Democratic socialism is a description used by various
socialist movements and organizations, to emphasize the
democratic character of their political orientation. The term is sometimes used synonymously with "
social democracy", but
social democrats need not accept this label, and many self-identified democratic socialists oppose contemporary
social democracy because
social democracy retains the
capitalist mode of production.
[1]
Democratic socialism is often used in contrast to movements, such as
Leninism, which resort to
authoritarian means to achieve a transition to socialism (i.e., "
democratic centralism", "
vanguardism", etc.) instead advocating for the immediate creation of
economic democracy by and for the
working class.
Democratic socialism is difficult to define, and groups of scholars have radically different definitions for the term. Some definitions simply refer to all forms of
socialism that follow an electoral,
reformist or evolutionary path to socialism, rather than a
revolutionary one.
[2] Often, this definition is invoked to distinguish democratic socialism from
communism, as in Donald Busky's
Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey[3], 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.
But 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 Attlee 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.[4]
Indeed, some proponents of
market socialism see the latter as a form of democratic socialism.
[5]
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.
[6]
In contrast, other definitions of democratic socialism sharply distinguish it from
social democracy.
[1] 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 and
social democracy, variants of
authoritarian state socialism. For Hain, this democratic/authoritarian divide is more important than the
revolutionary/
reformist divide.
[7] 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.
[8]
Other definitions fall 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
labor process and redistributive tax policies.
[9] Robert G. Picard similarly describes a democratic socialist tradition of thought including
Eduard Bernstein,
Karl Kautsky,
Evan Durbin and
Michael Harrington.
[10]
The term
democratic socialism can be used in a third 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".
[11] Consequently, some former
Communist parties have re branded themselves as democratic socialist, as with the
Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany.
Hal Draper uses the term "revolutionary-democratic socialism" as a type of
socialism from below in his
The Two Souls of Socialism. He writes: 'the 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"'.
[12] 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'.
[13]
Justification of democratic socialism can be found in the works of
social 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.
[14] 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 its emphasis on
social collectivism, could be seen as a way of safeguarding this dependency.
In recent years, some have suggested replacing "democratic" with "participatory" upon seeing the reduction of the former to parliamentarism.
