Dalam istilah sosialisme demokratis, kata sifat demokratis digunakan untuk membedakan sosialis demokratis dengan sosialisme yang terilhami Marxisme-Leninisme, yang dipandang banyak orang dalam praktiknya sebagai tidak demokratis atau otoriter.[4][5] Sosialis demokrat menentang sistem politik Stalinis dan perencanaan ekonomi tipe Soviet, menolak bentuk pemerintahan yang dianggap otoriter dan ekonomi komando yang sangat tersentralisasi seperti di Uni Soviet dan negara Marxis-Leninis lainnya pada awal abad ke-20.[6] Sosialisme demokratis dibedakan dengan konsep demokrasi sosial abad ke-20 atas dasar bahwa sosialis demokrat lebih berkomitmen pada transformasi ekonomi dari kapitalisme menuju sosialisme dengan menggunakan sarana pemerintahan; sedangkan demokrat sosial modern menentang penghapusan total kapitalisme dan sebaliknya mendukung reformasi progresif dari kapitalisme.
[7]
Sosialisme demokratis didefinisikan dengan memiliki ekonomi sosialis di mana alat produksi (termasuk kekayaan) dimiliki atau dikendalikan secara sosial dan kolektif, bersamaan dengan sistem pemerintahan yang secara politik demokratis. Sosialisme demokratis menolak Marxisme-Leninisme dan turunannya seperti Stalinisme, Maoisme dan lainnya.[11]Peter Hain mengklasifikasikan sosialisme demokratis bersama dengan sosialisme liberal sebagai bentuk sosialisme dari bawahantiotoritarian (menggunakan istilah yang dipopulerkan Hal Draper), berbeda dengan Stalinisme, sebuah varian dari sosialisme negara. Bagi Hain, kesenjangan demokratis/otoriter ini lebih penting daripada kesenjangan revolusioner/reformis.[12] Partisipasi aktif penduduk secara keseluruhan dan pekerja secara khusus dalam pengelolaan ekonomi merupakan ciri sosialisme demokratis, sementara nasionalisasi dan perencanaan ekonomi tersentralisasi (dikendalikan oleh pemerintahan terpilih atau tidak) adalah ciri dari sosialisme negara. Argumen serupa yang lebih kompleks dikemukakan oleh Nicos Poulantzas.[13] Draper sendiri menggunakan istilah sosialisme revolusioner-demokratis sebagai tipe sosialisme dari bawah dalam The Two Souls of Socialism, dia menulis: "Pembicara utama di Internasional Kedua tentang Sosialisme-dari-Bawah revolusioner-demokratis [...] adalah Rosa Luxemburg, yang dengan tegas menempatkan kepercayaan dan harapannya pada perjuangan spontan kelas pekerja bebas sehingga pembuat mitos menciptakan "teori spontanitas".[14] Demikian pula, dia juga menulis tentang Eugene V. Debs: "sosialisme Debsian" membangkitkan respon luar biasa dari hati rakyat, tetapi Debs tidak memiliki penerus sebagai mimbar sosialisme revolusioner-demokratis".[15]
Sosialisme Afrika telah dan terus menjadi ideologi utama di seluruh benua. Di Afrika Selatan, Kongres Nasional Afrika, meski tetap berafiliasi dengan Sosialis Internasional, meninggalkan kesetiaan sosialisnya setelah mendapatkan kekuasaan pada 1994 dan mengikuti jalan neoliberal.[butuh rujukan] Pada periode 2005-2007, negara ini didera oleh banyak protes dari komunitas miskin. Salah satunya memunculkan gerakan massa penghuni gubuk bernama Abahlali baseMjondolo yang terus berjuang untuk perencanaan rakyat banyak dan melawan melawan pembentukkan ekonomi pasar pada tanah dan perumahan meskipun mendapat penindasan besar-besaran dari polisi. Pada 2013, Serikat Nasional Pekerja Metal Seluruh Afrika, serikat pekerja terbesar di negara ini, memilih untuk menarik dukungan dari Kongres Nasional Afrika dan Partai Komunis Afrika Selatan dan membentuk partai sosialis untuk melindungi kepentingan kelas pekerja.[22] Partai ini bernama Front Bersatu.
