Democratic socialism

Not to be confused with social democracy.

Democratic socialism is a political ideology that advocates political democracy alongside social ownership of the means of production, often with an emphasis on democratic management of enterprises within a socialist economic system. The term "democratic socialism" is sometimes used synonymously with "socialism"; the adjective "democratic" is often added to distinguish it from the Marxist–Leninist brand of socialism, which is widely viewed as being non-democratic in practice. Democratic socialism is also sometimes used as a synonym for social democracy, although many say this is misleading because democratic socialism advocates social ownership of the means of production, whereas social democracy does not.

Democratic socialism is distinguished from both the Soviet model of centralized socialism and from social democracy, where social democracy refers to support for political democracy, nationalization of key industries, and a welfare state. The distinction with the former is made on the basis of the authoritarian form of government and centralized economic system that emerged in the Soviet Union during the 20th century, while the distinction with the latter is made on the basis that democratic socialism is committed to systemic transformation of the economy while social democracy is not. That is, whereas social democrats only seek to "humanize" capitalism through state intervention, democratic socialists see capitalism as inherently incompatible with the democratic values of liberty, equality and solidarity; and believe that the issues inherent to capitalism can only be solved by superseding private ownership with some form of social ownership. Ultimately democratic socialists believe that reforms aimed at addressing the economic contradictions of capitalism will only cause more problems to emerge elsewhere in the economy, that capitalism can never be sufficiently "humanized", and that it must therefore ultimately be replaced with socialism.

Democratic socialism is not specifically revolutionary or reformist, as many types of democratic socialism can fall into either category, with some forms overlapping with social democracy, supporting reforms within capitalism as a prelude to the establishment of socialism. Some forms of democratic socialism accept social democratic reformism to gradually convert the capitalist economy to a socialist one using pre-existing democratic institutions, while other forms are revolutionary in their political orientation and advocate for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the transformation of the capitalist economy to a socialist economy.

Definition

Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production are socially and collectively owned or controlled alongside a politically democratic system of government.

Some tendencies of democratic socialism advocate for revolution in order to transition to socialism, distinguishing it from some forms of social democracy. For example, Peter Hain classifies 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, a variant of authoritarian state socialism. For Hain, this democratic/authoritarian divide is more important than the revolutionary/reformist divide. In this type of democratic socialism, 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. Draper himself uses the term "revolutionary-democratic socialism" as a type of socialism from below in his The Two Souls of Socialism. He writes: "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, about Eugene Debs, he writes: "'Debsian socialism' evoked a tremendous response from the heart of the people, but Debs had no successor as a tribune of revolutionary-democratic socialism."

In contrast, other tendencies of democratic socialism advocate for eventual socialism that follow a gradual, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism, rather than a revolutionary one. Often, this tendency is invoked in an attempt to distinguish democratic socialism from Marxist–Leninist socialism, as in Donald Busky's Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey, Jim Tomlinson's Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945-1951, Norman Thomas Democratic Socialism: a new appraisal or Roy Hattersley's Choose Freedom: The Future of Democratic Socialism. A variant of this set of definitions is Joseph Schumpeter's argument, set out in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1941), that liberal democracies were evolving from "liberal capitalism" into democratic socialism, with the growth of workers' self-management, industrial democracy and regulatory institutions.

The Democratic Socialists of America's purpose is defined as "We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit, alienated labor, gross inequalities of wealth and power, discrimination based on race and sex, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo. We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships. We are socialists because we are developing a concrete strategy for achieving that vision, for building a majority movement that will make democratic socialism a reality in America. We believe that such a strategy must acknowledge the class structure of American society and that this class structure means that there is a basic conflict of interest between those sectors with enormous economic power and the vast majority of the population."

The term is sometimes used to refer to policies that are compatible with and exist within capitalism, as opposed to an ideology that aims to transcend or replace capitalism. Though this is not always the case. For example, Robert M. Page, a Reader in Democratic Socialism and Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, writes about "transformative democratic socialism" to refer to the politics of the Clement Attlee government (a strong welfare state, fiscal redistribution, some government ownership) and "revisionist democratic socialism," as developed by Anthony Crosland and Harold Wilson:

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.

Some proponents of market socialism see it as an economic system compatible with the political ideology of democratic socialism.

The term democratic socialism can be used even another way, to refer to a version of the Soviet model that was reformed in a democratic way. For example, Mikhail Gorbachev described perestroika as building a "new, humane and democratic socialism." Consequently, some former Communist parties have rebranded themselves as democratic socialist, as with the Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany.

