Democratic Socialism

Democratic socialism is a political ideology that advocates political democracy alongside social ownership of the means of production[1] with an emphasis on self-management or democratic management of economic institutions within a market socialist or decentralized socialist planned economy.[2]

Democratic socialists hold that capitalism is inherently incompatible with the democratic values of liberty, equality, and solidarity; and that these ideals can only be achieved through the realization of a socialist society. Democratic socialism can be supportive of either revolutionary or reformist politics as a means to establish socialism.[3]

The term "democratic socialism" is sometimes used synonymously with “socialism”, the adjective “democratic” is often added to distinguish democratic socialists from Marxist–Leninist inspired socialism which is viewed as being non-democratic in practice.[4][5] Democratic socialists oppose the Stalinist political system and Soviet economic model, rejecting the authoritarian form of governance and highly centralized command economy that took form in the Soviet Union in the early 20th century.[6]

Democratic socialism is distinguished from social democracy on the basis that democratic socialists are committed to systemic transformation of the economy from capitalism to socialism whereas social democracy is supportive of reforms to capitalism.[7] In contrast to social democrats, democratic socialists believe that reforms aimed at addressing social inequalities and state interventions aimed at suppressing the economic contradictions of capitalism will only see them emerge elsewhere in a different guise. As socialists, democratic socialists believe that the systemic issues of capitalism can only be solved by replacing the capitalist system with a socialist system; by replacing private ownership with social ownership of the means of production.[8][9]

Contents
[hide]
 * 1Definition
 * 2History
 * 2.1Forerunners and formative influences
 * 2.2Modern democratic socialism
 * 3Economic positions
 * 4Parliamentary democratic socialist parties
 * 5Notable self-described democratic socialists
 * 5.1Politicians
 * 5.2Intellectuals and activists
 * 6Criticism
 * 6.1Compatibility of "socialism" and "democracy"
 * 6.1.1Response
 * 7See also
 * 8References
 * 9Bibliography
 * 10External links

Definition[edit]
Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production are socially and collectively owned or controlled alongside a politically democratic system of government.[4]

Some tendencies of democratic socialism advocate for revolution in order to transition to socialism, distinguishing it from some forms of social democracy.[10] For example, Peter Hain classifies democratic socialism, along with libertarian socialism, as a form of anti-authoritarian "socialism from below" (using the term popularised by Hal Draper), in contrast to Stalinism, a variant of authoritarian state socialism. For Hain, this democratic/authoritarian divide is more important than the revolutionary/reformist divide.[11] In this type of democratic socialism, it is the active participation of the population as a whole and workers in particular in the management of economy that characterises democratic socialism, while nationalisation and economic planning (whether controlled by an elected government or not) are characteristic of state socialism. A similar, but more complex, argument is made by Nicos Poulantzas.[12] Draper himself uses the term "revolutionary-democratic socialism" as a type of socialism from below in his The Two Souls of Socialism and writes: "[T]he leading 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 working class that the myth-makers invented for her a 'theory of spontaneity'".[13] Similarly, about Eugene Debs he writes: "'Debsian socialism' evoked a tremendous response from the heart of the people, but Debs had no successor as a tribune of revolutionary-democratic socialism".[14]

In contrast, other tendencies of democratic socialism follow a gradual, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism rather than a revolutionary one, with socialism as an eventual long-term outcome.[15] Often this tendency is invoked in an attempt to distinguish democratic socialism from Marxist–Leninist socialism, as in Donald Busky's Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey,[16] Jim Tomlinson's Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945-1951, Norman Thomas Democratic Socialism: a new appraisal or Roy Hattersley's Choose Freedom: The Future of Democratic Socialism. A variant of this set of definitions is Joseph Schumpeter's argument, set out in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1941), that liberal democracies were evolving from "liberal capitalism" into democratic socialism, with the growth of workers' self-management, industrial democracy and regulatory institutions.[17]

As an example, the Democratic Socialists of America define socialism as a decentralized socially-owned economy but, while ultimately committed to socialism, focus their political activities on reforms within capitalism:

