What's the difference?

[commie kg]

I have seen punches thrown by both sides at the other, but how different are these two theories? I've scoured the internet, but I can only find conflicting explainations on this. What are the main differences between these two ideologies?

[Rob]

Well democratic socialism basically denies the necessity of a revolution by force. It more tries to fix capitalism from within and change society through the democratic process. Marxist-Leninism, however, affirms the necessity of the use force to remove capitalism, and is also characterized by the concept of the vanguard party. This was a concept Lenin came up with. It claims that a group of professional revolutionaries from all classes needs to lead the workers in the overthrow of capitalism. To me, these two forms of socialist ideology seem rather different, and I hope that this helped.

[commie kg]

thanks that helped. :)

[Conghaileach]

The confusing part though is that Marxist-Leninism is also known as Democratic Socialism, because Trotsky once said that socialism without democracy is not socialism. Marxist-Leninism believes in creating democracy, because at present it does not really exist. What we call democracy is really bourgeois democracy - democracy of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.

[Anonymous]

leninism IS democratic socialism...

[Ian]

I am in the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia and we are all marxist-leninists, Rob is just repeating a misconception most people have about Democratic Socialism, you think that we are not revolutionary? Well the only parties in Australia that are active and radical(somewhat violent) are the self professed democratic socialist parties (DSP, ISO, SAlt). Social Democrats are the people who want to reform the beast. As Anarchist said, Leninists are Democratic Socialist.

[antieverything]

Well, many Marxist-Leninists believe that the vanguard has to sieze power and rule on "behalf" of the workers for some period of time...basically this means that they believe that people must be conditioned to accept socialism before they will be able to have democracy.

...which is sort of like saying that democracy should only exist as long as it doesn't go against the wishes of the Communist Party.

[Rob]

Quote: from Ian Rocks on 9:27 pm on Jan. 16, 2003
I am in the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia and we are all marxist-leninists, Rob is just repeating a misconception most people have about Democratic Socialism, you think that we are not revolutionary? Well the only parties in Australia that are active and radical(somewhat violent) are the self professed democratic socialist parties (DSP, ISO, SAlt). Social Democrats are the people who want to reform the beast. As Anarchist said, Leninists are Democratic Socialist.


I won't start arguing about Leninism and whether or not it's incompatible democracy, since that's not my intent and I don't really have an opinion about it. And in my experience, Social-Deomcrat and Democratic Socialist have been synonyms, which would lead to the semantic differences between Ian and I. That doesn't mean they always will be, as Ian demonstrated.

[Umoja]

If your a Democratic Socialist, it means that you don't perscribe strictly to Marixst-Leninism.