Democratic Socialism is closer to socialism than communism. It literally means using democracy to transform the economic system to be socialist.
I’d consider myself a democratic socialist myself, as I believe that workers should own the businesses they work for instead of consolidating the power to a small amount of executives and shareholders who only care about making more profit than they did the previous quarter. I also believe this would limit the possibility of corruption by preventing extreme wealth from existing in the first place.
I do not consider myself a communist because I don’t believe that centralized control is a good idea in most cases. An exception to that for me would be a single payer healthcare system, where the government guarantees healthcare to all of its citizens and visitors free at the point of service.
Here I reckon you’ve made an important point. Socialism is economics, not governance. Well, in a democracy anyway. Perhaps that should be indented. I think it’s one of the biggest barriers to being comfortable with the word itself.
Workers can own businesses today, so there’s nothing stopping that from happening. There are lots of worker owned collectives out there. The major difference between Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism is that Democratic Socialism wants to nationalise many categories of business, ie. to have the government run them.
This tends to not go well where it’s been tried because once business and government meld it becomes an unstoppable force that eats everything and has no accountability to anyone or oversight by anyone, and rapidly becomes inefficient and ineffective. I much prefer the Scandinavian way of mass deployment of labor unions, so that labor is a powerful force in it’s own right rather than one that’s ruled by a powerful merged political/business elite.
The difference between it being an option and it being mandated is that when the level of greed we see today is allowed to exist, then it will exist, and power will slowly and inevitably be taken away from the worker class.
There are also multiple types of socialism, and socialism doesn’t necessarilly mean government ownership specifically. Check out Professor Richard Wolff’s excellent lectures on the topic.
I understand social democracy very well and I don’t think it’s a good system because the capitalist class ultimately stays in charge, which will inevitably lead to corruption and the slow reverting of social services. I used to be a social democrat myself around when Bernie started to run for president the first time, so I understand why the premise is popular.
My idea of socialism includes:
Workers owning the businesses they work for with no exceptions, which eliminates worker exploitation and enshittification
Having a hard wealth cap (both realized and unrealized) of between $10-50 million tied to inflation
A universal basic income that is enough to thrive, which will allow people to persue hobbies and become entrepeneurs without fear of failure
Having all basic necessities be guaranteed and universally available without means testing (healthcare, housing, utilities, food, etc.)
A universal right to dignity and privacy (eliminate mass surveillance both from governments and from companies, police and prisons must treat people with respect, similar to the Norweigan system)
Create a government organization that publicly audits code to ensure that neither malicious foreign or domestic actors have the ability to hack into computers to the best of their ability, and have a state bug bounty program for all open source code
Have the government own essential infrastructure as voted on by the people (public infrastructure, prisons, the military, schools, etc.)
Have a more direct form of democracy, eliminating representatives in favor of direct voting on legislation wherever possible to aid in abolishing corruption
Eliminate the Supreme Court’s ability to unilaterally enact laws
Public funding of elections where representatives are needed, along with a new voting system (RCV, STAR, etc. depending on what mathmeticians agree represents the people best for each individual scenario)
Ban all advertising, especially political. If any individual is getting paid to speak in any form that is not directly advertising, who pays must be disclosed or else face prosecution
Ban all for-profit news organizations, excluding independent outlets who receive their funding from small-dollar donations
Ensure that nobody is above the law by allowing the public as a whole to sue individuals and organizations, even if they were not directly affected by whatever crime has been committed
And that’s just what I came up with and is by no means comprehensive.
Democratic Socialism is closer to socialism than communism. It literally means using democracy to transform the economic system to be socialist.
I’d consider myself a democratic socialist myself, as I believe that workers should own the businesses they work for instead of consolidating the power to a small amount of executives and shareholders who only care about making more profit than they did the previous quarter. I also believe this would limit the possibility of corruption by preventing extreme wealth from existing in the first place.
I do not consider myself a communist because I don’t believe that centralized control is a good idea in most cases. An exception to that for me would be a single payer healthcare system, where the government guarantees healthcare to all of its citizens and visitors free at the point of service.
Here I reckon you’ve made an important point. Socialism is economics, not governance. Well, in a democracy anyway. Perhaps that should be indented. I think it’s one of the biggest barriers to being comfortable with the word itself.
Workers can own businesses today, so there’s nothing stopping that from happening. There are lots of worker owned collectives out there. The major difference between Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism is that Democratic Socialism wants to nationalise many categories of business, ie. to have the government run them.
This tends to not go well where it’s been tried because once business and government meld it becomes an unstoppable force that eats everything and has no accountability to anyone or oversight by anyone, and rapidly becomes inefficient and ineffective. I much prefer the Scandinavian way of mass deployment of labor unions, so that labor is a powerful force in it’s own right rather than one that’s ruled by a powerful merged political/business elite.
The difference between it being an option and it being mandated is that when the level of greed we see today is allowed to exist, then it will exist, and power will slowly and inevitably be taken away from the worker class.
There are also multiple types of socialism, and socialism doesn’t necessarilly mean government ownership specifically. Check out Professor Richard Wolff’s excellent lectures on the topic.
That’s why I wish there was better understanding of social democracy.
I understand social democracy very well and I don’t think it’s a good system because the capitalist class ultimately stays in charge, which will inevitably lead to corruption and the slow reverting of social services. I used to be a social democrat myself around when Bernie started to run for president the first time, so I understand why the premise is popular.
My idea of socialism includes:
And that’s just what I came up with and is by no means comprehensive.