1. A phoenix and its
ashes
Democratic socialism arises like a phoenix from the ashes of
its predecessor. After the downfall of
the Soviet bloc and pompous proclamations of the “end of history” and “no
alternative” to capitalism, the notion of democratic socialism – perceived as
the antidote to the excesses of capitalism - again starts gaining
popularity. This is evidenced by opinion
polls as well as swelling membership in Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
– an organization whose central mission entails spreading socialist ideology in
the country considered to be the bastion of unbridled capitalism.
As the phrase “democratic socialism” again entered the
political discourse in the US, this raises the question what is democratic
socialism anyway? Indeed, this is the
question that people frequently ask DSA activists Answering this question is muddied by the
fact that this newly reborn socialist phoenix is often associated with the
ashes of its predecessor – socialism of the Soviet bloc countries. How is “democratic socialism” different from
the Soviet version of socialism which, as it is commonly believed, was a quite
nasty authoritarian and inefficient system that collapsed under its own weight?
While the legacy of the soviet system is still being
debated, the reality is that none of the Soviet bloc countries were socialist
even by their own admission. Socialism
was merely a goal that, according to the official state propaganda, these
countries were supposed achieve in some unspecified future, but at the current
historical juncture they implemented the so-called “dictatorship of the
proletariat” – or consolidation of all political power in the political party
ostensibly representing the proletariat.
The official justification of the dictatorship of the proletariat was a
threat posed by “class enemies” and foreign agents to the attainment of
socialism in the future. To what extent
that threat was real (after all, imperialist countries like the US and Great
Brittan have a long record of orchestrating coups and otherwise meddling in the
affairs of other countries) or manufactured for political expediency may be
subject to debate. The main point is
that the Soviet bloc countries officially espoused a certain level of
authoritarianism as the necessary measure to achieve socialism in some
unspecified future than never materialized.
This distinction between the authoritarian means and the
socialist ends is not mere semantic sophistry.
The logic of equating an entire political philosophy or belief system
with practices of its followers in one place and time may serve propaganda
purposes but is fundamentally flawed.
Few people would seriously argue that Christianity is characterized by
the Spanish Inquisition and child abuse by priests, Islam is characterized by
terrorism and suicide bombers, or capitalism is characterized by enslaving of
Blacks and genocide of Native Americans.
The logic is faulty, because there are adherents of Christianity, Islam,
capitalism, and socialism who are free of the aforementioned excesses, and
those excesses are not limited to the adherents of any particular political
philosophy or religion.
Neither socialism, nor capitalism, or for that matter, any
system of religious beliefs can be identified with a particular set of
nation-states. Instead, each of these
concepts represents a set of principles that can be implemented in various ways
by political regimes governing nation states.
Christianity practiced in Poland is different from Christianity
practiced in Sweden, Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia is different from Islam
practiced in Uzbekistan, capitalism practiced in Germany is different from
capitalism practiced in the United States.
To define these doctrines, we need to focus on their core principles not
on their implementations. To understand
the essence of a phoenix it is necessary to grasp the concept of rebirth, not to
rummage through the ashes.
2. A break from
history
Socialism is a political philosophy that gained prominence
in the 19th century in response to capitalist industrialization and
its discontents. The essence of that
philosophy was to keep good things brought by industrialization, which can be
summarized as liberation from the “idiocy of rural life” and the production of
vast quantities of useful stuff, while getting rid of its discontents – general
unavailability of that useful stuff to people who actually produce it. The root cause of that discontent, according
to the 19th century thinking, was private ownership of the means of
production, which allowed factory owners to sell the stuff produced by the workers
and pocket the proceeds, instead of sharing them with the people who actually
produced them. Therefore, the socialist
remedy to the discontents of industrialization was changing the ownership of
the means production – from private to social.
Social ownership of the means of production is the common
theme of various strands of the 19th century socialist doctrines,
even though those doctrines gave divergent responses on the form of that social
ownership as well as the role of the markets and money in the distribution of
the produced stuff. This 19th
century concept of socialism as social ownership of the means of production
survived to the 21st century.
It is also the ash of the previous phoenix that stains the feathers of
the newly born one.
