The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament
Not Karl Marx — actually Lenin, paraphrasing MarxVladimir Lenin1870–1924 · Russian revolutionary and political theorist
This exact sentence is Lenin’s, from The State and Revolution (written August–September 1917, first published 1918), chapter 5, section 2 ↗: “Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!” Lenin is summarising Marx in his own words — note the indirect “he said that”, with no quotation marks — so the sentence circulating under Marx’s name is Lenin’s prose about Marx, not Marx’s prose. Marx’s own line, in The Civil War in France ↗, runs differently: “Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament…”
“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament” V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (written 1917, first published 1918), ch. 5, sec. 2. Commonly misattributed to Karl Marx: Lenin was summarising Marx's argument in The Civil War in France (1871), where Marx's own wording is "Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament…"
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Karl Marx. Use the credit shown above instead.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Vladimir Lenin — Russian revolutionary, political theorist and first head of the Soviet government. Theme: "The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where the sentence actually appears
Work
The State and Revolution, chapter 5, section 2 (“The Transition from Capitalism to Communism”)
Author
V. I. Lenin — not Karl Marx
Written / first published
Written August–September 1917; first published 1918, in Russian
Translation
English text as hosted by the Marxists Internet Archive, credited there to Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 25, pp. 381–492
Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich — that is the democracy of capitalist society. … Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!
Ellipsis marks an omitted passage
The giveaway is the grammar. Lenin writes “he said that the oppressed are allowed…” — reported speech, no quotation marks. Quote sites stripped the frame, kept the clause, and handed the words to the man being summarised.
Marx’s The Civil War in France ↗ — the Third Address of May 1871; the “ch05” in that URL is the archive’s file numbering, not a division of the work — does not contain it; his own formulation is “Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament…”
The Marxists Internet Archive’s title page for the work ↗ gives “Written: August – September, 1917”, “First Published: 1918” and “Source: Collected Works, Volume 25.”
Lenin’s Russian original of 1918 is long out of copyright, but this exact English sentence belongs to a translation, and rights follow the translation. The Marxists Internet Archive credits its text to Lenin’s English Collected Works, vol. 25, and Open Library catalogues that volume ↗ as Progress Publishing, 1964 — well after the 1931 US public-domain line — so we treat the wording as in copyright. We found no pre-1931 English edition carrying this phrasing.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
How Lenin’s sentence became a Marx quote
Nobody invented this line out of thin air — the misattribution is baked into the sentence itself. Lenin wrote it about Marx, in reported speech, and the aggregators kept the clause and dropped the reporter.
✕
The full sentenceKarl Marx Misattributed
Wikiquote’s Karl Marx page ↗ places the identical sentence in its Misattributed section, with the note that it is “Actually from State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin, paraphrasing Marx in The Civil War in France.” The full wording, with “shall” and the closing “in parliament”, is Lenin’s throughout.
✕
The shortened variant, without “in parliament”Karl Marx Reworded
The Quotations Page ↗ prints “…which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them” — are to rather than shall, and no closing “in parliament” — credited to “Karl Marx, German economist & Communist political philosopher (1818 - 1883).” Goodreads ↗ carries this same truncated form under Marx’s name, liked more than 1,500 times.
~
The argument, as opposed to the wordingKarl Marx Half right
The thought really is Marx’s, which is why the misattribution has survived. In The Civil War in France ↗ Marx wrote: “Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes…” Same target, different sentence.
Lenin wrote The State and Revolution in August and September 1917, in hiding from the Provisional Government, according to the Marxists Internet Archive’s notes on the work ↗; Wikipedia records that he had begun gathering material earlier, in Switzerland, under the working title “Marxism on the State.” The book is largely an exercise in reading Marx and Engels closely and drawing conclusions from them — which is exactly the mode this sentence is written in.
Chapter 5 argues that a capitalist republic offers “democracy for the rich”: a suffrage hedged by residence rules, exclusions and practical obstacles that squeeze the poor out of politics. The famous sentence is the punchline of that argument, and Lenin credits it to Marx’s dissection of the Paris Commune rather than claiming it himself. That generosity is the whole reason it now circulates with the wrong name on it.
Lenin wrote the sentence and handed the credit to Marx. The internet took him at his word.
Read the full story
There are two different English renderings of Marx’s underlying line, which adds to the confusion. The Marxists Internet Archive’s text of The Civil War in France has “which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament,” while chapter 3 of The State and Revolution ↗ quotes Marx as “which member of the ruling class was to represent and repress [ver- and zertreten] the people in parliament.” Neither is the sentence people quote.
The Civil War in France was itself written in English by Marx and first published in 1871 as an address of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association, so that text — unlike the Lenin translation quoted here — is in the public domain.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1870–1924 · Russian revolutionary, political theorist and first head of the Soviet government
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (born 22 April 1870, died 21 January 1924) was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist, and the founding head of government of Soviet Russia and then the Soviet Union. He wrote The State and Revolution while in hiding in the late summer of 1917, weeks before the Bolsheviks took power — a book built almost entirely out of close readings of Marx and Engels. That method is why so many of its sharpest sentences, this one included, get handed back to the authors he was reading.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (written August–September 1917; first published 1918), chap. 5, sec. 2, “The Transition from Capitalism to Communism,” in Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 25, pp. 381–492; English text at the Marxists Internet Archive. Compare Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (1871), which states the argument in different words.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament’?” Last verified 9 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-oppressed-are-allowed-once-every-few-years-to-decide/