Di Kanada, sosialis demokratis Federasi Persemakmuran Koperasi (CCF), pendahulu demokrat sosial Partai Demokratis Baru (NDP), memiliki keberhasilan yang signifikan dalam perpolitikan provinsi. Pada 1944, CCF Saskatchewan membentuk pemerintahan sosialis pertama di Amerika Utara. Di tingkat federal, NDP menjadi Oposisi Resmi pada 2011-2015.
Di Jepang, Partai Komunis Jepang tidak menganjurkan revolusi kekerasan, melainkan mengusulkan revolusi demokratis untuk mencapai "perubahan demokratis dalam politik dan ekonomi". Ada minat yang muncul kembali terhadap Partai Komunis Jepang di antara kalangan pekerja dan anak muda karena krisis finansial pada akhir 2000-an.[27][28]
Pada 2010, terdapat 270 kibbutz di Israel. Pabrik dan pertaniannya menyumbang 9% dari hasil industri Israel, yang bernilai 8 miliar dollar AS; dan 40% keluaran agrikultur Israel, bernilai lebih dari 1,7 miliar dollar AS.[32] Beberapa kibbutz juga mengembangkan industri besar berteknologi tinggi dan industri militer. Juga pada tahun 2010, Kibbutz Sasa yang beranggotakan 200 orang, menghasilkan pendapatan 850 juta dollar AS dari industri plastik-militernya.[33]
Beberapa tahun terakhir Australia mengalami peningkatan dalam minat sosialisme, khususnya di kalangan anak muda.[35] Paling kuat ada di Victoria, di mana tiga partai sosialis bergabung menjadi Sosialis Victoria, bertujuan untuk mengatasi permasalahan perumahan dan transportasi. Selandia Baru juga memiliki iklim sosialis, meski sebagian besar didominasi oleh kelompok Trotskyis.Di Melanesia, sosialisme Melanesia berkembang pada 1980-an, terinspirasi dari sosialisme Afrika. Bertujuan untuk mencapai kemerdekaan penuh dari Britania dan Prancis di wilayah Melanesia dan membentuk uni federal Melanesia. Gerakan ini populer dengan gerakan kemerdekaan Kaledonia Baru.[butuh rujukan][36]
Pendukung kontemporer sosialisme pasar berpendapat bahwa alasan utama kekurangan ekonomi dari ekonomi terencana tipe Soviet adalah kegagalan mereka untuk membuat kriteria aturan dan operasional untuk operasi yang efisien bagi badan usaha negara, serta kombinasi dengan kurangnya demokrasi dalam sistem politik.[41]
Di bawah ini merupakan daftar partai yang memiliki ideologi sosialisme demokratis atau sebagiannya, dan saat ini memiliki perwakilan di badan legislatif di negaranya.
menunjukkan partai yang memerintah (termasuk sebagai mitra junior koalisi)
^Busky, Donald F. (20 July 2000). Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey. Praeger. pp. 7–8. ISBN978-0275968861. "Democratic socialism is the wing of the socialist movement that combines a belief in a socially owned economy with that of political democracy."
^Anderson, Gary L.; Herr, Kathryn G. (2007). Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice. SAGE Publications. p. 448. ISBN978-1412918121. "Some have endorsed the concept of market socialism, a post-capitalist economy that retains market competition but socialises the means of production, and in some versions, extends democracy to the workplace. Some holdout for a non-market, participatory economy. All democratic socialists agree on the need for a democratic alternative to capitalism."
