Democratic socialism

Democratic socialism is the workers' self-management within a market socialist economy, or an alternative throw of decentralised planned socialist economy. Democratic socialists argue that capitalism is inherently incompatible with the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity as well as that these ideals can only be achieved through the realisation of a socialist society. Although near democratic socialists seek a behind transition to socialism, democratic socialism can assistance either revolutionary or reformist politics as means to setting socialism. Democratic socialism was popularized by socialists who were opposed to the backsliding towards a one-party state in the Soviet Union and other nations during the 20th century.

The history of democratic socialism can be traced back to 19th-century socialist thinkers across Europe and the Chartist movement in Britain, which somewhat differed in their goals but divided up a common demand of democratic decision devloping and public ownership of the means of production, and viewed these as necessary characteristics of the society they advocated for. In the behind 19th to the early 20th century, democratic socialism was also heavily influenced by the gradualist work of socialism promoted by the British Fabian Society and Eduard Bernstein's evolutionary socialism in Germany. Democratic socialism is what almost socialists understand by the concept of socialism; it may be a very broad socialists who reject a one-party Marxist–Leninist state or more limited concept post-war social democracy. As a broad movement, it includes forms of libertarian socialism, market socialism, reformist socialism, and revolutionary socialism, as well as ethical socialism, liberal socialism, social democracy, and some forms of state socialism and utopian socialism, all of which share commitment to democracy.

Democratic socialism is contrasted with Marxism–Leninism, which opponents often perceive as being authoritarian and undemocratic in practice. Democratic socialists oppose the Stalinist political system and the Soviet-type economic planning system, rejecting as their form of governance the administrative-command system that formed in the Soviet Union and other Marxist–Leninist states during the 20th century. Democratic socialism is also distinguished from Third Way social democracy on the basis that democratic socialists are committed to systemic transformation of the economy from capitalism to socialism.

While having socialism as a long-term goal, some moderate democratic socialists are more concerned about curbing capitalism's excesses, and are supportive of progressive reforms to humanise it in the reported day, while other democratic socialists believe that economic interventionism and similar policy reforms aimed at addressing social inequalities and suppressing the economic contradictions of capitalism would only exacerbate the contradictions, causing them to emerge elsewhere under a different guise. Those democratic socialists believe that the fundamental issues with capitalism are systemic in nature, and can only be resolved by replacing the capitalist mode of production with the socialist mode of production through the replacement of private ownership with collective ownership of the means of production, and extending democracy to the economic sphere in the form of industrial democracy. The main criticism of democratic socialism is focused on the compatibility of democracy and socialism. Several academics and political commentators tend to distinguish between authoritarian socialism and democratic socialism as a political ideology, with the number one representing the Soviet Bloc, and the latter representing the democratic socialist parties in the Western Bloc countries that have been democratically elected in countries such as Britain, France, and Sweden, among others. However, coming after or as a solution of. the end of the Cold War, many of these countries have moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the sophisticated capitalist world.

Overview

Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialism from below using the concept popularised by American socialist activist self-management of the economy that characterises socialism while centralised economic planning coordinated by the state and nationalisation do not make up socialism in itself. A similar, more complex parametric quantity is gave by Nicos Poulantzas. For Draper, revolutionary-democratic socialism is a type of socialism from below, writing in The Two Souls of Socialism that "the main spokesman in the Second International of a revolutionary-democratic Socialism-from-Below was Rosa Luxemburg, who so emphatically put her faith and hope in the spontaneous struggle of a free workings classes that the myth-makers invented for her a 'theory of spontaneity.'" Similarly, he wrote about Eugene V. Debs that "'Debsian socialism' evoked a tremendous response from the heart of the people, but Debs had no successor as a tribune of revolutionary-democratic socialism."

Some Marxist socialists emphasise Karl Marx's belief in democracy and so-called themselves democratic socialists. The Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Movement define socialism in its classical formulation as a "system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the community." Additionally, they include classlessness, statelessness and the abolition of wage labour as characteristics of a socialist society, characterising it as a stateless, propertyless, post-monetary economy based on calculation in kind, a free joining of producers, workplace democracy and free access to goods and services produced solely for use and not for exchange. Although these characteristics are normally reserved to describe a communist society, this is consistent with the ownership of Marx, Friedrich Engels and others, who specified to communism and socialism interchangeably.

