Democratic Socialism

This essay traces the development of the phrase “democratic socialism” from the early nineteenth century to the present, especially in relation to “social democracy” and “communism.” These meanings have changed over time, with democratic socialism and social democracy indicating the opposite of what they meant a century ago when social democracy was the more and democratic socialism the less radical position. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline of the post–World War II social-democratic compromise created space for a radical democratic socialism to flourish in our time. Twenty-first-century democratic socialism seeks to democratize the workplace and reorient the state, against the power of the organized capitalist class, to serve the needs of the many rather than the desires of the few.