“The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois”

Simplified Meaning:

The idea here is that in a democracy, the goal seems to be to make working-class people ("proletarians") as ignorant or simple-minded as the richer, upper-class people ("bourgeois"). This suggests that there might be a problem in both classes where they lack knowledge or understanding, but democracy doesn’t solve it; instead, it just makes everyone equally uninformed. Imagine a school where the teachers don't really teach well. Whether the students come from wealthy families or not, everyone ends up learning very little. So, instead of lifting everyone up with knowledge, the system just leaves them all at a lower level. The idea warns that true democracy should aim to educate and inform all people equally, instead of leaving them in ignorance. Using this idea in everyday life means not settling for just having the right to vote or having freedom; it means striving to be well-informed, thoughtful, and wise about decisions that affect everyone. This way, democracy works better for all people, not just keeping them in the dark.