Democratic socialism is a political, economic and social ideal, which advocates socialism as a basis for the economy and democracy as a governing principle. This implies that the means of production are owned by the entire population and that political power would be in the hands of the people, whether through representative or direct democracy. Democratic socialism contrasts with "socialist" ideologies that involve authoritarian or totalitarian elements.
Concept
Socialism is based on the idea that the economy and means of production should be in the hands of ordinary working people, or in older terminology the "working class". Democratic socialism involves the entire population controlling the economy through some type of democratic system. Directly contrasting this is state capitalism in which the state controls the means of production instead of the workers. Some authors see democratic socialism as sharing many political ideas with social democracy[citation needed], while others see them as radically opposed[citation needed].
Common Ideas
Though there are many types of socialism that fit the above description with many different methods for socializing the economy. There are some ideas that many of them have in common.
- Economic planning: an economy that uses planning by elected representatives, geared for consumption rather than profit.
- A state: a centralised government is supported by some, although anarchists and some libertarian socialists favor decentralized communes and other forms of non-statist social organisation.
- Workers' councils: considered by many to be the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat and as such the ideal organ of rule.
- Recallable delegates: the ability to quickly impeach any elected representative is supported as a safety measure against totalitarianism and bureaucratic corruption.
- Workplace democracy: the application of democracy to the workplace is naturally supported by those that call themselves democratic socialists.
History
Forerunners and formative influences
Fenner Brockway, a leading British democratic socialist of the Independent Labour Party, wrote in his book Britain's First Socialists:
The Levellers were pioneers of political democracy and the sovereignty of the people; the Agitators were the pioneers of participatory control by the ranks at their workplace; and the Diggers were pioneers of communal ownership, cooperation and egalitarianism. All three equate to democratic socialism. [1]
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[2] and came to be associated with the followers of 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.
Modern democratic socialism
Democratic socialism became a prominent movement at the end of the nineteenth century. In the US, Eugene Debs, one of the most famous American socialists, led a movement centered around democratic socialism and made five bids for President, once in 1900 under the Social Democratic Party and then four more times under 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 favored a form of government based on industrial unions, but which also sought to establish this government after winning at the ballot box.
In Britain, the democratic socialist tradition was represented in particular by the William Morris' Socialist League (UK) in the 1880s and by the Independent Labour Party (ILP) founded by Keir Hardie in the 1890s, of which George Orwell would later be a prominent member.
In 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. These internationals 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 One), and the perceived anti-democratic Third International. The key movements within the Two and a Half International were the ILP and the Austromarxists.
In America, a similar tradition continued to flourish in Debs' Socialist Party of America, especially under the leadership of Norman Thomas.
At the same time, the guild socialism of G. D. H. Cole in the early 1920s was a conscious attempt 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 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 the socialist transformation of society with a principled opposition to the one-party authoritarianism they perceived in the Stalinist revolutionary model.
The folkesocialisme or people's socialism that emerged as a vital current of the left in Scandinavia beginning in the 1950s could be characterized as a democratic socialism in the same vein.
Democratic socialism today
There was a strong current of democratic socialism in the politics of the New Left in much of Europe and North America during the 1960s. The classic Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society combined a stringent critique of the Stalinist model with calls for a democratic socialist reconstruction of society. In 1973, Michael Harrington and Irving Howe formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which articulated a strong democratic socialist message, while a smaller faction associated with peace activist David McReynolds formed the Socialist Party USA. In the early 1980s, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee merged with the New American Movement, an organization of New Left veterans, forming Democratic Socialists of America.
In the British Labour Party, the term democratic socialist was used historically by those who identified with the tradition represented by the ILP: the "soft left" of non-Marxist socialists around Tribune magazine (e.g. Michael Foot) and some of the "hard left" in the Campaign Group around Tony Benn. The Campaign Group, along with the extra-Labour Party Socialist Society (led by Raymond Williams and others) formed the Socialist Movement in 1987, which now produces the magazine Red Pepper.
Today in Germany there is a more left wing party called the "Party of Democratic Socialists" which takes the label of democratic socialism, while another more centrist party called the "Social Democratic Party of Germany" is the leading left wing German party that has held government. The British Labour party is a "democratic socialist party" according to its constitution.[3] Both the German SPD and British Labour party belongs to the European Parliament fraction, the Party of European Socialists to which the German SPD also belongs.
See also
Notes
- ^ Quoted in Peter Hain Ayes to the Left Lawrence and Wishart, p.12
- ^ Hain, op cit, p.13
- ^ Clause IV, Labour Party Constitution. "The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone..."
References
- Donald F. Busky, Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey ISBN 0-275-96886-3