Democratic socialism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Democratic socialism is a political philosophy supporting political democracy within a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy and workers' self-management within a market socialist economy or some form of a decentralised planned socialist economy.
Democratic socialists argue that capitalism is inherently incompatible with the values of freedom, equality and solidarity and that these ideals can only be achieved through the realisation of a socialist society.
Although most democratic socialists seek a gradual transition to socialism, democratic socialism can support either revolutionary or reformist politics as means to establish socialism.
As a term, democratic socialism was popularised by social democrats and other socialists who were opposed to the authoritarian socialist development in Russia and elsewhere during the 20th century.
The origins of democratic socialism can be traced to 19th-century utopian socialist thinkers and the British Chartist movement that somewhat differed in their goals yet all shared the essence of democratic decision making and public ownership of the means of production as positive characteristics of the society they advocated for.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, democratic socialism was also influenced by social democracy.
The gradualist form of socialism promoted by the British Fabian Society and Eduard Bernstein's evolutionary socialism in Germany influenced the development of democratic socialism.
Democratic socialism is what most socialists understand by the concept of socialism.
It may be a very broad or more limited concept, referring to all forms of socialism that are democratic and reject an authoritarian Marxist–Leninist state.
Democratic socialism is a broad label and movement that includes forms of libertarian socialism, market socialism, reformist socialism and revolutionary socialism as well as ethical socialism, liberal socialism, social democracy and some forms of state socialism and utopian socialism.
Democratic socialism is contrasted to Marxism–Leninism which those socialists perceive as being authoritarian or undemocratic in practice.
Democratic socialists oppose the Stalinist political system and the Soviet-type economic system, rejecting the perceived authoritarian form of governance and the centralised administrative-command system that formed in the Soviet Union and other Marxist–Leninist states during the 20th century.
Democratic socialism is also distinguished from Third Way social democracy on the basis that democratic socialists are committed to systemic transformation of the economy from capitalism to socialism whereas social-democratic supporters of the Third Way were more concerned about challenging the New Right to win social democracy back to power.
This has resulted in analysts and democratic socialist critics alike arguing that in effect it endorsed capitalism, even if it was due to recognising that outspoken anti-capitalism in these circumstances was politically nonviable, or that it was not only anti-socialist and neoliberal, but anti-social democratic in practice.
Some maintain this was the result of their type of reformism that caused them to administer the system according to capitalist logic while others saw it as a liberal and modern form of democratic socialism theoretically fitting within market socialism, distinguishing it from classical democratic socialism, especially in the United Kingdom.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
ON DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Re: ON DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Democratic socialism, continued ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
While having socialism as a long-term goal, some democratic socialists who follow social democracy are more concerned to curb capitalism's excesses and supportive of progressive reforms to humanise it in the present day.
In contrast, other democratic socialists believe that economic interventionism and similar policy reforms aimed at addressing social inequalities and suppressing the economic contradictions of capitalism would only exacerbate the contradictions, causing them to emerge elsewhere under a different guise.
Those democratic socialists believe that the fundamental issues with capitalism are systemic in nature and can only be resolved by replacing the capitalist mode of production with the socialist mode of production, i.e. replacing private ownership with collective ownership of the means of production and extending democracy to the economic sphere in the form of industrial democracy.
The main criticism of democratic socialism concerns the compatibility of democracy and socialism.
Academics, political commentators and other scholars tend to distinguish between authoritarian socialism and democratic socialism as a political ideology, with the first representing the Soviet Bloc and the latter representing the democratic socialist parties in the Western Bloc countries that have been democratically elected in countries such as Britain, France and Sweden, among others.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
While having socialism as a long-term goal, some democratic socialists who follow social democracy are more concerned to curb capitalism's excesses and supportive of progressive reforms to humanise it in the present day.
In contrast, other democratic socialists believe that economic interventionism and similar policy reforms aimed at addressing social inequalities and suppressing the economic contradictions of capitalism would only exacerbate the contradictions, causing them to emerge elsewhere under a different guise.
Those democratic socialists believe that the fundamental issues with capitalism are systemic in nature and can only be resolved by replacing the capitalist mode of production with the socialist mode of production, i.e. replacing private ownership with collective ownership of the means of production and extending democracy to the economic sphere in the form of industrial democracy.
The main criticism of democratic socialism concerns the compatibility of democracy and socialism.
Academics, political commentators and other scholars tend to distinguish between authoritarian socialism and democratic socialism as a political ideology, with the first representing the Soviet Bloc and the latter representing the democratic socialist parties in the Western Bloc countries that have been democratically elected in countries such as Britain, France and Sweden, among others.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Democratic socialism, continued ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Outline
Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production are socially and collectively owned or controlled, alongside a democratic political system of government.
Democratic socialists reject most self-described socialist states and Marxism–Leninism.
British Labour Party politician Peter Hain classifies democratic socialism along with libertarian socialism as a form of anti-authoritarian socialism from below (using the concept popularised by American socialist activist Hal Draper) in contrast to authoritarian socialism and state socialism.
For Hain, this authoritarian and democratic divide is more important than that between reformists and revolutionaries.
In democratic socialism, it is the active participation of the population as a whole and workers in particular in the self-management of the economy that characterises socialism while centralised economic planning coordinated by the state and nationalisation do not represent socialism in itself.
A similar, more complex argument is made by Nicos Poulantzas.