Justification of democratic socialism can be found in the works of social philosophers (non-economists) like Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth, among others. Honneth has put forward the view that political and economic ideologies have a social basis, that is, they originate from intersubjective communication between members of a society. Honneth criticises the liberal state because it assumes that principles of individual liberty and private property are ahistorical and abstract, when, in fact, they evolved from a specific social discourse on human activity. Contra liberal individualism, Honneth has emphasised the inter-subjective dependence between humans; that is, our well-being depends on recognising others and being recognised by them. Democratic socialism, with its emphasis on social collectivism, could be seen as a way of safeguarding this dependency.

History

Forerunners and formative influences

Fenner Brockway, a leading democratic socialist of the Independent Labour Party, identified three early democratic socialist groups in his book Britain's First Socialists: 1) the Levellers, who were pioneers of political democracy and the sovereignty of the people; 2) the Agitators, who were the pioneers of participatory control by the ranks at their workplace; 3) and the Diggers, who were pioneers of communal ownership, cooperation and egalitarianism. 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 and came to be associated with the followers of the Welsh reformer 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. Many countries have this.

The British moral philosopher John Stuart Mill also came to advocate a form of economic socialism within a liberal context. In later editions of his Principles of Political Economy (1848), Mill would argue that "as far as economic theory was concerned, there is nothing in principle in economic theory that precludes an economic order based on socialist policies."

Modern democratic socialism

James Keir Hardie was an early democratic socialist, who founded the Independent Labour Party in Great Britain

Democratic socialism became a prominent movement at the end of the 19th century. In Germany, the Eisenacher socialist group merged with the Lassallean socialist group, in 1875, to form the German Social Democratic Party. In Australia, the Labour and Socialist movements were gaining traction and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was formed in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891 by striking pastoral workers. A minority government led by the party was formed in Queensland in 1899 with Anderson Dawson as the Premier of Queensland where it was founded and was in power for one week, the world's first democratic socialist party led government. The ALP has been the main driving force for workers' rights in Australia, backed by Australian Trade Unions, in particular the Australian Workers' Union. Since the Whitlam Government, the ALP has moved towards Social Democratic and Third Way ideals which are found among many of the ALP's Right Faction members. Democratic Socialist, Christian Socialist, Libertarian Marxist and Agrarian Socialist ideologies lie within the ALP's Left Faction.

In the United States, Eugene V. Debs, one of the most famous American socialists, led a movement centered on democratic socialism and made five bids for President, once in 1900 as candidate of the Social Democratic Party and then four more times on the ticket of 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 favoured a form of government based on industrial unions, but which also sought to establish this government after winning at the ballot box. The tradition continued to flourish in the Socialist Party of America, especially under the leadership of Norman Thomas, and later the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Upon the DSA's founding in 1983, Michael Harrington and socialist-feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich were elected as co-chairs of the organization. Currently philosopher and activist Cornel West is one of several honorary chairs. The organization does not run its own candidates in elections but instead "fights for reforms... that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people." More recently, the US Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont described himself as a democratic socialist but his political positions and admiration for Nordic capitalism correspond with that of a social democrat.

In Britain, the democratic socialist tradition was represented in particular by William Morris's Socialist League, and in the 1880s by the Fabian Society, and later the Independent Labour Party (ILP) founded by Keir Hardie in the 1890s, of which George Orwell would later be a prominent member. In the early 1920s, the guild socialism of G. D. H. Cole attempted 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 the 1970s and 1980s, prominent democratic socialists within the Labour movement included Michael Foot and Tony Benn, considered by many to have redefined democratic socialism into an actionable manifesto which was, however, voted overwhelmingly against in the General Election of 1983 and referred to as 'The longest suicide note in history'. The modern Labour Party has often referred to itself as a democratic socialist party throughout the 20th century, and explicitly identifies as such in Clause IV of its Rule Book.

Italian President Giuseppe Saragat

In other parts of 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, along with many other socialists of different tendencies and ideologies. The socialist Internationales 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 I), and the perceived anti-democratic Third International. The key movements within the Two and a Half International were the ILP and the Austromarxists, and the main forces in the Three and a Half International were the ILP and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) of Spain. In Italy, the Italian Democratic Socialist Party broke away from the Italian Socialist Party in 1947, when this latter joined the Soviet-funded Italian Communist Party to prepare the decisive general election of 1948. Despite remaining a minor party in Italian Parliament for fifty years, its leader Giuseppe Saragat became President of Italy in 1964.

