Original post: PeoplesWorld.org
I was once told that the term "democratic socialism" is redundant. Socialism, it was said, is in its very nature democratic. Where there is socialism, there is democracy. With one comes the other. Democracy is inherent in socialism.
Actually, that is how it should be, but looking back on the experience of the Soviet Union, it is apparent that Soviet socialism had a democratic deficit, that democracy wasn't inherent in its socialism.
Soviet working people were not the authors of their own lives and the architects of their society in any deep sense. Despite the existence of local councils, trade unions and other organizations, political power wasn't really diffused to the various layers of society. Instead it was concentrated in the hands of the ruling Communist Party, and in too many instances employed arbitrarily. The party's near-monopoly of power foreclosed popular participation in and outside of the institutional structures of Soviet society.
