Marxist-Leninist theory judges democracy by class content, not procedure. The key question is “democracy for which class?” Liberal democracies are seen as formally free but substantively controlled by capital (bourgeois democracy), while one-party socialist states claim to be “people’s democracies” because the state (in theory) represents the working class/peasantry against capitalist and landlord classes. Popular will, in this framework, isn’t expressed through multiparty competition but through the party as the organized vanguard representing proletarian class interests — elections, if held, ratify this rather than allow contestation between competing class programs.

This is in contrast to Liberal democracy defines democracy procedurally: competitive multiparty elections, freedom of speech/press/association, checks on power, peaceful transfer of power. By this standard, one-party states with suppressed opposition and concentrated power fail regardless of their self-description.

So on the naming question, This is genuinely contested. Two views exist:

Official/Marxist-Leninist justification: These states claim genuine “people’s democracy” precisely because it excludes bourgeois parties and concentrates power to defend workers’ interests against capitalist restoration — so from their own theoretical framework, the name isn’t false, it’s just a different definition of democracy.

Critical/liberal view (widely held in the West and by many scholars): The names are propaganda — legitimizing branding for authoritarian, often personalist or elite-controlled, rule with little actual popular participation or accountability.

Which framing is “correct” depends on which definition of democracy you accept as valid — that’s ultimately a normative/philosophical dispute, not a factual one.