses . . . Practise and defend the truth and always the truth in front of militants, responsible workers, the people whatever the difficulties knowledge of the truth might cause. Revolutionary democracy demands that the militant should not be afraid of the responsible worker, that the responsible worker should have no dread of the militant, nor fear the mass of the people. It demands that the responsible worker live in the middle of the people, in front of the people and behind the people, that he work for the party serving the people.
In the framework of revolutionary democracy, power comes from the people, from the majority, and no one should be afraid of losing power. The leader must be the faithful interpreter of the will and the aspirations of the revolutionary majority and not the lord of power, the absolute master who uses the party and does not serve the party. In the framework of revolutionary democracy, we must avoid demagogy, promises we cannot keep, exploitation of the people’s feelings and the ambitions of opportunists. We must act in accordance with realities, to give everyone the possibility to progress, to verify through his own action and that of others that the party is the achievement of us all and that we all belong to the party, which is the instrument our people created for the winning of our freedom and for the construction of their progress. In the framework of revolutionary democracy and in the specific circumstances of our struggle, we must constantly increase the strength of the people, advance bravely for the conquest of power by the people, for the radical transformation (at the base) of the life of our people, for a stage in which the weapons and means of defence of our revolution will be entirely in the hands of the people. Do not be afraid of the people and persuade the people to take part in all the decisions which concern them – this is the basic condition of revolutionary democracy, which little by little we must achieve in accordance with the development of our struggle and our life.