It’s important to note that in socialist writings, democracy doesn’t mean what we in the west typically think of: free elections where people decide what they want. But further, our democracy isn’t a pure democracy. The problem with a pure democracy is that it is mob rule. Whoever gets more votes can do as they please. Our system sets up the rule of law, in which all individuals, including minorities, are protected against the majority’s whims.

In socialist writings, democracy refers to literal majority rule in the pure democracy sense. Understand that the socialists think the proletariat (working class) is a large majority, and the bourgeoisie (not the working class) is a small minority. The socialists then reason that if democracy were truly free, the working class majority could never be oppressed by the bourgeois minority. The fact that capitalist nations have not voted for socialism is proof that they are not true democracies, but rather bourgeois capitalist democracies. There is no way the majority (the workers) would vote against their own self-interests (socialism) if they were truly free. This is proof they must have been either tricked into voting for the capitalist system or actually suppressed from voting.  

When the socialists write about true democracy, they are referring to a political situation where they win. Systems where they don’t win must be bourgeois democracies, not real democracies. So whenever you read in socialist writings about how they will usher in true democracy, they mean a system where they win. When you read the word democratic in socialist literature, they mean it to be interchangeable with socialist, NOT a system whereby people freely vote on issues. Any system that doesn’t produce a socialist outcome, CAN’T be true democracy, when you’ve convinced yourself that the majority would vote for socialism if they were truly free.