The chief reason is that the concept of the ownership of the
means of production evolved since the 19th century. Today, most of the economic activity is
conducted by joint stock corporations whose key feature is separation of
ownership from control. Legal ownership
of a corporation may be vested in an entity that has little or no control of
its operations, such as a holding company or a government. Economic ownership, defined as exposure to
risks associated with its operation, is typically distributed among shareholders,
both natural persons and institutions, who also have no direct control of the
operations of the corporation whose stock they own. The operational control is exercised by the
management, who nominally are employees, but who often have considerable
ownership interest through stock ownership.
It is therefore clear that ownership of the means of
production can be socialized to include all employees through Employee Stock
Ownership Plans (ESOP) or in an extreme form, the entire society by distributing
shares to every citizen. This, however,
will not make the corporation any more socialistic if the actual control of the
operations is concentrated in the hands of the management. The economies of the Soviet bloc countries
are a case in point. Although the
majority of the means of production were nominally owned by “the people”, their
operations were controlled by the management and state planning boards, while the
workers, let alone “the people” had very little say how these companies were
run, what they produced, and how they distributed it, how much they paid in
wages, etc. In that respect, they were
no fundamentally different from “capitalist” corporations.
It is therefore clear that the 19th century
definition of socialism as social ownership of production is no longer adequate
in the 21st century economy.
Not that the fundamental idea of social ownership is irrelevant or
wrong, but that the concept of ownership evolved and has been separated from
operational control. And it is the
operational control not legal ownership that matters.
The second limitation of the old definition of socialism
stems from the macroeconomic dimension, namely that the producers, whether
privately or collectively owned, operate in an environment in which they have
to interact with other producers to obtain raw materials and intermediate
products as well as with customers buying their finished products. This unavoidably creates the markets in which
exchange of goods and services must be negotiated by the producers and
consumers. The unavoidability of the
markets is demonstrated by the fact that they existed even in centrally planned
economies of the Soviet bloc countries, which distributed raw materials,
intermediate products, and finished good by a central plan. Despite these allocations, firms had
shortages of some materials or intermediate products and surpluses of other, so
they developed a secondary market system outside the central plan in which
surpluses were traded among firms.
The importance of markets in complex economic systems was
recognized by many socialist theorists.
Among them, the Polish economist Oskar Lange argued that markets can not
only function in a socialist economy, but they can function better than they do
under capitalism. Managers of socialist
enterprises can set their prices the same way as managers of capitalist firms –
by observing changes in supply and demand and adjusting prices accordingly, by
trial and error. However, a socialist
economy has an advantage in the allocation of capital, which is based on
genuine social need rather than interests of individual capitalists, according
to Lange. To illustrate, the capitalist
Elon Musk can invest vast sums of money to boost his ego, like sending his car
into the outer space. In a socialist
economy that money would be invested in more socially useful pursuits, such as
public transit or education.
The macro-economic dimension – efficient allocation of
capital resources and distribution of goods to optimally meet social needs –
cannot be addressed by the form of ownership alone. A worker cooperative needs capital and has to
sell its product just as an individually owned firm does. On the other hand, consumers do not care
about ownership form of good producers. What matters to them is the
availability, quality, and price of the goods and services they need. All these aspects are affected by
macro-economic factors that are set by government policy in socialist and capitalist
economies alike. It is government that
regulates the supply of money and its availability to different producers,
decides which goods are public and which must be procured through the market, controls
the prices of many critical goods such as energy or food, sets minimum wage,
etc. The only difference is what policy
goals are being pursued and who wins and who loses as a result.
We need a new definition of socialism that, while true to
its 19th century roots, can nonetheless address two most important
aspects of modern economy: the actual control of the production process and
macroeconomic policy affecting production and distribution of goods and
services. That definition must also
clearly and plausibly show that socialism a more favorable alternative to
capitalism.
Capitalist doctrines conceptualize capitalism as a
production and exchange of goods and services through voluntary market
transactions among private parties free of unnecessary regulations. The policy goal in such a system is to
protect private property rights and make sure that markets operate free from
any impediments. This free operation of
the markets, Milton Friedman, one of the chief proponents of this doctrine
claims, will result not only in optimal distribution of economic benefits in a
society, but also in elimination of social “bads” such as exploitation and
discrimination in the work place.