For Draper, revolutionary-democratic socialism is a type of socialism from below, writing in The Two Souls of Socialism that "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, he wrote about Eugene V. Debs that "'Debsian socialism' evoked a tremendous response from the heart of the people, but Debs had no successor as a tribune of revolutionary-democratic socialism."
Some Marxist socialists emphasise Karl Marx's belief in democracy and call themselves democratic socialists.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Movement define socialism in its classical formulation as a "system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the community."
Additionally, they include classlessness, statelessness and the abolition of wage labour as characteristics of a socialist society, characterising it as a stateless, propertyless, post-monetary economy based on calculation in kind, a free association of producers, workplace democracy and free access to goods and services produced solely for use and not for exchange.
Although these characteristics are usually reserved to describe a communist society, this is consistent with the usage of Marx, Friedrich Engels and others, who referred to communism and socialism interchangeably.
As a democratic socialist definition, the political scientist Lyman Tower Sargent states:
Democratic socialism can be characterised as follows:
* Much property held by the public through a democratically elected government, including most major industries, utilities, and transportation systems;
* A limit on the accumulation of private property;
* Governmental regulation of the economy;
* Extensive publicly financed assistance and pension programs;
* Social costs and the provision of services added to purely financial considerations as the measure of efficiency;
* Publicly held property is limited to productive property and significant infrastructure; it does not extend to personal property, homes, and small businesses.
And in practice in many democratic socialist countries, it has not extended to many large corporations.
Another example is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), with the organisation defining democratic socialism as a decentralised socially-owned economy and rejecting centralised, Soviet-type economic planning, stating:
Social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives.
Democratic socialists favour as much decentralisation 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.
The DSA has been critical of self-described socialist states, arguing that "(j)ust because their bureaucratic elites called them 'socialist' did not make it so; they also called their regimes 'democratic.'"
While ultimately committed to instituting socialism, the DSA focuses the bulk of its political activities on reforms within capitalism, arguing: "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."
Labour Party politician Peter Hain, who identifies with libertarian socialism, gives the following definition:
Democratic socialism should mean an active, democratically accountable state to underpin individual freedom and deliver the conditions for everyone to be empowered regardless of who they are or what their income is.
It should be complemented by decentralisation and empowerment to achieve increased democracy and social justice. [...]
Today democratic socialism's task is to recover the high ground on democracy and freedom through maximum decentralisation of control, ownership and decision making.
For socialism can only be achieved if it springs from below by popular demand.
The task of socialist government should be an enabling one, not an enforcing one.
Its mission is to disperse rather than to concentrate power, with a pluralist notion of democracy at its heart.
Tony Benn, another prominent left-wing Labour Party politician, described democratic socialism as a socialism that is "open, libertarian, pluralistic, humane and democratic; nothing whatever in common with the harsh, centralised, dictatorial and mechanistic images which are purposely presented by our opponents and a tiny group of people who control the mass media in Britain."
Democratic socialism sometimes represents policies within capitalism as opposed to an ideology that aims to transcend and replace capitalism, although this is not always the case.
Robert M. Page, a reader in Democratic Socialism and Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, wrote about transformative democratic socialism to refer to the politics of Labour Party Prime Minister Clement Attlee and its government (fiscal redistribution, some degree of public ownership and a strong welfare state) and revisionist democratic socialism as developed by Labour Party politician Anthony Crosland and Labour Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson, arguing:
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.
The Socialist International, of which almost all democratic socialist, labourist and social democratic parties are members, declares the goal of the development of democratic socialism.
Some tendencies of democratic socialism advocate for social revolution in order to transition to socialism, distinguishing it from some forms of social democracy.
In Soviet politics, democratic socialism is the version of the Soviet Union model that was reformed in a democratic way.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev described perestroika as building a "new, humane and democratic socialism."
Consequently, some former communist parties have rebranded themselves as being democratic socialists.
This include parties such as The Left in Germany, a party succeeding the Party of Democratic Socialism which was itself the legal successor of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Outline
Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production are socially and collectively owned or controlled, alongside a democratic political system of government.
Democratic socialists reject most self-described socialist states and Marxism–Leninism.
British Labour Party politician Peter Hain classifies democratic socialism along with libertarian socialism as a form of anti-authoritarian socialism from below (using the concept popularised by American socialist activist Hal Draper) in contrast to authoritarian socialism and state socialism.
For Hain, this authoritarian and democratic divide is more important than that between reformists and revolutionaries.
In democratic socialism, it is the active participation of the population as a whole and workers in particular in the self-management of the economy that characterises socialism while centralised economic planning coordinated by the state and nationalisation do not represent socialism in itself.
A similar, more complex argument is made by Nicos Poulantzas.
For Draper, revolutionary-democratic socialism is a type of socialism from below, writing in The Two Souls of Socialism that "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, he wrote about Eugene V. Debs that "'Debsian socialism' evoked a tremendous response from the heart of the people, but Debs had no successor as a tribune of revolutionary-democratic socialism."
Some Marxist socialists emphasise Karl Marx's belief in democracy and call themselves democratic socialists.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Movement define socialism in its classical formulation as a "system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the community."
Additionally, they include classlessness, statelessness and the abolition of wage labour as characteristics of a socialist society, characterising it as a stateless, propertyless, post-monetary economy based on calculation in kind, a free association of producers, workplace democracy and free access to goods and services produced solely for use and not for exchange.