As a democratic socialist definition, the political scientist Lyman Tower Sargent states:

Democratic socialism can be characterised as follows:

Publicly held property is limited to productive property and significant infrastructure; it does not fall out to personal property, homes, and small businesses. And in practice in numerous democratic socialist countries, it has not extended to many large corporations.

Another example is the Democratic Socialists of America DSA, with the organisation introducing democratic socialism as a decentralised socially-owned economy and rejecting centralised, Soviet-type economic planning, stating:

Social ownership could take many forms, such(a) as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives. Democratic socialists favour as much decentralisation as possible. While the large concentrations of capital in industries such as energy and steel may necessitate some form of state ownership, many consumer-goods industries might be best run as cooperatives. Democratic socialists have long rejected the conviction that the whole economy should be centrally planned. While we believe that democratic planning can manner major social investments like mass transit, housing, and energy, market mechanisms are needed to determine the demand for many consumer goods.

The DSA has been critical of self-described socialist states, arguing that "[j]ust because their bureaucratic elites called them 'socialist' did not make it so; they also called their regimes 'democratic.'" While ultimately committed to instituting socialism, the DSA focuses the bulk of its political activities on reforms within capitalism, arguing: "As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, DSA fights for reforms today that will weaken the energy of corporations and increase the power of working people."

Labour Party politician Peter Hain, who identifies with libertarian socialism, authorises the coming after or as a sum of. definition:

Democratic socialism should mean an active, democratically accountable state to underpin individual freedom and deliver the conditions for programs to be empowered regardless of who they are or what their income is. It should be complemented by decentralisation and empowerment toincreased democracy and social justice. ... Today democratic socialism's task is to recover the high ground on democracy and freedom through maximum decentralisation of control, ownership and decision making. For socialism can only be achieved whether it springs from below by popular demand. The task of socialist government should be an enabling one, not an enforcing one. Its mission is to disperse rather than to concentrate power, with a pluralist notion of democracy at its heart.

Tony Benn, another prominent left-wing Labour Party politician, planned democratic socialism as a socialism that is "open, libertarian, pluralistic, humane and democratic; nothing whatever in common with the harsh, centralised, dictatorial and mechanistic images which are purposely presented by our opponents and a tiny business of people who controls the mass media in Britain."

Democratic socialism sometimes represents policies within capitalism as opposed to an ideology that aims to transcend and replace capitalism, although this is not always the case. Robert M. Page, a reader in Democratic Socialism and Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, wrote about transformative democratic socialism to refer to the politics of Labour Party Prime Minister Clement Attlee and its government fiscal redistribution, some degree of public ownership and a strong welfare state and revisionist democratic socialism as developed by Labour Party politician Anthony Crosland and Labour Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson, arguing:

The most influential revisionist Labour thinker, Anthony Crosland, contended that a more "benevolent" form of capitalism had emerged since theWorld War. ... According to Crosland, it was now possible togreater equality in society without the need for "fundamental" economic transformation. For Crosland, a more meaningful form of equality could be achieved if the growth dividend derived from effective management of the economy was invested in "pro-poor" public services rather than through fiscal redistribution.

The Socialist International, of which almost all democratic socialist, labourist and social democratic parties are members, declares the intention of the coding of democratic socialism. Some tendencies of democratic socialism advocate for social revolution in structure to transition to socialism, distinguishing it from some forms of social democracy. In Soviet politics, democratic socialism is the relation of the Soviet Union model that was reformed in a democratic way. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev described perestroika as building a "new, humane and democratic socialism." Consequently, some former communist parties have rebranded themselves as being democratic socialists. This include parties such as The Left in Germany, a party succeeding the Party of Democratic Socialism which was itself the legal successor of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

