Democratic socialism

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Democratic socialism is a political movement propagating the ideals of socialism within the framework of a parliamentary democracy. Thinkers, writers and activists such as Robert Owen, Karl Marx, 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 - not to be confused with the former Communist Party of Democratic Socialism), are equally critical to understanding Democratic Socialism.

Democratic socialist parties appeared before the First World War, when no single country could be described as democratic in the modern use of the term, because of electoral discrimination on the basis of gender, race or wealth. What distinguished 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).

The terms "democratic socialism" and "social democracy" are often used interchangeably and can confuse people. Parties which described themselves as either in the West have always worked through a market economy. Both typically advocate a welfare state, although Third Way influences have questioned why private investment cannot contribute to the financing of the public sector. Other hallmarks of policy have traditionally been a commitment to the re-distribution of wealth and state ownership or nationalisation of major industry. Some believed this could lead towards a planned economy in accordance with a Marxist analysis. However rejection of Marxism could equally be a hallmark of political thinking in a democratic socialist party.

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 (manhood) 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 arguably even the early Karl Marx. Such early socialisms might in retrospect be included as democratic socialist.

However, democratic socialism as such only becomes a movement in its own right as a current rejecting both Leninism (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 critiquing the alleged socialism of the USSR as defective or specious.

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 socialist transformation with principled opposition to the one-party authoritarianism they perceived in the Leninist 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 the New Left and 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. However, 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.

Regarding tactics, democratic socialists include a spectrum of positions, from those advocating nonviolent resistance against capitalism, or the possiblity 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.

Democratic socialism

History

Characteristics

See also