During India's freedom movement, many figures on the left of the Indian National Congress organised themselves as the Congress Socialist Party. Their politics, and those of the early and intermediate periods of Jayaprakash 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. This political current continued in the Praja Socialist Party, the later Janata Party and the current Samajwadi Party. In Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto introduced the concept of democratic socialism, and the Pakistan Peoples Party remained one of the prominent supporters for the socialist democratic policies in the country. In Nepal, B.P Koirala introduced the concept of democratic socialism.

In the Middle East, the largest democratic socialist party is the Organization of Iranian People's Fedaian (Majority).

The Folkesocialisme (translated into "popular socialism" or "people's socialism") that emerged as a vital current of the left in Nordic countries beginning in the 1950s could be characterised as a democratic socialism in the same vein. Former Swedish prime minister Olof Palme is an important proponent of democratic socialism.

Relation to economics

Democratic socialists have espoused a variety of different socialist economic models. Some democratic socialists advocate forms of market socialism where socially-owned enterprises operate in competitive markets, and in some cases, are self-managed by their workforce. On the other hand, other democratic socialists advocate for a non-market participatory economy based on decentralized economic planning.

Democratic socialism has historically been committed to a decentralized form of economic planning opposed to Stalinist-style command planning, where productive units are integrated into a single organization and organized on the basis of self-management.

Contemporary proponents of market socialism have argued that the major reasons for the failure (economic shortcomings) of Soviet-type planned economies was the totalitarian nature of the political systems they were combined with, lack of democracy, and their failure to create rules for the efficient operation of state enterprises.

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 private ownership and the profit system.

Parliamentary democratic socialist parties

The following is a list of socialist parties or originally socialist in being social democrat today.

See also: List of democratic socialist parties and organizations and List of democratic socialist parties which have governed

•   a governing party (incl. as junior coalition partner)

Party	Country	Date established	% of popular vote in the latest election	Seats in the lower house (if bicameral)
PDP-LABAN	Philippines	1982	39.01% (2016)	260 / 292 (89%)
Sandinista National Liberation Front	Nicaragua	1961	65.9% (2016)	71 / 92 (77%)
Movement for Socialism	Bolivia	1998	61.4% (2014)	88 / 130 (68%)
PAIS Alliance	Ecuador	2006	39.07% (2017)	74 / 137 (54%)
Labour Party	UK	1900	30.5% (2015)	230 / 650 (35%)
Australian Labor Party	Australia	1892	49.37% (2016)	69 / 150 (46%)
Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA)	Greece	2012	36.3% (9/2015)	145 / 300 (48%)
Peru Wins	Peru	2010	25.3% (2011)	47 / 130 (36%)
Inuit Ataqatigiit	Greenland	1976	33.5% (2014)	11 / 31 (35%)
United Socialist Party	Venezuela	2007	40.9% (2015)	52 / 165 (32%)
Sinn Féin	Northern Ireland	1905	26.2% (2011)	29 / 108 (27%)
Party of Socialists	Moldova	1997	20.5% (2014)	25 / 101 (25%)
Workers' Party	Brazil	1980	13.9% (2014)	68 / 513 (13%)
Sinn Féin	Ireland	1905	13.8% (2016)	23 / 166 (14%)
Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP)	Turkey	2012	10.8% (11/2015)	59 / 550 (11%)
Left-Green Movement	Iceland	1999	10.8% (2013)	7 / 63 (11%)
Socialist Party	Serbia	1990	13.5% (2014)	25 / 250 (10%)
Socialist Party	Netherlands	1971	9.7% (2012)	15 / 150 (10%)
The Left (Die Linke)	Germany	2007	8.6% (2013)	64 / 631 (10%)
Red–Green Alliance	Denmark	1989	7.8% (2015)	14 / 179 (8%)
Left Bloc	Portugal	1999	10.2% (2015)	19 / 230 (8%)
Armenian Revolutionary Federation	Armenia	1890	6.58% (2017)	7 / 105 (7%)
United Left	Slovenia	2014	6% (2014)	6 / 90 (7%)
Left Alliance	Finland	1990	7.1% (2015)	12 / 200 (6%)
Left Party	Sweden	1917	5.7% (2014)	21 / 349 (6%)
Left Ecology Freedom	Italy	2010	3.2% (2013)	37 / 630 (6%)
Labourists – Labour Party	Croatia	2010	5.1% (2011)	6 / 151 (4%)
Socialist Left	Norway	1975	4.1% (2013)	7 / 169 (4%)
The Left	Luxembourg	1999	4.9% (2013)	2 / 60 (3%)
Left Front	France	2008	6.9% (2012)	10 / 577 (2%)
Democratic Left Movement	Lebanon	2004	N/A (2009)	1 / 128 (0.8%)
Movement of Socialist Democrats	Tunisia	1978	N/A (2014)	1 / 217 (0.5%)
Parti Sosialis Malaysia	Malaysia	1998	N/A (2013)	1 / 222 (0.5%)