Yet, even the most cursory observation of a capitalist markets
revels that the expected outcome - optimal distribution of economic benefits in
society – often fails to materialize. While
Elon Musk can blow millions of dollars to send his car to outer space, millions
of people do not have adequate transportation, which impedes their ability find
employment. While Hollywood celebrities
can spend millions on plastic surgeries, millions cannot afford even the most
rudimentary health care. The super-rich
not only waste money on wanton pursuits, but use their resources to affect
public policies to their own advantage at the expense of the majority of the
population. A recent study of US
politics by two Princeton University researchers found that economic elites
have substantial impact on US government policy, while average citizens and
mass-based interest groups have little or no influence. What is more, as the markets became freer
thanks to globalization, working conditions in the developed economies worsened,
wages declined, and the weak position of labor created ample opportunities for
discrimination of workers.
So for the socialism to offer a more attractive alternative
to capitalism, it must meet tow conditions.
First, it must plausibly show that it can avoid the negative
consequences of capitalism – wasteful consumption of the wealthy while most
basic social needs are unfulfilled, subversion of democracy by concentrated
wealth, and increasingly exploitative conditions of work for a vast number of
people. Second, it must also ascertain
that the good things that the capitalist economy created, high living standards
and freedom of choice and movement, will be enhanced, or at least not be
jeopardized or diminished by its policies.
To this end, the following conceptualization of socialism is being
proposed here:
Socialism is any set of public policies that aim to optimize economic well-being
and freedom to achieve a full human potential for all citizens by prioritizing,
where appropriate, public goods over individual consumption, and democratic
decision making on the ‘one person one vote’ principle over concentration of
decision making authority in individuals.
The concept of actualization of a full human potential –
popularized by the psychologist Abraham Maslow but having its roots in the
philosophy of Aristotle – emphasizes the holistic nature of human needs,
ranging from basic physiological needs, such as food or rest, to the needs for
safety and security, the need to belong and be loved, and to the need for
respect, social status and self-esteem. A
political system is “correct” is it enables actualization of the full human
potential of all citizens, and “deviant” if it aims only at the advantage of
the rulers.
While the professed aim of socialism – fulfillment of human
needs and desires – may not substantially differ from the promises of
capitalism, socialism fundamentally differs from capitalism in the means
through which it pursues those aims – enabling achieving full human potential
through provision of public goods and democratic decision making on the one
person one vote (as opposed to votes proportional to shares of wealth held),
especially in the workplace.
3. Prioritizing
public goods
In conventional economic theory, a “natural state” of the
economy is exchange of goods and service through market transactions. What makes is “natural” is a belief that
market exchange will invariably create a situation in which all human needs and
sacrifices to meet those needs will be balanced at some optimal equilibrium point. However, certain types of goods or services cannot
be efficiently distributed through ordinary market exchanges (goods for
payment). This happens if it is too
expensive or impractical to exclude people unwilling or unable to pay for a
good from enjoying its benefits or utility (the so-called non-excludability
feature). For example, if fire
protection were offered only to the clients paying the market prices, it would
not be very effective, because unextinguished fires in the non-covered houses
could easily spread to the covered ones.
To avert that, fire fighters could extinguish fires in the non-covered
houses as well, but the drawback of this solution a “free rider effect.” Knowing that their homes will receive fire
protection regardless of whether they pay for it or not, many people would
decide to “free ride” and not pay for the service. This, in turn, will bankrupt the fire
protection providers.
Conventional economic theory offers a more efficient solution
to this problem – fund the service though compulsory payments, such as taxes or
insurance premiums, levied from all potential beneficiaries. However, for this solution to work, the good
or service in question must have another property – it must be “non-rival”,
which means that one person’s receiving the benefit of a good does not diminish
another person’s benefit. To use the
fire protection example, if fire fighters save my neighbor’s house, it does not
diminish the level of fire protection I receive, and in fact it enhances
it. By contrast, if my neighbor eats a
cake, there is nothing left for me. All
goods that are both “non-excludable” and “non-rival” are more efficiently delivered
through institutional arrangement involving compulsory cost sharing such as
insurance premiums or taxes, rather than through ordinary market
transactions. As a result, this class of
goods and services is called “public goods.”
In conventional economic theory, private goods exchanged
through market transactions are assumed to be a “natural state” of any economy,
while public goods are an exception due to their peculiar combination of
non-excludability and non-rivalry.
However, this assumption is an article of faith grounded in ideology of
the market rather than an accurate reflection of reality. In reality, there is nothing “natural” about
being a private or a public good. All
goods and services are social constructs and as such their properties reflect preferences
of societies that create them. They have
a certain degree of non-excludability and non-rivalry, depending on the
institutional mode (or “institutional sector” in the macro-economic parlance)
of their production and delivery, which in turn is defined by social circumstance
and government policy. Take, for
example, roads. If the government builds
them using general taxes and makes them available to everyone, they are public
goods. That is, it is not possible to
exclude non-payers from using them, and one person’s using them does not
diminish the utility of another person using them. If the government turns them into toll roads,
however, they become private goods.
