# Democratic road to socialism

Part of a series on :
Marxism :
Theoretical works
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
The Condition of the Working Class in England
The German Ideology
The Communist Manifesto
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Grundrisse
Capital
Critique of the Gotha Programme
Dialectics of Nature
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
What Is to Be Done?
The Accumulation of Capital
Philosophical Notebooks
Terrorism and Communism
The State and Revolution
Essays on Marx's Theory of Value
History and Class Consciousness
Prison Notebooks
The Black Jacobins
On Practice
Dialectic of Enlightenment
A Critique of Soviet Economics
The Long Revolution
Guerrilla Warfare
The Wretched of the Earth
Reading Capital
The Society of the Spectacle
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
Ways of Seeing
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Social Justice and the City
Women, Race and Class
Marxism and the Oppression of Women
Imagined Communities
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy
The Sublime Object of Ideology
Time, Labor and Social Domination
The Age of Extremes
The Origin of Capitalism
Empire
Late Victorian Holocausts
Change the World Without Taking Power
Caliban and the Witch
An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital
Capitalist Realism
Capital in the Anthropocene :
Philosophy
Alienation
Dialectical materialism
Ideology
Philosophy of nature
Philosophy in the Soviet Union
Reification
Marxist ethics :
Critique of political economy
Capital (accumulation)
Crisis theory
Commodity
Concrete and abstract labor
Factors of production
Falling profit-rate tendency
Means of production
Mode of production
Capitalist
Socialist
Productive forces
Scientific socialism
State monopoly capitalism
Surplus product
Socially necessary labour time
Value-form
Wage labour :
Sociology
Base and superstructure
Bourgeoisie
Class
Class consciousness
Classless society
Commodity fetishism
Communist society
Critical theory
Cultural hegemony
Democracy
Dictatorship of the proletariat
Soviet
Radical
Democratic centralism
Exploitation
False consciousness
Human nature
Immiseration
Imperialism
Lumpenproletariat
Metabolic rift
Proletariat
Private property
Relations of production
State theory
Working class :
History
Class struggle
Historical determinism
Primitive accumulation
Proletarian revolution
World revolution
Theory of historical trajectory :
Aspects
Aesthetics
Archaeology
Criminology
Cultural Marxism
Cultural Studies
Ethics
Film theory
Geography
Historiography
Literary criticism
Marxism and religion
Sociology
Philosophy :
Common variants
Structural
Autonomist
Marxism–Leninism
Guevarism
Maoism
Titoism
Trotskyism
Neo-Gramscianism
Regulation school
Third-worldist
Hegelian
Budapest School
Frankfurt School
Humanist
Neue Marx-Lektüre
Open
Praxis School
Both
Black
Classical
Communization
Feminist
Leninism
Neo
Post
Western :
Other variants
Analytical
Austromarxism
Centrist
Eurocommunism
Instrumental
Marxism–Leninism–Maoism
Nkrumaism
Political
Revisionist
Situationist
Socialism with Chinese characteristics
Wertkritik :
People
Marx
Engels
Morris
Lafargue
Rubin
Kautsky
Plekhanov
Du Bois
Connolly
Lenin
Luxemburg
Liebknecht
Kollontai
Stalin
Trotsky
Grossman
Zinoviev
Bloch
Lukács
Korsch
Bukharin
Ho
Serge
Gramsci
Pashukanis
Bordiga
Benjamin
Mao
Basu
Mariátegui
Horkheimer
Dutt
Brecht
Marcuse
Kalecki
Fromm
Cox
Lefebvre
James
Adorno
Padmore
Sartre
Deutscher
Beauvoir
Sombart
Nkrumah
Sweezy
Emmanuel
Hill
Bettelheim
Draper
Jones
Hobsbawm
Althusser
Hinton
Williams
Freire
Mandel
Sivanandan
Miliband
Cabral
Thompson
Bauman
Fanon
Berger
Castro
Guevara
Liebman
Heller
Guattari
Mészáros
O'Connor
Wallerstein
Mies
Tronti
Debord
Amin
Hall
Nairn
Parenti
Negri
Jameson
Dussel
Harvey
Laclau
Bahro
Poulantzas
Vattimo
Badiou
Harnecker
Altvater
Anderson
Löwy
Vogel
Sison
Easthope
Rancière
Berman
Przeworski
Cohen
Therborn
Losurdo
Postone
Rodney
Bannerji
Spivak
Newton
Wood
Federici
Wolff
Balibar
Eagleton
Kurz
Rowbotham
Mouffe
Geras
Brenner
Davis
Massey
Cleaver
Bishop
Haraway
Panitch
Clarke
Jessop
Davis
Wright
Fraser