^ abKurian, George Thomas; Alt, James E.; Chambers, Simone; Garrett, Geoffrey; Levi, Margaret; McClain Paula D. (12 October 2010). The Encyclopedia of Political Science Set. CQ Press. p. 401. ISBN978-1933116440. "Though some democratic socialists reject the revolutionary model and advocate a peaceful transformation to socialism carried out by democratic means, they also reject the social democratic view that capitalist societies can be successfully reformed through extensive state intervention within capitalism. In the view of democratic socialists, capitalism, based on the primacy of private property, generates inherent inequalities of wealth and power and a dominant egoism that are incompatible with the democratic values of freedom, equality, and solidarity. Only a socialist society can fully realise democratic practices. The internal conflicts within capitalism require a transition to socialism. Private property must be superseded by a form of collective ownership."
^Busky, Donald F. (20 July 2000). Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey. Praeger. pp. 7–8. ISBN978-0275968861. "Sometimes simply called socialism, more often than not, the adjective democratic is added by democratic socialists to attempt to distinguish themselves from Communists who also call themselves socialists. All but communists, or more accurately, Marxist-Leninists, believe that modern-day communism is highly undemocratic and totalitarian in practice, and democratic socialists wish to emphasise by their name that they disagree strongly with the Marxist-Leninist brand of socialism."
^Kurian, George Thomas; Alt, James E.; Chambers, Simone; Garrett, Geoffrey; Levi, Margaret; McClain Paula D. (12 October 2010). The Encyclopedia of Political Science Set. CQ Press. p. 401. ISBN978-1933116440. "Democratic socialism is a term meant to distinguish a form of socialism that falls somewhere between authoritarian and centralised forms of socialism on the one hand and social democracy on the other. The rise of authoritarian socialism in the twentieth century in the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence generated this new distinction."
^Prychito, David L. (31 July 2002). Markets, Planning, and Democracy: Essays After the Collapse of Communism. Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 72. ISBN978-1840645194. "It is perhaps less clearly understood that advocates of democratic socialism (who are committed to socialism in the above sense but opposed to Stalinist-style command planning) advocate a decentralised socialism, whereby the planning process itself (the integration of all productive units into one huge organisation) would follow the workers’ self-management principle."
^Eatwell, Eoger; Wright, Anthony (1 March 1999). Contemporary Political Ideologies: Second Edition. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 80. ISBN978-0826451736. "So too with ‘democratic socialism’, a term coined by its adherents as an act of disassociation from the twentieth-century realities of undemocratic socialism…but also, at least in some modes, intended to reaffirm a commitment to system transformation rather than a merely meliorist social democracy."
^Anderson, Gary L.; Herr, Kathryn G. (2007). Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice. SAGE Publications. p. 447. ISBN978-1412918121. "[...] the division between social democrats and democratic socialists. The former had made peace with capitalism and concentrated on humanising the system. Social democrats supported and tried to strengthen the basic institutions of the welfare state--pensions for all, public health care, public education, unemployment insurance. They supported and tried to strengthen the labour movement. The latter, as socialists, argued that capitalism could never be sufficiently humanised, and that trying to suppress the economic contradictions in one area would only see them emerge in a different guise elsewhere. (E.g., if you push unemployment too low, you'll get inflation; if job security is too strong, labour discipline breaks down.)"
^Sargent, Lyman Tower (2008). "The Principles of Democratic Socialism". Contemporary Political Ideologies: A Comparative Analysis, 14th Edition. Wadsworth Publishing. p. 118. ISBN978-0495569398. "Still, the origins of contemporary democratic socialism are best located in the early to mid-nineteenth century writings of the so-called utopian socialists, Robert Owen (1771-1858), Charles Fourier (1772-1837), Claude-Henri Saint-Simon (1760-1825), and Etienne Cabet (1788-1856). All these writers proposed village communities combining industrial and agricultural production, owned in varying ways, by the inhabitants themselves. Thus the essence of early socialism was public ownership of the means of production. These theorists also included varying forms of democratic political decision making, but they all distrusted the ability of people raised under capitalism to understand what was in their own best interest."