Notable democratic socialists

Politicians

Heads of state/heads of government

• Salvador Allende, President of Chile 1970–73
• Jacobo Árbenz, President of Guatemala 1951–54
• Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1945–51
• Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile 2006–10, 2014–
• David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel 1948–54, 1955–63
• Rómulo Betancourt, President of Venezuela 1945–48, 1959–64
• Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan 1973–77
• Léon Blum, Prime Minister of France 1936–37, 1938
• Willy Brandt, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–74
• Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela 1999–2013 (disputed)
• Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand 1999-2008
• Álvaro Colom, President of Guatemala 2008–12
• Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador 2007–
• Alexander Dubček, leader of communist Czechoslovakia 1968–9
• Peter Fraser, Prime Minister of New Zealand 1940-49
• Mauricio Funes, President of El Salvador 2009–14
• Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet leader 1985–91
• Norman Kirk, Prime Minister of New Zealand 1972-74
• Fernando Lugo, President of Paraguay 2008–12
• Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela 2013-
• Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa 1994–99
• Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica 1972–80
• François Mitterrand, President of France 1981–95
• Evo Morales, President of Bolivia 2006–
• José Mujica, President of Uruguay 2010–15
• Walter Nash, Prime Minister of New Zealand 1957-60
• Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India 1947–64
• Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua 1985–90, 2007–
• José Ramos-Horta, President of East Timor 2007–12
• Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden 1969–76, 1982–86
• Basdeo Panday, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago 1995-2001
• Salvador Sánchez Cerén, President of El Salvador 2014–
• Michael Joseph Savage, Prime Minister of New Zealand 1935-40
• Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President of Brazil 2003–11
• Kalevi Sorsa, Prime Minister of Finland 1972–5, 1977–9, 1982–7
• Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece 2015
• Tabaré Vázquez, President of Uruguay 2005–10, 2015–
• Gough Whitlam, Prime Minister of Australia 1972-1975

Others

• Tony Benn, leading British Labour politician
• Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the British Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition 2015–present
• James Connolly, Irish revolutionary
• Aneurin Bevan, father of the NHS
• Eugene V. Debs, American union leader, five-times presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America
• Tommy Douglas, Canadian politician, father of medicare
• Michael Harrington, founder of Democratic Socialists of America
• Denis Healey, British Labour politician
• Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London 2000–08
• Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator from Vermont (self-described)
• Kshama Sawant, Seattle City Council member
• Dennis Skinner, British Labour politician
• Norman Thomas, six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America
• Neil Kinnock (self-described, in opposition to SDP defectors)
• Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Two times Mexican Left-wing presidential candidate and ex head of Government of Mexico City.

Intellectuals and activists

• Billy Bragg
• Bertrand Russell, British philosopher
• John Dewey
• Barbara Ehrenreich
• Albert Einstein, German-born physicist. He wrote about his political views in a 1949 article titled Why Socialism?
• Erich Fromm
• Michael Harrington
• Christopher Hitchens
• Mary Harris Jones
• Mario Bunge
• Owen Jones
• Helen Keller
• Martin Luther King, Jr., African-American civil rights leader
• Naomi Klein
• Rosa Luxemburg
• Lawrence O'Donnell, American political analyst
• George Orwell, English novelist
• Andrei Sakharov, Soviet physicist, dissident and human rights activist
• Roger Waters
• Harry S. Weeks IV, notable political activist and founder of the Wheeling, West-Virginia, Democratic-Socialist Union
• Cornel West
• Richard D. Wolff
• Howard Zinn (self-described)
• Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister.

Criticism

Compatibility of "socialism" and "democracy"

Some politicians, economists and theorists have argued that "socialism" and "democracy" are incompatible.

Milton Friedman wrote:

[...] there is an intimate connection between economics and politics, that only certain combinations of political and economic arrangements are possible, and that in particular, a society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom.

