What is the difference between Democratic Socialists/Democratic Socialism and Social

[tradeunionsupporter]

What is the difference between Democratic Socialists/Democratic Socialism and Social Democrats/Social Democracy ? Are Social Democrats Capitalists and support Capitalism does Social Democracy believe in Capitalism ?
Are many Democratic Socialists really just Social Democrats ?

[syndicat]

okay, i'll repeat my opinion here. I think social democracy is a method for working for change. the method bases itself on electoral politics, electing leaders to run the existing state. and also on routine negotiations with employers through the hierarchical business union bureaucracy. because of this orientation to electoral politics and gaining control of the state, the tendency is to think in terms of what the state will do, of implementing some program through the state bureaucracy, top down.

this method can be advocated or worked at by people who maintain a commitment to replacing capitalism with something called socialism. or it can be used by people who don't have any ambition of getting beyond capitalism, but just aim at limited reforms within the system.

so "social democracy" can be used to refer either to 1. the method I described, or 2. the method plus limiting oneself to advocating only limited changes within capitalism, abandoning any ambition of getting beyond capitalism. "democratic socialism" is usually used by people who advocate the method but do retain the ambition to get beyond capitalism to something they call socialism. I think that is the difference between social democracy in the programmatic sense and "democratic socialism." But libertarian socialists and the more radical marxists will say that "democratic socialism" is still a form of social democracy because of its method.

[Red Commissar]

In their earlier days (after World War I) Social Democrats typically had two wings, a democratic socialist wing and a more progressive liberal wing. In the years running after World War II the former began to lose influence.

In the course of the 1970s and 1980s the Democratic Socialist wings were over time pushed out in favor of what we typically associate with social democracy nowadays, a progressive liberal type ideology with social services.

In Europe you generally see beyond the social democrats the more left wing parties, beginning with the Democratic Socialists and going through to the various Marxist parties at the end.

The only thing the two mainly share in common is that they don't shun mainstream political participation as a method of bringing about change, and don't believe a communist state is possible. That being said the self-professed "Democratic Socialists" are as I see them have a genuine desire for socialism, much more so than their Social Democrat counterparts.