“That fatal drollery called a representative government.”

Letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate, on the Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to the Actions of the Government of Syria https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/05/09/letter-to-the-speaker-of-the-house-of-representatives-and-the-president-of-the-senate-on-the-continuation-of-the-national-emergency-with-respect-to-the-actions-of-the-government-of-syria-2/
2022, May 2022

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests. I believe that every national officer, elected or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the States.

"What We Need", editorial published (24 October 1917), as quoted in Stalin : A Biography (2004) by Robert Service; also in Sochineniya, Vol. 3, p. 389
Variant translation:
The present imposter government, which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people, must be replaced by a government recognized by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants, and held accountable to their representatives
As quoted in The Bolsheviks Come to Power : The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd (2004) by Alexander Rabinowitch, p. 252
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 2, N.A.T.O., p. 32

Kshama Sawant, " Kshama Sawant's Speech at $15 Minimum Wage Vote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02PU5KoNhyc," YouTube video, 5:28, posted by "Calvin Priest," June 3, 2014.
Context: We did this. Workers did this. Today's first major victory for 15 will inspire people all over the nation. We need to recognize what happened here in Seattle that led us to this point. 15 was not won at the bargaining table as the so-called "sensible compromise" between workers and business. It was not the result of the generosity of corporations or their Democratic Party representatives in government.

Elliot's Debates, volume 2, p. 348. (Remarks on the U.S. House of Representatives, at the New York state convention on the adoption of the Federal Constitution, Poughkeepsie, New York July 27, 1788)

Source: "Let the Record Speak" 1939, “The Truth about Communism” https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015051180423&view=1up&seq=5 (1948), p. 9

Give Me Liberty (1936)
Context: Representative government cannot express the will of the mass of the people, because there is no mass of the people; The People is a fiction, like The State. You cannot get a Will of the Mass, even among a dozen persons who all want to go on a picnic. The only human mass with a common will is a mob, and that will is a temporary insanity. In actual fact, the population of a country is a multitude of diverse human beings with an infinite variety of purposes and desires and fluctuating wills.

Property (1935)