Democratic socialism is a political ideology that advocates political democracy alongside social ownership of the means of production with an emphasis on self-management or democratic management of economic institutions within a market socialist or decentralized socialist planned economy. 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.
The term "democratic socialism" is sometimes used synonymously with "socialism", but the adjective "democratic" is sometimes used to distinguish democratic socialists from Marxist-Leninist inspired socialism which is viewed as being non-democratic in practice. 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. 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. 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--i.e. by replacing private ownership with social ownership of the means of production.
Video Democratic socialism
Definition
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.
Some tendencies of democratic socialism advocate for revolution in order to transition to socialism, distinguishing it from some forms of social democracy. 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. 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. 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'". 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".
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. This tendency is often invoked in an attempt to distinguish democratic socialism from Marxist-Leninist socialism as in Donald Busky's Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey, 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.
As an example, the Democratic Socialists of America define socialism as a decentralized socially-owned economy, but while ultimately committed to socialism they focus their political activities on reforms within capitalism:
Social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives. Democratic socialists favor as much decentralization 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 belief that the whole economy should be centrally planned. While we believe that democratic planning can shape major social investments like mass transit, housing, and energy, market mechanisms are needed to determine the demand for many consumer goods.
As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, DSA fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people.
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 and some public ownership) 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.
Some proponents of market socialism see it as an economic system compatible with the political ideology of democratic socialism.
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". 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. 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.
Maps Democratic socialism
History
Forerunners and formative influences
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. 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 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".
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. 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. 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.
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. 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. The tradition continued to flourish in the Socialist Party of America (especially under the leadership of Norman Thomas) 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". More recently, the U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont described himself as a democratic socialist.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
Economic positions
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.
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. 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.
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.
The following is a list of socialist parties and democratic socialist parties around the world.
- a governing party (including as junior coalition partner)
Politicians
- Heads of state/heads of government
- Others
- Niki Ashton, Canadian Member of Parliament for Churchill--Keewatinook Aski in Manitoba and leadership candidate in the New Democratic Party leadership election, 2017
- Tony Benn, leading British Labour politician
- Aneurin Bevan, father of the National Health Service
- Lee Carter, elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017
- Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labour Party and leader of the Opposition (2015-present)
- James Connolly, Irish revolutionary
- Eugene V. Debs, American union leader, five-times presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America
- Tommy Douglas, Canadian politician, father of medicare
- Michael Harrington, founder of Democratic Socialists of America
- Obafemi Awolowo, founder of Action Group and First Premier of Western Regional Government, Nigeria
- Denis Healey, British Labour politician
- Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London 2000-2008
- Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator from Vermont, self-described democratic socialist
- Kshama Sawant, Seattle City Council member
- Dennis Skinner, British Labour politician
- Norman Thomas, six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America
- Neil Kinnock (self-described, in opposition to SDP defectors)
- Andrés Manuel López Obrador, two time Mexican left-wing presidential candidate and ex head of Government of Mexico City
Intellectuals and activists
Criticism
Some politicians, economists, and theorists have argued that "socialism" and "democracy" are incompatible. For instance, economist Milton Friedman stated that "a society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom". Sociologist Robert Nisbet argued in 1978 that there is "not a single free socialism to be found anywhere in the world".
Irving Kristol argued: "Democratic socialism turns out to be an inherently unstable compound, a contradiction in terms. Every social-democratic party, once in power, soon finds itself choosing, at one point after another, between the socialist society it aspires to and the liberal society that lathered [sic - fathered?] it". He added: "[S]ocialist movements end up [in] a society where liberty is the property of the state, and is (or is not) doled out to its citizens along with other contingent 'benefits'".