The term is sometimes used to refer to policies within capitalism as opposed to an ideology that aims to transcend and replace capitalism, though this is not always the case. For example, Robert M. Page, a reader in Democratic Socialism and Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, writes about "transformative democratic socialism" to refer to the politics of the Clement Attlee government (a strong welfare state, fiscal redistribution, some public ownership) and "revisionist democratic socialism", as developed by Anthony Crosland and Harold Wilson:

Some proponents of market socialism see it as an economic system compatible with the political ideology of democratic socialism.[21]

The term "democratic socialism" can be used even another way to refer to a version of the Soviet model that was reformed in a democratic way. For example, Mikhail Gorbachev described perestroika as building a "new, humane and democratic socialism".[22]Consequently, some former Communist parties have rebranded themselves as democratic socialist, as with the Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany.

Philosophical support for democratic socialism can be found in the works of political philosophers like Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth, among others. Honneth has put forward the view that political and economic ideologies have a social basis, that is they originate from intersubjective communication between members of a society.[23] Honneth criticises the liberal state because it assumes that principles of individual liberty and private property are ahistorical and abstract, when in fact they evolved from a specific social discourse on human activity. Contra liberal individualism, Honneth has emphasised the inter-subjective dependence between humans, that is our well-being depends on recognising others and being recognised by them. Democratic socialism with an emphasis on community and solidarity can be seen as a way of safeguarding this dependency.

Forerunners and formative influences[edit]
Fenner Brockway, a leading democratic socialist of the Independent Labour Party, identified three early democratic socialist groups in his book Britain's First Socialists: 1) the Levellers, who were pioneers of political democracy and the sovereignty of the people; 2) the Agitators, who were the pioneers of participatory control by the ranks at their workplace; 3) and the Diggers, who were pioneers of communal ownership, cooperation and egalitarianism.[24] The tradition of the Diggers and the Levellers was continued in the period described by EP Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class by Jacobin groups like the London Corresponding Societyand by polemicists such as Thomas Paine. Their concern for both democracy and social justice marks them out as key precursors of democratic socialism.[25]

The term "socialist" was first used in English in the British Cooperative Magazine in 1827[26] and came to be associated with the followers of the Welsh reformer Robert Owen, such as the Rochdale Pioneers who founded the co-operative movement. Owen's followers again stressed both participatory democracy and economic socialisation, in the form of consumer co-operatives, credit unions and mutual aid societies. The Chartists similarly combined a working class politics with a call for greater democracy. Many countries have this.

The British moral philosopher John Stuart Mill also came to advocate a form of economic socialism within a liberal context. In later editions of his Principles of Political Economy (1848), Mill would argue that "as far as economic theory was concerned, there is nothing in principle in economic theory that precludes an economic order based on socialist policies".[27][28]

Modern democratic socialism[edit]
James Keir Hardie was an early democratic socialist, who founded the Independent Labour Party in Great Britain

Democratic socialism became a prominent movement at the end of the 19th century. In Germany, the Eisenacher socialist group merged with the Lassallean socialist group in 1875 to form the German Social Democratic Party.[29] In Australia, the Labour and Socialist movements were gaining traction and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was formed in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891 by striking pastoral workers. A minority government led by the party was formed in Queensland in 1899 with Anderson Dawson as the Premier of Queensland where it was founded and was in power for one week, the world's first democratic socialist party led government.[citation needed]The ALP has been the main driving force for workers' rights in Australia, backed by Australian Trade Unions, in particular the Australian Workers' Union. Since the Whitlam Government, the ALP has moved towards Social Democratic and Third Way ideals which are found among many of the ALP's Right Faction members. Democratic socialist, Christian socialist, libertarian Marxist and agrarian socialist ideologies lie within the ALP's Left Faction.[citation needed]

In the United States, Eugene V. Debs, a prominent American socialist, led a movement centered on democratic socialism and made five bids for President, once in 1900 as candidate of the Social Democratic Party and then four more times on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America.[30] The socialist industrial unionism of Daniel DeLeon in the United States represented another strain of early democratic socialism in this period. It favoured a form of government based on industrial unions, but which also sought to establish this government after winning at the ballot box.[31] The tradition continued to flourish in the Socialist Party of America (especially under the leadership of Norman Thomas)[32] and later the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Upon the DSA's founding in 1983, Michael Harrington and socialist-feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich were elected as co-chairs of the organization. Currently philosopher and activist Cornel West is one of several honorary chairs. The organization does not run its own candidates in elections but instead "fights for reforms... that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people".[33] More recently, the U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont described himself as a democratic socialist.[34] However, Sanders does not "believe government should ... own the means of production" a basic tenet of socialism.[35] For him, "Democratic socialism means that in a democratic, civilized society the wealthiest people and the largest corporations must pay their fair share of taxes."[36]