Although they are still non-rival (unless congested beyond capacity, but
that is a temporary limitation affecting every user equally), non-payers are
prevented from using them. Another
example is health care or education – they can be a public good and funded by
taxes or private goods and funded by service fees paid by patients or students.
Being “public” does not necessarily means that a good or
service is provided free of charge to anyone .
It means that the procurement of that good or service is funded through
public funding of some sort (e.g. taxes or insurance premiums) and made
available to all eligible people.
However, the recipients of such goods may be asked to pay an additional user
fee to prevent waste and promote efficiency.
Examples include “co-pays” based on the actual visit in addition to
insurance premiums, or public transit fare or toll in addition to transportation
taxes. What distinguishes these user
fees for public goods from private market transactions is that the former are
set only to facilitate an efficient use of a particular resource and rarely, if
ever, cover the cost of procuring them.
The difference between user fees and the actual operating costs is
covered by public cost sharing mechanism (premiums or taxes). By contrast, private market transactions must
fully cover the cost of procuring the goods, including remuneration of all
people involved in this process as workers or owners of capital.
It is the government policy and social circumstance that
determine not only which particular good is public or private, but also the
overall balance between public and private goods in the entire economy. Here is where it makes sense to distinguish
between different approaches governing the balance of such goods. They range on a continuum between two extreme
positions: all goods in the economy are private and delivered via market
transaction, and all goods are public and distributed by some kind of
institutional arrangement, with an array of various “in-between” arrangements. This can be visually represented by a scale of the saturation of the economy by
public goods ranging from “none” (no public goods) to “all” (all goods are public). Of course, values “none” and “all” represent
only hypothetical situations. In
reality, we can identify three broadly defined economic environments falling in-between
these extremes:
·
“Effective market” in which most
goods are private and delivered through market transactions, while public goods
are limited to bare minimum, such as roads, elementary education, or
rudimentary social protections, such as unemployment insurance:
·
“Mixed economy” in which public
goods represent a substantial share of all goods in that environment (the
midpoint on our scale);these may include wide range of transportation services,
education at all levels, health care, housing, and various forms of public
insurance ranging from unemployment to income support, to maternity and old age
support. However, most other goods, services and assets are still private, and
some public goods are funded by a combination of public funds and private user
fees, which makes this environment “mixed public/private economy”
·
“Effective public goods economy”
further expands the share of public goods in the economic environment; this may include nationalization of key
industries to produce goods that are funded mostly by the public sector,
although they may be distributed through market transactions.
Which of these three economic environments represent
socialism? The quick and easy answer is,
of course, the third one, the effective public goods economy. However, this quick and easy answer may lead
to a dogmatic position of insisting on one answer to all problems, no different
from free market dogmatism espoused by many libertarians. Therefore, a more appropriate answer is a
qualified one – the deployment of public good economy when needed to effectively
meet social need. This more nuanced approach may lead to “effective markets” in
some situations, “mixed economy” in other, and “effective public goods economy”
in certain circumstances.
To illustrate, consider two services provided by a university:
education and food for the student population.
Education in most countries is public good for a reason – it is
non-rival and non-excludable. The fact
that there are other students in the classroom in no way diminishes the value
or quality of instruction I receive, and it often enhances it. Excluding people unable to pay for education
is highly undesirable and will lead to dire social and economic consequences –
illiteracy, low productivity, and shortages of skilled labor. The food service is a different story,
however. The university can decide to
provide it is a public good by charging the funding source a fixed per student premium, and give every
student a coupon to the cafeteria. Such
solution was once the norm, and it does the job, but not very efficiently. People’s tastes in food vary widely, and if
the cafeteria serves food that some students detest, those students will go
hungry and will be forced to buy food elsewhere. A more efficient solution is to open a food
court on the campus, where different vendors can offer different types of food
that suit different tastes. Therefore a
socialist university would provide education as a public good funded by general
taxes, and food services on the market basis.
It will also provide subsidies of one kind or another to those students
who cannot afford to buy food.