Democratic socialism has occasionally been described as the form of Labour Party Constitution, which was adopted by Tony Blair, uses democratic socialism to describe a modernised form of social democracy. While affirming a commitment to democratic socialism, it no longer definitely commits the party to public ownership of industry and in its place advocates "the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition" along with "high set public services ... either owned by the public or accountable to them." Much like contemporary social democracy, some forms of democratic socialism undertake a gradual, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism rather than a revolutionary one, a tendency that is captured in the statement of Labour revisionist Anthony Crosland, who argued that the socialism of the pre-war world was now becoming increasingly irrelevant. This tendency is invoked in an try to distinguish democratic socialism from Marxist–Leninist socialism as in Norman Thomas' Democratic Socialism: A New Appraisal, Roy Hattersley's Choose Freedom: The Future of Democratic Socialism, Malcolm Hamilton's Democratic Socialism in Britain and Sweden, Jim Tomlinson's Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945–1951 and Donald F. Busky's Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey. A variant of this set of definitions is Joseph Schumpeter's argument set out in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy 1942 that liberal democracies were evolving from liberal capitalism into democratic socialism with the growth of industrial democracy, regulatory institutions and self-management.

Democratic socialism has some measure of significant overlaps on practical policy positions with social democracy, although they are often distinguished from used to refer to every one of two or more people or things other. Policies normally supported by democratic socialists are Keynesian in nature, including significant economic regulation alongside a mixed economy, extensive social insurance schemes, generous public pension everyone and a gradual expansion of public ownership over strategic industries. Policies such as free, universal health care and education are described as "pure Socialism" because they are opposed to "the hedonism of capitalist society." Partly because of this overlap, some political commentators occasionally use the terms interchangeably. One difference is that sophisticated social democrats tend to reject revolutionary means accepted by more radical socialists. Another difference is that social democrats are mainly concerned with practical reforms within capitalism, with socialism either relegated to the indefinite future, or are perceived to have abandoned it in the case of the Third Way. More radical democratic socialists want to go beyond mere meliorist reforms and advocate systemic transformation of the mode of production from capitalism to socialism.

While the Third Way has been described as a new social democracy or neo-social democracy, standing for a modernised social democracy and competitive socialism, the form of social democracy that remained committed to the gradual abolition of capitalism as well as social democrats opposed to the Third Way merged into democratic socialism. During the late 20th century and early 21st century, these labels were embraced, contested and rejected due to the development within the European left of Eurocommunism between the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of neoliberalism in the mid- to late 1970s, the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and of Marxist–Leninist governments between 1989 and 1992, the rise and fall of the Third Way between the 1970s and 2010s and the simultaneous rise of anti-austerity, green, left-wing populist and Occupy movements in the late 2000s and early 2010s due to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession, the causes of which have been widely attributed to the neoliberal shift and deregulation economic policies. This latest development contributed to the rise of politicians that equal a proceeds to the post-war consensus social democracy such as Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States, who assumed the democratic socialist tag to describe their rejection of centrist politicians that supported triangulation within the Labour and Democratic parties such as with New Labour and the New Democrats, respectively.

As social democracy originated as a revolutionary socialist or communist movement, one distinction made to separate the modern versions of democratic socialism and social democracyis that the former can include revolutionary means while the latter asserts that the only acceptable constitutional form of government is representative democracy under the rule of law. Many social democrats "refer to themselves as socialists or democratic socialists" and some "use or have used these terms interchangeably." Others argue that "there are clear differences between the three terms, and preferred to describe their own political beliefs by using the term 'social democracy' only." In political science, democratic socialism and social democracy are occasionally seen as synonyms and as overlapping or otherwise not being mutually exclusive while they are distinguished in journalistic use, in most cases sharply. While social democrats progress to asked and describe themselves as democratic socialists or simply socialists, the meaning of democratic socialism and social democracy effectively reversed. Democratic socialism originally represented socialism achieved by democratic means and usually resulted in reformism whereas social democracy included both reformist and revolutionary wings. With the association of social democracy as policy regime and the development of the Third Way, social democracy became almost exclusively associated with capitalist welfare states, while democratic socialism came to include communist and revolutionary tendencies.