Although these characteristics are usually reserved to describe a communist society, this is consistent with the usage of Marx, Friedrich Engels and others, who referred to communism and socialism interchangeably.
As a democratic socialist definition, the political scientist Lyman Tower Sargent states:
Democratic socialism can be characterised as follows:
* Much property held by the public through a democratically elected government, including most major industries, utilities, and transportation systems;
* A limit on the accumulation of private property;
* Governmental regulation of the economy;
* Extensive publicly financed assistance and pension programs;
* Social costs and the provision of services added to purely financial considerations as the measure of efficiency;
* Publicly held property is limited to productive property and significant infrastructure; it does not extend to personal property, homes, and small businesses.
And in practice in many democratic socialist countries, it has not extended to many large corporations.
Another example is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), with the organisation defining democratic socialism as a decentralised socially-owned economy and rejecting centralised, Soviet-type economic planning, stating:
Social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives.
Democratic socialists favour as much decentralisation 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.
The DSA has been critical of self-described socialist states, arguing that "(j)ust because their bureaucratic elites called them 'socialist' did not make it so; they also called their regimes 'democratic.'"
While ultimately committed to instituting socialism, the DSA focuses the bulk of its political activities on reforms within capitalism, arguing: "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."
Labour Party politician Peter Hain, who identifies with libertarian socialism, gives the following definition:
Democratic socialism should mean an active, democratically accountable state to underpin individual freedom and deliver the conditions for everyone to be empowered regardless of who they are or what their income is.
It should be complemented by decentralisation and empowerment to achieve increased democracy and social justice. [...]
Today democratic socialism's task is to recover the high ground on democracy and freedom through maximum decentralisation of control, ownership and decision making.
For socialism can only be achieved if it springs from below by popular demand.
The task of socialist government should be an enabling one, not an enforcing one.
Its mission is to disperse rather than to concentrate power, with a pluralist notion of democracy at its heart.
Tony Benn, another prominent left-wing Labour Party politician, described democratic socialism as a socialism that is "open, libertarian, pluralistic, humane and democratic; nothing whatever in common with the harsh, centralised, dictatorial and mechanistic images which are purposely presented by our opponents and a tiny group of people who control the mass media in Britain."
Democratic socialism sometimes represents policies within capitalism as opposed to an ideology that aims to transcend and replace capitalism, although this is not always the case.
Robert M. Page, a reader in Democratic Socialism and Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, wrote about transformative democratic socialism to refer to the politics of Labour Party Prime Minister Clement Attlee and its government (fiscal redistribution, some degree of public ownership and a strong welfare state) and revisionist democratic socialism as developed by Labour Party politician Anthony Crosland and Labour Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson, arguing:
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.
The Socialist International, of which almost all democratic socialist, labourist and social democratic parties are members, declares the goal of the development of democratic socialism.
Some tendencies of democratic socialism advocate for social revolution in order to transition to socialism, distinguishing it from some forms of social democracy.
In Soviet politics, democratic socialism is the version of the Soviet Union model that was reformed in a democratic way.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev described perestroika as building a "new, humane and democratic socialism."
Consequently, some former communist parties have rebranded themselves as being democratic socialists.
This include parties such as The Left in Germany, a party succeeding the Party of Democratic Socialism which was itself the legal successor of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Democratic socialism, continued ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Overlap with social democracy
Democratic socialism has been described as the form of social democracy prior to the displacement of Keynesianism by neoliberalism and monetarism which caused many social-democratic parties to adopt the Third Way ideology, accepting capitalism as the current status quo and powers that be, redefining socialism in a way that it maintained the capitalist structure intact.
The new version of Clause IV of the Labour Party Constitution uses democratic socialism to describe a modernised form of social democracy.
While affirming a commitment to democratic socialism, it no longer definitely commits the party to public ownership of industry and in its place advocates "the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition" along with "high quality public services [...] either owned by the public or accountable to them."
Much like modern social democracy, some forms of democratic socialism follow a gradual, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism rather than a revolutionary one, a tendency that is captured in the statement of Labour revisionist Anthony Crosland, who argued that the socialism of the pre-war world was now becoming increasingly irrelevant.
This tendency is invoked in an attempt to distinguish democratic socialism from Marxist–Leninist socialism as in Norman Thomas' Democratic Socialism: A New Appraisal, Roy Hattersley's Choose Freedom: The Future of Democratic Socialism, Malcolm Hamilton's Democratic Socialism in Britain and Sweden, Jim Tomlinson's Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945–1951 and Donald F. Busky's Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey.
A variant of this set of definitions is Joseph Schumpeter's argument set out in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942) that liberal democracies were evolving from liberal capitalism into democratic socialism with the growth of industrial democracy, regulatory institutions and self-management.
Democratic socialism has some degree of significant overlaps on practical policy positions with social democracy, although they are often distinguished from each other.
Policies commonly supported by democratic socialists are Keynesian in nature, including significant economic regulation alongside a mixed economy, extensive social insurance schemes, generous public pension programs and a gradual expansion of public ownership over strategic industries.
Policies such as free, universal health care and education are described as "pure Socialism" because they are opposed to "the hedonism of capitalist society."
Partly because of this overlap, some political commentators occasionally use the terms interchangeably.
One difference is that modern social democrats tend to reject revolutionary means accepted by more radical socialists.
Another difference is that some democratic socialists and social democrats are mainly concerned with practical reforms within capitalism, with socialism relegated to the indefinite future.