4. Prioritizing
democratic decision making
Control, or decision making capacity, reflects the
concentration of power in the political or organizational environment. To define power, we need to introduce t
concept of social actor – a group of people sharing some common interests (real
or perceived) and acting to pursue those interests in the political or
organizational arena. Power of a social
actor is that actor’s capacity to prevail when confronted by opposing efforts
of other social actors. In the words of
the British sociologist Anthony Giddens “power is to social science what energy
is to thermodynamics.” It determines
whether there is social change and, if so, in which direction.
In real life, power can be concentrated in one social actor
or distributed among multiple actors.
Concentration of power in the hands of one social actor means that this
actor typically prevails when confronted by actions of other social actors that
threaten his interest. Diffusion of
power means that no single actor can typically prevail when confronted by other
actors, and therefore must collaborate with other actors to achieve his
interests. Stated differently,
concentration of power means that one or a few social actors have a hegemonic
position in society whereas diffusion of power means no social actor has such a
position.
Using an approach similar to that used to describe the
economic dimension, it is possible to use a scale ranging between two extremes:
“hegemony” (power concentrated in the hands
of a single individual or a small elite) to “diffusion” (power shared equally by
all social actors). In reality, we can identify three broadly
defined political environments:
·
“Effective hegemony” means that
political power is concentrated for all practical purposes in the hands of few
social actors that form an oligarchy.
The members of the oligarchy can come from the same socio-economic class
(e.g. landed aristocracy or industry owners), or the same institutional
background (e.g. government bureaucracy, the military, or religious
organization):
·
“Contested power relations” means
that while power is still concentrated in the upper strata of the society (e.g.
landowners or industrialists), the ability of those strata to prevail against
interests of the lower strata is relatively limited and not assured. This can be a result of a variety of factors,
such as internal divisions within upper classes, coordinate action of lower
classes, economic development, foreign intervention, or even changes in the
natural environment;
·
”Effective
power diffusion” means that political power is shared among many social
actors or groups. This of course does
not mean that all social actors have equal power, power inequalities still
exist, but none of these actors occupies
a hegemonic position allowing it to systematically prevail over other social
actors. On a macro-social scale, this is
typically represented by a multi-party parliamentary democracy in which none of
the parties can achieve a majority on its own and must form coalitions with
other parties. On a micro-social scale,
this is represented by a membership association or a cooperative in which every
member has equal voting rights and capacity to determine the policy of the
organization.
Historically, the “effective power diffusion” was the ideal
sought by socialist movements. This is represented,
among other, by a key defining principle of cooperatives, “one person one vote”
, as opposed to capitalist principle in which voting power is proportional to
ownership shares. The effective power
diffusion model works well in environments with little differentiation of
functions and responsibilities, such as housing or food cooperatives in which
every resident or worker has basically the same relation to the organization. However, things get more complicated in
complex environments, with highly specialized roles and widely ranging responsibilities. This is why there are plenty housing and food
cooperatives but not that many airline coops.
So how would an ideal distribution of decision making power
look like in a socialist airline? Here,
we have different groups of actors, pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, baggage
handlers, ticket agents, administrators, and last but not least passengers. A proposition that all these groups share
power on the one person one vote principle is absurd on its face. Instead, different aspects of airline
operation require different power sharing arrangements. In a
socialist airline, all these groups would have equal say in determining certain
aspects of operations, such as passenger comfort or conflict resolution and procedures. I practical terms, passengers would have an
equal say how much leg room they can have, what kind of food is being served,
how seats are assigned, and what is a reasonable price for these
amenities. All employees – pilots,
flight attendants, mechanics, and baggage handlers, and administrators – would
have an equal say in setting personnel policy, pay scale, benefits, scheduling,
grievance procedures. On the other hand,
a “socialist” flight would look very much like a “capitalist” one – the pilot
making all decisions about the flight itself, cabin crew making decisions about
what happens in the cabin, and passengers basically following the direction of
the pilot and the cabin crew. Perhaps
the only difference is that no passenger would be kicked out of a socialist
flight when a higher paying passenger wants his or her seat.
