View source for Danton's politics

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I'm a moderate socialist, with leanings towards anarchism that are tempered by a recognition of the value of liberal democracy.

==Moderate socialism==
By moderate socialism I mean limited socialism under a democratic political regime with a free market economy.

All Western democracies are in fact social-democratic. The Keynesian welfare state, introduced in the United States during the great depression of the 1930s as a response to one of the cyclic crises inherent in capitalism, is a form of minimal social-democracy. The difference between the welfare state and socialism proper is only a matter of degree. As a moderate socialist I advocate a greater degree of socialism, but within the same framework, that of liberal democracy.

The theory of moderate socialism was developed by Bernstein, who invented the term "social-democracy." Bernstein thought that the transition to socialism could be gradual, rather than requiring a revolutionary rupture. The ''practice'' of moderate socialism was developed in France by Leon Blum, whose Popular Front government illustrated how a leftist coalition could exercise power within the framework of liberal democracy, and then yield the power when overturned in the elections. More recently, John Rawls developed a theory of social justice which has affinities with a moderate socialist perspective.

==Failure of the Marxist governments==
Marx provided a useful diagnosis of the problems of capitalism, and a terrible prescription for their remedy. The Marxist model of the dictatorship of the proletariat, inherited from the Terror of the French revolution, led inevitably to the totalitarian regime of Stalin.

The formal mechanisms of liberal democracy, including free speech, universal sufferage with multiple parties, and a "state of law," are necessary to protect human rights and freedoms, whatever the economic system. Furthermore, a liberal democracy recognizes the right to property ownership, and by extension the right to hire the labor of others and operate as a "capitalist," which is incompatible with state-enforced communism. The best way to work towards the ideals egalitarianism and cooperative endeavor is to promote these within the framework of liberal democracy.

==The autonomous collective unit==
Like the Marxists, the leftist anarchist movements made the mistakes of rejecting liberal democracy and of advocating compulsory collectivism. But they developed a model of the autonomous collective unit which maintains its relevance today, among those that advocate decentralized forms of economic and political organization.

In the economic context, the automous collective unit is the workers cooperative. As a complement to top-down social reform carried out by the state, the working class movement should focus on building economic democracy from the bottom up, through the creation of cooperatives. A decentralized movement of voluntary association will in the long run allow us simply to replace companies that mistreat their employees, rather than having to conflict with their owners.

==See also==
*[[Participatory democracy]]
*[[Poverty consciousness]]

==Links==


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