The Difference Between Democratic Socialism and Stalinist Communism

According to Karl Marx, communism is an economic state in which everyone shares everything (think "communal" or, for any Christians out there, "communion") and socialism is a stage in the making of communism, where all property and resources are public, and everyone does their fair share of work in production (Campbell 2018). These ideas play out well on paper, but people are greedy, so it can be hard to implement either communism or socialism completely as Marx planned.

When most Americans with a high school education in history hear "communism," they think of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and the Red Scare. Some only think of Stalin. The communism that many picture is of the government seizing private property and personal belongings without redistributing the wealth fairly. "Socialism," although it defines a different economic state that is present and functional in countries such as Nicaragua, India, and Portugal ("List of socialist states" 2019), often brings the same image to mind. However, neither communism nor socialism was supposed to result in a dictatorship--in Marx's plan for communism, there was supposed to be no government at all--and the definitions of socialism and communism, especially from someone in support of them, usually aren't centered around the Soviet Union.

What is a Democratic Socialist?

A democratic socialist is someone who believes that the economy and government should be run by democracy ("What is Democratic Socialism?"). That is, the people should all have a hand in making and maintaining the government via voting for laws (as in a direct democracy) or voting for rulers (as in a representative democracy), and the people should also have some control over the economy. The ideals of a democratic socialist include things like a living wage as the minimum wage (about $15/hour in most of America) or a universal base income, free higher education, universal health care, and other ways of leveling out the playing field--basically, not letting the masses starve or at least count our pennies so that the 1% can earn more profit that they don't need. No one needs billions of dollars to live comfortably, but everyone needs more than $7.25 an hour--or $15,000 a year working full time with no vacation or days off--to live.

Many democratic socialists support the idea of capitalism on paper, but don't like the way it's played out so far. I, personally, think people should be able to follow their dreams and make money off of them, but I want that for everyone, not just those with inheritances or rich parents who can give them a small loan of a million dollars.

I know what you're thinking when someone says they want to redistribute the wealth: "Do they want to take my hard-earned money?" The short answer is no. Well, probably. I doubt Jeff Bezos is reading this. If you're making just enough money to live comfortably, good for you. If you're making $4 and a half million an hour (Settembre 2018) and not using it to better society or even pay your workers a living wage, you're who we're after. We don't want to take away people's homes or cars or anything they're still working to maintain. But the income of maybe 10 people in America could be used to buy meals for every hungry child. People live and die on the streets. I've seen more crowdfunding campaigns for medical costs of illnesses and injuries than for any other purpose. People tell teenagers and young adults that we can prevent that sort of life by going to college and getting a good job, but even low income jobs want degrees and college costs more than 10 times what it did 50 years ago ("Digest of education statistics" 2013). You have to have money to make money, even to make just enough to survive. We don't want to stop people from making money or following their dreams. We just want to change the requirements.

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