Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Bernie Sanders
Related: About this forum
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
What is a Democratic Socialist? (best definition ever!) (Original Post)
Playinghardball
Oct 2015
OP
Faux pas
(16,229 posts)1. Kickin'
n8dogg83
(248 posts)2. What a great and succinct definition. We need to forward this to the Sanders campaign!!
F4lconF16
(3,747 posts)3. Have you talked to the Democratic Socialist of America yet?
They're very strong supporters of him, by the way.
Here's the problem: Sanders is a social democrat, not a Democratic Socialist. That's a big difference.
From part of their website:
http://www.dsausa.org/toward_freedom
Socialists therefore argue that private corporate property is not only wrong, but also nonsensical. Wealth is a social creation and should be controlled by society as a whole.
Literally all of socialism depends on the democratization and non-private ownership of capital. I mean, I am all for Sanders at this point. I'm all for him embracing the term socialism (though it took me a while to come around on that). But can we not pretend that socialism and capitalism are in any way compatible?
Also, Democratic Socialism does utilize a huge amount of Marxist theory. Perhaps you meant to differentiate between Trotskyist socialism and DS?
Now, if you want to say that Sanders' brand of Democratic Socialism is all of the above, go for it. But this is just straight up false.

