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Democratic socialism is a broad political movement propagating the ideals of socialism within the context of a democratic system. In many cases, its adherents promote the ideal of socialism as an evolutionary process resulting from legislation enacted by a parliamentary democracy.
Thinkers, writers and activists such as Robert Owen, Karl Marx, George Orwell, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb can all be said to have contributed to "democratic socialist philosophy". However, popular movements such as the growth of trade unionism, the Chartists and the Labour Party (UK) (a "democratic socialist party" according to the first line of its constitution) or the SPD in Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) are equally critical to understanding Democratic Socialism.
Definitions
A red carnation held in a closed fist is the international symbol of democratic socialism.
Many of those who describe themselves as "socialists" often argue that socialism necessarily implies democracy, thus making "democratic socialism" a redundant term. The fact that one specific movement is called Democratic Socialism does not mean that other branches of socialism must be any less democratic.
The terms "Democratic Socialism" and "Social Democracy" have often been used interchangeably, and, indeed, many have considered them synonymous until recently. Today, however, they usually denote two different things: social democracy is more centrist and supports a broadly capitalist system, with social reforms (such as the welfare state), intended to make it more equitable and humane. Meanwhile, democratic socialism supports a fully socialist economy. Democratic socialists maintain a commitment to the government ownership of most major industry, and some believe in a planned economy; these are all concepts which social democrat governments in recent times have largely abandoned. In addition, many democratic socialists retain a Marxist analysis (though often a reformist one), while social democrats reject Marxism entirely.
Democratic socialist parties appeared before the First World War, when no single country could be described as democratic in the full modern use of the term, because of electoral discrimination on the basis of gender, race or wealth. What frequently distinguished these democratic socialists from others was a willingness to work through a parliamentary democracy (even if people were still disenfranchised) to both improve the lives of working classes and win the vote, rather than resort to revolution (the overthrow of the state). Revolutionary Democratic Socialism attracted greater support a few decades later, when many democratic socialists became disillusioned with evolutionary socialism, because social democracy, the largest evolutionary socialist movement, had failed to abolish capitalism and had in many cases abandoned the goal of building a socialist society.
History
Many early varieties of socialism, particularly those stemming from the sans-culotte branch of French Revolutionary politics, took for granted democratic characteristics such as universal suffrage and equality before the law. Notable among such currents are the egalitarian Jacobinism of Babeuf, the humanistic revolutionary spirit of Louis Blanc, Robert Owen's so-called utopianism, and the communism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Such early socialisms might in retrospect be included as democratic socialist. The late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Socialist Industrial Unionism of Daniel DeLeon in the United States represented another strain of early Democratic Socialism, which favored a form of government based on industrial unions, but which also sought to establish this government after winning at the ballot box, thus assuming a revolutionary approach while incorporating the parliamentarism of evolutionary democratic socialism.
However, democratic socialism as such only becomes a movement in its own right as a current rejecting both Stalinism (with its distinctive visions of the vanguard party and the dictatorship of the proletariat) and, preferably, the reformism characteristic of yellow socialists and social democrats.
During the 1920s, Council communism anticipated democratic socialist positions in several respects, notably through renouncing the vanguard role of the revolutionary party and holding that the system of the USSR was not authentically socialist (describing it as defective or corrupted socialism). However, council communism has generally tended towards the "ultraleft" position of opposing any reforms of capitalism in the short term.
The guild socialism of G. D. H. Cole was a conscious attempt to envision a socialist alternative to Soviet-style authoritarianism.
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 also be characterized as a democratic socialism in the same vein.
In much of Europe and North America during the 1960s, there was a strong current of democratic socialism in the politics of the New Left. For example, the classic Port Huron Statement of the SDS combines a stringent critique of the Communist model with calls for a democratic socialist reconstruction of society. In western Europe, Dany Cohn-Bendit, the situationists, and various groups taking to the streets in May 1968 articulated similar positions. The New Left legacy of democratic socialism may be clearly seen in the post-Marxist positions of a wide range of intellectuals (often identified with post-modernism or post-structuralism), from Chantal Mouffe in Europe to Cornell West in the United States.
Simultaneously in Eastern Europe (particularly Czechoslovakia), there was a tendency towards socialism with a human face meant to endow a Marxist-Leninist political establishment with more authentically democratic credentials.
Since the end of the Cold War, many traditionally Marxist-Leninist groups and parties have evolved positions more closely resembling democratic socialism. The parties of the European United Left today often include both a "conservative" Marxist-Leninist wing and a "liberal" democratic socialist tendency.
The boundaries of what might be categorized as "democratic socialism" are thus necessarily fluid. On the right, democratic socialism shades seamlessly into social democracy; on the left, it passes into various hybrids and permutations of Leninism. Furthermore, it also shades off into a variety of radical progressive groups not specifically identifying with the history or symbolism of "socialism" as such. Since the 1990s much of the political activity of the democratic Left has fed into the international movement against capitalist globalization. Many anti-globalist groups describe themselves as anti-capitalist without self-identifying as socialist, despite sharing a great many positions and analyses with democratic socialism.
Characteristics
Democratic socialists have normally defended the role of the public sector, particularly as regards the provision of key services such as health care, education, utilities, mass transit, and sometimes also banking, mining, and fuel extraction. For evolutionary democratic socialists, their economic vision has often included a mixed economy with a greater emphasis on worker and consumer co-operatives, credit unions, family farms and small businesses, as compared to authoritarian Marxist-Leninists. In India, democratic socialists have to varying degrees seen the traditional village-based peasant economy as a model to be supported and enhanced. Revolutionary democratic socialists usually see the role of the public sector, not as a means of achieving socialism, but as a means of ameliorating the worst effects of capitalism until a revolution is accomplished.
Regarding tactics, democratic socialists include a spectrum of positions, from those advocating nonviolent resistance against capitalism, or the possibility of violent resistance under certain circumstances, to those committed exclusively to anti-capitalist reforms through parliamentary means (see evolutionary socialism and Fabianism). Democratic socialists advocating direct action may tend to similar positions with anarcho-syndicalism (with which democratic socialism shares the characteristics of being both anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian), although democratic socialists characteristically do not regard the state itself as an evil to be abolished.
List of Democratic Socialist parties
The following political parties are either democratic socialist in themselves, social democratic parties with significant numbers of democratic socialist members, or other left-wing parties with democratic socialist members:
- Party of European Socialists, European Union. 32 members and 7 associate members, including:
- European United Left - Nordic Green Left, European Union
- Samajwadi Party, India
- Democratic Socialist Party, Japan
- New Democratic Party, Canada
- Union des forces progressistes, Quebec (Canada)
- Democratic Socialists of America, USA
- Socialist Party USA, USA
- Debs Tendency, USA (A group within the Socialist Party USA which support revolutionary socialism)
- Australian Labor Party, Australia
- Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño, Puerto Rico
- Partido Socialista, Argentina
- [Acción Democrática], Venezuela
See also
Books
- Donald F. Busky, Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey
Papers
External links
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