Others want to go beyond mere meliorist reforms and advocate systemic transformation of the mode of production from capitalism to socialism.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Overlap with social democracy
Democratic socialism has been described as the form of social democracy prior to the displacement of Keynesianism by neoliberalism and monetarism which caused many social-democratic parties to adopt the Third Way ideology, accepting capitalism as the current status quo and powers that be, redefining socialism in a way that it maintained the capitalist structure intact.
The new version of Clause IV of the Labour Party Constitution uses democratic socialism to describe a modernised form of social democracy.
While affirming a commitment to democratic socialism, it no longer definitely commits the party to public ownership of industry and in its place advocates "the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition" along with "high quality public services [...] either owned by the public or accountable to them."
Much like modern social democracy, some forms of democratic socialism follow a gradual, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism rather than a revolutionary one, a tendency that is captured in the statement of Labour revisionist Anthony Crosland, who argued that the socialism of the pre-war world was now becoming increasingly irrelevant.
This tendency is invoked in an attempt to distinguish democratic socialism from Marxist–Leninist socialism as in Norman Thomas' Democratic Socialism: A New Appraisal, Roy Hattersley's Choose Freedom: The Future of Democratic Socialism, Malcolm Hamilton's Democratic Socialism in Britain and Sweden, Jim Tomlinson's Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945–1951 and Donald F. Busky's Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey.
A variant of this set of definitions is Joseph Schumpeter's argument set out in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942) that liberal democracies were evolving from liberal capitalism into democratic socialism with the growth of industrial democracy, regulatory institutions and self-management.
Democratic socialism has some degree of significant overlaps on practical policy positions with social democracy, although they are often distinguished from each other.
Policies commonly supported by democratic socialists are Keynesian in nature, including significant economic regulation alongside a mixed economy, extensive social insurance schemes, generous public pension programs and a gradual expansion of public ownership over strategic industries.
Policies such as free, universal health care and education are described as "pure Socialism" because they are opposed to "the hedonism of capitalist society."
Partly because of this overlap, some political commentators occasionally use the terms interchangeably.
One difference is that modern social democrats tend to reject revolutionary means accepted by more radical socialists.
Another difference is that some democratic socialists and social democrats are mainly concerned with practical reforms within capitalism, with socialism relegated to the indefinite future.
Others want to go beyond mere meliorist reforms and advocate systemic transformation of the mode of production from capitalism to socialism.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Democratic socialism, continued ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Overlap with social democracy, concluded ...
While the Third Way has been described as a new social democracy or neo-social democracy standing for a modernised social democracy and competitive socialism, the form of social democracy that remained committed to the gradual abolition of capitalism as well as social democrats opposed to the Third Way merged into democratic socialism.
During the late 20th century and early 21st century, these labels were embraced, contested and rejected due to the development within the European left of Eurocommunism between the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of neoliberalism in the mid- to late 1970s, the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and of Marxist–Leninist governments between 1989 and 1992, the rise and fall of the Third Way between the 1970s and 2010s and the simultaneous rise of anti-austerity, green, left-wing populist and Occupy movements in the late 2000s and early 2010s due to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession, the causes of which have been widely attributed to the neoliberal shift and deregulation economic policies.
This latest development contributed to the rise of politicians that represent a return to the post-war consensus social democracy such as Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States, who assumed the democratic socialist label to describe their rejection of centrist politicians that supported triangulation within the Labour and Democratic parties such as with New Labour and the New Democrats, respectively.
As social democracy originated as a revolutionary socialist or communist movement, one distinction made to separate the modern versions of democratic socialism and social democracy is that the former can include revolutionary means while the latter asserts that the only acceptable constitutional form of government is representative democracy under the rule of law.
Many social democrats "refer to themselves as socialists or democratic socialists" and some "use or have used these terms interchangeably."
Others argue that "there are clear differences between the three terms, and preferred to describe their own political beliefs by using the term 'social democracy' only."
Social democracy is the evolutionary form of democratic socialism that aims to gradually and peacefully achieve socialism through established political processes such as the parliament.
In political science, democratic socialism and social democracy are largely seen as synonyms and as overlapping or otherwise not being mutually exclusive while they are distinguished in journalistic use, in some cases sharply.
While social democrats continue to call and describe themselves as democratic socialists or simply socialists, the meaning of democratic socialism and social democracy effectively reversed.
Democratic socialism originally represented socialism achieved by democratic means and usually resulted in reformism whereas social democracy included both reformist and revolutionary wings.
With the association of social democracy as policy regime and the development of the Third Way, social democracy became almost exclusively associated with reformism while democratic socialism came to include communist and revolutionary tendencies.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Overlap with social democracy, concluded ...
While the Third Way has been described as a new social democracy or neo-social democracy standing for a modernised social democracy and competitive socialism, the form of social democracy that remained committed to the gradual abolition of capitalism as well as social democrats opposed to the Third Way merged into democratic socialism.
During the late 20th century and early 21st century, these labels were embraced, contested and rejected due to the development within the European left of Eurocommunism between the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of neoliberalism in the mid- to late 1970s, the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and of Marxist–Leninist governments between 1989 and 1992, the rise and fall of the Third Way between the 1970s and 2010s and the simultaneous rise of anti-austerity, green, left-wing populist and Occupy movements in the late 2000s and early 2010s due to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession, the causes of which have been widely attributed to the neoliberal shift and deregulation economic policies.