^Busky, Donald F. (July 20, 2000). Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey. Praeger. hlm. 7–8. ISBN978-0275968861. Sometimes simply called socialism, more often than not, the adjective democratic is added by democratic socialists to attempt to distinguish themselves from Communists who also call themselves socialists. All but communists, or more accurately, Marxist-Leninists, believe that modern-day communism is highly undemocratic and totalitarian in practice, and democratic socialists wish to emphasise by their name that they disagree strongly with the Marxist-Leninist brand of socialism.
^Hain, Peter (1995). Ayes to the Left. Lawrence and Wishart.
^Anderson and Herr, Gary L. and Kathryn G. (2007). Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice. SAGE Publications. hlm. 448. ISBN978-1412918121. Some have endorsed the concept of market socialism, a post-capitalist economy that retains market competition but socializes the means of production, and in some versions,extends democracy to the workplace. Some holdout for a non-market, participatory economy. All democratic socialists agree on the need for a democratic alternative to capitalism.
^Prychito, David L. (July 31, 2002). Markets, Planning, and Democracy: Essays After the Collapse of Communism. Edward Elgar Publishing. hlm. 72. ISBN978-1840645194. It is perhaps less clearly understood that advocates of democratic socialism (who are committed to socialism in the above sense but opposed to Stalinist-style command planning) advocate a decentralized socialism, whereby the planning process itself (the integration of all productive units into one huge organization) would follow the workers' self-management principle.
^Debs, Eugene V (1912). "The Socialist Party's Appeal". The Independent.
^Thomas, Norman (2 February 1936). Is the New Deal Socialism? (Speech). Chicago Democratic Socialists of America. Diarsipkan dari versi asli tanggal 12 July 2010. Diakses tanggal 28 January 2016."Salinan arsip". Diarsipkan dari versi asli tanggal 2010-07-12. Diakses tanggal 2019-05-18.
^Gregory and Stuart, Paul and Robert (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First. South-Western College Pub. hlm. 152. ISBN0-618-26181-8. [...] market socialism's contemporary supporters argue that planned socialism failed because it was based on totalitarianism rather than democracy and that it failed to create rules for the efficient operation of state enterprises.
^ ab"What Sinn Féin stands for". sinnfein.ie. Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin is a 32-County party striving for an end to partition on the island of Ireland and the establishment of a democratic socialist republic.
^Elias, Anwen (2006). "From 'full national status' to 'independence' in Europe: The case of Plaid Cymru — the Party of Wales". European Integration and the Nationalities Question. Routledge: 194.
^Armenian Revolutionary Federation Program(PDF). Diarsipkan dari versi asli(PDF) tanggal 2017-10-20. Diakses tanggal 2019-05-16. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation in its world outlook and traditions is essentially a socialist, democratic, and revolutionary party.
^Patsouras, Louis (2005). Marx in Context. iUniverse. hlm. 265. In Chile, where a large democratic socialist movement was in place for decades, a democratic socialist, Salvadore Allende, led a popular front electoral coalition, including Communists, to victory in 1970.
^Medina, Eden (2014). Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile. MIT Press. hlm. 39. [...] in Allende's democratic socialism.
^Winn, Peter (2004). Victims of the Chilean Miracle: Workers and Neoliberalism in the Pinochet Era, 1973–2002. Duke University Press. hlm. 16. The Allende government that Pinochet overthrew in 1973 had been elected in 1970 on a platform of pioneering a democratic road to a democratic socialism.
^Morgan, Kenneth O. (2001). Britain Since 1945: The People's Peace. Oxford University Press. hlm. 111. The last years of Attlee's democratic socialist regime [...].
^Beech, Matt (2012). "The British Welfare State and its Discontents". Dalam Connelly, James; Hayward, Jack. The Withering of the Welfare State: Regression. Palgrave Macmillan. hlm. 90. Attlee's goal was a democratic socialist society [...].
^Livingston Hall, Anthony (2007). The Ipinions Journal: Commentaries on Current Events, Volume 2. iUniverse. hlm. 18. Chileans elected Michelle Bachelet as their new president [...] [b]ecause her advocacy of democratic socialism.
^Gal, Allon (1991). David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State. Indiana University Press. hlm. 216. Ben-Gurion, Zionist and socialist-democrat [...].
