民主主义

民主主义 — 'democracy as an -ism' — is the suffix-heavy form preferred in 20th-century political theory writing. Mao Zedong's 1940 essay 《新民主主义论》 ('On New Democracy') used 新民主主义 to label the bourgeois-democratic stage of the Chinese revolution led by the Communist Party — a foundational text of CCP ideology. In casual modern speech, 民主 alone usually suffices for 'democracy'; 民主主义 sounds textbook-formal.

Compositional: 民主 ('democracy') + 主义 ('-ism'). Same pattern: 资本主义 capitalism, 社会主义 socialism, 共产主义 communism, 个人主义 individualism. The 主义 suffix entered Chinese from Japanese 主義 (shugi) in the late Qing as a calque of Western '-ism'.