This latest development contributed to the rise of politicians that represent a return to the post-war consensus social democracy such as Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States, who assumed the democratic socialist label to describe their rejection of centrist politicians that supported triangulation within the Labour and Democratic parties such as with New Labour and the New Democrats, respectively.
As social democracy originated as a revolutionary socialist or communist movement, one distinction made to separate the modern versions of democratic socialism and social democracy is that the former can include revolutionary means while the latter asserts that the only acceptable constitutional form of government is representative democracy under the rule of law.
Many social democrats "refer to themselves as socialists or democratic socialists" and some "use or have used these terms interchangeably."
Others argue that "there are clear differences between the three terms, and preferred to describe their own political beliefs by using the term 'social democracy' only."
Social democracy is the evolutionary form of democratic socialism that aims to gradually and peacefully achieve socialism through established political processes such as the parliament.
In political science, democratic socialism and social democracy are largely seen as synonyms and as overlapping or otherwise not being mutually exclusive while they are distinguished in journalistic use, in some cases sharply.
While social democrats continue to call and describe themselves as democratic socialists or simply socialists, the meaning of democratic socialism and social democracy effectively reversed.
Democratic socialism originally represented socialism achieved by democratic means and usually resulted in reformism whereas social democracy included both reformist and revolutionary wings.
With the association of social democracy as policy regime and the development of the Third Way, social democracy became almost exclusively associated with reformism while democratic socialism came to include communist and revolutionary tendencies.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Democratic socialism, continued ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Political party
While most social-democratic parties describe themselves as democratic socialists, with democratic socialism representing the theory and social democracy the practice and vice versa, political scientists distinguish between the two.
Social democratic is used for centre-left socialist parties, "whose aim is the gradual amelioration of poverty and exploitation within a liberal capitalist society."
On the other hand, democratic socialist is used for more left-wing socialist parties, including left-wing populist parties such as The Left, Podemos and Syriza.
This is reflected at the European party level, where the centre-left social democratic parties are within the Party of European Socialists and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats while more left-wing democratic socialist parties are within the Party of the European Left and the European United Left–Nordic Green Left.
Aside from democratic socialism, the latter also include communist tendencies and communist parties in democratic socialist orientation.
According to Steve Ludlam, "the arrival of New Labour signalled an unprecedented and possibly final assault on the party’s democratic socialist tradition, that is to say the tradition of those seeking the transformation of capitalism into socialism by overwhelmingly legislative means. [...]"
"It would be a while before some of the party's social democrats — those whose aim is the gradual amelioration of poverty and exploitation within a liberal capitalist society - began to fear the same threat to Labour's egalitarian tradition as the left recognised to its socialist tradition."
This was reflected similarly in Labour: A Tale of Two Parties by Hilary Wainwright.
According to Andrew Mathers, Hilary Wainwright's 1987 work Labour: A Tale of Two Parties provided "a different reading which contrasted the 'ameliorative, pragmatic' social democratic tradition expressed principally in the Parliamentary Labour Party with a 'transformative, visionary' democratic socialist tradition associated mainly with the grassroots members engaged closely with extra-parliamentary struggles."
TO BE CONTINUED ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Political party
While most social-democratic parties describe themselves as democratic socialists, with democratic socialism representing the theory and social democracy the practice and vice versa, political scientists distinguish between the two.
Social democratic is used for centre-left socialist parties, "whose aim is the gradual amelioration of poverty and exploitation within a liberal capitalist society."
On the other hand, democratic socialist is used for more left-wing socialist parties, including left-wing populist parties such as The Left, Podemos and Syriza.
This is reflected at the European party level, where the centre-left social democratic parties are within the Party of European Socialists and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats while more left-wing democratic socialist parties are within the Party of the European Left and the European United Left–Nordic Green Left.
Aside from democratic socialism, the latter also include communist tendencies and communist parties in democratic socialist orientation.
According to Steve Ludlam, "the arrival of New Labour signalled an unprecedented and possibly final assault on the party’s democratic socialist tradition, that is to say the tradition of those seeking the transformation of capitalism into socialism by overwhelmingly legislative means. [...]"
"It would be a while before some of the party's social democrats — those whose aim is the gradual amelioration of poverty and exploitation within a liberal capitalist society - began to fear the same threat to Labour's egalitarian tradition as the left recognised to its socialist tradition."
This was reflected similarly in Labour: A Tale of Two Parties by Hilary Wainwright.
According to Andrew Mathers, Hilary Wainwright's 1987 work Labour: A Tale of Two Parties provided "a different reading which contrasted the 'ameliorative, pragmatic' social democratic tradition expressed principally in the Parliamentary Labour Party with a 'transformative, visionary' democratic socialist tradition associated mainly with the grassroots members engaged closely with extra-parliamentary struggles."
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Democratic socialism, continued ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Economics
Democratic socialists have promoted a variety of different models of socialism and economics, ranging from market socialism where socially owned enterprises operate in competitive markets and are self-managed by their workforce to non-market participatory socialism based on decentralised economic planning.
Democratic socialism is also committed to a decentralised form of economic planning where productive units are integrated into a single organisation and organised on the basis of self-management.
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 for-profit system and private ownership of the means of production.
Democratic socialists and contemporary proponents of market socialism have argued that rather than socialism itself, the major reason for the economic shortcomings of Soviet-type economies were command economies.