In Britain, the democratic socialist tradition was represented in particular by William Morris's Socialist League and in the 1880s by the Fabian Society and later the Independent Labour Party (ILP) founded by Keir Hardie in the 1890s, of which George Orwell would later be a prominent member.[37] In the early 1920s, the guild socialism of G. D. H. Cole attempted to envision a socialist alternative to Soviet-style authoritarianism, while council communism articulated democratic socialist positions in several respects, notably through renouncing the vanguard role of the revolutionary party and holding that the system of the Soviet Union was not authentically socialist.[38] During the 1970s and 1980s, prominent democratic socialists within the Labour movement included Michael Foot and Tony Benn, considered by many to have redefined democratic socialism into an actionable manifesto, which was voted overwhelmingly against in the General Election of 1983 and referred to as "The longest suicide note in history". The modern Labour Party has often referred to itself as a democratic socialist party throughout the 20th century and explicitly identifies as such in Clause IV of its Rule Book.

Italian President Giuseppe Saragat

In other parts of Europe, many democratic socialist parties were united in the International Working Union of Socialist Parties (the "Two and a Half International") in the early 1920s and in the London Bureau (the "Three and a Half International") in the 1930s, along with many other socialists of different tendencies and ideologies. The socialist Internationales sought to steer a course between the social democrats of the Second International, who were seen as insufficiently socialist (and had been compromised by their support for World War I) and the perceived anti-democratic Third International. The key movements within the Two and a Half International were the ILP and the Austromarxists and the main forces in the Three and a Half International were the ILP and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) of Spain.[39][40] In Italy, the Italian Democratic Socialist Party broke away from the Italian Socialist Party in 1947, when this latter joined the Soviet-funded Italian Communist Party to prepare the decisive general election of 1948. Despite remaining a minor party in Italian Parliament for fifty years, its leader Giuseppe Saragat became President of Italy in 1964.

During India's freedom movement, many figures on the left of the Indian National Congress organised themselves as the Congress Socialist Party. Their politics and those of the early and intermediate periods of Jayaprakash Narayan's career combined a commitment to the socialist transformation of society with a principled opposition to the one-party authoritarianism they perceived in the Stalinist revolutionary model. This political current continued in the Praja Socialist Party, the later Janata Party and the current Samajwadi Party.[41][42] In Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto introduced the concept of democratic socialism and the Pakistan Peoples Party remained one of the prominent supporters for the socialist democratic policies in the country. In Nepal, B.P Koirala introduced the concept of democratic socialism.

In the Middle East, the largest democratic socialist party is the Organization of Iranian People's Fedaian (Majority).

The Folkesocialisme (translated into "popular socialism" or "people's socialism") that emerged as a vital current of the left in Nordic countries beginning in the 1950s could be characterised as a democratic socialism in the same vein. Former Swedish prime minister Olof Palme is an important proponent of democratic socialism.[43]

Economic positions[edit]
Democratic socialists have promoted a variety of different models of socialism ranging from market socialism where socially-owned enterprises operate in competitive markets and are in some cases self-managed by their workforce to non-market participatory socialism based on decentralized economic planning.[44]

Historically, democratic socialism has been committed to a decentralized form of economic planning where productive units are integrated into a single organization and organized on the basis of self-management as opposed to Stalinist-style command planning.[45] For example, Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas, both of whom were United States presidential candidates for the Socialist Party of America, understood socialism to be an economic system structured upon "production for use" and social ownership in place of the profit system and private ownership.[46][47]

Contemporary proponents of market socialism have argued that the major reasons for the economic shortcomings of Soviet-type planned economies was their failure to create rules and operational criteria for the efficient operation of state enterprises and the lack of democracy in the political systems that the Soviet-type economies were combined with.[48]