5. Classification of
political-economic regimes
The characterization of political regimes in nation states
is heavily influenced by ideological distortions aimed to portray a particular
regime of policy in an unreasonably favorable or unfavorable light. Those distortions typically involve some form
of the pars pro toto fallacy, or
selectively using one element of a complex whole as a description of the
whole. I this particular case, the
‘whole” is the array of multiple political and economic institutions of any
given country, which typically involve various combinations of political
controls and market operations. The
ideology inspired par pro toto
characterization focuses on one element of that array and ignore other elements
to form a narrative advanced by this ideological position. A typical example of this fallacy is
selective focus on extensive social protections in countries like Denmark or
Sweden and call them “socialist”, while ignoring the fact that these countries
have market economies. The same
narrative focused on the market operations in the US and label it “capitalist”,
while ignoring vast government outlays on public goods (defense, roads, etc.)
and government regulations, and quasi monopolistic nature of many industries
(e.g. telecoms, aerospace, energy and to lesser degree retail). In the same vein, policy proposals of modest
expansion of social programs (e.g. Medicare) are portrayed as “socialism” that
will ruin the supposedly “market” economy of the US.
Those ideological distortions make it rather difficult to
discuss democratic socialist in a constructive matter-of-fact way. Years of indoctrination resulted in a
situation in which geo-political enmities are viewed as fundamental ideological
differences. As a result accepting socialism
is often viewed as an act of treason and siding with countries declared as the enemies
by the US political elites, such as Russia, Venezuela or North Korea. One way to counter this ideological distortion
is to accurately position “ideal type” or hypothetical and actually existing political
economic regimes on a conceptual “map” defined by the dimensions proposed
above: share of public goods and diffusion of power (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Classification
of political regimes
0= low; 1 = high
The four corners in Figure 1 represent hypothetical (i.e.
not actually existing) regimes representing four ideological archetypes. The hypothetical libertarianism is
characterized by the virtual absence of public goods (near 0 on the horizontal
axis) and the diffusion of power among individuals (near 1 on the vertical
axis). Hypothetical communism falls on
the polar opposite to libertarianism on the share of public good scale, but on
the same side of the diffusion of power axis.
Hypothetical corporatism is characterized high concentration of power
and absence of public goods (near 0 on both scales). Finally, hypothetical statism scores as low
as corporatism on the diffusion of power scale, and as high as communism on the
share of public goods scale.
Real economies fall in the middle among these hypothetical
regime types. The ex-USSR, former
Eastern Bloc countries, and the US fall within the same range of the
distribution of power dimension, but far apart on the share of public god
dimension. The low diffusion of power in
the US is due largely to the two party monopoly that effectively excludes all
other forms of political participation (cf. Walter Karp, Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America,
Harper’s Magazine Foundation, 2011), and the domination of the political
institutions by elite interest groups (cf. Gilens and Page, “Testing Theories
of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens” https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
). Western European and Scandinavian countries
score higher than both the US and former eastern Bloc countries on the
diffusion of power scale thanks to their multi-party parliamentary systems (cf.
Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy:
Government Forms and Performance in Thirty Six Countries. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1999). They also score
higher than the US on the share of public goods scale thanks to their social
welfare systems, but not as high as the former Eastern European countries,
thanks to their predominantly market economies.
The main conclusion of this brief comparison is that differences
among political-economic regimes of actually existing countries are the matter
of degree, different shades of grey rather than contrasting black/white images
favored by ideological narratives. It
illustrates the main claim of this article, that socialism (or capitalism) is
not a country or a place, but a set of principles that are implemented, in
varying degrees, in different countries and different areas of the economy.
6. In Lieu of Conclusion
This paper proposes a novel conceptualization of democratic
socialism that goes beyond the historical conceptualizations equating socialism
with common ownership of the means of production. The concept of the ownership of the means of
production evolved, and today most of the economic activity is conducted by
joint stock corporations whose key feature is separation of ownership from
control. As a consequence, ownership of the
means of production cannot guarantee the attainment of the key socialist goal –
the satisfaction of all human needs through fair sharing of all resources
produced by the economy.
The proposed conceptualization of democratic socialism
emphasizes the same goal as that sought by the historical socialism, but
proposes a different set of means to attain it.
First is public policy prioritizing public goods in various combinations
with market mechanisms to satisfy diverse demands. Second is the democratic political and
economic decision making on the one person one vote principle. Unlike doctrinaire approaches insisting on a
single solution with little regard to the circumstances (e.g. market only or
nationalization only approaches), the proposed conceptualization calls for
flexibility in crafting the right balance of private and market goods, and the
right combination of centralized and decentralized decision making structure
that is suitable to a particular area of the economy.
The intended purpose of this article is to facilitate public
discussion about democratic socialism in an objective, free of ideological distortions
manner.
