democratic socialism

'Democratic socialism advocates socialism as a basis for the economy and democracy as a governing principle. This means that the means of production are owned by the entire population and that political power would be in the hands of the people through a democratic state.

Basic concept

Socialism is based on the idea that the economy and means of production should be in the hands of ordinary working people,^[1] or in older terminology the "working class". Democratic socialism involves the entire population controlling the economy through some type of democratic system.

Directly contrasting this is what some theorists call state capitalism in which a non-democratic state controls the means of production instead of the workers (as in, for example, the Soviet Union during and after Stalin's era). Some authors see democratic socialism as sharing many political ideas with social democracy, while others see them as radically opposed. Nevertheless, democratic socialists often share political parties with social democrats, such as the British Labour Party in the 1980s. Democratic socialism is the second-strongest current of socialism in terms of political success in free elections, immediately following social democracy.^{[citation needed]}

Common ideas

Many types of socialism fit the above description, though many employ different methods for socializing the economy. Some common ideas are as follows:

• Economic planning: an economy that uses planning by elected representatives, geared for consumption rather than profit.
• Nationalization: taking control of the means of production from the bourgeoise and giving it to the state is a common idea amongst groups that call themselves democratic socialists.The more libertarian strain (eg. the Socialist Party USA) advocates socialization/direct workers ownership and control instead of state ownership.
• A state: most democratic socialists support parliamentary democracy, although libertarian socialists favor decentralized communes and other forms of non-statist social organization.
• Workplace democracy: the application of democracy to the workplace is naturally supported by those that call themselves democratic socialists.

Definition

Democratic socialism is difficult to define, and groups of scholars have radically different definitions for the term. Some equate it to other socioeconomic systems such as libertarian socialism, state socialism or social democracy. While others claim that it is fundamentally different from those ideologies.

Among those definitions of democratic socialism which sharply distinguish it from social democracy, Peter Hain, for example, classes 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 and social democracy, variants of authoritarian state socialism. For him, this democratic/authoritarian divide is more important than the revolutionary/reformist divide.^[2] In this definition, 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.^[3]

In contrast, in other definitions, democratic socialism simply refers to all forms of socialism that follow an electoral, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism, rather than a revolutionary one.^[4]

However, for those who use the term in this way, the scope of the term socialism itself can be very vague, and include forms of socialism compatible with capitalism. 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 Atlee government (a strong welfare state, fiscal redistribution, some nationalisation) and "revisionist democratic socialism", as developed by Anthony Crosland and Harold Wilson:

”The most influential revisionist Labour thinker, Anthony Crosland..., contended that a more ‘benevolent’ form of capitalism had emerged since the [Second World War]... According to Crosland, it was now possible to achieve greater 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.”^[5]

Indeed, some proponents of market socialism see the latter as a form of democratic socialism.^[6]

A variant of this second 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 instutions.^[7]

Other definitions fall somewhere between the first and second set, seeing democratic socialism as a specific political tradition closely related to and overlapping with social democracy. For example, Bogdan Denitch, in Democratic Socialism defines it as proposing a radical reorganization of the socio-economic order through public ownership, workers’ control of the labour process and redistributive tax policies. ^[8] Robert G. Picard similarly describes a democratic socialist tradition of thought including Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Evan Durbin and Michael Harrington^[9]

Finally, the term democratic socialism can be used 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”^[10] Consequently, some former Communist parties have rebranded themselves as democratic socialist, as with the Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany.

History

Forerunners and formative influences

Fenner Brockway, a leading British democratic socialist of the Independent Labour Party, wrote in his book Britain's First Socialists:

The Levellers were pioneers of political democracy and the sovereignty of the people; the Agitators were the pioneers of participatory control by the ranks at their workplace; and the Diggers were pioneers of communal ownership, cooperation and egalitarianism. All three equate to democratic socialism. ^[11]

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 Society and by polemicists such as Thomas Paine. Their concern for both democracy and social justice marks them out as key precursors of democratic socialism.

The term "socialist" was first used in English in the British Cooperative Magazine in 1827^[12] and came to be associated with the followers of 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.

