User:Eduen/Democratic socialism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Democratic socialism is a political philosophy that advocates achieving socialist goals withing a democratic system as opposed to what it perceives as undemocratic socialist ideologies such as Marxist–Leninist-inspired socialism which is viewed as being non-democratic in practice.[1][2] Democratic socialists oppose the Soviet economic model, rejecting the authoritarian form of governance and highly centralized command economy that took form in the Soviet Union in the early 20th century.[3].
Democratic socialism has promoted as economic solutions to capitalist systems public property through a democratically elected government of 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[4]; and self-management and democratic management in companies sometimes incluiding wider schemes of market socialist, participatory and decentralized planned economy.[5]
The modern history of democratic socialism goes back to early to mid 19th century socialist thought and movements associated with the label "utopian socialism" [6] as well as a socialist republican movement such as Chartism.[7][8] There is considerable controversy among scholars regarding Karl Marx’s attitude toward democracy, "but two lines of thought developed from Marx: one emphasizing democracy and one rejecting it while other socialists rejected Marx[9]. In the United Kingdom the Fabian Society was formed and it tended to emphasize "the democratic elements of democratic socialism: electoral success, the rational presentation of their position (in innumerable publications), careful study of the current social situation, and gradualism."[10] Another important source of inspiration was Eduard Bernstein´s proposal of "evolutionary socialism" which argued that socialism could be achieved by peaceful means through incremental legislative reform in democratic societies as opposed to revolutionary socialism. The 20th century saw the ascendence of socialist, labour and socialdemocratic parties in Europe who started to be elected in democratic elections to form governments in their countries. The terms "democratic socialism" and "socialdemocracy" have significant overlap[11] and during the late 20th century those labels started to be both contested and rejected due to the emergence of developments within the european left such as eurocommunism, the fall of eastern communist governments, the Third Way, and the rise of anti-austerity movements in the late 2000s and early 2010s motivated by the Great Recession. This last development contributed to the emergence of politicans such as Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the US[12] who assumed the label "democratic socialist" to describe their rebelion againts "third way" and centrist politicians within the UK Labour and US Democratic parties respectively[13][14].