Democratic Socialism

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, sometimes indirectly through a democratic state, but often emphasising direct democracy and self-management, through workers' councils.

Basic 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 what some theorists call state capitalism in which a non-democratic state controls the means of production instead of the workers (as in, for example, the Soviet Union during Stalin's era). Some authors see democratic socialism as sharing many political ideas with social democracy, while others see them as radically opposed. Nevertheless, democratic socialists often share political parties with social democrats, such as the British Labour Party in the 1980s. Democratic socialism is the second-strongest current of socialism in terms of political success, immediately following social democracy.

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 Marxists and 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.

Definition
Democratic socialism is difficult to define, and groups of scholars have radically different definitions for the term. Some equate it to other socioeconomic systems such as libertarian socialism, state socialism or social democracy. While others claim that it is fundamentally different from those ideologies.

Among those definitions of democratic socialism which sharply distinguish it from social democracy, Peter Hain, for example, classes 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 and social democracy, variants of authoritarian state socialism. For him, this democratic/authoritarian divide is more important than the revolutionary/reformist divide. In this definition, 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.

In contrast, in other definitions, democratic socialism simply refers to all forms of socialism that follow an electoral, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism, rather than a revolutionary one.