^Jones, Clive A. (2013). Soviet Jewish Aliyah, 1989-92: Impact and Implications for Israel and the Middle East. Routledge. hlm. 61. [...] Mapai, the democratic socialist party of David Ben Gurion.
^ abcdefgNavarro, Armando (2012). Global Capitalist Crisis and the Second Great Depression: Egalitarian Systemic Models for Change. Lexington Books. hlm. 299.
^Munck, Ronaldo (2012). Contemporary Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan. hlm. 119. In a broad historical sense Chávez has undoubtedly played a progressive role but he is clearly not a democratic socialist [...].
^ abIber, Patrick (Spring 2016). "The Path to Democratic Socialism: Lessons from Latin America". Dissent. "Most of the world's democratic socialist intellectuals have been skeptical of Latin America's examples [including Chavez and Correa], citing their authoritarian qualities and occasional cults of personality. To critics, the appropriate label for these governments is not socialism but populism."
^ abHanhimäki, Jussi M.; Westad, Odd Arne (2004). The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts. Oxford University Press. hlm. 441. Palme: Why I am a Democratic Socialist, 1982.
^Moraes, Frank (2007). Jawaharlal Nehru. Jaico Publishing House. hlm. 187.
^Powers, Roger S.; Vogele, William B.; Bond, Douglas; Kruegler, Christopher (1997). Protest, Power, and Change: An Encyclopedia of Nonviolent Action from Act-Up to Women's Suffrage. Taylor & Francis. hlm. 347. ISBN9781136764820.
^Hoadley, J. Stephen (1975). The Future of Portuguese Timor. Institute of Southeast Asian. hlm. 25. Ramos Horta during his December 1974 trip to Australia was careful to distinguish between Fretilin and Frelimo, arguing that his own party was a democratic socialist party [...].
^Anwar, Rosihan (2010). Sutan Sjahrir: True Democrat, Fighter for Humanity, 1909–1966. Penerbit Buku Kompas. hlm. 115. Sjahrir [...] called the ideology he had thought up and that he followed 'democratic socialism' [...].
^Adams, Ian (1993). Political Ideology Today. Manchester University Press. hlm. 139. Tony Benn's socialism is distinctive in the importance he places in combining socialism with radical democracy.
^Hill, Dave (2002). Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory. Lexington Books. hlm. 188. Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone can be depicted as two of the leaders of the democratic socialist (or 'hard') left [...].
^Tupy, Marian (1 March 2016). "Bernie Is Not a Socialist and America Is Not Capitalist". The Atlantic. Diakses tanggal 26 March 2019. First, Sanders is not a socialist, but a social democrat. Second, the United States does not have a strictly capitalist economy, but a mixed one.
^Cooper, Ryan (10 January 2018). "Bernie Sanders and the rise of American social democracy". The Week. Diakses tanggal 26 March 2019. Despite Sanders' self-identification as a 'democratic socialist,' all this is classic social democracy ...
^Barro, Josh (20 October 2015). "Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialist Capitalist". The New York Times. Diakses tanggal 26 March 2019. 'It's not socialism, it's social democracy, which is a big difference,' said Mike Konczal, an economic policy expert at the left-wing Roosevelt Institute.
^Calaprice, Alice; Lipscombe, Trevor (2005). Albert Einstein: A Biography. Greenwood. hlm. 61. ISBN9780313330803. He committed himself to the democratic- socialist goals that became popular among intellectuals in Europe at the time.
^Orwell, George (1968) [1958]. Bott, George, ed. Selected Writings. London: Heinemann. hlm. 103. ISBN0-435-13675-5. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.
^Alan Ryan (1981). Bertrand Russell: A Political Life. Macmillan. hlm. 87. ISBN9780374528201. None the less Russell joined the ILP [Independent Labour Party] and declared himself a democratic socialist, then and thereafter.
^"Andrei Sakharov". Spartacus Educational. He also advocated the integration of the communist and capitalist systems to form what he called democratic socialism.