• vzqq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    Democratic Socialist is mostly a U.S. centric (post) Cold War era term, designed to work around red scare propaganda. Older references I have been able to find are mostly either French mistranslations of social democrat (the grammar has a different word order) or intended as adjectives (socialists who are democratic).

    In 1944 it would have been considered a distinction without difference.

    • epicstove@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      From my understanding, both Social democrat and Democratic socialist were interchangeable terms at one point, but eventiay came to mean 2 different ideologies.

      Democratic socialist are socialist. they want to bring about socialism under a democratic system.

      Social democrat want to apply socialist principals to the existing democratic, capitalist framework. Examples of this would be the Scandinavian countries.

      • vzqq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        “Democratic socialists” are just called “socialists” in places where they do not have to contend with red scare propaganda. Almost all European countries have or used to have socialist parties.