Burawoy
Holloway
Rose
Screpanti
Tamás
Hampton
Cano
Žižek
Berardi
Sankara
Hennessy
McDonnell
Douzinas
Roediger
Foster
West
Ghandy
Marcos
Heinrich
Prashad
Kelley
Dean
Lordon
Linera
Fisher
Li
Coulthard
Malm
Seymour
Toscano
Bhattacharya
Moufawad-Paul
Srnicek
Horvat
Hamza
Saito :
Journals
Antipode
Capital & Class
Capitalism Nature Socialism
Constellations
Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory
Historical Materialism
Mediations
Monthly Review
New Left Review
Race & Class
Rethinking Marxism
Science & Society
Socialist Register :
Related topics
21st-century communist theorists
Anarchism
Creative destruction
Conflict theory
Criticism of Marxism
Communism
Communalism
Economic determinism
History of communism
Left-wing politics
Marxian economics
New Left
Old Left
Municipalism
Political ecology
Socialism
Authoritarian
Democratic
Market
Reformist
Revolutionary
Social
Utopian
Left-wing populism
Universal class
Vulgar Marxism
Economism
Worker cooperative
Workers' council :
Outline
Communism portal
Philosophy portal
Socialism portal :
vte :
The democratic road to socialism is a political philosophy within Marxism and democratic socialism which favors transitioning from capitalism to socialism through representative democracy and building an organized mass movement of the working class.
Nicos Poulantzas is often considered the first to formalize the term, democratic road to socialism.$^{:74-8}$ For Poulantzas, the democratic road to socialism refers to a form of democratic socialism that commits to pluralist representative democracy alongside an extension of participatory democracy. Poulantzas viewed political liberties in liberal democracies as "the result of popular struggles," but also believed that liberal democracy "helps reproduce the capitalist state regime."$^{:23}$ He therefore advocated for a Marxist and socialist democracy with strong labor unions, territorial popular assemblies, and socialist communitarianism that would enable a radical transformation of the state.$^{:24}$ Yet, institutions of representative democracy would be "an essential condition of democratic socialism" to regulate decentralized models like workers' councils in order for the working class to collectively wield the political power and technical expertise necessary to direct a complex socialist society.
Some academics, activists, and political commentators also apply the term democratic road to socialism to The Chilean Way to Socialism and the Presidency of Salvador Allende, a Marxist and democratic socialist in Chile. While Allende and the moderate factions of Popular Unity and the Socialist Party of Chile, which he reflected, never adopted the term, the democratic road to socialism has been applied to the 1970 to 1973 Chilean experience due to the Allende administration's commitment to Marxism, representative democracy, a gradual transition to socialism, and broader social movement politics.
The democratic road to socialism is distinguished from evolutionary socialism to its right, as espoused by Eduard Bernstein, which advocates for incremental reform by primarily parliamentary means within liberal democracy, with the goal of ultimately achieving socialism through the state. Yet, it is also distinguished from revolutionary socialism to its left, which views capitalism as only able to be completely overthrown by non-reformist means, and does not see a transformative "capture" of the liberal state as a viable means to reach a socialist democracy.
The democratic road to socialism is espoused by certain socialist politicians, such as Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera,$^{:xii}$ and groups, such as the Bread and Roses and Socialist Majority caucuses of the Democratic Socialists of America. The democratic road to socialism has influenced the development of Eurocommunism and the ideological trajectory of parties such as Syriza. Additionally, Tristram Hunt and Bruno Jossa argue that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels grew skeptical of "top-down revolutions" in their later writings, in favor of "a peaceful, democratic road to socialism."