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i dont have the time i'd like to have to devote to this post, so i'll just outline a couple things and maybe do more later.
democratic socialism is a variant of capitalism in which the state actively intervenes to shape the parameters of the captialist game--so it might subsidise businesses in particular sectors because the system interest is in full employment rather than in profit maximization for private holders of capital---in labor relations, it formalized and extended the role of trade unions and generated very different types of work environments than you tend to find in privately dominated capitalism (again, think how differently american capitalism would look if full employment were taken seriously as a goal--the barbarism that is american capitalism deals with structural unemployment by not counting it. go figure). the state redistributes wealth generally under teh assumption that flatter distribution curves are preferable if the idea is to maintain solidarity with the existing order over any period in political terms. the state also diverts wealth into providing basic services--which routinely include universal health care--and (on a matter that pisses me off to no end) actual funding for the arts--simply because it is assumed that physical and mental well-being are social concerns--and that art production is important, not simply a luxury (perhaps because artists tend to be quite innovative and capitalism can benefit from buying or stealing ideas--and art raises the quality of life in general--that sort of thing.)...so democratic socialism is a variant on capitalism there's alot more to it even at the level of ldeal-type and even more if you start considering the simple fact that there are in the empirical world a bewildering number of variants of social democracy.
but the bottom line is easy: democratic socialism represents a different set of conclusions about what constitutes the best way to maintain social and political solidarity in the face of the atomizing tendency of capitalism.
so in the main, i dont know what people are talking about above, what they have in mind when they talk about regimentation and so forth in the context of democratic socialism. there is no opposition between capitalism and democratic socialism--they are variants of the same economic system.
much of what you think of ds systems comes down to where your priorities are analytically--particular if you assume--as i do--that most claims regarding "human nature" are circular repetitions of the ideological situation of the speaker and do not refer to anything past that. if you want a capitalism that is sustainable socially, politically and environmentally, you cannot rely on private capital. ds-systems are based around that assumption.
state socialism of the type articulated in the soviet union etc are basically different--i could go on about them, but do not consider them relevant as they were in most ways kind of horrifying extensions of the logic of capitalism which the ideologues of these systems tended to imagine were otherwise. the best way of saying it quick: bureaucratic capitalism/state capitalism repeated all the worst features of capitalism while managing to erase even the small margins for individual autonomy that the latter allows--so for example in capitalism you can quit your job, but for a period in the ussr, you couldnt. that kind of thing.
in principle, socialism seems to me closest to direct democracy.
but here i have to stop.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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