Socialism and democracy: some European experiences

Abstract

The criticism that emerged in the last two decades, from different spheres, around the so-called "real socialisms" (Eastern Communism); it has been accompanied by the emergence, especially in southern Europe, of a new democratic socialism. The latter is expressed both in the coming to power of various socialist governments and in the rich intellectual debate on the question of the relationship between socialism and democracy.

In the pages that follow we want to argue that this phenomenon is not so "new", and that its roots go back to the Europe of the turn of the century, around the so-called "revisionist controversy", within the German social democracy. (...)