Their administrative-command system caused their failure to create rules and operational criteria for the efficient operation of state enterprises in their hierarchical allocation of resources and commodities and the lack of democracy in the political systems that the Soviet-type economies were combined with.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Economics
Democratic socialists have promoted a variety of different models of socialism and economics, ranging from market socialism where socially owned enterprises operate in competitive markets and are self-managed by their workforce to non-market participatory socialism based on decentralised economic planning.
Democratic socialism is also committed to a decentralised form of economic planning where productive units are integrated into a single organisation and organised on the basis of self-management.
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 for-profit system and private ownership of the means of production.
Democratic socialists and contemporary proponents of market socialism have argued that rather than socialism itself, the major reason for the economic shortcomings of Soviet-type economies were command economies.
Their administrative-command system caused their failure to create rules and operational criteria for the efficient operation of state enterprises in their hierarchical allocation of resources and commodities and the lack of democracy in the political systems that the Soviet-type economies were combined with.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Democratic socialism, continued ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Democratic planning
A democratic planned economy has been proposed as a basis for socialism and variously advocated by some democratic socialists who support a non-market form of socialism whilst rejecting Soviet-type central planning.
It has been argued that decentralised planning allows for a spontaneously self-regulating system of stock control (relying solely on calculation in kind) to come about and that in turn decisively overcomes the objections raised by the economic calculation argument that any large scale economy must necessarily resort to a system of market prices.
This form of economic planning implies some process of democratic and participatory decision-making within the economy and within firms itself in the form of industrial democracy.
Computer-based forms of democratic economic planning and coordination between economic enterprises have also been proposed by various computer scientists and radical economists.
Proponents present democratic or decentralized and participatory economic planning as an alternative to market socialism for a post-capitalist society.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Democratic planning
A democratic planned economy has been proposed as a basis for socialism and variously advocated by some democratic socialists who support a non-market form of socialism whilst rejecting Soviet-type central planning.
It has been argued that decentralised planning allows for a spontaneously self-regulating system of stock control (relying solely on calculation in kind) to come about and that in turn decisively overcomes the objections raised by the economic calculation argument that any large scale economy must necessarily resort to a system of market prices.
This form of economic planning implies some process of democratic and participatory decision-making within the economy and within firms itself in the form of industrial democracy.
Computer-based forms of democratic economic planning and coordination between economic enterprises have also been proposed by various computer scientists and radical economists.
Proponents present democratic or decentralized and participatory economic planning as an alternative to market socialism for a post-capitalist society.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Democratic socialism, continued ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Market socialism
Some proponents of market socialism see it as an economic system compatible with the political ideology of democratic socialism.
Advocates of market socialism such as Jaroslav Vaněk argue that genuinely free markets are impossible under conditions of private ownership of productive property.
Vaněk contends that the class differences and unequal distribution of income and economic power that result from private ownership of industry enable the interests of the dominant class to skew the market in their favour, either in the form of monopoly and market power, or by utilising their wealth and resources to legislate government policies that benefit their specific business interests.
Additionally, Vaněk states that workers in a socialist economy based on cooperative and self-managed enterprises have stronger incentives to maximise productivity because they would receive a share of the profits based on the overall performance of their enterprise, plus their fixed wage or salary.
Many pre-Marx socialists and proto-socialists were fervent anti-capitalists just as they were supporters of the free market, including the British philosopher Thomas Hodgskin, the French mutualist thinker and anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the American philosophers Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner, among others.
Although capitalism has been commonly conflated with the free market, there is a similar laissez-faire economic theory and system associated with socialism called left-wing laissez-faire to distinguish it from laissez-faire capitalism.
One example of this democratic market socialist tendency is mutualism, a democratic and libertarian socialist theory developed by Proudhon in the 18th century, from which individualist anarchism emerged.
Benjamin Tucker is one eminent American individualist anarchist, who adopted a laissez-faire socialist system he termed anarchistic socialism as opposed to state socialism.
This tradition has been recently associated with contemporary scholars such as Kevin Carson, Gary Chartier, Charles W. Johnson, Samuel Edward Konkin III, Roderick T. Long, Sheldon Richman, Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Brad Spangler, who stress the value of radically free markets, termed freed markets to distinguish them from the common conception which these left-libertarians believe to be riddled with statism and bourgeois privileges.
Referred to as left-wing market anarchists or market-oriented left-libertarians, Proponents of this approach strongly affirm the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free markets while maintaining that taken to their logical conclusions these ideas support anti-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-hierarchical and pro-labour positions in economics, anti-imperialism in foreign policy and radically progressive views regarding sociocultural issues such as gender, sexuality and race.
Echoing the language of these market socialists, they maintain that radical market anarchism should be seen by its proponents and by others as part of the socialist tradition because of its heritage, emancipatory goals and potential and that market anarchists can and should call themselves socialists.
Critics of the free market and laissez-faire as commonly understood argue that socialism is fully compatible with a market economy and that a truly free-market or laissez-faire system would be anti-capitalist and socialist in practice.
According to its supporters, this would result in the society as advocated by democratic socialists, when socialism is not understood as state socialism and conflated with self-described socialist states and the free market and laissez-faire are understood to mean as being free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities.
This is consistent with the classical economics view that economic rents, i.e. profits generated from a lack of perfect competition, must be reduced or eliminated as much as possible through free competition rather than free from regulation.
