Could someone please explain the philosophy behind “Democratic Socialsim”. I learned a little about it in my Economics class a couple years ago, but I really don’t remember all that much.
I suppose I can elaborate more on why I’m asking, but since I’m not sure what “Democratic Socialism” involves yet, I’m not exactly sure how to word my second question.
Thanks.
(Yeah, yeah, I know… I’ve heard of Google. 
I just thought I’d add a new thread to the board.)
‘Democratic socialism’ is a term used to explain the acceptance by the old order socialist parties in Western Europe of markets as the established mechanism of allocating the resources of a country.
Parties such as the Socialist Party in France, or the Labour Party in the UK have embraced the benefits of market-allocation in their policies under the fluid banner of ‘Social Democracy’ - where a socialist party is elected to power in order to implement a piecemeal programme of socially inclined policies. ‘Democratic socialists’ differ in that they intend to implement a fully fledged command economy following election to power. This incidence has been very rare given that most communist states since the war have not been plural democracies in the Western sense, and also most ‘socialist’ parties outside of the communist have favour a socially liberal agenda which has been best effected by the operation of markets, hence their ‘social democratic’ status.