Modern democratic socialism

James Keir Hardie was an early democratic socialist, who founded the Independent Labour Party in the United Kingdom

Democratic socialism became a prominent movement at the end of the nineteenth century. In the US, Eugene Debs, one of the most famous American socialists, led a movement centered around democratic socialism and made five bids for President, once in 1900 under the Social Democratic Party and then four more times under the Socialist Party of America. The socialist industrial unionism of Daniel DeLeon in the United States represented another strain of early democratic socialism in this period. It favored a form of government based on industrial unions, but which also sought to establish this government after winning at the ballot box.

In Britain, the democratic socialist tradition was represented in particular by the William Morris' Socialist League (UK) in the 1880s and by the Independent Labour Party (ILP) founded by Keir Hardie in the 1890s, of which George Orwell would later be a prominent member.

In 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. These internationals 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 POUM.

In America, a similar tradition continued to flourish in Debs' Socialist Party of America, especially under the leadership of Norman Thomas.

In the same period, the guild socialism of G. D. H. Cole in the early 1920s was a conscious attempt 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.

During India's freedom movement, many figures on the left of the Indian National Congress organized themselves as the Congress Socialist Party. Their politics, and those of the early and intermediate periods of JP 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.

The folkesocialisme or people's socialism that emerged as a vital current of the left in Scandinavia beginning in the 1950s could be characterized as a democratic socialism in the same vein.

Democratic socialism today

There was a strong current of democratic socialism in the politics of the New Left in much of Europe and North America during the 1960s. The classic Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society combined a stringent critique of the Stalinist model with calls for a democratic socialist reconstruction of society. In 1973, Michael Harrington and Irving Howe formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which articulated a strong democratic socialist message, while a smaller faction associated with peace activist David McReynolds formed the Socialist Party USA. In the early 1980s, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee merged with the New American Movement, an organization of New Left veterans, forming Democratic Socialists of America.

In the British Labour Party, the term democratic socialist was used historically by those who identified with the tradition represented by the ILP: the "soft left" of non-Marxist socialists around Tribune magazine (e.g. Michael Foot) and some of the "hard left" in the Campaign Group around Tony Benn. The Campaign Group, along with the extra-Labour Party Socialist Society (led by Raymond Williams and others) formed the Socialist Movement in 1987, which now produces the magazine Red Pepper.

Today in Germany there is a more left wing party called the "Party of Democratic Socialists" which takes the label of democratic socialism, while another more centrist party called the "Social Democratic Party of Germany" is the leading left wing German party that has held government. The British Labour party is a "democratic socialist party" according to its constitution.^[13] Both the German SPD and British Labour party belong to the Party of European Socialists grouping in the European Parliament.

In Latin America there has been a dramatic rise in support for democratic socialism since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez as president of Venezuela. In Venezuela the Bolivarian Revolution was launched with the goal of redistributing wealth from rich to poor and improve living standards for the nation's impoverished via the government's numerous widespread Bolivarian Missions. There have been noticeable improvements in areas such as housing, wage levels, literacy, education opportunities and healthcare availability; however like the rest of Latin America a large gap between a rich minority and an extremely poor majority continues to exist. Bolivians elected their nation's first indigenous president, another democratic socialist and a close ally of Venezuela, named Evo Morales in 2005. Morales ran for office on an agenda centered around nationalization of the oil industry and protection of the nation's coca industry.

In Nicaragua the Sandinistas made an electoral come back in 2006, this being the second time their leader, Daniel Ortega has been elected president of Nicaragua (the other being in 1984). The Sandinistas have also promised a greater redistribution of wealth to those in poverty. Peru also saw the strong performance of a leftwing candidate named Ollanta Humala in 2006 who came in second in the Presidential elections to former president and centre-left social democrat, Alan Garcia.

Ecuador, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina have also seen the elections of centre-left governments that while not being socialist in nature have been relatively supportive of Hugo Chavez and unsupportive of globalization.

See also

• Democratic Socialist Party
• Differences between Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy
• List of democratic socialist parties and organizations
• Libertarian socialism
• Luxemburgism
• Neosocialism
• Participatory democracy
• Sewer Socialism
• Social democracy
• Soviet democracy
• Third camp
• Third way
• Yellow socialism

Notes

References

• Donald F. Busky, Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey ISBN 0-275-96886-3

External links

• The Socialist International
• List of Leftist Socialists and Reform Communists
• Joseph Schwartz and Jason Schulman Towards Freedom: The Theory and Practice of Democratic Socialism
• Democratic Socialism in India Posters and Press Clips
• Albert Einstein: Why Socialism?
• What is democratic socialism?

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