Irving Kristol argued: "Democratic socialism turns out to be an inherently unstable compound, a contradiction in terms. Every social-democratic party, once in power, soon finds itself choosing, at one point after another, between the socialist society it aspires to and the liberal society that lathered [sic - fathered?] it." He added: "socialist movements end up [in] a society where liberty is the property of the state, and is (or is not) doled out to its citizens along with other contingent 'benefits.'"

Richard Pipes:

The merger of political and economic power implicit in socialism greatly strengthens the ability of the state and its bureaucracy to control the population. Theoretically, this capacity need not be exercised and need not lead to growing domination of the population by the state. In practice, such a tendency is virtually inevitable. For one thing, the socialization of the economy must lead to a numerical growth of the bureaucracy required to administer it, and this process cannot fail to augment the power of the state. For another, socialism leads to a tug of war between the state, bent on enforcing its economic monopoly, and the ordinary citizen, equally determined to evade it; the result is repression and the creation of specialized repressive organs.

Robert Nisbet: "In any event, with not a single free socialism to be found anywhere in the world."

According to Michael Makovi, "An economic analysis of the political institutions of democratic socialism shows that democratic socialism must necessarily fail for political (not economic) reasons even if nobody in authority has ill-intentions or abuses their power."

Response

One of the major scholars who have argued that socialism and democracy are compatible is the Austrian-born American economist Joseph Schumpeter, who was hostile to socialism. In his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (first published in 1942), he "emphasize[s] that political democracy was thoroughly compatible with socialism in its fullest sense."

In a 1963 address to the All India Congress Committee, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru stated: "Political Democracy has no meaning if it does not embrace economic democracy. And economic democracy is nothing but socialism."

Political historian Theodore Draper wrote: "I know of no political group which has resisted totalitarianism in all its guises more steadfastly than democratic socialists."

Robert Heilbroner: "There is, of course, no conflict between such a socialism and freedom as we have described it; indeed, this conception of socialism is the very epitome of these freedoms," referring to open association of individuals in political and social life; the democratization and humanization of work; the cultivation of personal talents and creativities.

Bayard Rustin:

For me, socialism has meaning only if it is democratic. Of the many claimants to socialism only one has a valid title—that socialism which views democracy as valuable per se, which stands for democracy unequivocally, and which continually modifies socialist ideas and programs in the light of democratic experience. This is the socialism of the labor, social-democratic, and socialist parties of Western Europe.

Kenneth Arrow argued that "We cannot be sure that the principles of democracy and socialism are compatible until we can observe a viable society following both principles. But there is no convincing evidence or reasoning which would argue that a democratic-socialist movement is inherently self-contradictory. Nor need we fear that gradual moves in the direction of increasing government intervention will lead to an irreversible move to “serfdom.” [referring to The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek]."

William Pfaff: "It might be argued that socialism ineluctably breeds state bureaucracy, which then imposes its own kinds of restrictions upon individual liberties. This is what the Scandinavians complain about. But Italy’s champion bureaucracy owes nothing to socialism. American bureaucracy grows as luxuriantly and behaves as officiously as any other."

See also

• Democratic capitalism
• List of democratic socialist parties and organizations
• Luxemburgism
• Workers' council

Bibliography

• Logie Barrow and Ian Bullock, 'Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement, 1880-1914'Cambridge University Press, 1996,ISBN 9780521560429
• Donald F. Busky, Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey Greenwood Publishing, 2000 ISBN 0-275-96886-3
• Draper, Hal (1966). "The Two Souls of Socialism". New Politics. 5 (1): 57–84.
• Michael Harrington, Socialism: Past and Future, Arcade Publishing /Little, Brown, 1989.
• Roy Hattersley Choose Freedom: The Future of Democratic Socialism, Penguin, 1987 ISBN 0-14-010494-1
• Ralph Miliband Socialism for a Sceptical Age, Polity Press, London, 1994
• David Reisman, ed, Democratic Socialism in Britain: Classic Texts in Economic and Political Thought, 1825–1952 Chatto and Pickering, 1996 ISBN 978-1-85196-285-3. (Includes texts by William Morris, George Bernard Shaw, GDH Cole, Richard Crossman and Aneurin Bevan.)
• Norman Thomas Democratic Socialism: a new appraisal, League for Industrial Democracy, 1953
• Jim Tomlinson Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945-1951 Cambridge University Press, 1997 ISBN 0-521-55095-5

External links

• What is Democratic Socialism? Q & A
• Joseph Schwartz and Jason Schulman Towards Freedom: The Theory and Practice of Democratic Socialism
• Democratic Socialism in India
• Ralph Miliband & Marcel Liebman. "Beyond Social Democracy"