David McNally, a professor at the University of Houston, has argued in the Marxist tradition that the logic of the market inherently produces social inequality and leads to unequal exchanges, writing that Adam Smith's moral intent and moral philosophy espousing equal exchange was undermined by the practice of the free market he championed as the development of the market economy involved coercion, exploitation and violence that Smith's moral philosophy could not counteract.
McNally criticises market socialists for believing in the possibility of fair markets based on equal exchanges to be achieved by purging parasitical elements from the market economy such as private ownership of the means of production, arguing that market socialism is an oxymoron when socialism is defined as an end to wage labour.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Market socialism
Some proponents of market socialism see it as an economic system compatible with the political ideology of democratic socialism.
Advocates of market socialism such as Jaroslav Vaněk argue that genuinely free markets are impossible under conditions of private ownership of productive property.
Vaněk contends that the class differences and unequal distribution of income and economic power that result from private ownership of industry enable the interests of the dominant class to skew the market in their favour, either in the form of monopoly and market power, or by utilising their wealth and resources to legislate government policies that benefit their specific business interests.
Additionally, Vaněk states that workers in a socialist economy based on cooperative and self-managed enterprises have stronger incentives to maximise productivity because they would receive a share of the profits based on the overall performance of their enterprise, plus their fixed wage or salary.
Many pre-Marx socialists and proto-socialists were fervent anti-capitalists just as they were supporters of the free market, including the British philosopher Thomas Hodgskin, the French mutualist thinker and anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the American philosophers Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner, among others.
Although capitalism has been commonly conflated with the free market, there is a similar laissez-faire economic theory and system associated with socialism called left-wing laissez-faire to distinguish it from laissez-faire capitalism.
One example of this democratic market socialist tendency is mutualism, a democratic and libertarian socialist theory developed by Proudhon in the 18th century, from which individualist anarchism emerged.
Benjamin Tucker is one eminent American individualist anarchist, who adopted a laissez-faire socialist system he termed anarchistic socialism as opposed to state socialism.
This tradition has been recently associated with contemporary scholars such as Kevin Carson, Gary Chartier, Charles W. Johnson, Samuel Edward Konkin III, Roderick T. Long, Sheldon Richman, Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Brad Spangler, who stress the value of radically free markets, termed freed markets to distinguish them from the common conception which these left-libertarians believe to be riddled with statism and bourgeois privileges.
Referred to as left-wing market anarchists or market-oriented left-libertarians, Proponents of this approach strongly affirm the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free markets while maintaining that taken to their logical conclusions these ideas support anti-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-hierarchical and pro-labour positions in economics, anti-imperialism in foreign policy and radically progressive views regarding sociocultural issues such as gender, sexuality and race.
Echoing the language of these market socialists, they maintain that radical market anarchism should be seen by its proponents and by others as part of the socialist tradition because of its heritage, emancipatory goals and potential and that market anarchists can and should call themselves socialists.
Critics of the free market and laissez-faire as commonly understood argue that socialism is fully compatible with a market economy and that a truly free-market or laissez-faire system would be anti-capitalist and socialist in practice.
According to its supporters, this would result in the society as advocated by democratic socialists, when socialism is not understood as state socialism and conflated with self-described socialist states and the free market and laissez-faire are understood to mean as being free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities.
This is consistent with the classical economics view that economic rents, i.e. profits generated from a lack of perfect competition, must be reduced or eliminated as much as possible through free competition rather than free from regulation.
David McNally, a professor at the University of Houston, has argued in the Marxist tradition that the logic of the market inherently produces social inequality and leads to unequal exchanges, writing that Adam Smith's moral intent and moral philosophy espousing equal exchange was undermined by the practice of the free market he championed as the development of the market economy involved coercion, exploitation and violence that Smith's moral philosophy could not counteract.
McNally criticises market socialists for believing in the possibility of fair markets based on equal exchanges to be achieved by purging parasitical elements from the market economy such as private ownership of the means of production, arguing that market socialism is an oxymoron when socialism is defined as an end to wage labour.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Democratic socialism, continued ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Implementation
While socialism is commonly used to describe Marxism–Leninism and affiliated states and governments, there have also been several anarchist and socialist societies that followed democratic socialist principles, encompassing anti-authoritarian and democratic anti-capitalism.
The most notable historical examples are the Paris Commune, the various soviet republics established in the post-World War I period, early Soviet Russia before the abolition of soviet councils by the Bolsheviks, Revolutionary Catalonia as noted by George Orwell and more recently Rojava in northern Syria.
Other examples include the kibbutzim in modern-day Israel, Marinaleda in Spain, the Zapatistas of EZLN in Chiapas and to some extent the workers' self-management policies within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Cuba.
However, the best-known example is that of Chile under President Salvador Allende, who was violently overthrown in a military coup funded and backed by the CIA in 1973.
When nationalisation of large industries was relatively widespread during the Keynesian post-war consensus, it was not uncommon for some political commentators to describe several European countries as democratic socialist states seeking to move their countries toward a socialist economy.
In 1956, leading British Labour Party politician Anthony Crosland claimed that capitalism had been abolished in Britain, although others such as Welshman Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health in the first post-war Labour government and the architect of the National Health Service, disputed the claim that Britain was a socialist state.
For Crosland and others who supported his views, Britain was a socialist state.
