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. 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'". 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 advocate for eventual socialism that follow a gradual, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism, rather than a revolutionary one. 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, 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.

The Democratic Socialists of America's purpose is defined as "We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit, alienated labor, gross inequalities of wealth and power, discrimination based on race and sex, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo. We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships. We are socialists because we are developing a concrete strategy for achieving that vision, for building a majority movement that will make democratic socialism a reality in America. We believe that such a strategy must acknowledge the class structure of American society and that this class structure means that there is a basic conflict of interest between those sectors with enormous economic power and the vast majority of the population."

The term is sometimes used to refer to policies that are compatible with and exist within capitalism, as opposed to an ideology that aims to transcend or 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 government 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.

Justification of democratic socialism can be found in the works of social philosophers (non-economists) 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 its emphasis on social collectivism, could be seen as a way of safeguarding this dependency.

Forerunners and formative influences

Fenner Brockway, a leading water 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."

Modern democratic socialism

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, one of the most famous American socialists, 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 US Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont described himself as a democratic socialist but his political positions and admiration for Nordic capitalism correspond with that of a social democrat.

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, however, 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. This was demonstrated in 2015, when politician and prominent activist Jeremy Corbyn was elected Leader of the Labour Party in a landslide victory, becoming the Leader of the Opposition.

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.

Relation to economics

Democratic socialists have espoused a variety of different socialist economic models. Some democratic socialists advocate forms of market socialism where socially-owned enterprises operate in competitive markets, and in some cases, are self-managed by their workforce. On the other hand, other democratic socialists advocate for a non-market participatory economy based on decentralized economic planning.

Democratic socialism has historically been committed to a decentralized form of economic planning opposed to Stalinist-style command planning, where productive units are integrated into a single organization and organized on the basis of self-management.

Contemporary proponents of market socialism have argued that the major reasons for the failure (economic shortcomings) of Soviet-type planned economies was the totalitarian nature of the political systems they were combined with, lack of democracy, and their failure to create rules for the efficient operation of state enterprises.

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 private ownership and the profit system.

Parliamentary democratic socialist parties

The following is a list of socialist parties or originally socialist in being social democrat today.

Politicians

Compatibility of "socialism" and "democracy"

Some politicians, economists and theorists have argued that "socialism" and "democracy" are incompatible.

Milton Friedman wrote:

[...] there is an intimate connection between economics and politics, that only certain combinations of political and economic arrangements are possible, and that in particular, a society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom.

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: "socialist 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:

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.

Robert Nisbet: "In any event, with not a single free socialism to be found anywhere in the world."

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."

Responses to criticism

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; the cultivation of personal talents and creativities.

Bayard Rustin:

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 that "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: "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."