Richard Pipes wrote:
The merger of political and economic power implicit in socialism greatly strengthens the ability of the state and its bureaucracy to control the population. Theoretically, this capacity need not be exercised and need not lead to growing domination of the population by the state. In practice, such a tendency is virtually inevitable. For one thing, the socialization of the economy must lead to a numerical growth of the bureaucracy required to administer it, and this process cannot fail to augment the power of the state. For another, socialism leads to a tug of war between the state, bent on enforcing its economic monopoly, and the ordinary citizen, equally determined to evade it; the result is repression and the creation of specialized repressive organs.
According to Michael Makovi: "An economic analysis of the political institutions of democratic socialism shows that democratic socialism must necessarily fail for political (not economic) reasons even if nobody in authority has ill-intentions or abuses their power".
Response
One of the major scholars who have argued that socialism and democracy are compatible is the Austrian-born American economist Joseph Schumpeter, who was hostile to socialism. In his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (first published in 1942), he "emphasize[s] that political democracy was thoroughly compatible with socialism in its fullest sense".
In a 1963 address to the All India Congress Committee, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru stated: "Political Democracy has no meaning if it does not embrace economic democracy. And economic democracy is nothing but socialism".
Political historian Theodore Draper wrote: "I know of no political group which has resisted totalitarianism in all its guises more steadfastly than democratic socialists".
Robert Heilbroner: "There is, of course, no conflict between such a socialism and freedom as we have described it; indeed, this conception of socialism is the very epitome of these freedoms", referring to open association of individuals in political and social life; the democratization and humanization of work; and the cultivation of personal talents and creativities.
Bayard Rustin wrote:
For me, socialism has meaning only if it is democratic. Of the many claimants to socialism only one has a valid title--that socialism which views democracy as valuable per se, which stands for democracy unequivocally, and which continually modifies socialist ideas and programs in the light of democratic experience. This is the socialism of the labor, social-democratic, and socialist parties of Western Europe.
Kenneth Arrow argued: "We cannot be sure that the principles of democracy and socialism are compatible until we can observe a viable society following both principles. But there is no convincing evidence or reasoning which would argue that a democratic-socialist movement is inherently self-contradictory. Nor need we fear that gradual moves in the direction of increasing government intervention will lead to an irreversible move to "serfdom" [referring to The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek]".
William Pfaff wrote: "It might be argued that socialism ineluctably breeds state bureaucracy, which then imposes its own kinds of restrictions upon individual liberties. This is what the Scandinavians complain about. But Italy's champion bureaucracy owes nothing to socialism. American bureaucracy grows as luxuriantly and behaves as officiously as any other".
See also
- Democratic capitalism
- Economic democracy
- List of democratic socialist parties and organizations
- Workers' council
References
Bibliography
- Logie Barrow and Ian Bullock, 'Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement, 1880-1914'Cambridge University Press, 1996,ISBN 9780521560429
- Donald F. Busky, Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey Greenwood Publishing, 2000 ISBN 0-275-96886-3
- Draper, Hal (1966). "The Two Souls of Socialism". New Politics. 5 (1): 57-84.
- Michael Harrington, Socialism: Past and Future, Arcade Publishing /Little, Brown, 1989.
- Roy Hattersley Choose Freedom: The Future of Democratic Socialism, Penguin, 1987 ISBN 0-14-010494-1
- Ralph Miliband Socialism for a Sceptical Age, Polity Press, London, 1994
- David Reisman, ed, Democratic Socialism in Britain: Classic Texts in Economic and Political Thought, 1825-1952 Chatto and Pickering, 1996 ISBN 978-1-85196-285-3. (Includes texts by William Morris, George Bernard Shaw, GDH Cole, Richard Crossman and Aneurin Bevan.)
- Norman Thomas Democratic Socialism: a new appraisal, League for Industrial Democracy, 1953
- Jim Tomlinson Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945-1951 Cambridge University Press, 1997 ISBN 0-521-55095-5
External links
- What is Democratic Socialism? Q & A
- Joseph Schwartz and Jason Schulman Towards Freedom: The Theory and Practice of Democratic Socialism
- Democratic Socialism in India
- Ralph Miliband and Marcel Liebman. "Beyond Social Democracy"
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