According to Bevan, Britain had a socialist National Health Service which stood in opposition to the hedonism of Britain's capitalist society.
Although the laws of capitalism still operated fully as in the rest of Europe and private enterprise dominated the economy, some political commentators claimed that during the post-war period, when socialist parties were in power, countries such as Britain and France were democratic socialist states and the same claim is now applied to Nordic countries with the Nordic model.
In the 1980s, the government of President François Mitterrand aimed to expand dirigisme by attempting to nationalise all French banks, but this attempt faced opposition from the European Economic Community which demanded a capitalist free-market economy among its members.
Nevertheless, public ownership in France and the United Kingdom during the height of nationalisation in the 1960s and 1970s never accounted for more than 15–20% of capital formation.
The form of socialism practised by parties such as the Singaporean People's Action Party during its first few decades in power was of a pragmatic kind as it was characterised by its rejection of nationalisation.
The party still claimed to be a socialist party, pointing out its regulation of the private sector, activist intervention in the economy and its social policies as evidence of this claim.
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew stated that he has been influenced by the democratic socialist British Labour Party.
Those confusions and disputes are caused not only by the socialist definition, but by the capitalist definition as well.
Christian democrats, social liberals, national and social conservatives tend to support social democratic policies and generally see capitalism compatible with a mixed economy while classical liberals, conservative liberals, liberal conservatives, neoliberals and right-libertarians define capitalism as the free market.
Those economic liberals support a small government, laissez-faire capitalist market economy while opposing democratic socialist policies as well as economic interventionism and government regulations.
According to them, actually existing capitalism is corporatism, corporatocracy or crony capitalism.
Socialism has often been conflated with an administrative command economy, authoritarian socialism, a big government, Marxist–Leninist states, Soviet-type economic planning, state interventionism and state socialism.
Austrian School economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises continually used socialism as a synonym for central planning and state socialism, conflating it with fascism and opposing democratic socialist policies, including the welfare state.
This is especially true in the United States, where socialism has become a pejorative used by conservatives and libertarians to taint liberal and progressive policies, proposals and public figures.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Implementation
While socialism is commonly used to describe Marxism–Leninism and affiliated states and governments, there have also been several anarchist and socialist societies that followed democratic socialist principles, encompassing anti-authoritarian and democratic anti-capitalism.
The most notable historical examples are the Paris Commune, the various soviet republics established in the post-World War I period, early Soviet Russia before the abolition of soviet councils by the Bolsheviks, Revolutionary Catalonia as noted by George Orwell and more recently Rojava in northern Syria.
Other examples include the kibbutzim in modern-day Israel, Marinaleda in Spain, the Zapatistas of EZLN in Chiapas and to some extent the workers' self-management policies within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Cuba.
However, the best-known example is that of Chile under President Salvador Allende, who was violently overthrown in a military coup funded and backed by the CIA in 1973.
When nationalisation of large industries was relatively widespread during the Keynesian post-war consensus, it was not uncommon for some political commentators to describe several European countries as democratic socialist states seeking to move their countries toward a socialist economy.
In 1956, leading British Labour Party politician Anthony Crosland claimed that capitalism had been abolished in Britain, although others such as Welshman Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health in the first post-war Labour government and the architect of the National Health Service, disputed the claim that Britain was a socialist state.
For Crosland and others who supported his views, Britain was a socialist state.
According to Bevan, Britain had a socialist National Health Service which stood in opposition to the hedonism of Britain's capitalist society.
Although the laws of capitalism still operated fully as in the rest of Europe and private enterprise dominated the economy, some political commentators claimed that during the post-war period, when socialist parties were in power, countries such as Britain and France were democratic socialist states and the same claim is now applied to Nordic countries with the Nordic model.
In the 1980s, the government of President François Mitterrand aimed to expand dirigisme by attempting to nationalise all French banks, but this attempt faced opposition from the European Economic Community which demanded a capitalist free-market economy among its members.
Nevertheless, public ownership in France and the United Kingdom during the height of nationalisation in the 1960s and 1970s never accounted for more than 15–20% of capital formation.
The form of socialism practised by parties such as the Singaporean People's Action Party during its first few decades in power was of a pragmatic kind as it was characterised by its rejection of nationalisation.
The party still claimed to be a socialist party, pointing out its regulation of the private sector, activist intervention in the economy and its social policies as evidence of this claim.
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew stated that he has been influenced by the democratic socialist British Labour Party.
Those confusions and disputes are caused not only by the socialist definition, but by the capitalist definition as well.
Christian democrats, social liberals, national and social conservatives tend to support social democratic policies and generally see capitalism compatible with a mixed economy while classical liberals, conservative liberals, liberal conservatives, neoliberals and right-libertarians define capitalism as the free market.
Those economic liberals support a small government, laissez-faire capitalist market economy while opposing democratic socialist policies as well as economic interventionism and government regulations.
According to them, actually existing capitalism is corporatism, corporatocracy or crony capitalism.
Socialism has often been conflated with an administrative command economy, authoritarian socialism, a big government, Marxist–Leninist states, Soviet-type economic planning, state interventionism and state socialism.
Austrian School economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises continually used socialism as a synonym for central planning and state socialism, conflating it with fascism and opposing democratic socialist policies, including the welfare state.
This is especially true in the United States, where socialism has become a pejorative used by conservatives and libertarians to taint liberal and progressive policies, proposals and public figures.
TO BE CONTINUED ...